2050: The never-ending nightmare of Net Zero

Classifying this as humour may not be appropriate, but we live in hope.
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IT IS the year 2050 and Britain, relentlessly driven by the governing Labour-Green coalition, has achieved Net Zero, imagines David Wright @ TCW (The Conservative Woman).

The nation is quite unrecognisable from the comfortable, well-fed country it was in the early part of the 21st century.

Massive wind turbines cover the landscape; the old ones built 25 years ago now knocked down and lying next to the new ones because it was uneconomic to remove them.

The whole country is covered in a dense spider’s web of power lines from the multitude of wind and solar farms miles from where the power is needed.

Rain stopped York council’s £500k electric bin lorries working

Risky business [image credit: safetysource.co.nz]

York is a notoriously flood-prone place and these wagons under-performed in a big way, restricting themselves to cricketing weather. The costly attempt to help save the planet by adopting net-zero climate dogma thus faltered. The ‘wrong type of weather’ excuse used to refer to UK trains, but now it’s moved on.
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Two electric bin lorries bought by City of York Council in a bid to cut carbon emissions were unable to operate when it rained, it has emerged.

Rain caused the wagons to be taken off the city’s roads for up to 26 days a month several times last year, reports BBC News.

The vehicles stopped working for a combined total of 481 days between January 2021 and November 2022.

The council bought the vehicles in 2020 as part of its drive to achieve net zero emissions by 2030.

Eco activists fail to glue themselves to road due to cold weather

Munich street [image credit: muenchen.de]

The Daily Mail headlines it: ‘Eco-mob’s global warming protest fails…because it is too COLD!’ — Climate obsession can do strange things to some people. Does the phrase ‘sub-zero temperatures’ mean anything to them?
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The orders were simple: Run out onto the road, glue yourself to the tarmac and stop drivers from getting through, says the Daily Mail.

But for two climate activists in Germany, that plan didn’t work out quite as they’d hoped because sub-zero temperatures stopped the glue from working properly in an embarrassing lack of foresight.

The ‘Last Generation’ activists, who were protesting against global warming, desperately poured a bucket of glue over each other before sitting stone-faced in the middle of the road in Munich this morning.

But the freezing temperature scuppered their plans and instead of being stuck to the road, the pair of protesters sat glumly amongst a pool of glue mixed with snow.

Climategate, the Movie: Boffins Turning Tricks

The Talkshop doesn’t do film reviews as a rule, but we have to make an exception for this amusing one from Tony Thomas. A tale of dodgy e-mails, thwarted FOI requests, feeble inquiries, and assorted sinister goings-on. We’ll even offer a short excerpt to give readers a taste of it.
. . .
TT: The top copper rates the case as “Category A”, literally worse than a homicide investigation because it could imperil the planet, you see. “So we can expect some additional support from national counter-terrorism, Scotland Yard,” he intones. A brown lady constable (two BBC diversity boxes ticked) interjects, “Sorry, boss, but who’s been murdered?” He snaps at her, “Look at the timing! Join the dots! Three weeks before COP15 [Copenhagen]. If this is someone trying to influence the global response to climate change, then I’d say Category A is not enough!” The now chastened lady constable nods: now she gets it.
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Tony Thomas writes: If I had my life to live over again, I wouldn’t change a thing, except I’d skip The Trick, a movie about the Climategate scandal that makes heroes of the villains. The BBC aired it last year, and it’s finally accessible on Britbox via my Apple TV. It’s a thriller and the hero is Dr Phil Jones, who, in 2009 when the scandal broke, was a “world renowned” top scientist on a mission to save the planet from the perils of CO2…

Continued here.

King Charles will not attend climate summit on Truss advice

One less climate bore at COP27. Or the polite version: we shall have to try to contain our profound disappointment. Reports claiming he was ‘ordered’ not to go are strongly denied.
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The monarch and prime minister agreed the King would not go after he sought government advice, says BBC News.

Gamblers update: Eli Rabett vs Tallbloke on Arctic Sea Ice extent

Six years ago this week, I agreed to a wager with Eli Rabett on the trend in Arctic sea ice extent from 2006-2026. Now we’re more than halfway to the finish line, it’s a good time to check on progress. Here’s how the Sea Ice Extent graph looks from mid 2006 to mid 2022. The trend is still towards less ice, but not by much. There’s no ‘climate emergency tipping point’ visible in the data.

The terms we agreed are detailed in the image of the twitter convo below.

Tesla on autopilot crashes into $3 million jet

Tesla Model 3 [image credit: Vauxford @ Wikipedia]

EVs can at least offer accidental entertainment, except to their victims of course. “There’s still plenty of idiots to go around”.
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A new Reddit clip shows a Tesla using the Smart Summon feature at a Cirrus event crash into a small private jet worth millions.

Autopilot didn’t work, says Futurism.

Ban fracking, rock concerts and football matches!

Image credit: Iridescent @ Wikipedia

And heavy vehicles – or armies – from bridges, obviously.
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If the government is banning fracking for producing imperceptible tremors then it should be consistent and not allow the seismic carnage caused by rock concerts or football matches for that matter, jokes Net Zero Watch.

When many members of the public think about fracking their very next thought is likely to be “earthquakes.”

That’s because in the public’s perception fracking is a danger – nobody wants an induced earthquake just as nobody would want an induced volcanic eruption or tidal wave.

Nature is capricious enough to be threatening if you live in certain parts of the world. We don’t want earthquakes near Blackpool or Burnley, do we?

That’s the problem with the word earthquake. A better term is micro-seismicity and when viewed that way such events are everywhere.
. . .
Now, have you ever wondered why armies break step on a bridge?

Full article here.

Watch: Tesla Owner Told Repairs Will Cost 20,000 Euros. He Chose Dynamite

Tesla plant [image credit: Steve Jurvetson @ Wikipedia]

Sometimes you’ve just had enough…
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Automobile giant Tesla leads the EV sector with innovations and new technology, says NDTV.

But that was not enough to stop a disgruntled customer from blowing up his Tesla car using 30 kg of dynamite.

Jaala, an idyllic and ice-covered village in south Finland’s Kymenlaakso region with just a few thousand people, witnessed a bizarre incident as the owner of a 2013 Tesla Model S set his car up for an explosion.

The crew of a YouTube channel – Pommijatkat – shot the entire episode that premiered on Sunday with the help of a few volunteers.

Full report here.

It’s weather wars as the Met Office forecasts mild winter while the BBC predicts a big freeze

Place bets now! Of course there could well be bits of both. The Met Office says its offering is ‘consistent with a warming climate’, but there was a very cold winter spell only 11 years ago, around the time of the last solar minimum.
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Most know from bitter experience that meteorology is far from an exact science, but Britain’s two leading weather forecasting services have given completely contradictory predictions on what we can expect this winter, reports the Daily Mail.

The Government-run Met Office has forecast a mild winter, but the BBC’s service predicts it is likely to be cold and harsh.

Experts last night described the opposing long-range forecasts as unparalleled and they risk causing havoc for businesses such as energy suppliers, transport firms, supermarkets and airlines which rely on forecasts to plan ahead.

The Net Zero Watch guide to decarbonising your life

Join the world savers now! Get into plant-based sausage making for example…
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COP26 has been a flop, says Andy Shaw at Net Zero Watch.

The world’s leaders have failed to stop climate change and it is now up to us to save the world from catastrophe.

Ever since the first COP, in 1995, we have been living at ‘one minute to midnight’ and the clock is still ticking.

Continued here.

Carbon dioxide to help cut train delays caused by leaves on tracks

Image credit: Rail Technology Magazine

The BBC headline says ‘dry ice’ [etc.], which is the solid form of carbon dioxide. When deployed ‘The dry ice then quickly turns back into gas’. Surely that won’t do for climate obsessives?
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The new method of removing leaves from tracks will be trialled across northern England in the coming weeks, reports BBC News.

The technique, developed by University of Sheffield engineers, involves blasting tracks with dry ice from a passenger train.

It will be trialled by operator Northern in the coming weeks.

Rats! Tesla won’t pay for rodent damage to cars

Any Teslas round here? [image credit: Edal Anton Lefterov @ Wikipedia]

A bit of light relief perhaps, unless you’re already one of the victims or could soon become one. Are electric cars more appealing than combustion-engined types to hungry rodents? Check those brake cables.
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Elon Musk may have a rat problem, says The New York Post.

Fans of the South African billionaire’s electric cars say rats, mice and rodents are chomping down on their Teslas.

And despite having dropped tens of thousands of dollars to buy the pricey vehicles, Tesla refuses to cover the damage.

BBC removes Bitesize page on climate change ‘benefits’ after backlash

UK summer 2018 [image credit: BBC]

Hilarious.
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The BBC has removed an educational page laying out the “benefits” of climate change after a furious online reaction, reports The Guardian.

BBC Bitesize, its website for schoolchildren, claimed warmer temperatures “could lead to healthier outdoor lifestyles” and that a benefit of climate change could mean easier access to oil in Alaska and Siberia.

Environmentally unfriendly as Formula E race runs out of juice

Not the latest model

That sinking feeling when your EV wheels stop turning…
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PARIS: Electrically-powered Formula E racing fell flat on Saturday (Apr 24) when 12 of 24 cars taking part in the Valencia Grand Prix ran out of energy and failed to finish, reports Channel News Asia.

On a wet track where collisions were frequent, the safety car was called upon five times.

However, the regulations provide that the level of energy available to the single-seaters is recalculated downwards during such pauses in racing.

Andy Shaw: A Guide to the Green Industrial Revolution

Guest post from our good friend Andy Shaw; taking a light hearted look at some pretty serious issues around Boris Johnson’s version of the Green New Deal. Andy is also the powerhouse behind London based Comedy Unleashed who are still running, despite the batflu restrictions. Book early and get along there to enjoy a pint, pizza and pisstake if you’re in the area. Give Andy a follow on twitter to keep up with the latest.

A Guide to the Green Industrial Revolution

The government has announced their Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. It will bring electricity to light homes, gas for cooking and cars to drive! You may think that we already have these things, but this is a Green revolution, everything that we have got used to will be re-invented. Boris Johnson’s 10 point plan includes heat pumps, hydrogen gas and batteries, but what is really going on? This is your 6 point guide.

1. Green is popular!

Boris Johnson’s dad and his current girlfriend have a favourite colour and it is .. green! This shows that green policies are popular across generations and that the government is right to revolutionise our entire economy.

It’s #ShowYourStripes day folks; climate realist style.

Exeter university warmist Ed Hawkins came up with an idea for a beach towel a couple of years back. It’s the (alleged) temperature history of Earth’s annual average surface temperatures since the 1850s. It acts as global warming propaganda for the uninformed and is pushed and touted by the usual alarmist outfits.

Ed Hawkins ‘Climate Stripes’

Friday Fibonacci Fun

Someone make this with cheese and tortilla chips so I can have a fibonacho pic.twitter.com/FyAir9GUgJ

— jayynecobb (@JayyneCobb) April 10, 2020

Such a cleverly made 12 second clip. Fullscreen it and enjoy

Researchers use stop-light cameras to reduce fuel consumption of less-efficient vehicles via traffic management

The less efficient the vehicle, the shorter the wait at the traffic lights, and vice versa – electric cars and newer vehicles must wait longer. So the incentive lies with inefficiency – genius!

Approximately 6 billion gallons of fuel are wasted in the US each year as vehicles wait at stop lights or sit in dense traffic with engines idling, according to US Department of Energy estimates.

The least efficient of these vehicles are the large, heavy trucks used for hauling goods—they burn much more fuel than passenger cars consume when not moving, reports Green Car Congress.

Now, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have designed a computer vision system—using the preexisting stop-light cameras of GRIDSMART, a Tennessee-based company that specializes in traffic-management services—that can visually identify vehicles at intersections, determine their gas mileage estimates, and then direct traffic lights to keep less-efficient vehicles moving to reduce their fuel consumption.

‘Melting Greenland’ likely to add up to half an inch to global sea levels by 2098

image credit https://visitgreenland.com/

Mike Waite left the following comment over at Paul Homewood’s excellent not a lot of people know that blog yesterday:

There is an interesting paper by MacGuth et al (2013) which supports you :

From their summary:

-“We calculate the future sea-level rise contribution from the surface mass balance of all of

Greenland’s glaciers and ice caps (GICs, ca. 90 000 km2) using a simplified energy balance

model which is driven by three future climate scenarios from the regional climate models

HIRHAM5, RACMO2 and MAR. Glacier extent and surface elevation are modified during the

mass balance model runs according to a glacier retreat parameterization. Mass balance and glacier surface change are both calculated on a 250 m resolution digital elevation model yielding a high level of detail and ensuring that important feedback mechanisms are

considered. The mass loss of all GICs by 2098 is calculated to be

2016 +/- 129 Gt (HIRHAM5 forcing),

2584 +/-109 Gt (RACMO2)

and 3907+/- 108 Gt (MAR). This corresponds to a total contribution to sea-level rise of

5:8 +/- 0:4,

7:4 +/- 0:3

and 11:2 +/- 0:3 mm, respectively. “-

The future sea-level rise contribution of Greenland’s glaciers and ice caps

H Machguth1,2, P Rastner1, T Bolch1,3, N M¨olg1, L Sandberg Sørensen4,

G Aðalgeirsdottir5, J H van Angelen6, M R van den Broeke6 and

X Fettweis7

Online at stacks.iop.org/ERL/8/025005

Even if subsequent calculations modified these figures they are unlikely to be an order of magnitude higher and the sea level rise to 2098 calculated here is at most 11mm (not cm or feet or metres).

Can’t someone take these activists, sit them in a quet room and just read the literature to them since they seem incapable of such study themselves.