“Record” Temperatures in Delhi, Not All They Seem
By Paul Homewood
The truth behind those so-called “record temperatures” in Delhi:
We are told that Delhi experienced record temperatures on 15th May, with 49.2C set at Mungeshpur, which surpassed the previous record of 48.4C at the Indira Gandhi (Palem) International Airport in 1998.
However, alarm bells soon began ringing, when we learnt that temperatures elsewhere in Delhi were nowhere near their record. For instance, at Safdarjun Airport, one of the longest running weather stations and the Base Weather Station for Delhi, temperatures peaked at 45.6C, well below the 1944 record of 47.2C.
Similarly at the Gandhi/Palam Int Airport, this week’s temperature of 46.4C was also far lower than the 48.4C in 1998.
So what lies behind this contradiction?
The Hindustan Times offers some clues:
UK Weather Trends In 2020/21
By Paul Homewood
My latest paper on UK weather trends has just been published by GWPF:
London, 17 May – UK weather trends have changed very little in recent decades and have become, if anything, less extreme, according to a new paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
That’s according to an annual review of official weather data by climate researcher Paul Homewood. The paper shows that while very cold winters are now very rare, heatwaves have not been increasing.
Similarly, there have been fewer droughts in recent decades, but we are not seeing more wet years, wet months, or wet days.
Paul Homewood says:
“The UK’s weather is becoming, if anything, less extreme. We are still waiting for evidence of a ‘climate crisis’ that politicians and environmentalists claim is upon us. But observational data shows that in the UK there is no evidence for any worsening weather trends."
Homewood also notes that storms are not an increasing problem either, with extreme winds having been on the decline for 30 years.
Note for journalists and bloggers:
Homewood’s paper is entitled "The UK’s Weather in 2020-21" and can be downloaded here (pdf).
The GWPF invited the Royal Society and the Met Office to review and submit a response to this paper, to be published as an addendum to it. The invitation was not taken up.
By Paul Homewood
Homeowners trying to install eco-friendly heat pumps have been left with surprise £30,000 bills after it emerged millions of radiators are too small to work with the new technology.
By Paul Homewood
I am amazed anybody seriously thought they would!
As I commented after COP26, why would any country suddenly come up with a new emissions cutting plan, if it refused to before Glasgow?
And as usual, the author of this piece clearly has not read the COP26 agreement, because it contains no such “promise”. Below is the relevant section:
From Solar Grid To Cattle Shed!
By Paul Homewood
- A Greenpeace-funded solar energy project in India has become completely defunct just years after it was built, according to local media reports.
- “When this solar farm went defunct, it was primarily because of two reasons,” said Vijay Jayaraj, an India-based researcher. “One, is the cost of the power and the second is reliability.”
- “No one uses solar power anymore here,” Ravi Kumar, a local shopkeeper, told an India-based news outlet.
Eco-activist group Greenpeace brought solar power to Dharnai, India, in 2014, constructing a green micro-grid it said would make the tiny village “energy independent” and a model for the rest of the country to follow.
Eight years later, reports indicate the solar micro-grid is not only defunct, but being used as a cattle shed. The Dharnai venture is only one of many failed attempts by environmental groups, like Greenpeace, to “green” the developing world, according to one of its co-founders.
“It’s the same thing that’s happened a lot across Africa: goody two-shoes comes in and builds them a small solar facility,” CO2 Coalition Director Patrick Moore, who co-founded Greenpeace in the 1970s, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Then, pretty soon the battery wears out and it just doesn’t get repaired and they don’t know what to do because they don’t have any expertise,” said Moore, who departed Greenpeace in the 1980s after he said the group lost touch with its original purpose. “There’s plenty of those stories.”
In July 2014, Greenpeace celebrated the project, claiming that it made Dharnai the first village in the state of Bihar to run entirely on solar energy. The project quickly collapsed, though, as batteries became overused, causing the entire grid to fall into disrepair, environment-focused news outlet Mongabay-India reported in December.
“When this solar farm went defunct, it was primarily because of two reasons,” Vijay Jayaraj, an India-based researcher at the environmental group Cornwall Alliance, told TheDCNF. “One is the cost of the power, and the second is reliability.”
“In 2016 and 2017, when the village was finally connected to the grid — and the grid was powered by coal power plants — they understood that coal power is much more reliable,” he continued.
ayaraj added that non-governmental organizations like Greenpeace often market renewable energy alternatives to remote villagers with little or no electricity in developing countries. Such groups are able to avoid heavy scrutiny since the areas they approach are in dire need for power.
“These programs and solutions don’t talk about the sustainable nature of the programs, the longevity of the programs, what happens when the technologies age or how much of the current demand it could meet,” he said. “So, by pushing these questions under the carpet, these programs have started to take root in a lot of developing countries. India is no exception.”
While some villagers expressed optimism about Dharnai, India, solar facility in 2014, others protested it saying they didn’t want “fake” electricity, according to Mongabay-India. At the time, Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of Bihar, applauded the project and told locals that coal power would diminish over time while solar power would always be around.
“In the first three years, it worked well and people were using it. But after three years the batteries were exhausted and it was never repaired,” Ravi Kumar, a local shopkeeper, told Mongabay-India. “So now, while the solar rooftops, CCTV cameras and other infrastructure are intact, the whole system has become a showpiece for us.”
“No one uses solar power anymore here,” he continued. “The glory of Dharnai has ended.”
“We left solar connection after using it for one year. How can poor people like us pay such amounts of money?” an anonymous local told Nalanda University. “They used to give electricity only for two hours. During rain, they do not use to give electric supply and so does during the fog in the winter.”
https://dailycaller.com/2022/05/15/greenpeace-solar-farm-india-cattle-shed-renewable-energy/
FOOTNOTE
I thought this rang a bell!!
The BBC’s (false) prophet of doom–Ross Clark
By Paul Homewood
The pressure builds on Justin Rowlatt, as Ross Clark weighs in:
Anyone who watched the BBC‘s Panorama programme on November 3 last year without previously having taken an interest in climate change probably found themselves terrified.
That edition of the Beeb’s flagship documentary series, called Wild Weather: Our World Under Threat, began with the corporation’s climate editor, Justin Rowlatt, telling viewers: ‘The world is getting warmer and our weather is getting ever more unpredictable and dangerous. The death toll is rising around the world and the forecast is that worse is to come.’
Footage of terrible floods, storms, droughts and fires rolled on — with the clear implication that this had all been caused by man-made climate change.
‘It has been a year of extreme weather,’ Rowlatt went on. ‘We have been able to see the impact of climate change all around us.’
Now jump forward to last week, when it was reported that the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) had upheld complaints about two claims made in the programme.
First, it wasn’t true that the death toll from natural disasters is rising. In fact, the opposite is true.
According to ourworldindata.com, the number of deaths globally from natural disasters has tumbled each decade for the past century, apart from a small blip in the 2000s, from an average of 524,000 a year in the 1920s to just 45,000 in the 2010s — despite a booming global population.
The ECU also ruled that Rowlatt’s claim that southern Madagascar was ‘on the brink of the world’s first climate-induced famine’ was incorrect, as other factors were involved.
Although the ECU didn’t spell out these other factors, the UN has previously blamed last year’s famine partly on Covid restrictions, which prevented seasonal agricultural labourers from working as usual.
But this is not the first time BBC viewers have been misled by the Corporation’s climate editor.
Last December, the ECU had to clarify a claim made by Rowlatt that Britain’s offshore wind is ‘now virtually subsidy-free’.
As was clarified, such a claim may be true of recently installed turbines, but many older models were built under contracts which guarantee them subsidies for many years to come.
Some at the BBC, it seems, are losing patience with their climate editor. ‘The Justin Rowlatt stuff is grim,’ an unnamed BBC source told one newspaper this week. ‘These are not ‘mistakes’; he’s a campaigner.’
Full story here.
Heatwaves Getting Worse In India? More BBC Lies
By Paul Homewood
The BBC says heatwaves are getting more intense in India:
An intense heatwave is sweeping through northern India with temperatures hitting a record 49.2C (120.5F) in parts of the capital, Delhi.
Summers have always been gruelling in many parts of India – especially in the northern and central regions. Even before air-conditioners and water coolers started selling in the millions, people had devised their own ways of coping with the heat – from keeping water cool in earthen jugs to rubbing raw mangoes on their bodies to ward off heat strokes.
But many experts say India is now recording more intense, frequent heatwaves.
Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, agrees that several atmospheric factors have led to the current heatwave. But adding to all that, he says, is global warming.
"That’s the root cause for the increase in heatwaves," he says, adding that more research is needed to link climate change to other, less extreme weather fluctuations.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-61242341
Except that the facts don’t support this, in Delhi at least:
A Quarter Of UK’s Electricity Could Be Wasted By 2030, Thanks To Intermittent Wind Farms
By Paul Homewood
From Current+
If the UK meets its expanded renewable and nuclear targets, the country will have an oversupply of electricity more than half of the time by 2030, creating significant opportunities for flexible demand.
In new research from LCP, the company looked at the generation targets outlined in the British Energy Security Strategy alongside expected levels of demand, and found that 53% of the hours in the year, the UK’s grid could have an oversupply of renewable and nuclear power. By comparison, in 2022 it is expected there will only be an oversupply in 6%.
The security strategy outlined a new target of up to 24GW of nuclear power by 2050, and up to 50GW of offshore wind by 2030. It additionally highlighted that solar could grow five-fold by 2035.
“The energy strategy received the headlines for ambitious and laudable energy generation targets but a closer look reveals the significant challenge of building a decarbonised future energy mix that delivers value for consumers and ensures security of supply,” said Chris Matson, partner at LCP.
“For more than half the time in 2030 the UK’s renewable and nuclear backed energy system will be producing more energy from renewables and nuclear than it uses. Simply wasting this generation would harm both consumers and investors so a whole system approach is essential to minimise the cost of delivering net zero.”
In 2030, there is now expected to be 72TWh of excess renewable and nuclear energy, or almost 25% of current demand. 50GW of demand-side flexibility from technologies like batteries, electrolysers and interconnectors will be needed to use all of this excess.
Accelerating the expansion of demand-side flexibility would reduce the cost of balancing the grid, mitigate falling revenues for renewable generators and help consumers recognise the wider benefits of renewable power, said LCP.
“The need for significant amounts of flexibility and back-up power shows the scale of investment needed in order to deliver the government’s ambition to achieve 95% decarbonisation of the power sector by 2030,” continued Matson.
“Without a concerted programme of policy and regulatory reform to unlock this investment on a range of supporting technologies, there is a risk that the strategy will fail to cut bills in the long-term, and actually puts them up.”
In addition to the need for demand-side flexibility assets, LCP estimated 45GW of extra back-up capacity will be needed to ensure energy security during periods of low renewable output.
This gap will likely be filled by bioenergy, hydrogen and carbon capture usage and storage enabled power plants. But, over 20GW of this capacity will be used in fewer than 5% of hours.
Focusing solely on investing in renewables therefore comes with risk, as investors will see their assets turned off for periods of time or not earning revenue, warned Rajiv Gogna, partner at LCP.
“However, a diversified approach that looks for more ‘value-add’ and opportunistic approaches to infrastructure investment can balance this risk by exploring less well-established technologies such as batteries which would sit well against generation assets,” said Gogna.
This is the key chart from the LCP analysis:
How phantom forests are used for greenwashing
By Paul Homewood
No S**t Sherlock!!
Capturing carbon by increasing forest cover has become central to the fight against climate change. But there’s a problem. Sometimes these forests exist on paper only – because promises have not been kept, or because planted trees have died or even been harvested. A new effort will now be made to track success and failure.
Dr Jurgenne Primavera is being paddled in a canoe along the coast of Iloilo in the Philippines. It’s an idyllic scene but she is frowning. Six years ago these shallow waters were planted with mangroves as part of the country’s ambitious National Greening Programme, but now there is nothing to see but blue water and blue sky.
Ninety per cent of the seedlings died, Dr Primavera says, because the type of mangrove planted was suited to muddy creeks rather than this sandy coastal area. The government preferred it, she suggests, because it is readily available and easy to plant.
"Science was sacrificed for convenience in the planting."
The National Greening Programme was an attempt to grow 1.5 million hectares of forest and mangroves between 2011 and 2019 but a withering report from the country’s Commission on Audit found that in the first five years 88% of it had failed…..
Tim Christophersen, until this month head of Nature for Climate with the UN Environment Programme, says that of the one billion hectares of landscape that countries have promised to restore worldwide "most" remains a promise rather than a reality.
In some cases, grandiose planting programmes have gone ahead, but have delivered limited results. The BBC has investigated a dozen examples that have flopped – as in the Philippines – usually because insufficient care was taken.
The Philippines government did not respond to requests to comment on the official Commission on Audit assessment that 88% of the National Greening Programme failed.
The local authority that planted what Dr Primavera considers to be the wrong mangrove species for coastal sites disagreed with her, saying that 50% of seedlings had survived in some locations.
In the Philippines at least an audit was published; in many other countries results are unclear.
The Indian State of Uttar Pradesh, for example, has planted tens of millions of saplings in the last five years, but when the BBC went to check new plantations near Banda, it found few alive.
Signs still proudly announced the plantations’ existence, but scrubland plants were taking over.
Prof Ashish Aggarwal of the Indian Institute of Management in Lucknow says India has covered an area the size of Denmark with plantations since the 1990s, but national surveys show forest cover increasing only gradually.
"Even at a survival rate of 50%, we should have seen more than 20 million hectares of trees and forests," he says. "But that hasn’t happened – the data does not show that addition."
According to the deputy director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Tina Vahanen, this problem is widespread, not confined to India.
"Many of the plantations have been promotional events," she says, "with no follow-up action that is really needed to grow trees."
The BBC found a different kind of problem in Mozambique, which has allowed private companies to plant large monoculture plantations as part of its contribution to the AFR100 forest landscape restoration initiative.
While many plantations have grown successfully, it’s alleged that in some cases mature natural forest has been felled to make space.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61300708
Why any of this should comes as a surprise beats me!
Texas Spring Heatwave Is Not Unusual
By Paul Homewood
There has naturally been an attempt to blame the Texas power shortages on an “unusual heatwave”:
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/texas-heat-pushes-power-demand-141925296.html
Fox is predicting temperatures to peak on Monday, at 101F in San Antonio and 96F in Houston:
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 