Is net zero climate dogma more important to the government than the entire UK economy?

The difficulty of getting any economic common sense into the heads of carbon dioxide obsessed leaders seems insurmountable at present.
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Economic disaster beckons without radical policy changes, says Net Zero Watch.

London, 27 September – Net Zero Watch has said that negative market reactions to the Government’s mini-budget show that domestic and international investors are highly sceptical about what appears to be half-baked policy proposals.

Investors can see that hardly anything is being done to address the underlying reasons for Britain’s economic and energy cost crisis.

Tax cuts in conjunction with astronomical and indeterminate handouts to energy suppliers announced by the Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng last week have alarmed financiers because they shift the energy cost burden onto the UK’s debt mountain and future generations. As a result, the pound has crashed against the dollar and market reactions have been highly critical.

Net Zero Watch director, Dr Benny Peiser has warned that the country faces years of inflation and in all likelihood a major economic depression unless the government announces radical energy policy reforms:

The economy looks likely to tank and suffer for years to come because the Government refuses to abandon its suicidal Net Zero targets which are effectively preventing solutions to the catastrophic energy crisis.”

Full press release here.

Net-Zero Is The Real Climate Catastrophe

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Putin’s antics have led to at least a temporary reality check on the net-zero obsession in the EU, UK etc. Whether their energy policies are affected long-term remains to be seen.

PA Pundits - International

By Duggan Flanakin ~

Maybe Vladimir Putin SHOULD get the Nobel Peace Prize after all.

To be sure, Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine is an affront to humanity, given his targeting of civilians. Russia even fired upon medical and humanitarian aid convoys and is using a nuclear power plant as a shield for his military operations.

But Putin’s invasion may be saving Europe – and other nations – from their blind devotion to the “climate catastrophe” movement and the worldwide push to “Net Zero by 2050.” Even before Putin’s war disrupted European energy supplies vastly increased energy costs, Europeans were suffering from senseless “green” energy policies imposed in the name of “saving the planet.”

The radical Net Zero plan, crafted by the United Nations and endorsed by such entities as the World Economic Forum, would press nations to abdicate reliance on fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and even hydroelectric dams in…

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ENSO update: La Niña continues

It could still be active into next spring, according to some forecasters. Unusual by its own historical (back to 1950) standards.
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La Niña continues! It’s likely that the La Niña three-peat will happen: the chance that the current La Niña will last through early winter is over 70%, says NOAA’s ENSO blog.

If it happens, this will be only the third time with three La Niña winters in a row in our 73-year record.

ENSO (El Niño/Southern Oscillation, the whole La Niña and El Niño system) has the greatest influence on weather and climate during the Northern Hemisphere cold season, so forecasters pay especially close attention when it looks like ENSO will be active in the winter.

NOAA still expects above-normal Atlantic hurricane season

We like a prediction, so we’ll see how this one goes after ‘a relatively slow start to hurricane season, with no major storms developing in the Atlantic’. NOAA’s ENSO blog says ‘La Niña suppresses hurricane activity in the central and eastern Pacific basins, and enhances it in the Atlantic basin’, which influences their thinking. No doubt climate obsessives will be on the lookout for something to wail about.
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Atmospheric and oceanic conditions still favor an above-normal 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, according to NOAA’s annual mid-season update issued today by the Climate Prediction Center, a division of the National Weather Service. — Phys.org reporting.

“I urge everyone to remain vigilant as we enter the peak months of hurricane season,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.

“The experts at NOAA will continue to provide the science, data and services needed to help communities become hurricane resilient and climate-ready for the remainder of hurricane season and beyond.”

London’s desalination plant won’t be fired up even if official drought is declared

Beckton desalination plant, London [image credit: Acciona]

Is the plant, which is supposed to run on renewable energy, deemed too expensive to operate except as a last resort, or are there other problems? Hosepipe bans are obviously a cheaper alternative.
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London’s desalination plant won’t be fired up even if official drought is declared, says The Telegraph (via MSN).

It was opened by the Duke of Edinburgh in 2010 and promised to be the saviour for thousands of Londoners in case of drought.

Twelve years later, its moment arrived during the driest July on record – but the desalination plant in Beckton, east London, was effectively mothballed with no clear date for its resurrection.

Net Zero Policy Already Costing UK Households Over £2,000 A Year

Offshore wind farm [image credit: Wikipedia]

UK governments are legally forced to follow the Climate Change Act and even then they’re coming up short, according to a High Court verdict this week. How long can this climate-induced madness go on?
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A new analysis by Net Zero Watch reveals that Net Zero policies are already costing every household over £2,000 ($2,400) per year, says Climate Change Dispatch.

Spending programs and the Emissions Trading Scheme together cost around £300 ($360), while green levies – mostly subsidies to renewables – are adding another £350 ($420).

Renewable energy also imposes a range of indirect costs as businesses pass on their costs to consumers, which may add up to another £600 ($719).

Finally, there is a significant cost due to the constraints put on fossil fuel extraction in the UK.

Climate mania: When will the UK heatwave peak and how hot will it get?

Warm day in London

People in many parts of the world must be wondering what all the fuss is about, but Brits like to discuss their ever-changeable weather now and again…and again. Of course there’s now the added element of wild panic-mongering (see below) from the usual climate-obsessed suspects like the Met Office, trying to blame humans for natural events plus all the rest of their tedious hype. We’ve had hot days before, and some like to pay to find hotter ones on their travels, so let’s dial back on the shrill alarmism.
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The Met Office has issued its first red warning for extreme heat, warning of a “potentially very serious situation” in parts of England, says ITV News.

The UK Health Security Agency has increased its heat health warning from level three to level four – a “national emergency.”

Level four is reached only when a heatwave is “so severe and/or prolonged that its effects extend outside the health and social care system”, according to the UK Health Security Agency.

Illness and death may occur even among the fit and healthy, and “not just in high-risk groups.”

The other side of climate ‘lawfare’: Maine hydropower project sparked a $100m ‘hoohah’

[credit: green lantern electric]

Court actions by so-called green groups are commonplace, but there’s legal pushback from another quarter – against intrusive electricity generation schemes favoured by climate obsessives, with a perceived lack of benefits. Not everyone is buying the endless climate fear campaign.
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A proposal to transport clean hydropower from Canada to the state of Maine has created enough “hoohah” to launch a fierce court battle – possibly signalling trouble for the future of green energy projects across the US, says BBC News.

New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) was supposed to be an industry-leading project, transporting 1,200 megawatts of Canadian hydropower to Massachusetts across 145 miles (233 km) of transmission line, and eliminating over three million metric tonnes of carbon emissions every year.

The $1bn (£840m) project, funded by utility company Hydro-Quebec and Central Maine Power (CMP), which is owned by the Spanish energy giant Avangrid, received final approvals, including a Presidential Permit from the US Department of Energy. Construction began in January 2021.

Now, the hydropower project could be dead in the water, after a majority Mainers voted to cancel it last November.

Spain, Portugal dryness ‘unprecedented’ in 1,200 years – or maybe not, say critics

Credit: NOAA

Some scientists contacted by Carbon Brief have their doubts about the reasons given for the reported expansion of the Azores high. An assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, warns that “the title statement is not justified by the study”. Another assistant professor, at the University of Dartmouth, told Carbon Brief ‘that changes in the size and intensity of the Azores high could also have been driven by changes in aerosol levels, rather than changes in greenhouse gases emissions. (For example, the passing of the US Clean Air Act in the 1970s saw pollution levels drop significantly, causing localised warming.) That the authors did not investigate this factor is “a curious omission” he says.’ On top of that, Prof Richard Seagar – a research professor at Columbia University – told Carbon Brief that the expansion in the Azores high could also “easily be explained by the long-term variability and changes of the North Atlantic Oscillation”.
In short, this attempt to put the blame on humans for the more recent climatic conditions related to this phenomenon is already starting to look shaky.
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Parts of Portugal and Spain are the driest they have been in a thousand years due to an atmospheric high-pressure system driven by climate change, according to research published Monday, warning of severe implications for wine and olive production.

The Azores High, an area of high pressure that rotates clockwise over parts of the North Atlantic, has a major effect on weather and long-term climate trends in western Europe says Phys.org.

But in a new modeling study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers in the United States found this high-pressure system “has changed dramatically in the past century and that these changes in North Atlantic climate are unprecedented within the past millennium”.

Met Office 2050 forecasts use ‘plausible scenarios’ that aren’t plausible

Image credit: livescience.com

In their computer model game they use the discredited RCP 8.5 formula that assumes a highly unlikely surface energy increase of 8.5W/m^2 by 2100 (not 2050). What’s the point?
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You may have seen some of our forecasts that look a little further ahead than you would usually expect, says the UK Met Office.

Although they use the same graphics as our normal weather forecasts, we’ve been producing theoretical ‘forecasts’ for 2050 to look at what conditions we could expect to see in the UK if global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.

One of the greatest challenges with communicating the risks of climate change is how to show, in a relatable way, how changes in our atmosphere could impact the weather we experience on the Earth’s surface.

New study may solve long-standing mystery of what triggered ice age

Canadian Arctic archipelago [via Wikipedia]

The clue is in the study title: The importance of Canadian Arctic Archipelago gateways for glacial expansion in Scandinavia.
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A new study led by University of Arizona researchers may have solved two mysteries that have long puzzled paleo-climate experts (says Phys.org): Where did the ice sheets that rang in the last ice age more than 100,000 years ago come from, and how could they grow so quickly?

Understanding what drives Earth’s glacial–interglacial cycles—the periodic advance and retreat of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere—is no easy feat, and researchers have devoted substantial effort to explaining the expansion and shrinking of large ice masses over thousands of years.

The new study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, proposes an explanation for the rapid expansion of the ice sheets that covered much of the Northern Hemisphere during the most recent ice age, and the findings could also apply to other glacial periods throughout Earth’s history.

New Zealand’s plan to tax cow and sheep burps

Image credit: Zelp

An own goal for NZ farming. Where is the greenhouse they’re so frightened of? From livestock to laughing stock.
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New Zealand has unveiled a plan to tax sheep and cattle burps in a bid to tackle one of the country’s biggest sources of greenhouse gases, says BBC News.

It would make it the first nation to charge farmers for the methane emissions from the animals they keep.

New Zealand is home to just over five million people, along with around 10 million cattle and 26 million sheep.

Almost half the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, mainly methane.

New measurements from Northern Sweden suggest methane emission hype overrated

Swedish permafrost [image credit: International Permafrost Association]

Another attempted climate scare gets dented. In short, nature takes care of it.
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It is widely understood that thawing permafrost can lead to significant amounts of methane being released, says Phys.org.

However, new research shows that in some areas, this release of methane could be a tenth of the amount predicted from a thaw.

The research was conducted in Sweden by an international group that includes researchers from the University of Copenhagen.

Heat pump costs soar because Britain’s radiators are ‘too small’

Domestic Air Source Heat Pump [image credit: UK Alternative Energy]

The ill-conceived ‘net zero’ emissions plan born of the UK government’s carbon dioxide obsessions takes another hit. Five-figure radiator installation bills will put people off bigtime.
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Homeowners trying to install eco-friendly heat pumps have been left with surprise £30,000 bills after it emerged millions of radiators are too small to work with the new technology, says The Telegraph.

The Government wants 600,000 heat pumps installed every year by 2028, in line with its “net zero” aims, but the majority of homes may need thousands of pounds worth of upgrades to accommodate them.

Heat pumps need larger radiators to achieve the same heat output as gas boilers, which heat water to much higher temperatures.

Some 99pc of British homes do not have radiators large enough to heat a room on the coldest winter’s day, using a low-temperature heat pump, the most common model, according to a Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy study.

“High temperature” heat pumps can help fix this but 90pc of homes would still need better radiators.

Full article here.

Some Antarctic ice shelves grew in area over the last 20 years – study

Credit: British Antarctic Survey

Much ado about sea ice in recent times, but usually in terms of promoting climate alarm. On closer inspection East Antarctica (2/3rds of the continent) tells a somewhat different story.
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Some ice shelves in the eastern Antarctic have grown in the last 20 years despite global warming, a study suggests.

Researchers say that sea ice, pushed against the ice shelves by a change in regional wind patterns, may have helped to protect the ice shelves from losses, reports Yahoo News.

Ice shelves are floating sections of ice attached to land-based ice sheets and they help guard against the uncontrolled release of inland ice into the ocean.

Exploding e-scooters kill four as heatwave damages batteries

Ballistic battery time again. Insurers and fire fighters must be nervous as mass battery-powered travel is supposed to be the future in many countries.
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There have been near daily reports of electric scooters catching fire across India amid record-breaking temperatures, says The Telegraph.

At least four Indians have died since March after their electric scooters caught fire, with record-breaking temperatures caused by climate change now feared to be behind the deadly blazes.

A father and daughter died in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in March, while two men died in two separate incidents in April in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

EU climate chief talks up hypothetical ‘green’ hydrogen

Credit: wheels.ca

Good luck with the costs and the leakage losses from shipping. Only last month the same source reported a study saying Germany’s global hydrogen plans could accelerate climate change. The study said ‘In the worst-case scenario, hydrogen could even prove 16 times more harmful than the widespread greenhouse gas.’ The EU obviously isn’t bothered by that study, or one by the British government warning of 13% leakage losses from tanker transport of hydrogen. ‘The 75-page report, Atmospheric Implications of Increased Hydrogen Use, explains that H2 is an indirect greenhouse gas, which reacts with other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to increase their global warming potential (GWP)’. What real world problem do they think they’re trying to solve? Looks like yet another trip to cloud cuckoo land.
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Hydrogen will be essential for Europe’s future economy, particularly to store and transport green energy, EU climate chief Frans Timmermans told the European Parliament on Thursday (28 April) — Euractiv reporting.

“I strongly believe in green hydrogen as the driving force of our energy system of the future,” said Timmermans in a meeting with the environment committee.

“Hydrogen is going to be a pivotal element in our economy of the future,” he added in a discussion that covered the impact of the war in Ukraine, the state of play with Europe’s new climate legislation and food security.

Melting ice caps may not shut down ocean current, say researchers

A portion of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation [image credit: R. Curry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution @ Wikipedia]

Another supposed climate tipping point, popular with the alarm-loving media, floats away? A feature that’s “built into many models” was found not to work as advertised.
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Most simulations of our climate’s future may be overly sensitive to Arctic ice melt as a cause of abrupt changes in ocean circulation, according to new research led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Climate scientists count the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (or AMOC) among the biggest tipping points on the way to a planetary climate disaster, says Phys.org.

The Atlantic Ocean current acts like a conveyor belt carrying warm tropical surface water north and cooler, heavier deeper water south.

French winemakers fan flames to save 2022 crop after unexpectedly sharp frosts

A winegrower lights anti-frost candles in a French vineyard [image credit: thelocal.fr]

‘Climate change’ gets the blame of course, which is code for human activities in the media, politics etc. How trace gases might cause warmth one month and frosts the next in a particular region of the world is not explained. Short video via link below.
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Climate extremes in France this spring have again made it a race against time for vineyard owners to protect their crops, reports BBC News.

March warmth and April frosts in 2021 resulted in one of the country’s lowest wine production in years. This year is proving every bit as tough.
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France experiences coldest April night since 1947
Published: 4 April 2022

The French weather forecaster Météo France recorded temperatures of -9C on Sunday night, reports Thelocal.fr.

Removing ‘carbon’ from atmosphere only way to save climate, says desperate UN report

CO2 is not pollution

H/T New York Post.

Everyone knows that won’t happen. Too expensive, and no adequate methods available anyway even if it was a good idea, which it isn’t. Nobody consults the growers and planters of the world, it seems. Little or no role is allocated to natural climate variation, but that’s only one of many issues.
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Sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is the world’s only chance to avoid climate change disaster, according to a report due to be released Monday.

The paper by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is expected to say that dangerous climate change will be avoided only if vast quantities of carbon dioxide are removed from the air, the Times of London reported.

“Carbon dioxide removal is necessary to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions globally and nationally,” a draft version of the summary report said, according to The Times. If “negative emission” technologies fulfill their potential, it continues, they could even enable a reversal of global warming.

However, carbon-capturing technology is nowhere near where it needs to be. Today, 19 operational plants capture only 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year, compared to the 36 billion tons the world produces annually, according to the report.

The paper also says that an urgent and wholesale shift away from fossil fuels is needed for there to be any chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

Scientists believe topping that threshold will lead to significant and irreversible harm to Earth’s climate.

But the report, commissioned and endorsed by 195 governments, acknowledges that the only “negative emissions” strategy currently used on a mass scale is tree planting.

Scientists are working on other techniques, including air capture or giant fans extracting carbon dioxide from the air and storing it underground or converting it into jet fuel.

Full article here.
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BBC: Scientists race to finish key IPCC report — says the same thing.