UK’s Third Climate Change Risk Assessment
By Paul Homewood
With the public finally rebelling against the cost of Net Zero, the government has published its latest Climate Change Risk Assessment, warning us that climate change will cost tens of billions in “climate disasters”:
The Government has today (Monday 17 January) published the UK’s Third Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3), recognising the unprecedented challenge of ensuring the UK is resilient to climate change and setting out the work already underway to meet that challenge.
The five-year assessment, delivered under the Climate Change Act 2008 and following close work with the Climate Change Committee (CCC), identifies the risks that climate change poses to multiple parts of our society and economy.
For eight individual risks, economic damages could exceed £1 billion per year each by 2050 with a temperature rise of 2°C, with the cost of climate change to the UK rising to at least 1% of GDP by 2045.
Details
As required by the Climate Change Act 2008, the UK government has undertaken the third five-year assessment of the risks of climate change on the UK. This is based on the Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk, the statutory advice provided by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), commissioned by the UK government and devolved administrations.
The risk assessment considers sixty-one UK-wide climate risks and opportunities cutting across multiple sectors of the economy and prioritises the following eight risk areas for action in the next two years:
- risks to the viability and diversity of terrestrial and freshwater habitats and species from multiple hazards
- risks to soil health from increased flooding and drought
- risks to natural carbon stores and sequestration from multiple hazards
- risks to crops, livestock and commercial trees from multiple climate hazards
- risks to supply of food, goods and vital services due to climate-related collapse of supply chains and distribution networks
- risks to people and the economy from climate-related failure of the power system
- risks to human health, wellbeing and productivity from increased exposure to heat in homes and other buildings
- multiple risks to the UK from climate change impacts overseas
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-publishes-uks-third-climate-change-risk-assessment
The report is largely based on last June’s Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk, published by the CCC, who seem to now be in charge of every aspect of climate policy. Unsurprisingly, given their involvement, the latest assessment is pure fantasy.
Three basic factors undermine and discredit the new Risk Assessment throughout:
- Despite claims to the contrary, no evidence is offered that our weather is getting any worse, or will do. Flooding is a good example, which we are told will become disastrous in future. So where is the data which shows it has already got worse?
- The report totally ignores adaptation, as this section reveals:
It is absurd to assume that, for instance, farmers won’t adapt to slightly warmer weather.
- Whatever may be the impacts of climate change, and no mention seems to have been made of the undoubted benefits, they will be dwarfed by natural variability and other human influence. Moorland wildfires, for instance, are mentioned several times, even though the actual data proves that the UK is not getting drier. But where is there any acknowledgment of the overwhelmingly key factors in wildfires – arson and accidents, both aggravated by easy accessibility nowadays. If we are so concerned about wildfire, surely we should be addressing these factors, and not trying to control the weather?
In terms of the specific risk areas, the first four all seem to revolve around floods and drought, with a few wildfires thrown in:
They really are making a meal out of wildfires, which only affect a miniscule proportion of our moorlands.
As for the other two, where is the evidence that either floods or droughts are getting worse? If they have not in the past, why should we believe the CCC when they tell us they will in future.
The idea, anyway, that floods will diminish soil fertility is ridiculous. It is flooding which restores fertility.
The CCC talk about land management and new crops and technologies, as if farmers have not been doing these since time immemorial. But England is not suddenly going to turn into Texas in climate terms, and the enormous year-to-year, as well as month-to-month, variations will continue to dwarf longer term climate changes. If these happen at all, they will occur so slowly as to be barely noticeable, and will allow plenty of time to adapt
They go into the realms of fantasy when it comes to supply chains:
According to the CCC, extreme weather is already causing disruption:
But what does “extreme weather” have to do with “climate change”. There is certainly no evidence that it is getting worse.
We have already learnt from the pandemic that it is dangerous to be over reliant on China for so much of what we buy, and it should be a top priority for any government to reduce this.
But the danger is that Net Zero policies will destroy our industrial base and place even more dependence on imported goods.
But this next section must surely take the biscuit!
Again from the CCC:
So the the weather related risks to our electricity system will grow as we become more dependent on wind power.
WOW!! I did not see that one coming!
It gets worse:
Obviously whoever wrote this gibberish did not read the ONS’ latest report, pointing out that global warming has saved half a million lives in Britain.
The CCC perpetuates the lie about 2500 heat-related deaths in 2020, failing to point out that death rates in recent hot summers have actually been lower than cold, wet ones.
Apparently we are all going to be too hot to work as well! Have they not heard of air-conditioning? Or mechanisation which takes the hard labour out of most jobs?
And what about all of the lost productivity during cold winters, when the whole country can seize up with a few inches of snow? We are told these are things of the past now.
And finally, even if none of these calamities come to our shores, there is always the rest of the world to worry about:
I think the CCC have been watching too many disaster movies!
The whole report is just another attempt to scare the children and persuade people to accept the high costs of Net Zero.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Yet isn’t that ‘climate cost’ a fraction of what they are proposing to spend in the vein hope of mitigating it??!!
And since when has the Climate Change Committee (CCC) ever been ‘independent’??
It’s independent of voters.
Correct!
It’s independent of reality.
Has anyone ever tried picking the CCC apart and shining a light on how much skin in the game each and every one of these clowns has.
If not, perhaps its time for an “Independent Assessment Report of CCC members Independence”
Yes Tim. It needs to be done. It is a matter of ‘in-dependence’ on political status, grant decisions, personal income and investments etc.
If we had switched-on, honest government, the CCCwould never ave been set up (M’band) and would now be wound up, by Boris, without compensation for its corrupt members or incorrupt onesy, if any of these exist.
Much worse governance than the illicit booze ups by No 10 because they cost us billions!
Meanwhile, NOAA has released their year-end climate assessment. It turns out that 2021 was only the fifth warmest year on record, at least since the middle of the last century. What this means is our efforts to stem global warming are working? The last five years have been cooler than 2016. Doubtful if the “green” media and politicians will view it that way. Doomsday is the preferred solution to keep us alarmed.
“The last five years have been cooler than 2016” will be spun as a success for the climate agenda, not as a natural phenomena. This will be strange, as CO2 levels are rising, which is the very thing they believe causes temperature rise.
A solar Grand Minimum is now developing since solar cycle 24, so those 1970s predictions of global cooling are being borne out.
What price decarbonisation?
I thought about you, Paul when I first heard this reported on Monday. I wondered at the stamina you would need to wade through this garbage, as I knew you would. Well done!
The bits I read seemed only to leave out the swarms of locusts and deadly famine. I was tickled to read the bit where they claimed (as per every year) – without blushing – that winters would be wetter and summers drier, totally forgetting the downpours we had last summer and the previous milder winters. The thing is, they can’t afford to move away from their doom and gloom as that would start people wondering what else they got wrong.
“as that would start people wondering what else they got wrong”! Their question should be “what did they get right?”.
Paul you are brilliant in your analysis. When are you going to get onto Channl;e 4, GB News, Sky News or the BBC Today programme to inform the Public….?
Look, just understand; it’s many times more worse than you think it is
When this report was published the orders for Tena incontinence pads at the BBC went through the roof
Brilliant evisceration as ever Paul and what a steaming pile of carp the report is from start to finish. So childish, so hysterical, so scientifically illiterate.
This caught my eye with regard to the result of Net Zero policies:
“Electricity provides about 15-20% of our energy today. By 2050 it could account for around 65%”.
So, assuming (unlikely but stay with me) that energy use now will be approximately the same in, say, 2050 are we to believe that electricity generation will have to increase 4 fold? And of course if, as seems likely, energy use will increase with population, industry and other inflationary factors, that multiple could be much higher than 4. So, where on Earth are we going to get all that electricity from, how are we going to store it for all the times that the wind doesn’t blow or the Sun don’t shine and how will the great majority of the population ever afford it? Can’t any of these learned people do the very simplest of maths?
“It’s not going to happen folks” so why are they still coming out with this delusional tripe?
The Future Energy Scenarios “Consumer Transformation” scenario calls for about 140 GW of offshore wind (14 times present) and 50 GW of onshore (4 times present). That’s over 70 jiggawatts on average.
Dispatchable supply is almost all gone at this stage, if we reach it.
Yes there is large amounts of oversupply at times (supposedly sent to the continent/used in electrolysis), but there will be large chunks of time where the wind doesn’t blow.
“Increased risk of flooding” has been the fault of Chris Smith’s environmental policies under the Blair Government. Ending river management “to protect invertebrates” ie. halting dredging and clearing along with increased culverting has been disastrous. Since the Somerset Levels were cleared, flooding stopped. The Fens, much below sea level, are well managed, hence no dramatic flooding.
Even if the UK warms by several degrees C it would very roughly gives us the current climate of France. Sacre bleu, is there climate “chaos” there, if so why do people still go there for summer hols, presumably the peak time for such chaos?
Do you really want my current climate? The night before last was -7 and today is the first time we’ve hit plus for a week! Be careful what you wish for!
Macron is fully signed up to the climate scam, as is the EU as a whole but if you look closely you’ll notice that it’s really only the Anglosphere — UK+US — plus the UN and Greta that are obsessed with it.
Even the Germans, who “invented” environmentalism, are only paying lip service.
Un be leaveable! A 2°C rise is barely noticeable, and cold kills more than hot. We often holiday (when possible!) in places with temperatures around 30-36°C, and haven’t died yet.
It’s NETZero that will kill people – intermittent power supply together with massively increased costs AND dependence on the Grid will hit EVERYBODY except the very rich, but especially poorer people. The Grid will take years and £ billions to be able to cope with current users of gas and all these electric cars.
These people are extreme eco-loons and should be banished to somewhere distant and cold. Rockall sounds about ideal!
What hope has Britain in its darkest hour?
Rockall, Rockall!
Old Flanders and Swann coment that just came to mind.
This short statement from the report shows just how utterly stupid and incompetent the authors, advisors and government really are:
Electricity is not an energy source. Anyone who thinks it is who is writing government position/advice like this should be sacked. God help us that there are bozo MP’s and HMG Minister’s listening to this crap and actually believing it to be true.
Electricity is a carrier/method of distribution of energy from a source to an end use. Taking the energy currently distributed via electricity supply the dominant and dispatchable) energy source is natural gas supported with nuclear, biomass and coal. Electricity will not become our “dominant energy source” as we head lemming-like to Net Zero.
We will not become increasingly exposed and vulnerable to electricity system failures, we will become increasingly exposed and vulnerable because government and the CCC, in acts of utter folly, are stupidly pursuing a policy of substituting reliable and predictable dispatchable energy sources for unreliable and intermittent weather-dependent sources.
Well said, TS!
If I had my conspiracy hat on I would wonder who or what would benefit from the fall of the UK and it’s major utilities. I would also want to know who on the CCC was ‘owned’ by whom and how much they were taking for steering the country towards the hell that will be NZC.
I also wonder if my seven-year-old should take up classes in Mandarin as he moves through his school years. He’ll be 56 in 2050: I am making sure I leave my writings and notes for him and I shall make very sure the names of those responsible are known to him.
Harry, is my maths poor or is yours?
I am sure that the PM’s “Five Year Climate Assessments” & the “Five Year Plans” of Josef Stalin are very similar in creating misery, as they are in name!
The UK Climate Change Risk Assessment 2022 is simply surreal. It is the product of a committee, and it shows.
‘Climate change is happening now.’
Define ‘climate change.’ What do you mean by it? Where is it happening?
‘has already begun to cause irreversible damage to our planet and way of life’
Examples? Where is irreversible damage? And whose ‘way of life’ has changed?
They are just making it up.
How does one cause irreversible damage to a big dirt and water covered ball flying around the sun?
‘As we redouble our efforts to achieve net zero’
Redouble? Wut?
‘The extent of climate change will depend on our success in controlling global emissions
over the coming decades.’
We, Kemo Sabe? You have no such control. China is planning to build 43 new coal-fired power plants and 18 new blast furnaces.
Brazil, India and China et al have made it crystal clear that they are not playing this game. Their emissions dwarf the UK’s, and will continue to increase. Should UK achieve Net Zero, it won’t even cover a single annual increase in these countries. I.e., UK Net Zero is unilateral self destruction.
At some point, the UK populace should consider that the government is trying to destroy them. Net Zero cannot accomplish anything else. It is self evident. Cutting UK emissions as the world vastly increases theirs does what? Shifting British industry to India, China, and Brazil accomplishes what?
Yes how do you begin to cause irreversible damage? It’s another false phrase, designed to sound completely different from what it actually says.
The whole thing is a horrible mess of fraud, half-truths and outright fantasies, with no attempt to consider alternative views on what might happen.
My Grandfather and his brother were both killed in WWI and by strange coincidence I spent a lot of my younger life studying the history and hellish slaughter of the war’s battlefields. At the time one could have said that the unimaginable damage caused by the warring armies – significantly worse than anything the CCC can dream up – was ‘irreversible’. But it was not! Countries healed, rebuilt and moved on – and remembered: they that are left know that CC and its nightmarish scenarios dreamed up by Deben’s fifth-columnists know they are being scammed, as do we. When we say, ‘We shall remember them’ I shall also include Deben and his dogs’ turds as well. But not like they think.
Why do they need “evidence” of adaptation? If our climate becomes more like that of countries a bit south of us then why would we not simply grow what they do in the way they do? It really can’t be that difficult. Or we engineer current crops to cope. Again, not difficult.
Most moronic though is the stuff on electrification which is apparently creating huge risks. That’s not a risk of climate change then. That’s a risk of the mitigation the CCC demand. You can’t include those risks. The costs of those risks should be entirely ignored for this analysis.
Just fradulent analysis again.
There is also the time factor. If the average temperature of an area went up 1 degree in ten years, no one would notice. They will know only because someone told them.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/man-jailed-after-causing-mile-22791376?IYA-mail=047d17b0-5e7c-4e29-8701-132eca97c268
For many years I was peripherally involved in risk assessments in the nuclear industry. This piece of “work” bears no resemblance to a proper risk assessment, where risk = probability x consequence. Where are the probabilities given? Where are all the consequences identified?
Spot on Phillip. They never mention probabilities, which are generally close to zero, or error ranges on forecast outcomes, which are generally at least of the order of changes over the last 100 years rendering the forecasts statistically meaningless.
As the ONLY Mass Properties engineer in a (Civil Service run) South African aircraft company, I was presented with a “risk assessment form”, which was apparently designed for clerks, not engineers. Basically, the questions asked what was the worst effect of a bad decision or output. Most of my answers were of the form “An aircraft may crash and people may die”. I didn’t hear anything else from the ‘safety’ people after that…
Essentially they’ve dreamed up every scary weather, climate, commercial, industrial and economic scenario they can and then put ‘climate change’ in front of each.
Total and utter tripe.
And even if it was all true they still wouldn’t be able to change the weather.
Thank you Paul for your analysis, when is this madness going to stop? Why do they do it? What is in it for them? The report is just propaganda, so false it is unbelievable that it comes from the government, 1984 is alive and well… ministry of truth rules OK.
Why will electricity be only 65% ?
What is the other 35% going to be? The only thing I can think of is hydrogen. Or perhaps bioethanol for vehicles?
Unicorn farts KB.
Has any of the climate/weather forecasts oc the wretched CCC come true?
In fact has ny climate forecast by the alarmists been realised?
Can any reader name one-I cannnot.
Apparently, according to latest research by Scientists at the University of Massachusetts revealed today, the forecast of approaching armageddon caused by Global Warming, is actually only a prelude to a NEW ICE AGE!! Oh no we are actually going to freeze to death!! Link https://uk.news.yahoo.com/scientists-discover-surprising-cause-europe-172447309.html
I have two thoughts abouit this.
Firstly, the temperature where I was changed from minus two point five to plus eight point five in about eight hours. Nobody died!
Secondly we are beginning to see the disasters resulting from the very poor and maliciously used models for Covid. There is every reason to believe the climate fear models are equally poor technically, unproven by validation from measured data and operated fraudulently by those with vested interests.
While the handling of Covid resulted in unnecessary damage to the economy, society and families, as well as the public debt levels, warmists’ policies will be far far worse and permanently so unless reversed quickly.
‘ the climate fear models’?…models?
The only models these CCC Clowns use were made by Airfix!
They projected the cost of Net Zero over the next 30 years, as a percentage of GDP, using spreadsheets!……..GIGO………..too many assumptions and not enough variables!
Morons!
CCC then stonewalled FOA requests for sight of said spreadsheets for 2 years, out of embarrassment probably:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9870031/Judge-orders-quango-claim-1-GDP-hit-net-zero.html
excerpt:
‘The CCC has said releasing the spreadsheets would be too time consuming and ‘cause confusion, and distract public debate’. It also said that some parts of the analysis had been written over, instead of being preserved on its computer systems.’
The dog ate their homework more like!
Doubtless I think, the CCC has been bought by the CCP’s Chinese Project with the sole intention of utterly destroying the United Kingdom.
Sort of on topic:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/environment/2022/01/18/heat-conservatories-climate-change-building-rules-put-threat/
“The long-awaited regulations respond to concerns that Britain’s housing stock is at risk of becoming “uninhabitable” if 40C summers become commonplace.
It follows calls by environmental groups, including official government advisers the Climate Change Committee, to build houses in a way that makes sure people do not overheat in the summer.”
Tellingly you will not be allowed to heat your conservatory under the new rules even if you could afford it!
Note to self – keep up, lad!
Sue?
The heatwaves of 1934, 1949, 1976, 2003, and 2018, all had the same type of discrete solar forcing, they are a cause and not a product of climate change.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQemMt_PNwwBKNOS7GSP7gbWDmcDBJ80UJzkqDIQ75_Sctjn89VoM5MIYHQWHkpn88cMQXkKjXznM-u/pub