Gargantuan solar farms threaten UK farming and food security

Image credit: MIT

Industrialising the countryside is now deemed a plus for the environment by climate obsessives, including the government. Solar power is ineffective in UK winters, when electricity demand is often at its highest during the long hours of darkness anyway.
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Drawing on new data from the solar industry the campaign group Net Zero Watch has revealed that an astonishing 37,000 MW of land based solar PV capacity is in pre-planning.

If built, this would take 150,000 acres of farmland – or 75,000 football pitches – out of production at a time when Britain has less farmland in use than at any time since 1945, and is losing such land to industrial and other uses at the rate of about 99,000 acres a year, increasing import dependency.

Solar energy should not be permitted to add to this serious problem.

Emails Cast Further Light on the Plot to Re-educate Boris About Climate Change

Caution – alarmist brainwashers at work. Never mind the ‘unrealistic’ climate models.
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Thirty-eight emails released under a recent FOI request provide an interesting insight into the way Government science advisers plotted to change Boris Johnson’s mind over the causes of climate change, ahead of a Cabinet Office presentation, says The Daily Sceptic.

The event on January 28th 2020 was led by the Government’s Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance and presented, using 11 slides, by the Chief Scientist of the Met Office, Professor Stephen Belcher.

According to Belcher, the stated goal of the presentation was to “stabilise climate which requires net zero emissions”.

The Starlink Incident

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Looks like the risks were seriously underestimated if this was only a minor geomagnetic storm.

Spaceweather.com

Feb. 9, 2022: As many as 40 Starlink satellites are currently falling out of the sky–the surprising result of a minor geomagnetic storm. SpaceX made the announcement yesterday:

“On Thursday, Feb. 3rd at 1:13 p.m. EST, Falcon 9 launched 49 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. … Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday, [Feb. 4th].”

Two days before launch a CME hit Earth’s magnetic field. It was not a major space weather event. In fact, the weak impact did not at first spark any remarkable geomagnetic activity. However, as Earth passed through the CME’s wake, some sputtering G1-class geomagnetic storms developed. It was one of these minor storms that caught the Starlink satellites on Feb. 4th.

Geomagnetic storms heat Earth’s upper atmosphere. Diaphanous tendrils of warming air literally reached up…

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Net Zero Watch has called on ministers to overrule the fracking regulator

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Looks like a sop to the green lobby as new North Sea oil and gas projects have just been approved. But gas will be needed long after 2050 if the UK intends to keep running a modern economy, and security of supply in a competitive world is obviously far greater with more home-produced energy.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

With energy price rises about to hammer hard-pressed households across the UK, the Oil and Gas Authority regulator is trying to force onshore gas companies to seal up the shale gas wells they have drilled.

Net Zero Watch is warning that the government’s approach to the energy crisis remains dangerously incoherent. On the one hand, the Prime Minister is openly calling for increased domestic gas extraction and has brought forward approvals for North Sea developments, while at the same time regulators are preventing lower-cost onshore fields from ever being exploited.

Net Zero Watch director Dr Benny Peiser said:

And Net Zero Watch’s Director of Energy Dr John Constable explained that regulators’ remits are making things worse.

https://www.netzerowatch.com/government-needs-to-get-a-grip-on-energy-crisis/

One of the major issues here is that Net Zero has been deliberately placed as an overriding obligation in the OGA’s Strategy:

https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/regulatory-framework/the-oga-strategy/

Although they say they still aim to…

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NotZero: just 3% of air passengers use voluntary tuppence for ten miles miles carbon offset scheme.

We’re told that the majority of people in the UK are very concerned about global warming and climate change. But only 3% are so concerned that they are willing to pay even a trifling sum to offset their air miles. The Sunday Times carried a story about this and told us:

The airline offers all customers who are about to buy a ticket the chance to “fully offset your CO2 emissions for this flight” by paying a fee. The 730km journey from Dublin to Paris can be offset for €1.20, while a 486km journey from Dublin to London, one of the world’s busiest air routes, can be offset for 78c. Ryanair said: “The 3 per cent of customers that chose to go greener in 2019 has yet to substantially increase, with the impact of the pandemic on air travel potentially playing a part. To date, these customers have contributed €3.5 million to support environmental projects.”

NOT Zero: Less than 3% of Ryanair flyers willing to pay carbon offset
The Sunday Times, 6 February 2022

All of which begs two questions:

Firstly, why have polling organisations not asked consumers how much they’re will to pay to alleviate global warming before? Is it because the answers would reveal how unconcerned the large majority actually are?

Six new UK oil and gas fields to be fired up as Sunak takes action

Dismay for renewable energy fanatics, but common sense from the perspective that about 80% of total UK energy use is from fuel burning. Increasing the reliance on imports while ignoring available energy at home would be expensive and pointless.
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Six North Sea oil and gas fields are set to be given the green light this year, according to newspaper reports this morning.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has asked Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, to fast-track the licenses amid Treasury fears over the economic impact of making the UK a net zero carbon emitter by 2050, says AGCC news.

Deep insights into the Arctic of tomorrow

Arctic sea ice [image credit: cbc.ca]

One finding was that snow cover variability was more ‘extreme’ than expected, pointing to the need for further research as well as improvements to climate models. Whether the recent Arctic weather/climate history is a reliable guide to future conditions remains to be seen.
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Hundreds of international researchers are currently analyzing observations from the one-year MOSAiC expedition, during which hundreds of environmental parameters were recorded with unprecedented accuracy and frequency over a full annual cycle in the Central Arctic Ocean, says Phys.org.

They have now published three overview articles on the MOSAiC atmosphere, snow and sea ice, and ocean programs in the journal Elementa, highlighting the importance of examining all components of the climate system together.

These results present the first complete picture of the climate processes in the central Arctic which is warming more than two times as fast as the rest of the planet—processes which affect weather and climate worldwide.

Biden Is Disconnected From Americans’ Reluctance To Be Regulated Out Of Fossil Fuel Prosperity

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Importing energy instead of producing it at home solves nothing, increases costs, reduces reliability of supply and puts people out of work. Aren’t leaders supposed to be concerned about such matters?

PA Pundits International

By Ronald Stein ~

Civilization has benefited from more than 6,000 products made from the oil derivatives manufactured out of raw crude oil at refineries. None of these products were available to society before 1900. With no known replacement for crude oil in the foreseeable future, President Biden has stated “we are going to get rid of fossil fuels” implying that he is going to change society’s lifestyle and economy demands for the products made from fossil fuels that were not available before 1900.

Virtually all the components of wind turbines, solar panels, and all forms of transportation are assembled with products made from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil. Ridding the world of crude oil would eliminate most forms of transportation and electricity generation from wind and solar.

The public has demonstrated that they are not going to be mandated and regulated away from using the products…

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Energy crisis: Fears energy companies profit when renewable power slumps – adding to burden on bill payers

Energy costs on the rise

Entirely foreseeable. When renewables are under-performing, the National Grid is under pressure to keep the electricity supply system afloat, giving fringe providers an obvious earning opportunity as there are only a limited number of them able to offer such a service, and time is short. As long as renewables are given priority and are increasing their share of the market, everything else has to cover its fixed costs with a shrinking share, forcing prices up. It’s an inevitable result of the UK government’s climate-obsessed policies on power generation.
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The power industry is concerned some companies could be making massive profits on the occasional days when renewable electricity generation slumps, says Sky News.

Generators which step up to fill those gaps are charging record prices to “balance” the supply of electricity as our power grid rapidly shifts towards net-zero.

The costs are paid by the industry, but are ultimately passed on to bill payers.

Ocean acidification claims by researchers run into the ‘decline effect’

Atlantic Cod.

There are no ‘acidified’ oceans so the whole topic was over-hyped from the start. ‘Seawater is slightly basic (meaning pH > 7), and ocean acidification involves a shift towards pH-neutral conditions rather than a transition to acidic conditions (pH < 7)’ – Wikipedia. Another climate scare gets deflated.
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As humans fill the atmosphere with excess carbon dioxide, much of it gets absorbed by the oceans, acidifying them (claims Phys.org)—a potential concern for marine life.

According to a new study publishing February 3rd in PLOS Biology, however, previously high-profile worries about an effect on fish behavior appear to have declined.

The research led by Jeff Clements and Fredrik Jutfelt at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, along with Josefin Sundin (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) and Timothy Clark (Deakin University), demonstrates that the apparent severity of ocean acidification impacts on fish behavior, as reported in the scientific literature, has declined dramatically over the past decade.

How Boris Was Conned By The Met Office

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Can Boris now explain the causes of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period, pre-dating industrial development?

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

A slide show that Prime Minister Boris Johnson says helped convince him on climate change has been revealed for the first time.

The slides used to “teach” him about climate science have been released after a Freedom of Information request by UK climate website Carbon Brief.

While Mr Johnson has urged action on climate change, he previously, as a journalist, expressed scepticism.

He called the presentation, given just after he took office, “very important”.

The “teach in”, as it was described in email correspondence, took place in the Cabinet Room of Number 10 Downing Street on 28 January 2020.

It was organised by the office of Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser.

The briefing consisted of 11 slides showing key aspects of climate science and its impacts and the presentation was led by Prof Stephen Belcher, the chief scientist at the Met Office.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60203674

These…

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Earth is spinning faster now than it was 50 years ago, say scientists

Credit: NASA

Compensating for the lost time may prove challenging for scientists, says Astronomy magazine. Turning the internet clock back one second implies a repeat of a computer-generated timestamp for example, which might confuse some vital systems not designed to handle that.
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Ever feel like there’s just not enough time in the day? Turns out, you might be onto something.

Earth is rotating faster than it has in the last half-century, resulting in our days being ever-so-slightly shorter than we’re used to.

Ocean eddies could explain Antarctic sea-ice paradox, say climate modellers

Opposite sea ice trends? [Credits: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Joy Ng]

Climate modellers need yet more and bigger computers to stand a chance of eradicating faulty sea ice projections in the polar regions, apparently. Meanwhile, they believe there must be some ‘delay’ in their long-predicted but not (yet?) happening Antarctic sea ice decline. Quote: “Our study supports the hypothesis that climate models and projections of the Antarctic sea ice will be far more reliable as soon as they are capable of realistically simulating a high-resolution ocean, complete with eddies”.
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Despite global warming and the sea-ice loss in the Arctic, the Antarctic sea-ice extent has remained largely unchanged since 1979, says Eurekalert.

However, existing climate model-based simulations indicate significant sea-ice loss, contrary to actual observations.

As experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute have now shown, the ocean may weaken warming around Antarctica and delay sea-ice retreat.

It’s Energy Will Make or Break the World Now

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How long will people tolerate big cost increases without asking awkward questions about supposedly climate-oriented energy policies?

Science Matters

Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains how Energy has become the first and foremost world public concern in her Spectator article Energy is the most important issue in the world. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Gas prices are climbing, Russia is building pipelines, yet we’re focused instead on appeasing climate activists

One issue more than any other will dominate airtime and influence policy in 2022: energy.Americans are seeing the highest prices at the pump in seven years. Since Biden took office, average gas prices are up by more than $1 a gallon. In November, gas prices in Mono County, California hit more than $6 per gallon, forcing some residents to drive to Nevada (where gas taxes are lower) to buy fuel.

The price of natural gas in the US is at its highest in seven years, and up more than 180 percent in the last year…

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One in three homes will need electricity boost for heat pumps to work

Domestic Air Source Heat Pump [image credit: UK Alternative Energy]

Another example of how ‘net zero’ dogma is going to be highly disruptive and expensive for energy customers, all in the name of appeasing climate obsessives.
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Installing a heat pump will require one in three homes to have an electricity upgrade, a power company has said.

Heat pumps and electric car chargers will mean a big increase in a household’s electricity demand, with many older properties requiring upgrades that can cost thousands of pounds, though most companies are planning to start “socialising” the cost by spreading it out among bills, says the Telegraph.

Western Power Distribution (WPD), which manages the electricity network for the Midlands, South Wales and the South West, said providing power to heat homes was one of the “biggest challenges” of the heat pump rollout.

“We anticipate that this will lead to the need for service upgrades for around a third of all heat pump installations,” the company said in its business plan, published in December.