Temperatures are rising, but soil is getting wetter, confounding climate theorists

One overlooked factor was the CO2 fertilization effect in plant photosynthesis. The researchers found that “it’s virtually impossible to predict soil moisture in the coming decades”, contrary to some alarmist notions about future droughts.
– – –
Soil moisture can determine how quickly a wildfire spreads, how fast a hill turns into a mudslide and, perhaps most importantly, how productive our food systems are, says Eurekalert.

As temperatures rise due to human-caused climate change [Talkshop comment – evidence-free assertion of cause], some researchers are concerned that soils will dry.

However, between 2011 to 2020, soil moisture increased across 57% of the United States during summer, the warmest time of year.

Why did soil get wetter even as the planet got hotter?

World’s first year-long breach of ‘key’ 1.5C warming limit alarms the BBC

Alarmists mark an artificial deadline, still pretending government-driven limits can be put on long-term climate variations and attempting to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere, which hasn’t happened anyway. Cue the usual well-worn phrases about tackling climate change, emissions etc.
– – –
For the first time, global warming has exceeded 1.5C across an entire year, according to the EU’s climate service.

World leaders promised in 2015 to try to limit the long-term temperature rise to 1.5C, which is seen as crucial to help avoid the most damaging impacts, says BBC News.

This first year-long breach doesn’t break that landmark “Paris agreement”, but it does bring the world closer to doing so in the long-term.

Labour to ditch £28bn green prosperity plan – Sky News

Maybe the vast scale of anti-net zero protests around Europe has given them cold feet, plus the general lack of enthusiasm for such extravagant so-called climate policies among UK voters battling the fast-rising cost of living.
– – –
Labour is ditching its policy of spending £28bn a year on its green investment plan, Sky News understands.

The policy will not be dropped altogether, but the party is ditching the financial target to spend £28bn a year on environmental schemes.

Labour will put this down to uncertain public finances and is also likely to say that this is the outcome of finalising ideas for their manifesto for the next general election, expected later this year.

Electric van maker once valued at £10bn collapses into administration

Arrival is departing

Shades of the dot.com bubble. The grand illusions of net zero climate alarmism continue to crumble, but not quickly enough yet.
– – –
A British electric van maker once valued at $13bn (£10bn) has gone into administration after burning through $1.5bn without having sold a vehicle, reports The Telegraph.

Oxfordshire-based Arrival has appointed administrators at EY to find a buyer for the business, blaming “challenging market and macroeconomic conditions”.

Arrival’s Nasdaq flotation in 2021 was the biggest ever for a British company but shares have fallen by 99.98pc as it became clear that the company was unable to service its debts.

Face It: The Energy Transition Ain’t Happening — Manhattan Contrarian

Wind power and EV sales stalling or in retreat, while coal, oil and gas advance. Things are not going according to the climate alarm script, despite assorted government interventions.
– – –
If you are at all interested in matters of climate and energy, you have probably read hundreds of articles over the past few years about the inevitability of the coming energy transition, says the Manhattan Contrarian.

A piece of the claimed inevitability is that all good and decent people support this transition as a matter of moral urgency; but it’s not just that.

Nor is it just that government backs the transition with all its coercive powers, from subsidies to mandates to regulations. No, most importantly, the transition is said to have become inevitable due to unstoppable economic forces.

Climate Scientists Want Space Umbrellas The Size Of Argentina To Blot Out The Sun

Mr. Burns blocks the sun

Bad luck for solar panel owners and users, and anything relying on photosynthesis. But as such umbrellas would be far too heavy to move even if they could be made, probably nothing to worry about. Just another climate alarm concoction in search of funding.
– – –
A team of climate scientists wants to launch enormous umbrellas into space to reduce the Earth’s exposure to the sun and fight climate change, The New York Times reported Friday (via Climate Change Dispatch).

The underlying idea is that large parasols could be positioned in space such that they marginally reduce the intensity of sunlight the Earth receives and thereby mitigate some global warming, the Times reported.

To block out enough radiation, a single sunshade would need to be approximately the size of Argentina — nearly one million square miles — and would weigh about 2.5 million tons, so scientists are looking to prove the idea could work by first producing a 100-square foot prototype with the help of $10 to $20 million of funding.

Ofgem to investigate claims of UK wind farms overcharging billpayers £millions

Scottish offshore wind project [image credit : urbanrealm.com]

We knew wind farms were also subsidy farms but this could be even worse. Why ‘regulators’ need to get informed by the media before noticing anything wrong, or potentially wrong, is another question.
– – –
Energy regulator Ofgem is investigating the claim that wind farms may have incorrectly added close to £51m to taxpayer bills since 2018, says CityAM.

A Bloomberg report found that 40 out of 121 studied projects overstated their output by ten per cent on average and one-sixth (27) of wind farms were found to be overstating by at least 20 per cent.

Ofgem said it was investigating the alleged behaviour and has asked the Energy System Operator (ESO) to look into the matter.

UN bidding starts in the $trillions for COP 29 climate finance

Crazy world of climate finance [image credit: renewableenergyfocus.com]

A UN official claims there’s a ‘need to collectively raise and direct $2.4 trillion annually for climate mitigation’. Billions are too small to mention any more, when trying to ‘avoid devastating impacts of climate change’ (says this article). Since climate models aren’t even much good at replicating reality, and various dire predictions to date have failed, what basis is there for this proposed level of spending?
– – –
The UN’s next climate summit will be an “enabling COP,” focused on drastically scaling up climate finance and making bold emissions reduction commitments, says Axios.

Why it matters: Top UN climate official Simon Stiell delivered a speech this morning in Baku, Azerbaijan, envisioning what will happen if the world meets the climate challenge and avoids devastating impacts of climate change.

Zoom in: The speech, delivered at ADA University, counters perceptions in some parts of the climate community that Baku will involve lower stakes and more technical work than COP28 did in Dubai.

Gwythian Prins: National security concerns must take precedence over the climate

There is a respectable peacetime economic case for closing the Port Talbot blast furnaces and ceasing production of basic oxygen steel (BOS) in the United Kingdom and it is set out by the leading trade economist Catherine McBride. She shows how much British steel-making of any type has declined by volume, and how chronically dependant what remains is upon imported raw materials. She also explains how much EAF – electric arc furnace – steel production from recycled scrap has increased worldwide: for example, 70% of American steel in 2022 came from that source. Finally, she shows how globally dominant China and India have become in BOS, as witness 90% of China’s 1 billion ton steel production in 2022. China and India have massive economies of scale, and also access to domestically controlled raw materials, giving end-to-end control: in the Chinese case, both coking coal and iron ore, and in the Indian case, iron ore but with need to import coking coal. In contrast, the UK currently has to import both ore and coking coal at scale to feed the condemned blast furnaces.

Satellite traffic jams ahead?

Will Satellite Megaconstellations Weaken Earth’s Magnetic Field?

– – –
Researcher: “We absolutely cannot dump endless amounts of conductive dust into the magnetosphere and not expect some kind of impact. Multidisciplinary studies of this pollution are urgently needed.”

Study: Potential Perturbation of the Ionosphere by Megaconstellations and Corresponding
Artificial Re-entry Plasma Dust

EU’s new fiscal rules too strict for ‘fight’ against climate change? Churchill analogy invoked

The Greens claimed the new rules are ‘suicidal’ (which could also be said of the proposed spending plans), and imagined bean counters telling Churchill to give up because his World War costs were unaffordable. Climate hysteria rumbles on in its own world.
– – –
The new EU rules for national debts and deficit would hamper member states’ ability to make the public investments needed to effectively combat climate change, a new study commissioned by the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament found.

Speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday (30 January), Philippe Lamberts, co-president of the Greens/EFA group, stressed that the fiscal rules currently being negotiated in ‘trilogue’ discussions between the European Commission, Parliament, and Council would render it “legally impossible” for the bloc to achieve its goal of full decarbonisation by 2050, reports Euractiv.

Echoing earlier comments, he accused the EU of being run by “religious fundamentalists” following “suicidal” policies.