Climate the Movie is here.

Eight years ago, talkshop readers helped film maker Martin Durkin finance ‘Brexit the Movie‘, raising over £8000 towards the total cost of production. Now, Martin has made the long awaited sequel to ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle‘ with help from long time fellow sceptic Tom Nelson. It’s called ‘Climate the Movie: the Cold Truth’ and you can watch it for free here, right now. Enjoy!

Available at Vimeo vimeo.com/924719370
On X at twitter.com/TomANelson/status/1771682333738848477
On Youtube at youtube.com/watch?v=zmfRG8-RHEI
On Rumble at rumble.com/v4kl0dn-climate-the-movie-the-cold-truth-martin-durkin.html

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.
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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.

Dose of engineering reality needed to counter climate obsessions

Using ‘Green Energy’ To Wreck Our Way Of Life

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Talkshop comment:
Playing the expensive renewable energy game isn’t an option for the majority of ‘non-wealthy’ countries anyway, regardless of promoters of climate alarm. China for example forges ahead with dozens of new coal mines every year to help keep its growing economy functioning, while countries like Britain attempt to survive without any. Somebody has it wrong and it’s not going to be China.

Latest energy policy announcements show that the UK Government has gone Insane

By David Turver at his ‘Eigen Values’ substack blog

Introduction

Back in the summer, there were signs that the consensus around Net Zero policy was starting to crack. The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak then made his speech that watered down some Net Zero commitments and promised “a more pragmatic, proportionate, and realistic approach that eases the burdens on families.” However, in the run up to Christmas, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) made several announcements about various aspects of energy policy that can only add to consumer costs. These included various announcements about their hydrogen policy, a statement on carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS) and an update on the business models for greenhouse gas removal (GGR) and power from bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).

This article explains that unfortunately, the announcements mark the end of any serious fightback against the Net Zero insanity and demonstrate that the Government has no idea about economics, thermodynamics or energy and has gone completely insane.

The EU Is Willing to Go To War Over Lithium?

By Phil Butler
New Eastern Outlook

January 3, 2024

The riddle of unhinged EU support for the Zelensky regime in Kyiv is now solved. Anyone inclined can unravel why the Germans, in particular, backstabbed Russia in the Minsk peace boondoggle. Lithium.

Energy Monitor’s parent company, GlobalData, recently released a report showing that Europe’s biggest lithium reserves lie in the Donbass region of Russia. The former Ukrainian Shevchenkivske field in the Donetsk region and the Kruta Balka block in the Zaporizhzhia region are now part of Russia. These reserves add tremendously to Russia’s humongous Lithium deposits (now 1.5M metric tons) and solidify the country’s top ten position globally. If we consider other BRICS nations’ reserves, including China (2M metric tons), EU industry is at a leverage point.

Government has surrendered to green lobbyists – NZW

UK governments snookered themselves by passing the Climate Change Act. Now when the green lobby says ‘jump!’ all they can do is say ‘how high?’ They’ve given themselves no other option.
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Net Zero Watch says Claire Coutinho’s decision to award huge price increases to renewables operators is a wholesale surrender to green lobbyists.

— Generators awarded large and open-ended price increases to new offshore wind, with a minimum 66% increase.
— Government has offered further handouts contingent on delivery of a ‘low carbon supply chain’ and ‘social benefits’
— This can only increase costs to consumers, who should expect hefty increases in bills

Campaign group Net Zero Watch has ridiculed energy minister Claire Coutinho’s claim that handing a 66% price increase to windfarm operators is part of her plan for ‘bringing bills down for families’.

UK sued for counting wood burning with carbon capture as ‘negative emissions’

Biomass on the move [image credit: Drax]

Denounced by one opponent as ‘an accounting gimmick’ and ‘double counting’. The whole biomass from trees industry is once more outed as little more than a giant subsidy-grabbing confidence trick, from energy-intensive conversion of wood into pellets all the way to so-called carbon capture. Where are the real world benefits in this hugely expensive system?
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Environmental groups are taking the UK government to court on Monday (13 November) over plans to spend billions on Biomass with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), a technology aimed at removing CO2 from the atmosphere that is also being promoted by the European Union, says Euractiv.

Plaintiffs say BECCS technology relies on flawed accounting assumptions because it sees the carbon captured from wood burning as negative emissions when the process is at best neutral from a climate perspective.

“The government’s rationale for BECCS as providing negative emissions violates international carbon accounting protocols underpinning the Paris Agreement, to which the UK is a signatory,” said a statement from The Lifescape Project and the Partnership for Policy Integrity (PPI), two environmental groups that are the complainants in the case.

“Burning forest biomass and relying on BECCS for negative emissions will not contribute to the government’s legal obligation to achieve net zero by 2050,” they warned.

Germany To Bail Out Siemens’ Struggling Wind Turbine Division

Big Wind to governments: ‘We’re gonna need a bigger trough’. So much for cheap renewable energy, a stale myth if ever there was one, given the endless subsidies. How much is too much in climate obsession circles? Net zero targets have created a captive market for suppliers.
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The German government is preparing to provide financial support to Siemens Energy’s struggling wind turbine division amid a broader crisis in the wind and solar industries, reports OilPrice.com.

-> Siemens Energy, facing significant losses, is in talks for up to 15 billion euros in guarantees, with the German state covering 80% of the initial funding.
-> Siemens AG shares have plummeted over 70% since mid-June, with the company abandoning its 2023 profit outlook due to challenges in its wind turbine unit.
-> The UK government is set to offer higher subsidies for offshore wind projects, following a previous auction where developers backed out due to low pricing, indicating growing financial strains in the renewable energy sector.

Idea of green growth losing traction among climate policy researchers, survey of nearly 800 academics reveals

Prosperity via subsidies, making the energy that powers economies more scarce and/or more expensive, always sounded like a fantasy.
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When she took to the floor to give her State of the Union speech on 13 September, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen largely stood by the script, says Phys.org.

Describing her vision of an economically buoyant and sustainable Europe in the era of climate change, she called on the EU to accelerate the development of the clean-tech sector, “from wind to steel, from batteries to electric vehicles.”

“When it comes to the European Green Deal, we stick to our growth strategy,” von der Leyen said.

Her plans were hardly idiosyncratic.

Ben Pile: Rishi’s Net Zero delay has outed the Green Blob’s threadbare theory

Green blob [credit: storybird.com]

Rishi Sunak’s ‘watering down’ of certain Net Zero targets is the first time that the green policy agenda has had ANY scrutiny of any consequence, despite many failures, starting with the ruinously expensive Renewable Obligation, extending into the totally failed CfDs that allowed wind farm developers to lie to achieve planning consent over rival generators and technologies. Not one part of the green policy agenda has lived up to any promise to deliver good to the British public.

It was the mildest possible reversal. It is in fact an attempt to SAVE Net Zero, not roll it back. Complaints that it has left Britain without an ‘industrial policy’ or has left ‘investors’ without ‘confidence’ are for the birds. It has put the UK in the same policy position as the EU (more on which in a bit), and there is no evidence of green policies having delivered any significant industrial development to these shores. No green jobs. No green growth. No green industrial revolution. Not even a BritishVolt. It is a farce.

Matt Ridley: I’ll buy a new petrol car in 2029

The rush to electric vehicles risks killing our car industry, shackling us to China and bumping up our taxes to reduce global emissions by just 0.044%. That’s why I’ll be buying a brand new petrol car just before the 2030 ban

Daily Mail July 8

BMW i3 electric car plus battery pack [image credit: carmagazine.co.uk]

Britain’s electric vehicle transition and the ban on petrol car sales from 2030 are a slow-motion car crash. The technology is not ready, the cost will be vast, the logistics are forbidding, the reliance on China is worrying and the backlash from the public is likely to be harsh.

Worst of all, the benefits are derisory at best and may not even exist.

Yes, you read that right. It is possible that we could replace all of Britain’s cars and vans with electric vehicles and still find that carbon dioxide emissions are higher, not lower. Cost-benefit, hello?

As predicted, wind industry blackmails the UK – demands yet more subsidies – Net Zero Watch

Hornsea Offshore Wind Project, Yorkshire, England
[image credit: nsenergybusiness.com]

Forget the cheap electricity hype. The Oliver Twists of the loss-making renewables business are raising their voices again.
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London, 5 July – Net Zero Watch has urged the Government to stand up for consumers and businesses by rejecting the wind industry’s latest demands for more subsidies.

In a move that gives the lie to years of propaganda claiming falling costs, the wind industry’s leading lobbyists have written to the Government, threatening to abandon the UK unless there are hugely increased subsidies for their companies (see RenewableUK press release).

The industry is claiming that unforeseen rising costs now necessitate and justify three actions:

Irony Alert: Why Offshore Wind Power Increases Carbon Dioxide Gas Emissions

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A reminder that green industrialization is mostly fuel-powered.

STOP THESE THINGS

Wind power is delivered chaotically, it’s costly and critically depends on the weather. So, the only purported justification is said to be a reduction of carbon dioxide gas emissions in the electricity generation sector. Putting aside whether there’s any need to do so, STT is happy to attack the myth that wind power does any such thing.

One of our posts to that effect – How Much CO2 Gets Emitted to Build a Wind Turbine? – has clocked up over 130,000 hits and still attracts attention.

In the first of the pieces below, David Wojick tackles the myth that offshore wind power generation reduces carbon dioxide gas emissions, explaining that collapses in wind power output are met by using costly to run and highly inefficient open cycle gas turbines, ramped up to keep the grid from collapsing and the lights on when calm weather sets in. With the net result…

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Solar panels – an eco-disaster waiting to happen?

Image credit: solaruk.net

The same question can be asked of wind turbines and old lithium-based batteries. Experts warn of a waste mountain by 2050.
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While they are being promoted around the world as a crucial weapon in reducing carbon emissions, solar panels only have a lifespan of up to 25 years, says BBC News.

Experts say billions of panels will eventually all need to be disposed of and replaced.

“The world has installed more than one terawatt of solar capacity. Ordinary solar panels have a capacity of about 400W, so if you count both rooftops and solar farms, there could be as many as 2.5 billion solar panels,” says Dr Rong Deng, an expert in solar panel recycling at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

According to the British government, there are tens of millions of solar panels in the UK. But the specialist infrastructure to scrap and recycle them is lacking.

Deep-sea mining controversy: hotspot teems with mystery animals

Seabed mining

There’s already friction between some of the big car firms and the mining concerns, with the car people backing a moratorium but the miners insisting they wouldn’t be able to produce enough for the EV markets without exploiting the sea bed.
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A vast stretch of ocean floor earmarked for deep sea mining is home to thousands of oddball sea creatures, most of them unknown to science, says BBC News.

They include weird worms, brightly coloured sea cucumbers and corals.

Scientists have put together the first full stocktake of species to help weigh up the risks to biodiversity.

They say more than 5,000 different animals have been found in the Clarion Clipperton Zone of the Pacific Ocean.

The area is a prime contender for the mining of precious metals from the sea bed, which could begin as early as this year.

Opposing wind farms morally unacceptable – ‘expert’

Well, the alleged expert Lord Deben – shortly to quit as chair of the pompously named Climate Change Committee – would say that, wouldn’t he?
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Communities opposed to wind turbines in their local area do not have an “acceptable moral position” according to a climate change expert.

Dozens of large-scale wind farm applications are being considered as Wales tries to reach net zero, says BBC News.

Campaigners say the ambition is putting the Welsh countryside at risk and south Wales already has several wind farms.

ULEZ Extension: Damning New Report Shatters ‘Scientific’ Claims Made By London Mayor Khan

The alarmist foundation for ULEZ expansion has disintegrated.

Read the new Together Declaration & Climate Debate UK report by Ben Pile demonstrating that neither the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) nor the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP) find evidence of a causal link between air pollution and mortality.

Despite Khan claiming that 4,000 Londoners die each year, both UKHSA and COMEAP explicitly advise against framing the potential mortality risk associated with air pollution exposure in terms of deaths because it is untrue and unscientific.

Giant UK offshore wind farm ‘at risk without government support’

The government talks about ‘investment’ in renewables. So-called cheap wind energy holds out the begging bowl again.
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Rising supply chain costs and other financial pressures are threatening the development of what could be the world’s largest offshore wind farm off the coast of Britain, says Energy Live News.

The Hornsea Three Offshore Wind Farm is expected to have a capacity of almost 3GW and generate [Talkshop comment – on a good day] enough energy to power three million homes.

Energy giant Orsted, which is behind the construction of the massive wind farm, has said it needs more government support to achieve project progress.

In a statement, Duncan Clark, Head of Orsted UK & Ireland, said: “Since the auction, there has been an extraordinary combination of increased interest rates and supply chain prices.

“Industry is doing everything it can to manage costs on these projects but there is a real and growing risk of them being put on hold or even handing back their CfDs.”

Mr Clark has called on the government to offer targeted support on investments such as tax breaks.

A government spokesperson told ELN: “The government is encouraging investment in renewable generation including through £30 billion to support the green industrial revolution…”

Full article here.

Britons paying hundreds of millions to turn off wind turbines as network can’t handle the power they make on the windiest days

Electricity transmission [credit: green lantern electric]

Not a new story, but problems are getting worse thanks to net zero obsessions. Why authorise new capacity in areas where transmission lines are known to be inadequate?
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UK consumers are paying hundreds of millions of pounds to turn wind turbines off because the grid cannot deal with how much electricity they make on the windiest days, says Sky News.

The energy regulator Ofgem has told Sky News it is because the grid is “not yet fit for purpose” as the country transitions to a clean power system by 2035.

The National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO), which is responsible for keeping the lights on, has forecast that these “constraint costs”, as they are known, may rise to as much as £2.5bn per year by the middle of this decade before the necessary upgrades are made.

The problem has arisen as more and more wind capacity is built in Scotland and in the North Sea but much of the demand for electricity continues to come from more densely populated areas in the south of the country.

Green Energy – The Greatest Transfer Of Wealth To The Rich In History

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The cost per molecule of atmospheric CO2 ‘saved’ must be phenomenal i.e. ridiculous.

PA Pundits International

By Steve Goreham~

We are in the midst of history’s greatest wealth transfer. Government subsidized support for wind systems, solar arrays, and electric vehicles overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy members of society and rich nations. The poor and middle class pay for green energy programs with higher taxes and higher electricity and energy costs. Developing nations suffer environmental damage to deliver mined materials needed for renewables in rich nations.

Since 2000, the world has spent more than $5 trillion on green energy. More than 300,000 wind turbines have been erected, millions of solar arrays were installed, more than 25 million electric vehicles (EVs) have been sold, hundreds of thousands of acres of forest were cut down to produce biomass fuel, and about three percent of agricultural land is now used to produce biofuel for vehicles. The world spends about $1 trillion per year on green energy. Government subsidies run about…

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