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January 13, 2025 at 08:48AM
Less than three weeks ago, on December 23, in a post on optimism about the potential demise of the green energy fantasy, I took note that two of the largest U.S. banks had just quit something called the “Net Zero Banking Alliance.” The two were Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. These two banks, along with many others, including all of the biggest ones, had joined the NZBA as it was getting organized under auspices of the UN back in 2021. NZBA, together with other related groups organized around the same time, aspired to be cartels of financial institutions that would save the planet by starving hydrocarbon fuels of all investment capital, while re-directing the money to the “green” energy transition. Now, shortly after the re-election of Donald Trump, two of the biggest banking giants had decided to exit. Could this be a sign that the zero-carbon green energy fantasy was losing its grip?
In the short 19 days since that post, the trickle of resignations from the NZBA and related groups has turned into an avalanche. In the blink of an eye, what once seemed a serious threat that hydrocarbon fuels could be snuffed out by a group boycott of investors has almost entirely gone away.
More on the latest developments later in this post. But first, some history of NZBA and the related alphabet soup of do-gooders.
2021 was the year that the UN’s big climate confab, known as the “Conference of Parties” or “COP,” was to be held in Glasgow, Scotland. Although the COPs are normally held every year, there had not been one in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. After the year hiatus, COP-26 was ultimately held from October 31 to November 13, 2021. Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the UK, who had converted from one-time climate skeptic to all-in alarmist, was determined to make this COP-26 the be-all and end-all of all COPs. The swarms of little aspiring tyrants in UN bureaucracies, just off their hugely successful Covid power grabs, were ready to flex their new muscles in the climate arena.
In the many months of preparations for the Glasgow conference, the UN got the bright idea of organizing all of the world’s big financial institutions into cartels to direct their capital to an “energy transition” and away from hydrocarbon fuels. To achieve this goal, in April 2021 there was formed an entity called the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, or GFANZ. According to its website:
The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) brings together leading financial institutions and other financial services sector participants who have individually decided to support the objectives of mobilizing capital and addressing the barriers companies face to scaling decarbonization. . . . GFANZ was founded to establish a forum for addressing and catalysing action toward the sector-wide challenges and opportunities associated with the net-zero transition.
The moving force behind this initiative appears to have been a guy named Mark Carney. Have you heard of him? Here is a picture of him from the GFANZ website:
Carney is a native Canadian, and a big-time guru in the central banking world: he was the Governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013, and then promptly moved to become the Governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020 (the first non-Brit to hold that position). Along the way, Carney became one of the top evangelists of the climate alarm religion. Upon leaving the Bank of England, he hopped over to the UN, where he got the highfalutin title of “Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance.” According to its website, “GFANZ was launched in April 2021 by UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance Mark Carney and the COP26 presidency to accelerate the transition to a net-zero global economy.”
Carney became the Chair of GFANZ. By the time of COP-26 in November 2021, Carney had also recruited to join him as Co-Chair none other than the ultimate climate hypocrite, Mike Bloomberg (of the seven houses and eight private aircraft). According to the GFANZ website, the two remain Co-Chairs today.
GFANZ was then instrumental in organizing a series of subsidiary groups divided by industry sector. Relevant to today’s post are the NZBA (formed contemporaneously with GFANZ in April 2021), and the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, NZAMI, which actually had been launched a little earlier in December 2020.
Both the NZBA and the NZAMI were rapidly successful in recruiting to their membership essentially all the biggest names in their industry sectors. The missions statements of the groups are written in a bureaucratic style that makes them difficult to understand, but it is clear at least that the idea is to stop the financing of the hydrocarbon fuel industry. For example, here is the first item of the “Commitment Statement” of the NZAB:
Transition the operational and attributable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from their lending and investment portfolios to align with pathways to net-zero by 2050 or sooner.
Which brings me to the latest developments: The exits from the NZAB of Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo in early December quickly opened the barn doors for the other big players to rush out. On December 31, Reuters reported that Citibank and Bank of America had just quit the NZAB. Morgan Stanley announced its exit on January 2. JP Morgan quit on January 7. These six big banks among them have a market share of more than 25% of the entire U.S. banking industry.
And then, just yesterday, the largest asset manager in the country, BlackRock, quit the NZAMI. Of the three largest asset managers, another one, Vanguard, had already quit back in 2022. That leaves only State Street remaining, of the big three.
Meanwhile, in case you are wondering what is going on with Mark Carney, he appears to be a leading candidate for leader of Canada’s Liberal Party now that Justin Trudeau has quit. The CBC, in a piece yesterday, says that Carney has the backing of some 30 Liberal MPs. That would mean that Carney could become the next Prime Minister of Canada, should the Liberals win the election expected to be held some time this year. On the other hand, according to the latest polls, it looks like the Liberals are headed toward one of the most decisive wipe-outs in the history of Canada. This poll, from CBC News on January 6, concludes that if the election were held that day, the Conservatives would win approximately 227 seats to the Liberals’ 44 (in a Parliament of 338).
So Carney may get a chance to test how well the climate alarm message continues to sell to the Canadian voter. So far, it’s not looking good.
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January 13, 2025 at 08:07AM
A new study highlights an underrated part of the global water cycle. It is suggested that land-use changes may be intensifying this cycle, leading to more heavy rain events. Why the speed of the cycle was unexpected is not made clear. According to theory the process of water movement in plants depends mainly on osmosis.
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A study from Chapman University provides the first comprehensive global estimates of water storage in Earth’s vegetation and the time it takes for that water to flow through plants, says Earth.com.
The research fills a critical gap in our understanding of the global water cycle and its sensitivity to climate and land-use changes.
Published in the journal Nature Water, the study reveals that Earth’s vegetation holds about 786 km³ of water, a mere 0.002% of Earth’s total freshwater.
However, the significance lies in the rapid movement of water through plants.
This transit time, from absorption to release into the atmosphere, is among the fastest in the water cycle – ranging from five days in croplands to 18 days in evergreen needleleaf forests.
For perspective, water in lakes takes around 17 years to cycle, and in glaciers, the process spans 1,600 years.
. . .
A forgotten element of the water cycle
“Plants are the forgotten part of the global water cycle,” noted Dr. Andrew Felton, lead author and professor at Montana State University. Despite their critical role in returning water from the ground to the atmosphere, plants are often excluded from water cycle diagrams.
“Our results show that the transit of water through plants occurs on the order of days, rather than months, years, or centuries, as it does in other parts of the water cycle,” said Dr. Felton.
By combining plant water transit estimates with those for the atmosphere (8–10 days) and soil (60–90 days), researchers can now approximate the total time a drop of water spends in the terrestrial cycle.
Intensification of the water cycle
One striking finding is the rapid transit of water through croplands. During peak growing seasons, water cycles through crops in less than a day. This speed, consistent across global croplands, hints at a broader environmental implication.
“Land use change may be homogenizing the global water cycle and contributing to its intensification by more rapidly recycling water back to the atmosphere where it can turn into heavy rain events,” explained Dr. Gregory Goldsmith, senior author and associate professor at Chapman University.
. . .
Implications for a changing planet
The study highlights the sensitivity of plant water transit times to environmental events like deforestation, drought, and wildfires.
“The results suggest that the transit time of water through plants is likely to be very sensitive to events such as deforestation, drought and wildfire, which will fundamentally change the time it takes for water to flow through the water cycle,” said Felton.
By shedding light on the dynamic role of vegetation, this research highlights the interconnectedness of ecosystems and the urgent need to understand how land-use changes influence the global water cycle.
Full article here.
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Image: Global hydrological exchanges [credit: Wikipedia]
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
January 13, 2025 at 06:05AM
51.14986 -1.56999 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Installed 1/1/1959 Temperature data archived from 1/3/1984
I consider Middle Wallop to be a classic example of the Met Office creative tape measuring system. Rather than following the guiding principle of the CIMO classification system, i.e. to provide a standardised representation of the natural environment to provide international data comparison, they have followed the letter of the law not the “spirit”
To go through the technicalities of the exact dimensions the screen has to be from “extraneous” heat sources, the 10 metre circled area just manages not to include any car exhausts and not too much of all the surrounding hard standing. A tiny, fenced-in grass island within a sea of concrete, tarmac, buildings, cars, conventional aircraft and helicopters would not be most people’s chosen location for accurate temperature readings.
I am sure it is stating the obvious that those determining such distance regulations did not expect such rather silly locations as above to be used. It would almost certainly have been their intention to ensure no heated draughts would be able to influence readings. Such a heated draught problem is NOT just those car exhausts, the circled areas just north of the screen are helicopter landing pads as seen in use below. If the car exhausts do not effect the readings from the south,then the helicopters do from the north.
Have Met Office staff never been in the vicinity of a helicopter take off or landing? Somewhat unlikely as so many train at Navy, Army Air Corps or Air Force establishments.
I find it quite appalling that such a compromised location should be used at all to contribute readings to the historic temperature record. Worse still is that the Met Office should effectively bend the spirit of the regulations so wantonly. If this site has to be classified, then it is unquestionably Class 5 (not class 4) and inaccurate by up to an additional 5°C.
Or is there an alternative motive? As noted in a Met Office observers guest post
“For example a site on an airport may present no problems for a MiG; the quicker response of the Pt may catch a quick burst of an aeroplane’s exhaust as it passes en route for take-off or landing. This will result in a higher Maximum Temperature recorded for that day.“
As noted in the review of Wiggonholt, the “crossing of thresholds” seems to be equally important to promote as “evidence” as potentially inflated average temperatures from poorly sited weather stations do. For example, in this BBC article its Lead Weather Presenter (and RAF Officer) Simon King proclaimed –
Most would accept that Army Air Corps Middle Wallop (being inland from the coast in warm Hampshire) is very much more likely to record 30°C or higher when temperatures are read by highly responsive and modern electronic instrumentation having track-side heated air blown at it from car exhausts and helicopter rotors. Are these higher temperatures really a “result of climate change” as an RAF Officer instructs us to believe rather than selected location of readings? Not a lot of those conditions around in the early 20th century….and meteorologists were much more careful in their choice of location for weather stations back then.
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January 13, 2025 at 05:46AM
