Did You Get Your Climate Emergency Alert?
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Tens of millions of mobile phone users have received a message and loud alarm during the first nationwide test of the government’s new public alert system.
It is intended to be used in situations such as extreme weather, flooding, and fires.
Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said "it really is the sound that could save your life".
Ministers have insisted alerts will only be sent in "life-threatening" situations.
People who do not wish to receive the alerts will be able to opt out in their device settings, switch off their phones, or place them in flight mode – but the authorities hope many will choose to keep them on.
Such systems have seen increased adoption by governments in recent years, with the pandemic and climate-related emergencies increasing the need for fast and direct communication with the public.
The EU has introduced a directive requiring member states to have a phone-based public warning system
Oliver Dowden rather lets the cat out of the bag here. This never had anything to do with “saving people’s lives”; quite apart from anything else it is far too broadbrush to do that.
No, it is all about ramping up the climate scare campaign.
Every bit of bad weather nowadays seems to be linked to climate change. And if you look at the BBC weather forecast, you can almost guarantee to see a “UK Flood Warnings” message.
And we all know about the BBC uses black wind gust speeds, instead of the usual average wind speeds, whenever there are strong winds, which is all designed to make it look scarier.
Now apparently we need to be alerted to “climate emergencies”. Unless you have switched off the alerts on your phone, you can expect to hear them regularly in future, warning us about heavy rainfall, a bit of hot weather and the like.
As Ian M pointed out, it is intended to keep drip feeding the fear of climate catastrophe.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
How many people in the UK have died over, say, the last 20 years solely due to ‘extreme’ weather?
Precisely speaking of course.
I did not receive the test
My phone was turned off for once
We will no doubt be alerted when we have the rare couple of nice hot days to stay indoors, keep curtains closed and drink plenty of water!
What about people like me who don’t even need a bottle of water on a hot day, in the London Underground?
I can’t believe I managed to survive decades without carrying a bottle of water everywhere, or to use the railways without the provision of a coffee stall at every station.
or to carry an idiot phone!
So called ‘smart’ phones are a bit marmite and not that smart since the supposedly dumb phone I had before was able to turn itself on to sound the wake up alarm but the smart one needs to be on all the time, running down the battery with all sorts of crap running. They are useful for train travel, given how often your journey gets screwed up, as they can provide information as to what is going on. The downside is that they have opened the way for the fascists to try to force digital IDs on us, not to mention that everyone wants you to have an app so they can track you even more than with a loyalty card, and as we are currently seeing you are being forced to use one to park your car.
I am disappointed that so many people don’t want to even try to question the doomsday narrative. It is pretty obvious to those who visit this site and some others that global warming was massively exaggerated and there is evidence it has slowed or stopped and that carbon dioxide has little or no effect on climate change.
People should be pleased that the end of the world has been delayed or cancelled but instead there is a doubling down on the doom and Net Zero nonsense.
Lockdown was a massive over reaction to a respiratory illness yet apparently 90% of people still think lockdown was a good thing. Net Zero is an over reaction to an unproven cause of climate change.
People don’t want to face up to the fact that they have been sheep and done whatever the farmer and his dogs have told them to do.
I agree. I am amazed by how many seemingly intelligent people I know fall for this nonsense. I suspect most of them don’t even know how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere, let alone how little of it is man made. Do they even know that it is carbon dioxide that they breathe out?
You’ll like this – or maybe not…
This scam has been running since my two daughters were toddlers and my son had yet to be born, in the late 1980’s. They are now in their mid thirties/mid 20 none of us have noticed any change in climate, whatsoever despite the 50% increase in atmospheric CO2.
There has not been a single prediction that has been even remotely accurate! We were historically told that currently’ drought would drive climate refugees to head north, in Newcastle I would be growing and harvesting grapes and citrus fruits and equatorial regions would be uninhabitable.
This has simply not happened, it is a thermodynamically impossible that an increase in atmospheric CO2 from 0.o3% to 0.042% will change the climate.
Many things from decades ago have not come to pass. There’s a new scare every decade. It makes a mockery of current predictions. No doubt you all saw the recent removal of an old post from dear little Greta. It’s not really about saving the planet, the bottom line is that it’s about money, as always…
More “big brother”, how long before people are penalised for not listening or acting on the alerts?
Used settings to switch off siren (and switched off Earthquake and Tsunami alert, felt reasonably safe on that one).
I switched them off too. I figured that if a real alert happens then all escape routes will be blocked by escapees, so there’d no point in trying to escape
“Did You Get Your Climate Emergency Alert?”
No, but then my “Mobile Phone” doesn’t connect to 4G or 5G networks…
As someone who travelled the world extensively I thought an earthquake app might be worth having on my phone. However, there were so many earthquakes going on around the world that I got fed up with all the notifications even when programmed for relatives big ones – so it got deleted. (The only earth quake I ever experienced was in the middle of the night – in Japan – and I thought it was just an underground train – only found out in the morning it was the real thing).
I have “experienced” 3 earthquakes in the last 15 years (about). The two at 2.5 Richter I slept through but I did notice the 3.5 one as I was having breakfast at the time. I didn’t realise it was one and put it down to passing heavy traffic.
As all these were about 100 (or more) times stronger than the level used to declare fracking a danger, what level would the alerts be set for? And, if at a reasonable one, what is to stop that level being reduced at a politician’s whim?
I too have experienced several earthquakes – three of them in Britain!
If you have a primitive mobile – I have an old Nokia with ‘Snakes’ on it that I only use for calls and texts, my choice, btw – it will be on 2G or 3G, so no alerts for you. I will surely die, because I haven’t got a smart phone and they can’t control me. I seem to have lived to a reasonable age without the need for all this bo**ocks – enough said. Who is paying for this rubbish ayway?
I’m not in the UK, but similar “this is a test” SMS from the government have been turning up on my phone about once a month. No “siren” though.
“flight mode” doesn’t help. You wouldn’t be able to make and receive phone calls or normal SMS.
My non-UK SIM card probably wouldn’t receive such if I had been in the UK. Mobile numbers are not supposed to be accessible to anyone except the SIM card provider without a court order. There is a major privacy issue here and even worse if such start getting sent to “foreign” numbers. And what about GDPR?
Yesterday I was out with friends visiting a NT property. The subject of this test came up and everybody we talked to at the property, without exception, believed it was a foretaste of the Government’s hidden plan to control and track us in the future. I was quite surprised at the depth of this distrust but the place was full of older people who have been brought up to think for themselves so maybe I shouldn’t have been.
Sky News UK:
‘The EU has introduced a directive requiring member states to have a phone-based public warning system’
This for their anti-Brexit readers?
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Here in the Land of Rednecks, this would just piss people off. Most people pay attention to the weather. E.g.,
“Warning: heavy rain”
“No shit, Sherlock. It’s been forecast for 3 days.”
Nanny state bullshit.
BWTM:
Focus. Such warning systems are impossible to properly focus. People a hundred miles from the actual problem are going to get alerts. First, they will be alarmed. Then, in the postmortem, they’ll wonder aloud, “Why did you send this to me?”
A few false alarms will get people to ignore it. Well, not actually ignore it. It’s going to piss them off.
UK has elaborate weather prediction systems and broad communication of weather forecasts. This new system seems pointless. They are doing it because they can, and someone else is paying for it.
Following the Easter 1913 storm I mentioned, the BBC has just discovered stormy weather existed in 1903 too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65365106
Luckily nowadays we have the opportunity to stop all this weather by ditching fossil fuels.
No, the opportunity to change the climate for the better consists simply and easily of influencing the sun, cosmic rays and water vapour!
Is that how it’s done? The Swiss will be so disappointed 😎
https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/europe/vanishing-switzerland-drapes-blankets-on-swiss-alps-to-protect-from-climate-change.html
I’ll get my ray gun out then, or is it the sonic screwdriver?
It’s just not possible, as you know, but if the Authorities were to recognise that truism, an awful lot of money and trouble could be saved,
if that is what they want, you’ll agree!
The first major alert should be sounded when the Government announce NetZero is dead.
Stock market buy signal!
Ring the bells!
Leaving aside the nefarious reasons for such a system and its potential misuse and appropriation of private property (our phones), a test is a test; it cannot fail (except test equipment failure, but that’s another story.) A system can be proven to work or not to work or partially to work; the whole point of a test. In this case you could say the test succeeded (as a test) because it showed up a failing. Musk’s calm reaction to his recent rocket failure made this point and confounded media and public, dismaying supporters whilst detractors gleefully went big on catastrophe.
It failed on the 3 network, but I’d already blocked it anyway!
I am curious where these settings are, both for Android and Apple phones.
I found “wireless emergency alerts” on one Android phone and “earthquake alerts” on another one.
Maybe older versions of Android and iOS don’t have these settings.
>>It failed on the 3 network, but I’d already blocked it anyway!
Ditto.
Surely its the EU bit that’s the reason? The Directive dates to 2018 and was adopted by the UK in 2020 after “consultation” in 2019 as it was required to do so (!) under the Transition Arrangements.
What’s absurd is that there’s some sort of disaster that we can get sufficient warning of to do something to lessen its impact. It’s pretty much impossible to think of anything that is so serious and so immediate we need warning by phone in this way but which we will still have time to get to safety. It’s just mindless EU bureaucracy tagged on to a somewhat reasonable directive about electronic communications.
Absolutely! You are trying to stop the flood from coming around your front door when you get a call from the government (!).
Thanks for the help, guys.
EU bureaucracy is never mindless; it always has a purpose, usually diametrically opposite to what they say it is for.
No
I’m 73 and cannot think of one occasion in my long life when I would have benefitted from being warned at this level. At the personal level – yes, like most folk I have taken many risks – but not at a population-wide level!
“The British Military Information War Waged On Their Own Population | UKColumn” https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/british-military-information-war-waged-their-own-population
What misinformation and disinformation is 77th Brigade helping to quash? How much of the ‘disinformation’ originates from 77th Brigade in the first place?
Part of 77th Brigade’s role is:
Monitoring and evaluating the information environment within boundaries or operational area
They not only ‘counter’ disinformation, but also watch social media, analysing how disinformation, including their own, spreads; mapping the internet and the networks of people sharing content between each other.
When there is a national emergency or as happens in our rural idyll the electricity grid will be off, in consequence your mobile phone won’t work because all the transmitters will be down.
Paradoxically the telephone landline will function without issue, so you can phone home.
Except that BT are hell bent on removing your landline, assisted by the internet providers not allowing it with their full fibre packages. Only 2 companies offer a landline only package and it is not cheap if it is on top of your internet costs.
… until the copper phone network is turned off of course.
You may have seen this but my son is off to Oz to investigate whether to move his company there due to our mad climate goons. I think this might have an effect on his decision.
I see some people received theirs yesterday. Maybe giving the job to the company who was responsible for the Post Office scandal resulting in many suicides was not a good idea, but then when has our government had a good idea.
In a Dundee hospital in the early 1960s there was a flashing light on a pillar.We were told that ifthe warning light stopped showing, there were 4 minutes to run for cover before Soviet nuclear missiles arrived to desolate the UK, including Dundee.
(This info did not reach us on 1 April so maybe it was correct).
The worst did not happen so we were able to continue to enjoy our Dundee Cake and our Dundee marmalade and scones!
Gamecock was awakened several times last night by “Amber alerts.” A government BOLO alert system for kidnapped children (virtually always domestic custody disputes). It was 135 miles away.
Government mischief . . . disturbing the peace.
How dumb to say people can switch their phones off or put them in flight mode! How do they know when an alert is coming?! We really do have a lot of very stoopid purple in Westminster and the hanger-on organisations. Moreover, not once in my several decades of life has there been any need for such an emergency notification.
” it is intended to keep drip feeding the fear of climate catastrophe “….
..Yes indeed ….So to extend the drip feed analogy why are there longer time spacings of the drips into this century that have no connection to the fearmongering ?..As I understand it , global extreme weather disasters have declined by 10% over the past 23 years