Is Boris Jeremy Clarkson or Greta Thunberg?
By Paul Homewood
Dan Hodges sums up the problem superbly.
It is the metropolitan bubble all over again:
The whole piece is worth a read, but this comment stands out:
But though Ministers may be aware of the pitfalls, the reality is COP26 represents a giant political trap. And the Government is in danger of plunging head-first into it.
A false consensus is again forming. Just as we saw with immigration and Brexit, a self-selecting group of politicians, activists, media commentators and blue-chip corporates have decided their will is now the settled national will. And they have unilaterally decreed tackling the ‘Climate Crisis’ is the priority of the moment.
Whether ordinary people agree with them is neither here nor there. The environmental elite will determine the price to be paid to save the planet from destruction. You’re worried about the cost of a new boiler? Or a new electric car? We’re saving the world here. Just shut up, plebs, and pay.
Never mind that’s not where the public are. Yes, they believe in – and are concerned about – global warming. Yes, they want to do their bit to protect the future of the children and grandchildren. But they are not about to be dictated to by a global environmental clique who will jet in to Glasgow, get whisked around for 12 days in their darkened SUVs, then jet out again.
The inconvenient truth is the environment is not the No 1 issue for the majority. Maybe it should be. But it isn’t. A secure job. A decent home. A good school. Safe streets. These are the real ‘global priorities’.
But in the weeks ahead, as COP 26 and the international environmental clique bears down upon us, these priorities will be shunted aside. The news pages will be filled with one issue – and one perspective. TV will be the same. The global corporates – who see COP26 not as an opportunity to save the world, but a perfect moment to burnish their social responsibility profiles – will push their greenwashed advertising campaigns.
And once again, the gap between those who govern and those who are governed will widen. Let’s call it the Canning Town Paradox.
In 2019, Extinction Rebellion took to the streets of London. They were lauded by politicians. They were applauded by many in the press. They were feted by celebrities.
Then Extinction Rebellion turned up at Canning Town and Shadwell and Stratford stations, and jumped on to the roof of the trains.
At which point, ordinary Londoners expressed their own feelings by hauling them off the carriages and nearly lynching them.
This is the danger for Boris. As the lustre of COP26 beckons, he loses further focus on the agenda – and voters – that delivered him his majority back in 2019.
‘Carry on, Allegra’? I really wouldn’t.
Bjorn Lomborg: ‘Warming annually causes about 120,000 heat deaths but prevents nearly 300,000 cold deaths’
By Paul Homewood
Another balanced article by Bjorn Lomborg:
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
In years to come, people will look back and wonder how politicians of all parties were so naive to believe that Net Zero could be attained at little cost.
Finally some are beginning to wake up to the truth:
Boris Johnson’s green agenda has been plunged into chaos amid fears that the costs of reaching “net zero” could cripple working class families in newly-won Tory seats.
A Treasury review of the costs of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 has been delayed since the spring. There are concerns the analysis highlights that the poorest households will be hit the hardest by the ambition, which will involve policies such as stripping out gas boilers and switching to electric or hydrogen cars.
Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, is said to be increasingly concerned about a looming crisis over the cost of living for British households, as the country faces the triple threat of rocketing energy bills, the potential for rising prices as a result of inflation, and an as-yet unspecified suite of policies to enable the country to meet the net zero target.
The Treasury review has been held back amid fears that the analysis will lead MPs and the public to the conclusion that Mr Johnson’s net zero strategy would be politically toxic in the Red Wall seats won by the Conservatives in December 2019.
Amid growing disquiet among Tory MPs, a new net zero scrutiny group of backbenchers is being formed to hold ministers to account over the plans. Craig Mackinlay, its chairman, warned that spending vast sums on subsidising green schemes would be seen by the public as “aping” some of Jeremy Corbyn’s pledges at the 2019 election.
He said: “The Conservatives’ strongest hand has always been credibility: credibility to deliver good economics and good governance. To ape the failed policies of an extreme Labour politician does not seem to be the way of electoral success.”
He added: “I’m very pleased the Treasury are actually thinking of this with a financial head on rather than just a warm feeling.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/08/07/boris-johnsons-push-net-zero-plunged-chaos/
It really should not have taken a genius to work out that forcing people to buy hugely expensive electric cars and heat pumps was would cripple most family budgets.
As we know, of course, successive governments have been badly misled by Gummer’s Committee on Climate Change, helped its useful idiots in the media who have failed to challenge Gummer’s crazy policies. It is worth noting that this article is written by Edward Malnick, the Political Editor, rather than little Emma Gatten, who merely gets an assist. Her contributions are usually typical of the environmental departments across the media, which act as mouthpieces for the renewable lobby and rarely challenge any of the green dogma.
By Paul Homewood
Once every five years, the IPCC publishes its latest Assessment Report into the state of the climate. And every five years, governments get together to write their own scary version:
UN researchers are set to publish their strongest statement yet on the science of climate change.
The report will likely detail significant changes to the world’s oceans, ice caps and land in the coming decades.
Due out on Monday, the report has been compiled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
It will be their first global assessment on the science of global heating since 2013.
It is expected the forthcoming Summary for Policymakers will be a key document for global leaders when they meet in November.
After two weeks of virtual negotiations between scientists and representatives of 195 governments, the IPCC will launch the first part of a three-pronged assessment of the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change.
It is the presence of these government officials that makes the IPCC different from other science bodies. After the report has been approved in agreement with governments, they effectively take ownership of it.
On Monday, a short, 40-page Summary for Policymakers will be released dealing with the physical science.
It may be brief, but the new report is expected to pack a punch.
"We’ve seen over a couple of months, and years actually, how climate change is unfolding; it’s really staring us in the face," said Dr Heleen de Coninck, from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, who is a coordinating lead author for the IPCC Working Group III.
"It’s really showing what the impacts will be, and this is just the start. So I think what this report will add is a big update of the state of the science, what temperature increase are we looking at – and what are the physical impacts of that?"
One key question in the new summary will be about the 1.5C temperature target. The climate summit held in the French capital, Paris, in 2015, committed nations to try to limit the rise in global temperature from pre-industrial times to no more than 1.5 degrees.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58102953
The fact that governments “negotiate” tells us every thing we need to know. Their Summary for Policymakers will not be an objective, independent scientific report, it will be a political statement.
Information Tribunal orders Committee on Climate Change to reveal Net Zero calculations
By Paul Homewood
A big win for GWPF:
The CCC’s figures were presented to Parliament ahead of the Net Zero emissions target nodded through in June 2019 to enshrine it in law. The case was brought by Andrew Montford, the deputy director of the Global Warming Policy Forum.
The ruling, which dismisses almost all of the CCC’s arguments, comes after a two-year battle to obtain the cost calculations. Extraordinarily, the CCC’s case centred around a claim that it had erased and overwritten the relevant information by the time of the FOI request, just six weeks after the publication of the Net Zero report, and indeed changed and lost it further subsequent to the request. According to Mr Montford:
By arguing that it has overwritten and erased the spreadsheet data, the CCC has essentially admitted that its internal processes are a shambles. This is not a competent organisation and Parliament needs to investigate as a matter of urgency. If they can’t even manage simple matters of data retention, what hope is there that they can prepare a plausible costing of a multi-trillion pound project such as the decarbonisation of the UK economy?”
During the case, the CCC revealed that their costing does not include any estimate for spending in 2020-2049, but only considered the residual amounts in 2050, after the bulk of the transition. This was not made clear to the MPs when they agreed to bring the Net Zero target into law, and it is likely therefore that MPs were misled.
———-
*The CCC has 35 days to publish the closest versions of the spreadsheets to those that existed at the time of the request.
*Mr Montford was advised by information law specialists John Goss and Aaron Moss of 5 Essex Court chambers.
It is clear that the the CCC’s internal procedures are a shambles, as Andrew says. The reality is that the CCC have never been bothered about the costs to the country of its mad decarbonisation agenda.
July 2021 A Month Of Extremes? The Archives Say Otherwise
By Paul Homewood
Last month was notable for a hot spell mid month, interspersed with spells of heavy, thundery rain. No doubt the Met Office/BBC/Guardian nexus will label it a month of extremes, as they always do when it’s a bit warm, cold, wet, dry etc:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/summaries/index
How does this compare with previous years?
2012 All Over Again!
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Somebody’s been watching 2012 again!
Human-caused warming has led to an “almost complete loss of stability” in the system that drives Atlantic Ocean currents, a new study has found — raising the worrying prospect that this critical aquatic “conveyor belt” could be close to collapse.
In recent years, scientists have warned about a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which transports warm, salty water from the tropics to northern Europe and then sends colder water back south along the ocean floor. Researchers who study ancient climate change have also uncovered evidence that the AMOC can turn off abruptly, causing wild temperature swings and other dramatic shifts in global weather systems.
Scientists haven’t directly observed the AMOC slowing down. But the new analysis, published Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change, draws on more than a century of ocean temperature and salinity data to show significant changes in eight indirect measures of the circulation’s strength.
These indicators suggest that the AMOC is running out of steam, making it more susceptible to disruptions that might knock it out of equilibrium, said study author Niklas Boers, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany…
The AMOC is the product of a gigantic, ocean-wide balancing act. It starts in the tropics, where high temperatures not only warm up the seawater but also increase its proportion of salt by boosting evaporation. This warm, salty water flows northeast from the U.S. coastline toward Europe — creating the current we know as the Gulf Stream.
But as the current gains latitude it cools, adding density to waters already laden with salt. By the time it hits Greenland, it is dense enough to sink deep beneath the surface. It pushes other submerged water south toward Antarctica, where it mixes with other ocean currents as part of a global system known as the “thermohaline circulation.”
So scientists have not actually directly observed the AMOC slowing down, but give me some more grant money and I will keep researching it!
The whole concept is frankly ludicrous anyway. The world has been much warmer than now for most of the time since the end of the ice age, particularly the Arctic regions. Yet the AMOC never collapsed then.
The Conservative Woman’s New Weekly Climate Round Up
By Paul Homewood
I have agreed to write a weekly round up of climate stories for The Conservative Woman website.
It is designed for those readers who don’t routinely follow the climate scene, and may be swayed by the perpetual propaganda emitted by the alarmist lobby.
Please circulate amongst your friends. It is planned to run this round up every Friday
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-climate-scaremongers-part-one/
German Floods Update
By Paul Homewood
Thanks to Tony Heller, we have a bit more detail from the WMO on the amount of rain that fell during the German floods last month:
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/summer-of-extremes-floods-heat-and-fire
This is consistent with my original source, which quoted:
The idea that four or five inches of rain in a day is somehow exceptional is ridiculous. As I pointed out at the time, the 24-hour record in Germany stands at 353 mm. In September 1968, 200mm fell in just one hour in Miltzow.
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/national-24hour-precipitation-records.html
As the WMO map highlights, the area principally affected was tiny. Unfortunately the rain fell on the wrong place at the wrong time. But global warming had nothing at all to do with it.
By Paul Homewood
The knife through the heart of COP26:
https://chinaenergyportal.org/en/2021-q2-electricity-other-energy-statistics/
Any prospect that China would play ball at COP26 have surely now vanished with their latest power generation numbers.
