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Nobody in power wants to face the facts and backtrack, even though the unpleasant reality is staring them in the face.
By Paul Homewood
h/t Conrad Jones
https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/assets/documents/reports/cat11/1708081027_170807_AQEG_Biomass_report.pdf
Earlier this year, DEFRA published a report by the Air Quality Expert Group into the impacts of biomass on air quality. The results make for startling reading.
Among the findings are:
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From the Evening Express
The Scottish Government gave consent to four major wind farms in the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay in 2014, but the RSPB launched a judicial review.
The charity initially won a court victory but it was later overturned, clearing the development and prompting the RSPB to seek a further appeal.
Scotland’s Court of Session last month refused the application for the case to be sent to the Supreme Court, but the RSPB has now applied directly to the UK’s highest court.
The charity said it recognises the role renewable energy has in reducing emissions but the current project could lead to major declines in the population of gannets, puffins and kittiwakes.
From part of Peter Hitchens Mail on Sunday Blog
I feel sorry for British Gas, attacked for raising the price of electricity. I still find it confusing a gas company sells electricity, but the facts are quite simple.
British Gas and the other power companies are raising charges because we have a mad Government. Under New Labour’s unhinged Climate Change Act, backed by the Tories and virtually unopposed in Parliament, we are steering straight into an iceberg.
Perfectly good coal-fired power stations all over the country are being shut down and blown up so they can’t be reopened, because of crazed Green regulations.
In some cases, they are being converted to burning wood chips imported from the USA. If this did any good (which is, er, unproven) it would be immediately cancelled out by the huge number of new coal-fired power stations recently built in India and China.
Reproducibility is a cornerstone of the scientific method. It must be possible to replicate experiments or datasets which scientific claims rest on. Especially when billions of pounds of public money financing public policy decisions stemming from those scientific claims are at stake. Here’s just one reminder of certain climate scientist’s approach to this fundamental aspect of scientific method and ethics.
We’ve lost the numbers: CRU responds to FOIA requests
The world’s source for global temperature record admits it’s lost or destroyed all the original data that would allow a third party to construct a global temperature record. The destruction (or loss) of the data comes at a convenient time for the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia – permitting it to snub FoIA requests to see the data.
The CRU has refused to release the raw weather station data and its processing methods for inspection – except to hand-picked academics – for several years. Instead, it releases a processed version, in gridded form. NASA maintains its own (GISSTEMP), but the CRU Global Climate Dataset, is the most cited surface temperature record by the UN IPCC. So any errors in CRU cascade around the world, and become part of “the science”.
Professor Phil Jones, the activist-scientist who maintains the data set, has cited various reasons for refusing to release the raw data. Most famously, Jones told an Australian climate scientist in 2004:
Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.
Report written by commenter ‘stickywicket’ at Spiked online
Everyone has been shocked to the core by the images of the inferno that engulfed the Grenfell Tower, killing 79 people. Most were horrified by the suggestion in the Times that the cause of the fire might have been penny-pinching on the type of cladding used in the recent refurbishment of the building. It seems unbelievable that they didn’t spend an extra £5,000 for fire resistant cladding.
This is probably not the whole story. The revelation that a further 70+ tower blocks have failed fire safety tests tells us that there is an endemic problem. We don’t know the precise reasons for the fire yet, but we should certainly look at the influence of slavish devotion to green regulations.
A long and interesting article about science publishing in the Guardian is largely about the history of Robert Maxwells involvement in science publication, but contains much else of interest besides. A few excerpts:
Many scientists also believe that the publishing industry exerts too much influence over what scientists choose to study, which is ultimately bad for science itself. Journals prize new and spectacular results – after all, they are in the business of selling subscriptions – and scientists, knowing exactly what kind of work gets published, align their submissions accordingly. This produces a steady stream of papers, the importance of which is immediately apparent. But it also means that scientists do not have an accurate map of their field of inquiry.
Planned nuclear power station at Hinkley Point
UK government plans for a new £18bn nuclear power station have come under fire from public auditors, who call it “a risky and expensive project”, BBC news reports.
The case for the Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset was “marginal” and the deal was “not value for money”, according to the National Audit Office (NAO). The NAO said the government had not sufficiently considered the costs and risks for consumers.
The government said building the plant was an “important strategic decision”. The report comes nine months after the government granted final approval for the project, which is being financed by the French and Chinese governments.
Tesla Model S – this is the only way you’ll keep warm in one during winter.
From NyTeknik:
Huge hopes tied to electric cars as the solution to automotive climate problem. But the electric car batteries are eco-villains in the production. Several tons of carbon dioxide has been placed, even before the batteries leave the factory.
IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute was commissioned by the Swedish Transport Administration and the Swedish Energy Agency investigated litiumjonbatteriers climate impact from a life cycle perspective. There are batteries designed for electric vehicles included in the study. The two authors Lisbeth Dahllöf and Mia Romare has done a meta-study that is reviewed and compiled existing studies.
The report shows that the battery manufacturing leads to high emissions. For every kilowatt hour of storage capacity in the battery generated emissions of 150 to 200 kilos of carbon dioxide already in the factory. The researchers did not study individual bilmärkens batteries, how these produced or the electricity mix they use. But if we understand the great importance of play battery take an example: Two common electric cars on the market, the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Model S, the batteries about 30 kWh and 100 kWh.
Via GWPF, an abstract from a brilliant essay by the evergreen Clive James.
When you tell people once too often that the missing extra heat is hiding in the ocean, they will switch over to watch Game of Thrones, where the dialogue is less ridiculous and all the threats come true. The proponents of man-made climate catastrophe asked us for so many leaps of faith that they were bound to run out of credibility in the end.
Now that they finally seem to be doing so, it could be a good time for those of us who have never been convinced by all those urgent warnings to start warning each other that we might be making a comparably senseless tactical error if we expect the elastic cause of the catastrophists, and all of its exponents, to go away in a hurry.
I speak as one who knows nothing about the mathematics involved in modelling non-linear systems. But I do know quite a lot about the mass media, and far too much about the abuse of language. So I feel qualified to advise against any triumphalist urge to compare the apparently imminent disintegration of the alarmist cause to the collapse of a house of cards. Devotees of that fond idea haven’t thought hard enough about their metaphor. A house of cards collapses only with a sigh, and when it has finished collapsing all the cards are still there.
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As predicted here a few days ago, U.S. President Donald Trump has decided to end involvement in the Paris Climate Accord.
A tweet from the well informed Tony Heller around 4.20pm GMT today indicated the administration’s direction of travel.
Airport chaos for BA passengers
BA chief executive Alex Cruz says the airline’s flight disruptions had nothing to do with cutting costs but were caused by a power surge that “only lasted a few minutes”, reports BBC News via the GWPF.
BA chief executive Alex Cruz says he will not resign and that flight disruption had nothing to do with cutting costs.
He told the BBC a power surge, had “only lasted a few minutes”, but the back-up system had not worked properly.
By Viv Forbes,
Secretary of the Clexit Coalition
The Clexit Coalition today called on President Trump to keep his election promise to withdraw from the Paris Climate Treaty and stop US payments to all UN global warming programs.
The Clexit (ClimateExit) Coalition, comprising over 175 representatives from 25 countries, aims to prevent ratification or local enforcement of the UN Paris climate treaty.
See: http://clexit.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/clexit-members.pdf
The Secretary of Clexit, Mr Viv Forbes of Australia, said that all nations will suffer from the destructive energy policies being promoted in the UN’s war on cheap, reliable hydro-carbon fuels and the backbone industries that rely on them – mining and smelting, farming, fishing, forestry, processing and manufacturing.
He was supported by Professor Will Happer, Professor of Physics at Princeton University who said today:
“Americans never felt compelled to sign up to international folly in the past. I hope the United States once again shows the common sense of its people and walks away from the Paris Agreement.”
Just a little reminder of the science still championed by Al Gore, Barack Obama, the UN IPCC, the UK parliament’s climate change committee and all those august institutions of science such as the Royal Society, the AAAS, and the rest. Ed cook offered to put a bomb under it in 2003 by telling the truth (in bold), but none of the Hockey Jockeys at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit wanted to know.
From: Edward Cook <drdendro@xxxx.columbia.edu>
To: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxx.ac.uk>
Subject: An idea to pass by you
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 08:32:11 -0400
Hi Keith,
After the meeting in Norway, where I presented the Esper stuff as
described in the extended abstract I sent you, and hearing Bradley’s
follow-up talk on how everybody but him has fucked up in
reconstructing past NH temperatures over the past 1000 years (this is
a bit of an overstatement on my part I must admit, but his air of
papal infallibility is really quite nauseating at times), I have come
up with an idea that I want you to be involved in. Consider the
tentative title:
“Northern Hemisphere Temperatures Over The Past Millennium: Where Are
The Greatest Uncertainties?”
Authors: Cook, Briffa, Esper, Osborn, D’Arrigo, Bradley(?), Jones
(??), Mann (infinite?) – I am afraid the Mike and Phil are too
personally invested in things now (i.e. the 2003 GRL paper that is
probably the worst paper Phil has ever been involved in – Bradley
hates it as well), but I am willing to offer to include them if they
can contribute without just defending their past work – this is the
key to having anyone involved. Be honest. Lay it all out on the table
and don’t start by assuming that ANY reconstruction is better than
any other.
Here are my ideas for the paper in a nutshell (please bear with me):
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Future UK energy policy under the green tories
As a followup to the commonsense stuff UKIP’s Roger Helmer suggested yesterday, here’s James Delingpole’s take on what is likely to happen. Reposted from Breitbart
Suppose you were a Conservative leader hoping to win a stonking majority in your general election campaign, which of these two manifesto propositions do you think would win the most votes?
a) Our energy policy will remain in the clutches of a cabal of vested interests – rent-seeking, crony capitalist shysters; green ideologues with junk-science degrees in Gaia Studies from the University of East Anglia; eco-fascist lobby groups and NGOs; compromised scientists with their snouts in the trough; goose-stepping technocrats; really, really, really dim MPs – ensuring that the landscape continues to be blighted by an ever-greater-proliferation of shimmery solar panels and ginormous bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifixes.
We remain committed to the Climate Change Act which will cost the UK economy over £300 billion by 2030, costing each household £875 per annum; and also to the Levy Control Framework (LCF) which, combined with carbon taxes, cost the UK £9 billion in 2016 alone. Then we’ll pretend it’s the fault of the greedy energy companies by hammering them with a price cap – thus driving their share prices down (bad luck pensions and investors!), reducing competition and innovation, and signalling that we intend to be a meddling, interventionist government which has no truck with free market principles.
Tony Heller, AKA Steve Goddard, has published two short videos on youtube covering the topics of the extreme weather of 1936 compared to today, and the way temperature data has been manipulated to hide the 1940s-1970s cooling trend. Well worth 15 minutes of your time.
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Who gets a say in deciding whether to interfere with nature on a global scale?
H/T Sott.net
If someone applied to a top position at a company, you’d hope a hiring manager would at least Google the applicant to ensure they’re qualified.
A group of researchers sent phony resumes to 360 scientific journals for an applicant whose Polish name translated to “Dr. Fraud.” And 48 journals happily appointed the fake doctor to their editorial board.
This sting operation was the first systematic analysis on editorial roles in science publishing, adding concrete evidence to a problem past stings have shed light on.
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The institute for Economic Affairs has published a report calling for a reduction in electricity bills.
Brexit provides real opportunity to bring down electricity bills for low-income households
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Once again the ‘climate change’ card is played by authorities to excuse their own failings.
By Paul Homewood
It is just over a year since Storm Desmond brought devastating floods to Carlisle.
Soon after the Carlisle Flood Action Group was formed, and they have now published a very full and highly technical account of the floods.
This is the first part of the Executive Summary:
Although Storm Desmond was severe by any account (and the report later accepts that it may have been exacerbated by global warming), the real problem was lack of river maintenance and poor management. This of course is a rerun of the Somerset floods in 2014.
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It’s OK ‘says ex-National Grid boss’. Well, let’s hear that from the current boss, and if it turns out he’s wrong he can be the next ex-boss.
By Paul Homewood
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38791572
Roger Harrabin, who is apparently now an energy analyst as well as an environmental one, writes:
The UK has enough energy capacity to meet demand – even on the coldest days when demand is highest, says Steve Holliday, the man who ran National Grid for a decade.
He said news stories raising fears about blackouts should stop.
His optimism is based on the government’s latest auction of capacity for power generation, which starts later today.
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