Green/Climate

2021-09-07

I know this because I took advantage to get back into the saddle and pedal my way around the local topography, resplendent in green and brown (the farmers were busy harvesting) and generally beautiful to the eye and challenging to the legs in equal measure.

It was a day when the call for power should have been pretty low, since no heating would be required, although perhaps there was some demand for air-conditioning. 

Anyway, the sunshine was abundant and surely all those solar panels would be pumping the electric juice?

Apparently not. It seems that solar was meeting less than 12% of our energy needs, and wind-power not even 2%. Gas was meeting just under 50% of demand but at a high price amid high global demand (if it's high now, how much higher will demand climb in the

2021-09-01

Climate Discussion Nexus investigates - the Antarctic? the Arctic? Greenland? Bangladesh? Well, no - the troposphere. More precisely, the tropical troposphere. 

What were the 2007 IPCC predictions predicting? and what happened according to the temperature data measurements?

"... basic problem with models is that they are not based upon fundamental physics, they are based upon approximations of what happens in the atmosphere..."

Like / Dislike this video here.

2021-08-20

The GWPF (Global Warming Policy Forum) thinks that it probably does. They believe that the government's prioritising of Wind and Solar renewables (both intermittent and inherently unreliable) over a robust combination of renewables underpinned by reliable thermodynamic power sources such as natural gas and nuclear, will likely cost the UK our geopolitical status, since the affordable and reliable availability of power underpins confidence in our economic and global leadership.

This is a concept that China and India, both intent on building more coal-fired power-stations, fully understand.

I would hesitate to place all our reliable power generation eggs in the nuclear basket however - whilst small modular reactors are fine in principle, Windscale is still home to ponds full of spent nuclear fuel that nobody seems either to know what to do with or to want to talk

2021-08-12

The GWPF (Global Warming Policy Forum) press release notes the oncoming political pressures on the Conservative Party if Boris continues with his stated plans to move the UK to "Net Zero".

As most normal people know, the costs will be vast and will fall disproportionately on the ordinary citizenry.

Even if the government ministers and their advisers haven't noticed, Tory MPs have and are making their views felt.

Whilst this is good news, a loss to Labour at the next election doesn't seem likely to redress the situation in the eyes of the voters since the Left are perhaps even more determined to push ahead with "green" initiatives than the Right, so the calculation may be that the public has no choice and will get the green

2021-08-10

The Global Warming Policy Forum press release puts the case, and restates the reason:

"despite yearly UN climate conferences it is now beyond doubt that renewable energy policies have failed to halt or slow the relentless rise in global CO2 emissions"

"these policies have only destroyed industry in the West and exported production and their CO₂ emissions to areas still using low cost fossil fuels, such as China. The conclusion is obvious. Climate policies are failing not because of a lack of political will, but because the technologies selected are extortionately expensive and ineffective"

In fact, these policies were designed to fail, and fail they have in

2021-07-26

The GWPF (Global Warming Policy Forum) notes the government plans for raising the costs of power in order to pay for EV charging stations.

The point about the switch from coal to oil was two-fold - convenience (oil didn't have to be shovelled) and energy density (you could go further on the same weight of oil) thus minimising the cost of carrying the stuff when used to power transport.

It's true that oil required the additional step of refining to produce a relatively clean fuel, but that cost was worth it. 

Government subsidies to persuade people to make the switch were simply not required.

Electricity has been around for a very long time, however is still tricky to store. It isn't available from wells and mines, it has to be generated at point of use, or transmitted via power lines. So it made perfect sense for railways trams and trolley-buses and powering static homes off a fixed grid, and was widely

2021-07-23

The GWPF (Global Warming Policy Forum) in their 23 July newsletter reminds us of a number of issues, and we are indeed approaching the brink of another UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, COP26 to be held in Glasgow from 31st October. It will be interesting to see how many luminaries come jetting in for the occasion - let us hope that Covid restrictions will not put too much of a dampener on the attendances.

On the other hand the GWPF finds little sign of the much foretold incoming climate disaster in current news, although it must be said that recent adverse weather events including severe flooding in Europe (not seasonal) and China (seasonal), and heatwaves and wildfires along the Pacific coast of North America and Canada

2021-07-07

Climate Discussion Nexus picks up on an article in Market Watch which appears to be another out-of-place polemic explaining to us benighted slow-coaches how we must change the world to avert the imminent catastrophe.

"Evict short-termism from human thinking and all will be splendid. Except if you want to look before you leap, don’t, because we must act in the short term and without sober second thought: 'The window for launching a climate revolution—and achieving an inclusive recovery from COVID-19 in the process—is rapidly closing.' And if it doesn’t, the government will slam it shut with you inside just in case"

There is more of

2021-07-02

This rather begs the question of whether "models" are science, could be science, or can never be science.

I would suggest that to qualify as science, they should have to be incorporated into the scientific method.

The basic scientific method involves several stages, more or less as follows:

1. Consider a problem
2. Collect facts and data about the problem
3. Formulate a hypothesis
4. Make predictions using the hypothesis
5. Test the predictions
6. Repeat as required

2021-07-02

The GWPF (Global Warming Policy Forum) points up the every-rising energy costs that will be necessary to force households off gas and petrol and onto "green" electricity over the coming few years.

Perhaps they are relying on a nation grateful for "saving them from Covid" - but then voters are notorious for their short memories, particularly when being hit in the pocket and driven out of business.

They should tread carefully.

2021-06-30

The Guardian reports that 80% of new coal power generation investment will take place in five Asian countries.

Which begs the question: was it really wise of the UK Europe and the USA to outsource our heavy industries to the East during the last century?

Has it not led overall to more global pollution and CO₂ generation rather than less?

Is it not now high time to begin repatriating our heavy industries back to the UK so that we can use the abundant supplies of green energy that we have been promised to create our steel, aluminium etc rather than importing it from high-polluting Asia?

Especially as (again according to the Guardian)

2021-06-07

The GWPF report on a new study which claims to verify the accuracy of climate models used to predict the climate in the North Atlantic.

"The basic questions for climate models is whether they realistically simulate observations, and to what extent can future climate change be predicted? It’s an important concept as political and environmental action is predicated upon it"

Scientific modelling has had a bit of a bad press in the Coronavirus pandemic scenario, so how do these climate models fare when put to the test?

The GWPF has the story.

2021-06-03

"German government warns of dangerous water pollution and public health threat from heat pumps""

The latest press release from the Global Warming Policy Forum draws attention to a study by the German Federal Environment Agency that has identified the threat from refrigerants used in such devices as air conditioners and heat pumps leaking into the atmosphere, leading to contamination of groundwater supplies.

European governments have already established their propensity to make a bad situation worse (think diesel fuel for cars) through not doing their due diligence and running a full health and safety assessment on the proposed course of action before mandating it on the public. Whilst it appears that the German government may have learned its lesson, it is probably no surprise (...

2021-05-21

Steve Baker MP has just earned himself some free-thinker points by (a) joining Benny Peiser at the Global Warming Policy Foundation and (b) warning the government that we are not going to take kindly to replacing all our nice cheap and efficient gas appliances with expensive and not very effective heat pumps.

Perhaps the government will think that we will all be so relieved to have survived the Great Covid Catastrophe and so grateful for their splendid management of the lockdowns that kept us all safe (not to mention the fantastic purchase at government expense of innumerable unapproved experimental vaccine shots to keep us all safe into the future) that we will be only too happy to oblige their obsession with net zero even when it means power poverty for most of us.

...

2021-05-18

The latest newsletter from the Global Warming Policy Forum lists a number of notable stories, from Germany's refusal to bring forward the ending of their dependence on coal, to the news that RR will be bring out enhanced Small Modular Reactors capable to provide power to local energy grids.

Given the costs, timescales, international politicking, and consequent uncertainties associated with traditional large nuclear power plants, that sounds like a "no-brainer" to me.

Not included in their newsletter are their proposals for a more workable proposals for energy policy:

"Current UK climate

2021-05-18

LarouchePAC publish an interesting viewpoint, pointing out that the current drive for "zero carbon" will probably have serious consequences for the population (should the Covid menace spare any of us).

As always it's the poor and needy who will bear the brunt, but the zero carbon push seems to fail before it's even got going due to the impossibility of mining enough of the prerequisite key minerals (required by current technology).

“the world doesn’t have the capacity to meet such demand”

In addition:

"they require far higher physical inputs (capital goods, labor) to produce a given amount of energy for the economy (when compared with coal, natural gas, or nuclear)"

Inefficiency (equals

2021-05-13

The IRT (Institute for Responsible Technology) releases a report on the GMO regulatory system in America.

It's not true that here is no regulatory oversight, but their article for the layman that explains the position summarises the difficulty in one telling paragraph:

"Unfortunately, no meaningful laws or regulations reign in these biological time bombs. Ironically, the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations that do apply to most genetically engineered microbes treat them explicitly as chemicals. They employ evaluation standards developed for toxic substances. They have yet to create systems to analyze the very different set of risks associated with living microorganisms (Mandel, 2014)"

Is this scare-mongering?

It's probably impossible

2021-05-08

The Extinction Clock site features a large number of predictions by those who perhaps should have known better, from the 1970s to the present.

I'll leave it to you to decide which of these merits your attention . . .   and you can vote for your favourite!

Enjoy.

2021-05-06

Ice Age Farmer reports on the latest in the globalists' war on long-established farming custom and practice - how long before we begin to hear the same rumblings in the UK and Europe?

"a new bill proposed in Oregon would create a 'sanctuary state' for animals, radically transforming how animals are treated across the state"

"The language is all about eliminating 'animal abuse', which sounds good, right, but the subtlety is that all animal agriculture has been redefined as abusive... all references to good husbandry practices are eliminated..."

"livestock would have to die of natural causes before they could be sued for food production..."

"this moving of the goal-posts for food production is happening across the board"

A Pandemic of Vulnerability?