Swiss parliament snubs European court climate ruling, dubbed “judicial activism”

Judges trying to punish governments for not controlling present or future weather is an absurdity ripe for knocking on the head. In any case, Swiss glaciers have advanced and retreated in the past with no input from the government or anyone else, so local climate variation is nothing new.
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BERN (Reuters) -The lower house of the Swiss parliament voted on Wednesday to reject a ruling ordering Switzerland to do more to combat global warming in a move that could encourage others to resist the influence of international courts, reports Swissinfo.ch.

In April, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg issued an unprecedented judgment that said Bern had violated the human rights of a group of older Swiss women, the KlimaSeniorinnen, by failing to tackle climate change.

But Bern’s lower house on Wednesday followed in the steps of the upper house and passed a non-binding motion with 111 votes in favour and 72 against blasting the court’s “judicial activism”.

Serious floods in southern Germany – Chancellor beats his climate drum, ignoring history

Flooding like this has been recorded for centuries, e.g. on the Danube at Passau, Bavaria. Politicians are doing the usual bandwagon-jumping trick by trying to invoke human causes as the problem.
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Floods caused by heavy rain in southern Germany have claimed at least four lives, reports BBC News.

The victims include three people found in flooded basements on Monday. On Sunday a firefighter died while trying to rescue trapped residents.

Thousands of people in the states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg have fled their homes since torrential rains began on Friday.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who visited affected areas, said the flooding was a reminder of critical environmental challenges.

Landmark case crumbles: Swiss parliamentary committee rejects European climate ruling

Back to the drawing board for the climate miserablists and their litigious Swiss grannies, who had claimed a so-called ‘landmark’ victory after arguing their country wasn’t cold enough for their liking due to lack of government action, or something. The report notes that ‘the government had proposed stronger measures…but Swiss voters rejected them in a 2021 referendum’.
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GENEVA, May 21 (Reuters) – A Swiss parliamentary committee on Tuesday rejected a ruling by a top European court that said Switzerland had violated the human rights of its citizens by not doing enough to prevent climate change.

In April, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg found in favor of a group of elderly Swiss women who took their government to court over its record on tackling global warming.

The decision, which was expected to embolden more people to bring climate cases against governments, indicated Switzerland had a legal duty to take greater action on reducing emissions.

China develops revolutionary electric car battery that can charge in 10 minutes

If true, the rest of the EV scene looks obsolete already. Will other countries find themselves rolling out the red carpet for Chinese cars as their own motor industries struggle to survive?
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China has developed a revolutionary car battery that can charge in just 10 minutes and power a car for hundreds of miles before it needs to be plugged in, reports The Telegraph.

A report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) has hailed “remarkable” developments in chemistry that have allowed China to develop new batteries that pack far more energy than existing technologies.

The IEA highlighted EV batteries capable of travelling 250 miles without a recharge. Newer versions announced since the report was written can manage 600 miles.

Russia finds vast oil and gas reserves in British Antarctic territory – what happens next?

Report: ‘Junior minister David Rutley last week told the EAC that his department had decided to trust Russian assurances it was just conducting scientific research.’ However, ‘reserves 10 times the North Sea’s output’ could be tempting – but not to most UK politicians, who prefer to import anyone else’s oil and gas in order to pose as climate friendly or something, while the government loses another court battle over its self-imposed net zero targets.
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Russia has found vast oil and gas reserves in the Antarctic, much of it in areas claimed by the UK, reports The Telegraph.

The surveys are a prelude to bringing in drilling rigs to exploit the pristine region for fossil fuels, MPs have warned.

Reserves totalling 511bn barrels of oil – about 10 times the North Sea’s entire 50-year output – have been reported to Moscow by Russian research ships, according to evidence given to the Commons Environment Audit Committee (EAC) last week.

UK Government defeated in High Court over climate plans – as usual

Time for yet another revised ‘net zero emissions’ plan. Whether any country that used to depend largely on fuel-burning power stations for electricity can meet the demands of its own time-limited climate plans/targets is open to question. The BBC report once again wheels out the old climate propaganda con trick of pretending that sunset shadow effects are scary pollution clouds in its report image.
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The government has been defeated in court – for a second time – for not doing enough to meet its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, reports BBC News.

Environmental campaigners argued that the energy minister signed off the government’s climate plan without evidence it could be achieved.

The High Court ruled on Friday that the government will now be required to redraft the plan again.

In response the government defended its record on climate action.

Photos of torrential Dubai flash floods show the downsides of trying to control the weather

The UAE’s cloud seeding operations worsened the Dubai flash floods according to this source. Would-be climate savers with grandiose schemes can take note.
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Summary:
— The United Arab Emirates experienced torrential rainfall and severe flash floods on Tuesday.
— The flooding was worsened by the UAE’s cloud seeding practice to address water scarcity.
— The weather modification method involves getting clouds to drop more precipitation.
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Torrential rainfall pummeled the United Arab Emirates this week, resulting in flash floods that have caused air travel delays, closed schools, and deluged homes, says Business Insider.

Dubai International Airport — recently named the most luxurious airport in the world — was diverting planes as of Tuesday evening until the weather conditions improved, according to a statement.

World’s top cosmologists convene to question conventional view of the universe

A meeting at London’s Royal Society will scrutinise the basic model first formulated in 1922 that the universe is a vast, even expanse with no notable features and ask (after 100+ years): is it wrong, and if so, what next? Competing measurements of the Hubble ‘constant’ will come under yet more scrutiny.
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If you zoomed out on the universe, well beyond the level of planets, stars or galaxies, you would eventually see a vast, evenly speckled expanse with no notable features. At least, that has been the conventional view, says The Guardian.

The principle that everything looks the same everywhere is a fundamental pillar of the standard model of cosmology, which aims to explain the big bang and how the universe has evolved in the 13.7bn years since.

But this week a meeting of some of the world’s leading cosmologists will convene at London’s Royal Society to ask the question: what if this basic assumption is wrong?

First Ever Advanced Reactor Submitted for Justification in UK

Press release – the application ‘has been accepted for Government consideration’. Electricity supply is too important to be left mainly to erratic and weather-dependent power sources.
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LONDON, UK – 5 April 2024 – The Nuclear Industry Association has applied for a justification decision for newcleo’s lead-cooled fast reactor, the LFR-AS-200, says newcleo.

Our application makes the case that the benefits of clean, firm, flexible power from the LFR-AS-200 would far outweigh any potential risks, which are in any event rigorously controlled by robust safety features, including passive safety systems, built into the design and incorporated into the operating arrangements, in line with the UK’s regulatory requirements.

The application also demonstrates that the reactor design would support nuclear energy’s contribution to a stable and well-balanced electricity grid, which is essential to reduce consumer bills and maintain economic competitiveness.

X-class flare as two sunspots explode in tandem

A Sympathetic X-class Solar Flare

Solar maximum part two on the way.

Viewers ‘very sad’ after Sky’s climate show gets the chop – but too many non-viewers

Commercial failure, it seems. Never mind, there’s always the weather forecast.
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Viewers have expressed their devastation after BBC presenter Tom Heap revealed his Sky News show had been cancelled, says Metro News.

The Countryfile host, 58, presented the last episode of The Climate Show on Saturday and announced it had been axed after two years on air.

Tom shared the clip of his ‘pithy final line’, prompting an outpouring of disappointment from his X follower who branded the show ‘important’ amid the escalating [Talkshop comment – only in the media?] climate change crisis.

Confused over the show’s end, account @Earth2075 remarked: ‘Why? It seems now is a more important time than ever.’
. . .
Ending the final The Climate Show, Tom said: ‘And that is it for The Climate Show. This is our final outing.’

Full article here.

Climate protesters in England and Wales lose criminal damage defence

Appeal court says defendants’ ‘beliefs and motivation’ do not constitute lawful excuse for damaging property. They may think their imaginary weather scenarios, supposedly based on climate models and ‘greenhouse effects’, should be taken seriously but the rest of the world has no obligation to do so.
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One of the last defences for climate protesters who commit criminal damage has been in effect removed by the court of appeal, says The Guardian.

The court said the “beliefs and motivation” of a defendant do not constitute lawful excuse for causing damage to a property.

The defence that a person honestly believes the owner of a property would have consented had they known the full circumstances of climate change has been used successfully over the last year by protesters.

Two million animals dead as extreme winter weather hits Mongolia

The UN as usual blames ‘climate change’ (no definition available) which is synonymous with global warming to a lot of people. Snowfall in the country is reported as the heaviest since 1975.
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Bayanmunkh Sum: More than two million animals have died in Mongolia so far this winter, a government official said Monday, as the country endures extreme cold and snow, reports Gulf News.

The landlocked country is no stranger to severe weather from December to March, when temperatures plummet as low as minus 50 degrees Celsius (minus 58 Fahrenheit) in some areas.

But this winter has been more severe than usual, with lower than normal temperatures and very heavy snowfall, the United Nations said in a recent report.

As of Monday, 2.1 million head of livestock had died from starvation and exhaustion, Gantulga Batsaikhan of the country’s agriculture ministry said.

Mongolia had 64.7 million such animals, including sheep, goats, horses and cows, at the end of 2023, official statistics show.

The extreme weather is known as “dzud” and typically results in the deaths of huge numbers of livestock.

The United Nations said climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of dzuds.

Mongolia has experienced six dzuds in the past decade, including the winter of 2022-23 when 4.4 million head of livestock perished.

This year’s dzud has been exacerbated by a summer drought that prevented animals from building up enough fatty stores to survive the harsh winter.

‘Praying for warmer weather’
Seventy percent of Mongolia is experiencing “dzud or near dzud” conditions, the UN said.

That compares with 17 percent of the country at the same time in 2023.
. . .
Snowfall this year – the heaviest since 1975 – has compounded herders’ woes, trapping them in colder areas and making them unable to buy food and hay for their animals from the nearby towns.

Full report here.
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Image: Another tough winter for Mongolian livestock [credit: eurasianet.org]

Britain to harness power of Sahara solar farms using world’s biggest cable-laying ship

‘The project has already been declared one of “national significance” by Claire Coutinho, the Energy Secretary, who has also set a team of civil servants to work on it’, says the story. A claim of ‘near-constant’ electricity supply from one of the project team sounds a tad optimistic. Sandstorms are not unheard of in the Sahara region, for example. [Click on image to enlarge]
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A project to power Britain using solar farms thousands of miles away in the Sahara is moving a step closer to fruition as its backers prepare to commission the world’s biggest cable-laying ship, says The Telegraph.

The 700ft vessel will lay four parallel cables linking solar and wind farms spread across the desert in Morocco with a substation in Alverdiscott, a tiny village near the coast of north Devon.

Once completed, the scheme is expected to deliver about 3.6 gigawatts of electricity to the UK’s national grid – equating to about 8pc of total power demand.

February Arctic ice ahead of recent comparisons

February Arctic Ice Jumps Over 15 Wadhams a Month Early

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Let’s see how this plays out over the full season.

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.
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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.

Solar protons rain down on Earth via the Parker spiral

Solar Protons Are Raining Down on Earth

Sometimes known as a Solar particle event:
These particles can penetrate the Earth’s magnetic field and cause partial ionization of the ionosphere. Energetic protons are a significant radiation hazard to spacecraft and astronauts.

More climate squabbling: Governments fail to set a timeline for the IPCC reports

Yet another climate conference

Another round of climate obsessives versus energy realists, as ‘Saudi, India and China led opposition against a proposal to link the IPCC’s assessment cycle with the global stocktake’. Supposed climate issues continue to be a drain on government time and resources, with attendees racking up loads of the dreaded ’emissions’ between them just to get to the latest of the endless series of venues.
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Governments have failed to agree on a timeline for the delivery of highly influential scientific reports assessing the state of climate change by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says Climate Home News.

That is after Saudi Arabia, India and China opposed attempts to ensure the scientific body would provide its assessment in time for the next global stocktake, the UN’s scorecard of collective climate action, due in 2028, according to sources present at the IPCC talks in Istanbul, Turkiye, last week.

Following “fraught” discussions that ran all night Friday, governments postponed a final decision on the timeline until the next meeting scheduled in the summer.

Chancellor Hunt ‘bitterly disappointed’ after gas drilling approved in his constituency

Climate obsession can warp the mind if this case is anything to go by. Government policy is to find more UK gas but one of its top ministers opposes the idea in his own constituency.
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Chancellor Jeremy Hunt says he is “bitterly disappointed” after a Court of Appeal ruling gave the green light to a gas drilling project in his Surrey constituency, reports Sky News.

The site in Dunsfold, which energy company UK Oil and Gas (UKOG) wants to explore, has been the source of a protracted legal battle.

The application was approved by the government in June 2022, despite it being refused by the local Conservative council and opposition from Mr Hunt when he was a backbench MP.

US: Winter storm brings ‘life-threatening’ cold

Instead of imagining dire global warming, many US citizens can step outside for a sharp dose of a different reality. “EVERY state in the US has an active NWS watch, warning, or advisory”. One to remember when summer heatwaves come around and UN-led warmist miserablism fires up again.
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The mercury was plummeting across the US Midwest on Saturday as a biting winter storm left hundreds of thousands without power and threatened to disrupt the first key event in the 2024 presidential election campaign, says DW.com.

Over a quarter of a million people in Michigan and Wisconsin were left without power as freezing temperatures spread across the region, according to the PowerOutage.US website.

Winds and heavy snow also grounded planes at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport with some 7,600 flights delayed across the country.