Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
A hopelessly garbled and self contradictory piece from Jeremy Warner:
More money for defence, policing, child care, long term illness, new nuclear, gigafactories, an auto industry struggling to find reasons to stay in the UK now that the internal combustion engine is to be assigned to the dustbin of history โ the list of calls on the public purse just keeps on growing.
Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, will no doubt make as much of a show as he can out of the little room for manoeuvre heโs got in next weekโs spring Budget.
But the overriding message will be similar to that of Liam Byrne, one-time chief secretary to the Treasury, who on being voted out of office in 2010 left a note on his desk to his successor saying, โIโm afraid there is no money. Good luckโ.
Gordon Brown had spent it all; Byrneโs missive marked the start of years of penny-pinching austerity.
On this occasion, Hunt has no one to blame for the dire state of the public finances but his own Government, which has even more heroically splashed the cash, first on lockdown and then on energy price subsidies.
Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts suggest there is little or no money left for all those other worthy causes.
Into this miserable straitjacket of constraint steps โ like a forgotten relative at the nationโs own funeral โ another of the Governmentโs claimed objectives, net zero by 2050.
This is a legally binding commitment, and should therefore be at the heart of whatever industrial/energy strategy the Government might have, yet it doesnโt even figure on Rishi Sunakโs five key priorities for 2023.
While others race ahead, climate change policy in Britain has been left becalmed amid a sea of Whitehall indecision, byzantine planning restrictions and lack of money.
It is as plain as a pike staff that net zero by 2050 is already an almost wholly unrealistic objective, but the pretence goes on, apparently oblivious to the scale of the challenge.
More than 90pc of the countryโs current energy provision โ gas, coal, oil, diesel and petrol โ is not meant to exist in 27 yearsโ time. The idea that alternatives can be achieved in such a short space of time is cloud cuckoo land.
Even to come close requires the Government to start putting its hand in its pocket in a manner not yet remotely contemplated.
Instead, ministers hide behind a list of headline grabbing targets, aspirations and notional commitments which they fondly hope will of themselves galvanise the private sector into investing and bringing about the desired transition.
Well, hereโs the truth: they will not. Iโve been talking to the climate change activist Daragh Coleman, whose CBI Projects consultancy has been crunching some of the numbers, using data from Imperial College London.
By his calculation, removing all hydrocarbon-based sources of energy from the economy by 2050 would result by way of replacement in a 400pc increase in peak demand for electricity from the UKโs 20m-plus households.
On average, electricity usage would surge from 12.8 kW/hours a day per household to 126.8. Business demand would grow by a similar order of magnitude.
Given current dithering and Treasury scrimping, how on earth is that going to be achieved?
Even with advances in energy storage and efficiency, itโs going to require something like a five-fold expansion in both the National Gridโs and the countryโs generating capacity.
And by the way, National Grid does not disagree.
It has stated that over the next seven years it will need to install five times the amount of transmission infrastructure in England and Wales than has been built in the last 30 years to support the Governmentโs target of 50 GW of offshore wind by 2030.
For its part, the Climate Change Committee said in an update last week that a decarbonised electricity system alone will require reinforcement of all parts of the existing network, with an average doubling of their capability by 2035.
As it is, the CCC is almost certainly underestimating the scale of the task, having factored in only a 50pc increase in demand for electricity to reflect the expected increase in electricity use in transport, industry, and buildings.
What chance when there is no gas, no oil, no coal and the countryโs entire transport, lighting, heating and air-conditioning needs are dependent on electricity?
The only new nuclear build going on in Britain right now is the ruinously expensive Hinkley Point C, and all this will do is partially fill the gap in supply left by the progressive closure over the next five years of the ageing remnants of Britainโs existing fleet of nuclear generators.
The โGreat British Nuclearโ initiative is as things stand no more than a list of aspirations.
Be that as it may, the energy revolution is coming.
Already, there is unstoppable global momentum. The UK can either be at the forefront of it, or left trailing at the back, ever more dependent on foreign technology, expertise, and overseas supply chains in its efforts to catch up.
The extra ยฃ1bn a year earmarked in next weekโs Budget for carbon capture is a step in the right direction, but still falls woefully short of whatโs needed for the wider energy transition.
Yes, the Government has a policy of sorts, but without money behind it to help with implementation, it is worthless. The private sector wonโt invest on the back of targets alone.
Take the car industry. The Government says that sales of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned from 2030 onwards.
A noble aim perhaps, but not one likely to be helpful to car production in the UK. If told that all existing plants are to be made obsolete by 2030, the world is your oyster when deciding where to locate new electric vehicle manufacturing capacity.
The way things are going, it wonโt be Britain. There is a real prospect of the target costing jobs rather than creating them.
CBI Projectsโ Coleman reckons that the Government needs to be allocating a sum equivalent to at least 1pc of GDP to the energy transition to stand some chance of success โ around ยฃ26bn a year โ an investment he thinks will pay for itself several times over in higher growth.
But if money is tight, and there are all those other calls on the public purse, whereโs it going to come from?
Part of the answer may lie in smarter allocation of resources. Why not, for instance, hypothecate some of the defence budget to these goals, by mandating that all military procurement be hydrogen powered vehicles, or even, if the Government felt minded to follow the protectionist model of Americaโs Inflation Reduction Act, are made-in-Britain EVs.
Net zero by 2050 may be fantasy, but we fail to participate in the industrial revolution of the coming energy transition at our peril.
He heavily belabours the fact that the UK is effectively broke, but then wants to waste hundreds of billions on Net Zero!
And his suggestion that we spend the defence budget on greenery is simply absurd; we might just as well disband the Armed Forces now.
Nowhere does he recognise the elephant in the room โ that Net Zero is unaffordable, impractical and irrelevant in global terms.
But he does thankfully address some of the risks, such as the likely death of the UK car industry.
And his comments about the extra generating and transmission capacity needed must be reemphasised:
A 400% increase in peak demand from households
A ten-fold in demand for electricity from households and industry
A five-fold increase in generating transmission capacity.
The fact that the CCC seem to have seriously underestimated the scale of the problem
And above all this comment:
All of these problems have been obvious for years, as many of us have been repeatedly pointing out. So why were journalists like Jeremy Warner not warning about them long before Net Zero was legislated?
Why were they not demanding that Parliament properly cost Net Zero and offer a detailed roadmap of how it would have been achieved before the Net Zero Act was passed? Instead Warner and the rest simply went along all the other lemmings.
But itโs still not too late to recover your credibility, Mr Warner.
Start next week by demanding that Net Zero is suspended until all of these questions are addressed.
โA nationwide shortage of power grid transformers is causing delays across the US for everything from infrastructure for electric vehicles to new homesโ
โAcross the US, new houses sit unfinished โ construction canโt be completed until they are connected to the electricity grid. Utility companies worry about how quickly they can restore power after damage caused by hurricanes and other natural disasters. And nationwide efforts to modernize ageing electrical grids face delays of months or even years.โ
โโฆ ย ย ย the United States is undergoing a shortage of a range of transformers โ spanning smaller, pole-top units on city streets to Virginia Transformerโs massive units โ for reasons that vary depending on the equipment. That means utilities could struggle to add enough new wind and solar generation to meet the countryโs net-zero goals and to keep the lights on when storms damage their depleted transformer stockpiles.โ
Massive Grid Transformer constructed at Virginia Transformer
E&E references this yearโs Department of Energy report, stating โThe DOE report concludes that the supply of new transformers must multiply dramatically if the nationโs grid is to fill up with new wind and solar generation and EV charging. DOE and Commerce also warned that transformer supply is a national security issue โ even without the added pressure of a clean energy transition.โ
There are grid transformers in all the red boxes which include areas that will need upgrading, just to allow for EV charging stations at homes and businesses.
In that essay, I said โIโm not sure we can even supply the components for the transformation.โ Apparently, that is already true, at least for transformers.
The BBC is, perhaps not unreasonably, plugging Sir David Attenboroughโs latest series on its website.
One of itsย piecesย about this is headed โSir David Attenborough show looks at puffinsโ plightโ. No doubt visitors to the website can find their way to this article by several different routes, but if stumbling on it via the Science & Environment section of the website the chosen excerpt to suck in readers isย โRare seabirds on the coast of East Yorkshire face threats from climate change, the RSPB says.โ
Read the article, and that turns into โPuffins at Bempton Cliffs in East Yorkshire have been affected by threats to their nests, food supply and climate change, according to the RSPB.โ
Which is rather more nuanced, since the threats listed extend well beyond climate change. Nevertheless, someone from the RSPB was on hand to provide a useful quote:
Dave OโHara, site manager, said seabirds were โthe most threatened group of birds in the worldโ.
He said the UKโs puffin population was predicted to reduce by 90% by 2050 if global temperatures continued to rise.
โLots of our seabirds here at Bempton Cliffs have been affected,โ Mr OโHara said.
The RSPB says rising sea temperatures mean the fish that rare birds feed on swim deeper in search of cooler waters, making it more difficult for birds to find them.
The charity said these challenges mean birds produce fewer chicks each year.
Historical data
One of the problems encountered when trying to get to the bottom of the question of puffin numbers is a frustrating lack of detailed historical data. Presumably in the past there wasnโt the focus on puffin numbers that there is today, so itโs difficult to know how they have fared historically, and therefore difficult to make comparisons between current and past numbers. Nevertheless, there are a few suggestions on the internet that in some places numbers may have been lower in the past than they are today, and in others numbers have recovered to those last seen before the Second World War, following a subsequent decline, possibly for lots of different reasons. I set out below a few examples, firstly from South Wales, with an article published on the BBC website on 24th March 2021, under the heading โPuffin numbers boom to 1940s-level high on Skokholmโ.
The highest number of puffins since the 1940s has been counted on Skokholm Island off Pembrokeshire.
A total of 11,245 were spotted on Monday, compared to 8,534 last year, the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales said.
The sea birds have begun arriving almost a month early for their annual return to the area to mate.
A similar count is due on nearby Skomer, which recorded 34,796 puffins in 2020, a 44% rise on 2019 figures.
Two years ago, 24,108 were counted on Skomer.
โฆWelsh ornithologist Ronald Lockley carried out studies and estimated the islandโs puffins number hit a record number of 40,000, in 1934.
Numbers subsequently crashed, which the trust puts down to marine pollution, particularly from oilโฆ
โฆMs Gavigan said it was not clear why the puffin population was increasing now, but the trust is working with Oxford and Gloucestershire universities to carry out research into finding reasons.
Next, turning to the Farne Islands, just off the coast of north Northumberland, another BBC article headed โPuffin census on Farne Islands shows numbers risingโ was published on 19th July 2013 (numbers may have fallen back again since then).
Puffin numbers in a habitat in the north-east of England are making a comeback despite thousands having perished in severe winter storms.
A census on the Farne Islands, off the coast of Northumberland, showed there had been an 8% increase from the last count in 2008.
There are now just under 40,000 pairs of nesting puffins across the eight National Trust-owned islands.
Articles relating to Puffin numbers on the Farne Islands suggest that the story is complex and that long-term trends are confusing. In 2018, Paul Homewood helpfully wrote about a Telegraph scare story which rather undermined its own narrative:
It means thousands of birds have vanished since the last count in 2013, with just 35,000 breeding pairs probably remaining. At the current rate of decline, conservationists forecast that the entire colony could vanish within 50 years, an alarming trend that is being seen across Britain.
Puffin numbers on the Farne Islands have been monitored since 1939, when just 3,000 pairs were recorded, but numbers rose steadily until 2008, when the population declined by a third from 55,674 to 36,835.
3,000 pairs in 1939! Almost twelve times as many in 2018.
Ten years earlier the Express ran a story which seemed to contradict the Telegraphโs claim of steadily rising numbers of Farne Island puffins to 2008, when its headline claimed โSurprise fall in puffin numbersโ.
The number of pairs of puffins breeding on the Farne Islands has fallen by a third in the past five years, the National Trust said.
The three-month survey, in which wardens check if the burrows the puffins use to nest in are occupied by reaching in with their arms, found that numbers had fallen from 55,674 pairs in 2003 to 36,500 pairs this yearโฆ
However, for present purposes, the part of the article of interest is this:
The first detailed count of puffins on the Farne Islands took place in 1969 when there were 6,800 pairs of puffins.
Perhaps the number cited above for 1939 wasnโt terribly accurate, but it sounds as though the 1969 number might be credible, and if so there are many more puffins on the Farne Islands today than there were a little over half a century ago.
An additional issue might be that puffin census numbers were under-counted due to covid limitations and restrictions, at least according to an article on the National Trust website:
Although the pandemic made conducting the puffin count in 2020 and 2021 more difficult, rangers put in place a good system of monitoring to ensure vital data could still be collected. In 2021, 36,211 breeding pairs of Atlantic puffins were recorded across four islands, compared to 42,378 pairs across eight islands in 2019.
Numbers appeared to drop in 2021 due to the team being unable to carry out a full survey. However, itโs anticipated that a return to a full census in 2022 will lead to a more accurate picture. This yearโs count is therefore a very important one for these popular seabirds.
I havenโt discovered the outcome of the 2022 census and would love to know the numbers it revealed.
Turning next to the Firth of Forth, an article in the East Lothian Courier on 6th August 2009 was headed โWandering pufflings proof of rising numbersโ.
Local puffin numbers are thought to be on the increase following the clearance of the once-abundant tree-mallow plant from Craigleith Island and the rise in numbers of sand eels, the puffinsโ favourite food, on May Island.
Lynda Dalgleish, marketing manager of the Scottish Seabird Centre, said the increase in wandering pufflings on the mainland was evidence of a more robust population inhabiting islands off North Berwick.
Perhaps inevitably, climate change was blamed for the thriving tree-mallow; nevertheless, the article demonstrated rising puffin numbers when habitat problems were resolved.
Climate change and/or other issues?
While the RSPB is fully signed-up to climate alarmism, even it acknowledges that over-fishing of sandeels is a massive problem:
Whereas climate change is held primarily responsible for the decline of sandeel availability, the commercial fishing of this species is gravely exacerbating the problem. โฆ
โฆNew post-Brexit fisheries powers mean the UK can fight for its seabirds. It now needs to close UK waters to commercial sandeel fishing or, at the very least, drop catch limits so more fish are available for our seabirds.
Another article, which I think is aimed at youngsters, also illustrates that puffins face lots of problems. It starts by throwing the kitchen sink at the climate change explanation, but reading on it quickly becomes apparent that there are lots of other issues:
Itโs predicted that the UKโs puffin population could plunge 90% by 2050 if global warming is unchecked. Theyโre facing threats to both their nesting sites and their food supply, and the climate crisis is only making things worseโฆ
โฆEvery year, thousands of tonnes of small fish are taken from the North Sea, making it harder for puffins to feed their chicksโฆ
โฆIn some parts of the UK, Puffins also have to contend with invasive rats feeding on their eggs and chicks, climate change causing increasingly frequent and violent storms, oil spills, and the emerging threat of bird flu.
Direct conservation can help. A rat-eradication project led by the RSPB, Natural England, the Landmark Trust and the National Trust on the island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel, meant that puffin numbers boomed from 13 to 375 just 15 years after the island was declared rat-free.
The last word
This article started at Bempton Cliffs in East Yorkshire, so it seems appropriate to return there for something approaching a conclusion. A guest blog by a puffin volunteer on the section of the RSPB website dedicated to Bempton Cliffs does seem to suggest that while counting puffin numbers is fraught with difficulty, the ones that come ashore every year at Bempton Cliffs seem to be doing all right:
โฆThe location of most all other puffin โcavesโ on the reserve is pretty much unknownโcliff height and lack of access make it virtually impossible to undertake any traditional kind of puffin count in the Yorkshire colonyโฆIn recent years, however, the reserve team has attempted to count puffins at sea at the start of each seasonโฆ.
โฆThis at-sea counting task is fraught with challenges. There are over 7 miles of cliff top to walk, with elevations ranging from 200 to nearly 400 feet. Discerning a puffin at this distance from other auks (guillemots and razorbills) requires skill, patience and diligence!
Not to mention that puffins move on the tide and waves, fly, dive etc. So how do you avoid under-counting, or double counting? Poor visibility, tide, strong winds and waves all increase the degree of difficulty. But this type of survey method is used to census other marine life such as sea otters and can be used as an indicator of population trends. Repeating surveys over a number of years can balance out factors that can influence the countโweather, viewing conditions, animal movements etc. and over time can be used to understand whether a population is increasing or decreasing.
Based on these recent counts, and historical observations, we believe that the Yorkshire Coast population is around 3,000-4,000 puffins, but it is too early to determine whether this is a growing or declining population. But what we do know is that Bempton Cliffsโ puffins likely benefit from being within good commuting range of puffin supermarkets stocking a variety of prey species, including sandeels and sprats. Project Puffin and RSPBโs work with partners across the UK shows that such puffin populations are generally faring better than those that are experiencing dwindling sandeel supplies and a lack of suitable alternative prey.
Conclusion
Puffin numbers in the UK (as counted by humans) seem to be all over the place, and itโs difficult to get a handle on long-term trends (or, if the above blog quote is to be believed, even on current numbers). It seems clear that when island nesting grounds are infested by rats or tree-mallow plant, it will cause them major problems, as will marine pollution, and over-fishing of sand eels (their main food) by massive trawlers. Perhaps climate change is causing, and will continue to cause, a problem for puffins, but they have plenty of other problems, and it would be a pity if an obsession with climate change blinded puffin helpers to things that can be done to help. I am concerned that the RSPB seems to put climate change front and centre of its publicity and campaigning, but am also relieved that they recognise โ and apparently take steps to try to deal with โ other more pressing problems.
The road to tyranny begins in Berlin as climate gets framed as a state of emergency
If the referendum is successful, cars could soon no longer drive on Berlin’s streets.
A new, radical climate amendment that will be voted on on March 26th in a referendum that could change Berlinโs climate targets to enforceable obligations, thus clearing the way for radical CO2 reduction measures by an unelected council.
Draft amendment: carbon neutrality already by 2030 instead of 2045!
If Berliners think protesters obstructing traffic by gluing themselves to the streets are a nuisance, just wait until what could be the case after March 26, when Berliners vote on climate referendum.
If the climate referendum is successful, a radical amendment to the current climate protection and energy transition law will be enacted. The online German Pleiteticker.de exclusively has an internal paper and reports of an โempowerment paragraphโ in the proposed amended law.
The aim of the referendum is to amend the existing Climate Protection and Energy Transition Act (EWG Bln) in order to force the city of Berlin to achieve climate neutrality by 2030 instead of 2045.
The vote will be binding, which means that if the referendum is successful, the amendment will be enacted into law. The amendment is being pushed by the Green Party and radical groups like Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion.
Targets would become legal obligations
The amendment would be so radical that even Berlin SPD socialists consider it dangerous and speak of an โempowerment paragraphโ in the law that would transfer immense power to a small group of unelected people, namely a Climate Protection Council appointed by the Berlin Senate.
Concerning paragraph 6 of the new amendment, โImmediate program in the event of non-fulfillment of obligationsโ, the SPD explicitly warns that climate targets have been changed to โobligationsโ, which would mean the Berlin Senate probably would have to implement immediate radical measures to achieve the obligations, even by court order.
Paragraph 14 provides for a โClimate Protection Councilโ to monitor compliance. It would be appointed by the Berlin Senate and not made up by democratically elected officials.
Good bye to cars in Berlin?
โThere is a danger that the possibility of immediate measures โ which, according to the SPD, are not democratically legitimized โ will be used excessivelyโ, Pleiteticker warns. โIf the climate referendum is successfully implemented, it will therefore not only be expensive for Berliners, but there will be many more restrictions on freedom than under the previous the Socialist-Green Senate โ Berliners may then have to say goodbye to their cars completely.โ
Reducing flights at Berlinโs BER airport?
According to paragraph 3 on โClimate Protection Obligationsโ, CO2 reduction should be 70 percent by 2025 and 95 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels! โThe previous regulation has been changed so that the time periods are dramatically shortened,โ
According to Clause 2, even the Berlin airport would be a part of the climate budget. Pleiteticker warns: โSo there is a risk that an immediate measure for emissions reduction could be to reduce the number of flights.โ
Property owners would be forced to make major renovations
The amendment also calls on the mandatory energy refurbishment of all public buildings by 2030 and the entire state administration would have to be CO2-neutral by 2030.
โWhere the money is to come from remains a mystery once again,โ Pleiteticker comments.
Paragraph 19, โUse of Renewable Energyโ, could also mean the mandatory installation of solar panels for all homeowners. Again, no one knows how all of this would be paid for. Owning a home and property would certainly become unaffordable for many private owners.
Looking at it from a different angle, Berlin could serve as a pilot that would in all likelihood expose the shear folly of rapid climate neutrality once and for all. Maybe a โsuccessfulโ referendum would be a good lesson for the rest of the world.
Recently, I was asked to make a podcast on the subject of โglobal warming,โ otherwise known as โclimate change.โ Regrettably, the material I had was too much and too detailed, so the podcast did not go ahead. As I had already spent considerable time assembling an armoury of facts on the issue, I decided to make a silk purse out of a sowโs ear. I have chosen to expand the level of detail considerably, and so to build the material into a matched pair of major essays.
This, the first essay in the set, will concentrate on the accusations that are being made against humanity and our civilization over this issue, and the evidence that we are not guilty on those charges. In the second part, Iโll tell the back-story to these accusations, and how the UN, governments, mainstream media and others have joined together in a project, whose objective appears to be no less than the destruction of our human industrial civilization.
Much of the material in these essays, I have published before; but never all together.
The background
Why am I writing this? And why now, in the early spring of 2023? In the โUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Irelandโ today, our rights and freedoms, our economy, and everything we stand for as human beings, all hang in the balance. Over 40 years and more, successive UK governments have persistently lied to and misled us. And, in cahoots with the European Union, the United Nations and other internationalist organizations such as the World Economic Forum, they have imposed on us a torrent of bad laws and ever-increasing taxes. Hurtful green policies have progressively chipped away at our rights, our freedoms, our standard of living and our quality of life. And the nastiness of their policies, the speed with which they are seeking to implement them, and the dishonesty with which they are behaving towards us, are rising in a mighty crescendo. One obvious symptom of this right now is their escalating war against our right to drive cars. Here is a recent, topical example: [[1]] and [[2]].
All the main political parties are in on this. In a supposed โdemocracy,โ it should be the people (that is, persons eligible to vote) who dictate the direction in which a country moves, not a bunch of lying, thieving, scheming politicians. Still less should policies be driven by unaccountable internationalist and globalist รฉlites. Yet, that is what is being done to us.
There is no way to create change through the ballot box. None of the four major parties (Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, Greens) offers anything but the same old same old tyranny. โDemocracyโ is a total sham, when there is no-one worth voting for. Indeed, I myself havenโt voted in a UK general or local election since 1987! And in a first-past-the-post system, new parties take decades at least to get any traction. So, there is no prospect of any relief within the existing system.
Therefore, change for the better must come from the grass roots. There must be, to use a phrase, some โclimate change.โ We must change the climate of thought in peopleโs minds, and help them to join us in the struggle to re-gain our rights, our freedoms, our prosperity and our dignity as human beings.
My part in creating a โclimate changeโ
Many among my friends are warriors for human rights and civil liberties. Indeed, in my own way, I am one myself. But protests and mass action are not my style. I see myself as more of an educator. I try to document the facts in a way which makes very complex issues, like โglobal warmingโ (or is it โclimate change?โ), understandable to ordinary people. This means that an essay such as this one will be, unavoidably, long. It will also include some numbers! My excuse is that, in a context like this, numbers can often tell more than words. But Iโll do all I can to keep the numbers simple.
This pair of essays will also be very wide ranging. I have been studying this subject for 16 years now, and writing about it for six. I have found a need to make myself into a combination of amateur scientist, historian, philosopher and journalist; not to mention psychologist! Add to that my long-ago degree in mathematics and my career as a software consultant, and I think I have earned the moniker, with which I sometimes label myself: generalist.
My job here, as I see it, is to give my readers the facts โ lots of them โ and some of my interpretations of those facts. I see this process as rather like one of those dot puzzles we all did as children. Iโll give you the facts โ the dots. Your part of the job is to join them up; and then, you will have something far more valuable than mere facts. You will have understanding. From which, you can form your own views, both on this matter and on others. And you can take things from there.
I expect I may get flak for writing and publishing this. โFact checkersโ (most of whom are really โpolitical correctness checkersโ) will accuse me of โmisleading,โ โconspiracy theory,โ โfake newsโ or โdisinformation.โ Faceless bureaucrats may try to get these essays removed from the Internet on spurious grounds of โsafety.โ To which I respond, what I write here is simply the truth, to the best of my knowledge and belief; with some deductions I have made from it. As the saying goes, if youโre getting flak, youโre close to the target!
The claimed case against us
To begin, Iโll ask: What are the specific accusations being made against us human beings under the moniker of โclimate changeโ or โglobal warming?โ
Iโll note, first, that simply to accuse humanity of causing โglobal warmingโ or โclimate changeโ is very imprecise. To spell out just what it is that we are being accused of, it is necessary to split the accusations into several parts, and to state each one clearly. Also, to refer to the matter in just two words, โclimate change,โ is a big over-simplification. For the Earthโs climate changes. It always has, even before humans existed; and it always will! Human beings cannot possibly be responsible for all โclimate change.โ
And yet, the United Nations, which has been the main driver of the green agenda for the last half century, has had since 1992 its very own definition of โclimate change.โ Article 1, paragraph 2 of the Framework Convention on Climate Change [[3], page 3] says: โโClimate changeโ means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.โ So, now we know. โClimate change,โ because of the way the UN defines it,ย hasย to be our fault! So much for the presumption of innocence.
The six claims
I divide the accusations into six specific claims.
Claim One: Itโs warming. It has been warming since at least 1880 or so. And the warming is global, not just local or regional.
Claim Two: The warming is unprecedented.
Claim Three: All, or a significant part of, the (global) warming is the result of emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) by human civilization. The effect, by which these gases cause warming on a planetary scale, is known as the greenhouse effect. The major GHGs are: methane, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapour. (There are some others, most of which are fluorinated gases).
Our accusers see CO2 as by far the main culprit in the warming, and the burning of fossil fuels as by far the biggest contributor to it. Although water vapour is the strongest GHG of them all, being responsible for about half of the entire greenhouse effect.
Claim Four: This warming will have significant negative effects on the planet and on human well-being and prosperity.
Claim Five: The benefits from avoiding the negative consequences of this warming outweigh the costs of taking action to avoid them. Thus, pre-emptive action to stop the warming is preferable to letting the warming happen and then fixing any problems as they arise. The former approach is known as โmitigation,โ the latter as โadaptation.โ
The mitigation approach depends heavily on Claim Three, that all or much of the warming is caused by carbon dioxide emissions, being true. For if not, no amount of reduction in CO2 emissions could prevent any amount of warming! To force people to make such reductions would turn out to have been far worse than a mere waste, if it turned out that CO2 wasnโt the main culprit after all.
Claim Six: Itโs a crisis! There is a climate crisis, and we need to act NOW!
Itโs important to note that ALL of these six steps must be proven beyond reasonable doubt in order to โjustifyโ any of the extreme political actions that have been and are being proposed. Such as making it unaffordable, within only a very short time from now, for anyone but the rich to drive cars. In the UK, and probably in most of the rest of the world as well.
Evidence for a climate crisis?
What evidence is being presented that there is a โclimate crisis?โ
As Iโll show later, thereโs no hard evidence of any crisis, at least none that I can see. But here is a list of some of the things the alarmists are wailing about. In almost every case, they are claiming that these things are happening now.
Weather disasters are becoming worse and more frequent!
Weโre facing more and worse storms and hurricanes!
Weโre facing more and worse floods!
Weโre facing more and worse droughts!
Weโre facing more and worse wildfires!
Weโre facing more and stronger heatwaves!
More and more people are dying from heatstroke!
There are millions of climate refugees!
Arctic sea ice is disappearing fast!
Because of this, thousands of polar bears are dying!
Sea levels are rising fast!
And the rate of rise is accelerating!
Because of this, islands like Tuvalu and the Maldives are being submerged!
Antarctica and Greenland are losing ice fast! This will lead to melting of ice sheets, and catastrophic sea level rise!
Hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of coral reefs are dying!
We soon wonโt be able to grow enough food to feed the population!
All these things, so they claim, areย ourย fault for emitting so much CO2!
The IPCC
Before going further, it is necessary to understand one particular aspect of the politics. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was set up in 1988. In its own words, it โprepares comprehensive Assessment Reports about the state of scientific, technical and socio-economic knowledge on climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for reducing the rate at which climate change is taking place.โ [[4]]. The IPCC is a United Nations organization. Unsurprisingly, then, it takes the alarmist side.
Responses to the accusations
Itโs time to take a look at the facts on the six accusations.
Is it warming?
Itโs commonly agreed that the climate has been warming for centuries. The so-called Little Ice Age was a period of relative cold, which lasted from roughly the 14th century AD to the middle of the 19th. Across the Northern Hemisphere, temperatures went down by more than half a degree Celsius over this period. The Central England temperature record (in Hubert Lambโs reconstruction, see the IPCCโs first assessment report [[5], page 202]) troughed out in the mid-17th century at a full degree below where it had likely been in the 14th century.
The Little Ice Age itself followed the Mediaeval Warm Period. This was the time, roughly between 950 and 1250 AD, in which commerce took off in southern Europe; and at the same time, the Vikings had farms in Greenland. Earlier, there had been a Roman Warm Period, from about 250 BC to 400 AD. The Romans were able to grow grapes in Scotland! Itโs hard to โmeasureโ temperatures with any accuracy that far back, but some scientists think this warm period may have been as much as two degrees Celsius warmer than today.
You might expect that it would be far easier to measure temperatures accurately today than to infer temperatures for the past. Itโs true that the only means available to estimate temperatures for times before written weather records were โpalaeoโ records such as ice cores and tree rings. But going forward, itโs not that simple. For a start, there are many ways to measure temperature. There are surface measurements with thermometers. There are satellite measurements of temperatures at different heights in the atmosphere. There are weather balloons and radiosondes. At sea, there have been shipsโ buckets, and more recently buoys.
Further, each kind of temperature record has its own set of difficulties. For instrument-based land records, for example, there are changes in instrument siting. There are new stations. And there are discontinued stations, of which there may be large numbers at once; for example, in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
For all temperature records, there are changes in instrument types and accuracy, and even in whether records are kept in Fahrenheit or Celsius. There is the problem of how to deal with missing readings. And even with the best will in the world, instrument operators will make mistakes. To make matters worse, most of the data we have comes from land, and from Europe and North America. There is poor coverage of the southern oceans, for example. And there is the thorny question of how you try to in-fill areas which have no data at all, for example by extrapolating from neighbouring regions.
Satellite measurements have their own problems, too. Complex calibrations and adjustments are necessary. Satellites have an unfortunate tendency to drift in their orbits. And when the responsibility for the measurements is moved from one satellite to another, there may be a discontinuity between the old readings and the new.
Then there is the problem of trying to assemble the whole into a coherent picture of โthe global temperatureโ over time. Inevitably, there will be huge levels of uncertainty in any such picture. It doesnโt help that in many cases this is being done by government agencies, some of which (such as the UK Met Office) choose to take an alarmist position at any opportunity. But there is general agreement that global temperatures have been warming since the 17thย century. And that they have warmed very close to 1 degree Celsius since 1880.
Is the warming over the last 150 years or so unprecedented?
Past records show temperatures going up and down by large amounts, sometimes over relatively short time periods. For example, Lambโs Central England Temperature record shows a huge dip into, and an even bigger rebound out of, the trough of the Little Ice Age.
More recently, there seems to have been strong cooling, on a global scale, between about 1880 and 1910, followed by strong warming over the following 30 years. And if we look at the magnitude of the temperature changes apparent in the Roman and Mediaeval warm periods, and juxtapose them with the last century or so, they are very comparable.
So, on the question of whether recent warming is โunprecedented,โ my verdict is the Scottish one: Not proven.
How much warming has been, or will be, caused by CO2 from human civilization?
To the third accusation, that all or much of the global warming is the result of emissions of carbon dioxide gas by human civilization.
Now, thereโs a plausible scientific hypothesis that says that greenhouse gases, including CO2, do cause some warming. The basic idea is that molecules of CO2 absorb photons of radiation, then re-emit them in directions that, on average, are more downwards than upwards, thus keeping heat in rather than letting it escape to space. The forcing is usually expressed in watts per square metre, at a suitably selected point high in the atmosphere.
For ease of understanding, the forcing can be converted into a temperature rise in degrees Celsius per doubling of CO2. It is calculated this way, because according to the greenhouse effect theory, the effects of CO2 are logarithmic. That is, each doubling of CO2 is expected to produce the same amount of warming. This warming is not expected to be evenly distributed over the globe; there is likely to be far more warming at higher latitudes, and so a lower temperature gradient from the tropics to the poles.
In its Third Assessment Report (2001), the IPCC gave this value as 1.46 degrees Celsius: [[6]]. Their latest technical summary report [[7]], on page 27, gives a central estimate of 1.07 degrees Celsius. Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist and a skeptical expert, has given 1 degree Celsius: [[8]], page 4. But some skeptics come out with considerably lower numbers. See [[9]] for an argument suggesting the figure may be as low as 0.5 degrees Celsius.
A major problem arises at this point. For surface level warming (โforcingโ in Climatespeak), whatever the reason for it, is theorized to cause more warming (โfeedbacksโ). This is because a warmer surface is expected to cause more evaporation from the oceans, so more water vapour in the atmosphere; and water vapour is a strong greenhouse gas, far stronger than CO2. Moreover, warming is also likely to cause more cloud cover. Clouds can cool, as on a hot summer day, or warm, as on a cold winter night. Which of these effects is stronger when averaged over the whole globe, and by how much, are very difficult questions to answer.
The alarmist camp think that the overall feedbacks are strongly positive, and the 1.07 degrees Celsius of forcing translates into an equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) of 2.5 to 4.0 degrees Celsius per doubling of CO2. Interestingly, in the Third Assessment Report, the 1.46 degrees of forcing translated into an ECS for a doubling of CO2 of 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius. So, over 20 years, the IPCCโs estimate of the forcing has gone down significantly; but the feedbacks seem to have become bigger to compensate!
The skeptical camp, on the other hand, think that the feedbacks are considerably lower, perhaps zero or even negative. Lindzen discusses this in the paper at [8]. In which he goes so far as to say: โthe stability of the tropical temperature suggests negative rather than positive feedbacks.โ
Nic Lewis, in a comment in the same paper (page 17), suggests that the ECS, or otherwise put the long-term warming, from a doubling of CO2 is 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius. This is well below the IPCCโs range. Lewisโs own best estimate, with Judith Curry, is between 1.50 and 1.76 degrees Celsius: [[10]]. In a reply to the comment (page 20), Lindzen suggests that even Lewisโs numbers are high.
CO2 is currently at 412 parts per million (ppm) compared to pre-industrial times with about 280. We are now a fraction over half way towards our first doubling. (412/280 is about 4 per cent larger than the square root of 2). If I accept Lewis and Curryโs most pessimistic estimate of 1.76 degrees for a doubling, including feedbacks, that means 0.88 degrees of temperature rise from CO2 which has been emitted from 1880 up to now. So, the higher the proportion of the feedbacks which have not appeared yet (and Iโd guess this is quite small; 140 years is a long time!) the higher the proportion of the close to 1 degree Celsius warming we have seen since 1880 must be due to causes other than CO2.
There is one piece of (lack of) hard evidence, which suggests that the idea of large positive feedbacks from surface warming which was caused by increased CO2 is almost certainly wrong. Calculations lead to a conclusion that feedbacks from surface warming should result in a โhot spot,โ warmer than its surroundings, in the atmosphere over the tropics at about 10 to 12 kilometres altitude. Since human caused emissions of CO2 have been going on constantly for decades now, if CO2-caused warming leads to large feedbacks, there should be a permanent hot spot at this altitude. But neither weather balloons nor satellite measurements find any such hot spot, despite attempts by the alarmists to claim that it exists after all.
Moreover, the Roman and Mediaeval warm periods were, without doubt, warmer than today. Although alarmists have tried, at various times and in various ways, to air-brush them out of the record. These warm periods cannot possibly have been caused by emissions of carbon dioxide by human civilization, can they? So, the question is, what caused them? There are lots of theories, such as solar variability, lack of volcanic eruptions, and ocean oscillations bringing more warm water to the surface over a long period. But no-one knows for sure. And if we donโt know what caused these warmings, how do we know those phenomena arenโt still active, and causing, or at least contributing greatly to, the modern warming period?
What will be effects of warming on the planet and on human civilization?
Historically, human civilizations have tended to thrive during warmer periods rather than colder ones. Roman civilization flourished during a relatively warm period; yet Rome collapsed not long after it ended. There is also some evidence, further back, for a Minoan Warm Period, which coincided with the Minoan civilization up to about 1500 BC. Itโs not impossible that the end of that warm period might have been a factor, not only in the fall of the Minoan civilization, but in the wider โLate Bronze Age collapseโ across the region in the 12th century BC. Moreover, the early Middle Ages, as I said earlier, was the time in which commerce began expanding in southern Europe. Whereas the 14th century, during which the warm period ended, was a time of wars, diseases, and disasters in much of Europe.
But the alarmists keep on screaming about the TERRIBLE consequences if โweโ donโt reduce CO2 emissions and stop the warming RIGHT NOW! Cognitive dissonance, anyone?
Yet, looking forward, wouldnโt a warmer world be likely to be a better world? And if not, why not? Fortunately, today we have a technique, a means of exploring the consequences of hypothetical situations such as a warmer world. Itโs called cost-benefit analysis. Why donโt we do a cost-benefit analysis on this issue?
Why donโt we estimate, as best we can, the cost of the damage which would be caused by a particular amount of warming, if we took no action at all to reduce CO2 emissions? Then compare that with our best estimate of the costs of the mitigation approach โ acting to reduce CO2 emissions just enough to avoid that amount of warming? And with our best estimate of the costs of the adaptation approach โ not bothering to reduce CO2 emissions at all, but simply fixing any negative consequences of warming as and when they become problems. And the time to do such an analysis is, obviously, before any action is taken, and before huge sums of money are spent on what may well prove to be a wild goose chase.
Now, Iโm in danger of getting ahead of myself here; but I canโt resist telling you a little bit about what has happened in terms of cost-benefit analysis on the โglobal warmingโ issue. Not only has no objective, unbiased cost-benefit analysis ever been done on the issue. But the UK government has taken steps, which I can only interpret as being intended to prevent such a cost-benefit analysis being done. And still, no proper cost-benefit analysis has been done.
The cost-benefit saga is a long, complicated, sorry tale, and Iโll tell it when I get to the back-story. But the only answer anyone can honestly give, even now after weโve already suffered decades of costly climate โaction,โ to the question โWhat would be effects of X amount of warming on the planet and on human civilization?โ is: โWe simply donโt have a clue.โ
Mitigation or adaptation?
In the absence of any proper cost-benefit analysis on the matter, the fifth accusation, that pre-emptive action to reduce CO2 emissions in order to stop warming (mitigation) is preferable to letting the warming happen and then fixing any problems as they arise (adaptation), becomes moot. Moot, in the dictionary sense of โhaving little or no practical relevance, typically because the subject is too uncertain to allow a decision.โ
From a philosophical viewpoint, I myself tend strongly to prefer adaptation over mitigation, because it avoids spending large amounts of effort and money on what may well turn out to have been non-problems. And if no proper cost-benefit analysis has been done at all, then the case for adaptation over mitigation becomes even stronger.
Many people will have noticed that governments, particularly in the UK, have shown an increasing tendency towards a culture of over-safety, and even of โsafety at any cost.โ This culture subjects us to ever more, tighter and more costly restrictions on how we live our lives. It reduces our freedoms and puts us more and more under government micro-management, yet we get little or no demonstrated benefits in return.
Those that want to โmitigateโ putative warming, I think, are letting themselves be driven by this culture of over-safety. Again, Iโm in danger of getting ahead of myself here. But I can โ and will, in the second essay โ tell you about where that culture came from, and how the UK government fostered it. Itโs not a pretty story.
So, is there really a climate crisis today?
At last! The sixth and last accusation is one I can (mostly) answer directly. With facts and evidence.
Climate alarmists have been making accusations against us for more than 30 years. Theyโve been screaming, again and again, โweโve got ten years to save the planet!โ (Or twelve years? Or 18 months?) So, by now, if the accusations are true, we should be able to see and to measure the negative effects they claim, should we not?
If we can see all or some of these negative effects happening today, then the next question to ask is, what caused them? Is it, all or mainly, CO2 emissions from human activities? Or is it, all or mainly, other human activities, such as land use changes and the urban heat island effect? Or is it, all or mainly, processes independent of human activities? (Some like to call these โnaturalโ processes, but I find that a misnomer; for in my view, humans are just as natural as any other species on our planet!)
What I found out in responding to the first five accusations suggests that the effects on the climate of non-human-caused processes are very significant, and that we donโt know at all how significant CO2 emissions are, or even whether they are a real problem. Not much of a โcase for the prosecutionโ so far, even if we could see some of negative effects that they claim when we observe the real world today.
But, looking as closely as we can, are these touted negative effects evident? If not, then the idea that they are likely to happen in the future ought to be called into serious question.
The evidence
It is part of my character that I seek to follow the sage advice of Bertrand Russell. โWhen you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed, but look only, and solely, at what are the facts.โ
So, here we go. The data and papers I link to come mostly from 2020 or 2021, a few from earlier. Not all the data is global; some of it is US specific. But even US figures do give a picture of the situation over a significant part of the globe.
Are weather disasters becoming worse and more frequent?
Global deaths from disasters such as droughts, floods and extreme weather have gone down dramatically in the last century or so: [[11]]. During which time, temperatures have risen by very close to 1 degree C. (Hover the mouse over one of the categories at the right to see that category more clearly). Deaths from extreme weather have dropped very significantly from the peak in the 1970s. Deaths from floods are now far lower than they were in the 1930s or 1950s. And deaths from droughts have come down enormously since the 1920s.
The drops in deaths from natural disasters have been even more spectacular when looked at in terms of death rates per 100,000 people: [[12]].
Global death risk from extreme weather has declined 99% over 100 years and global costs of extreme weather have declined 26% over the last 28 years: [[13]]. And the weather isnโt getting worse, as our accusers tell us it is. See [13], section 2.8, and particularly figure 17.
Are there more and worse storms and hurricanes?
Even the IPCC finds no trend in global hurricane frequency, and has low confidence in attribution of any changes in hurricane frequency to human activity: [13], section 2.6. Moreover, the USA has not seen any increase in landfalling hurricanes since 1900: [13], Figure 14.
Yearly โaccumulated cyclone energyโ in the Northern Hemisphere has not been increasing in the last 30 years, and it was unusually low in 2022 (33% down on the average for 1991-2020): [[14]]. The data was captured from dynamic web pages supplied by Colorado State University.
Are there more and worse floods?
Flood damage in the USA, as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product, has been trending down since 1940: [[15]]. The IPCC cannot say whether flooding on a global level is increasing or decreasing: [13], section 2.4.
Are there more and worse droughts?
Deaths from droughts, floods and extreme weather have gone down dramatically in the last century or so: [11]. The IPCC says: โthere is low confidence in attributing changes in drought over global land areas since the mid-20th century to human influence.โ [13], section 2.3.
As at 2012, there had been little change in global drought over the previous 60 years (Sheffield et al. 2012, referenced from [13].)
Are there more and worse wildfires?
โMany consider wildfire as an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses. However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends.โ (Doerr and Santรญn 2016, quoted in [13], section 2.5).
Are there more and stronger heatwaves?
In the USA at least, heat waves in the 1930s were an order of magnitude stronger than in any of the previous or subsequent decades: [[16]]. There is no apparent trend in the rest of the data.
Are there more and more people dying from heatstroke?
Looking at [11], it appears that deaths reported as caused by โextreme temperaturesโ have been rising since about the 1970s, peaking around the 2000s. But they are only a small proportion of deaths from all natural disasters.
In terms of deaths per population, the rise has been much less clear. Both may well be attributable to the reporting of these deaths by poor countries improving over time. So, the jury is still out on this one.
Moreover, a recent paper [[17]] analyzing data from 750 locations around the world concluded that deaths caused by cold were approximately ten times as many as deaths caused by heat. Suggesting that warming on a global scale should have a beneficial effect on human survival, rather than a negative one.
Are there millions of climate refugees?
Not that I am aware of. I certainly havenโt met one. But then, what exactly is a climate refugee?
I came across this paper from 2001: [[18]]. Oddly, it was written on behalf of a UN agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. This does, however, appear to be a part of the UN which is less corrupted than most. A couple of quotes from the paper: โPractical concern with the plight of poor people leaving fragile environments has not translated into hard evidence of the extent or fundamental causes of their problems.โ And: โWithout a firm definition of who is an โenvironmental refugeeโ it is not easy to say that this category of people is increasing.โ
Iโm with the paperโs author on this one. I wonโt believe anything I hear about โclimate refugeesโ without evidence that they exist, that there are a lot of them, and that their plight is due to human-caused climate change, not to war, political oppression, or anything else.
Is Arctic sea ice disappearing fast?
At its yearly summer minimum, Arctic sea ice reached a low point in 2012. But by 2021 and 2022, it had rebounded to around 50% above that value: [[19]]. (Click on 2021 and 2022 to see those lines on the graph).
Are thousands of polar bears dying because low sea ice means they canโt find food?
We keep on hearing stories about polar bear populations declining abruptly. But these stories arenโt always what they may seem. See this report: [[20]], and note the caveat. โScientists caution a direct link between the population decline and sea ice loss in Hudson Bay wasnโt yet clear.โ See also this: [[21]].
The world-wide polar bear population has risen from about 10,000 in the 1960s to 26,000 now. This estimate comes from the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature): [[22]]. One polar bear expert has estimated 32,000 bears: [[23]], see particularly Figure 3.
Are sea levels rising fast?
Sea levels have been rising for 12,000 years, since the last Ice Age. Most of that was obviously not caused by human-caused CO2 emissions! As measured by tide gauges, the current rate of sea level rise varies a lot by location. This is as you would expect, since some coasts are rising, others falling. But a sea level rise of 1-3 millimetres per year is typical.
Here is a table of sea level data for 1,269 tide gauge stations spread around the world: [[24]]. Most of the data goes up to the end of 2015. The โtrendโ column shows the rate of sea level rise at each station in millimetres per year. The mean rate of rise was 1.65 millimetres per year, and the median 1.78. Of the 1,269, 199 show sea levels falling by more than 1 mm/year, and 215 show a rise of more than 4 mm/year.
As an aside, more than 40 years ago, I lived in the Netherlands, in a polder almost 6 metres below sea level. They haveย seriousย flood defences there! The nearest tide gauge (Maassluis) has been in operation since 1848. It is almost right in the middle of the list of stations when they are sorted by rate of sea level rise. The detail graph for the Maassluis tide gauge is here: [[25]]. It shows an average rise from 1848 to 2021 of 1.69 millimetres per year (plus or minus 0.1). At that rate, it would take around 3,500 years for sea levels to rise 6 metres!
Is the rate of sea level rise accelerating?
Satellite measurements seem to show an acceleration of sea level rise in the last 20 years or so. Tide gauges, in general, donโt. Hereโs a skeptical perspective: [[26]]. In any case, the discrepancy needs to be fully explained before anyone can reasonably claim that acceleration of sea level rise is a problem.
My Dutch tide gauge shows an acceleration of 0.0041 millimetres per year per year. Thatโs 0.41 millimetres per year per century. So, in 100 years, the current 1.69 mm/yr might rise to 2.10 mm/yr. (Might). And Maassluis is in the top half of the 1,269 stations sorted by rate of acceleration, though not by much. Wake me up when the world is under water.
Are islands like Tuvalu being submerged?
There have been claims that low lying atolls like Tuvalu and the Maldives would become flooded and submerged by rising sea levels. But even some of the mainstream media have noticed that, on a multi-decadal scale, many of these islands are growing, not shrinking: [[27]]. 80 per cent of all the islands surveyed (including Tuvalu) were either growing, or staying about the same.
Are Antarctica and Greenland losing ice fast?
The Antarctic continent has not warmed in the last seven decades: [[28]]. For the entire continent, the winter (June to August) of 2021 was the second-coldest on record: [[29]]. So, if Antarctica is losing ice from its ice sheets, it isnโt because of warming; and surely not because of warming caused by CO2.
As to Greenland, see the โCon:โ argument here: [[30]]. I quote: โthe total ice loss each year is a nearly undetectable five one-thousandths of one percent (0.005 percent) of the Greenland ice mass.โ At that rate, melting it all would take 20,000 years. Also see here: [[31]].
Are hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of coral reefs dying?
The biggest coral reef I know of is the Great Barrier Reef. And that seems, after an iffy period around 2012 or so, to be doing fine: [[32]].
Floridaโs reefs have taken a bit of a pasting, and through human actions too. But the problem is not โglobal warming,โ but local water pollution: [[33]]. And coral reefs are a lot more resilient to changing conditions than they are often given credit for: [[34]].
Can we grow enough food to feed the population?
Yields of most crops per area farmed have risen over the last 60 years. Wheat yields, for example, have gone up from just over 1 tonne per hectare in 1961 to almost 3.5 tonnes per hectare in 2020. And maize yields have gone up from 2 to well over 5, in the same units. You can find the data at [[35]]. Meanwhile, more carbon dioxide in the air has had a beneficial effect of โgreeningโ the Earth: [[36]].
Sadly, there are places and times where farmers are not able to grow enough to feed local people, let alone export food. But in recent times, these problems have been caused almost exclusively by governments. It is green policies, not global warming, that have caused the famine in Sri Lanka and the troubles with farmers in the Netherlands!
Hubert Lambโs warning
I recently read an interesting account of the life and work of Hubert Lamb, one of the earliest โclimatologistsโ and the first director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia: [[37]]. In his later years, he became rather skeptical of the idea that humans were causing catastrophic global warming.
In 1994, in the journal of the World Meteorological Organization, Lamb left for posterity the following warning. โA precarious and threatening situation has developed for climatology. A tremendous effort was made to land research funds in all countries, mostly the USA, on the basis of frightening people about the possible drastic effect of Manโs activities. And so much has been said about climate warming, that there will be an awkward situation if the warming doesnโt happen, or not to the extent predicted.โ
Hubert Lamb was right; but I think he understated his case. As Iโve shown above, the drastic effects, which have been predicted from warming caused by emissions of carbon dioxide from human activities, arenโt in evidence today. Thirty years on from the Rio summit which triggered all the oppressive green policies, the argument that the bad effects are โbaked inโ already, but we just canโt see them yet, is losing any semblance of credibility. As the bad policies really start to bite into the rights and freedoms of ordinary people, there is indeed an โawkward situation.โ Not just for climatologists, but for all those that have jumped on the โclimate changeโ bandwagon, and used it either for personal gain, or as an excuse to carry out political aggressions against innocent people.
To sum up
Whatever alarmists may say, I for one donโt see any evidence for a โclimate crisis.โ Still less is there any hard evidence that emissions of CO2 from human civilization are causing any climate problems at all. Nor is it at all certain that any amount of reduction in CO2 emissions would achieve any improvement in the climate.
The alarmists, in order to argue that there is a climate problem, require that the surface warming directly caused by having more CO2 in the atmosphere is dwarfed by the โfeedbacksโ to this direct warming through other processes, notably water vapour and clouds. But many skeptics, including experts such as Richard Lindzen, do not agree. They think these feedbacks may even be negative. Moreover, an empirical estimate of long term climate response, including feedbacks, by Nic Lewis and Judith Curry suggests that the effects of CO2 on climate are way less than even the lower bound of the range given by the IPCC. The absence of a permanent โhot spotโ at about 10 to 12 kilometres up in the atmosphere also suggests the feedbacks from warming induced by CO2 cannot be large.
The alarmists, I think, have caught themselves in a trap here. The effects of 1 degree of warming over 140 years have not been catastrophic. Why, then, should we suppose that the effects of at least one more similar warming would be any worse? That defies both common sense and history. The effects of the warming into the Roman and Mediaeval Warm Periods, and out of the Little Ice Age, werenโt bad, were they?
Of course, the alarmists will probably try to scare us by telling us that equilibration is slow, and thereโs a lot more warming yet to come, which is already โbaked inโ from past CO2 emissions. But that would imply that a lot of the last 140 years of warming is due to factors other than CO2. The alarmists are wrong, either way.
In my view, the entire โglobal warmingโ and โclimate changeโ accusation is a total fraud. Those that have peddled and are peddling it are traitors to human civilization. In addition, they are causing severe mental damage to many young people, through spreading lies, fear and scares. They deserve to be brought to justice, made to compensate all those they harmed, and duly punished as traitors deserve.
Those who have been bamboozled into believing there is a climate problem at all, let alone a crisis, need to look at the facts, evaluate them, and reach their own conclusions. They must stop fearing anything that hasnโt been proven to be a real threat. And they must stop accepting guilt for anything, without proof of their guilt beyond reasonable doubt. They also need to stop deferring to politicians, โauthorityโ figures, โexpertsโ and the mainstream media. Instead, they must use their own judgement, and spread the truth on the matter, as best they understand it, to all those they can.
Half a loaf is better than none on energy, but America needs and deserves a full ration.ย Biden failed both to appease his Green base and deliver reliable energy at the scale required.
The Biden Administration approved three out of five Alaskan drilling sites applied for by Conoco Philips.
Alaskaโs Willow project will bring urgently needed gas and oil to the American energy market which is essential to recapturing energy independence and security.
However, the vacillating President, fearful of offending the climate change campaigners who influence his base, reduced the project by 40% and promised bans on future oil and gas development. Conoco Philips is being forced to relinquish 68,000 acres of existing leases. Obama-era bans on both onshore and offshore Alaska energy development are being expanded.
Adding the Willow projectโs gas and oil brings sorely needed American oil and gas to the market. America produces commodities under the highest environmental standards. Yet by partially approving Willow, while impeding future energy development, the Biden Administration demonstrated its particular knack for approaching a goal with inadequate commitment to deliver the needed results.
Climate pressure groups are livid, despite the Biden Administrationโs efforts to throttle back Willow. The Sierra Club accused the President of โputting profits over people.โ
โThe administration has no excuse for letting this project go forward in any form, and new Arctic drilling makes no sense. Even one new oil well in the Arctic is one well too manyโฆ particularly coming from an administration who has pledged to address the climate crisis, has pledged to address environmental injustice, has pledged to address the extinction crisis,โ said the Center for Biological Diversityโs Kristen Monsell.
Six Green groups, including the Sierra Club, immediately filed a lawsuit seeking injunctive relief to block or slow down the Willow Project.
Half a loaf is better than none on energy, but America needs and deserves a full ration.ย Biden failed both to appease his Green base and deliver reliable energy at the scale required.
This week the financial world balances on the edge, and all the old rules have broken. Joe Biden is signing off on an oil drilling program on US soil which he said heโd never do โ and itโs one of the largest ever โ like building โ66 new coal plantsโ. At the same time the Bank of England is apparently cutting the sacred climate change spending, and has leaked this news to the world.
As someone said on Twitter, โlast week was a different countryโ.
After all these years, climate change has fallen out of the Weekly Hit Parade of Panic.
Climate programs will slip lower on the central bankโs agenda so officials can focus more on the core operations such as financial stabilityโฆ
As Dr Benny Peiser of NetZeroWatch saysโthe risk of costly climate and Net Zero policies have become a bigger threat to the UKโs economy and financial stability than climate change.โ
Itโs not all good news though. One of the Bankโs new core operations is โa digital currencyโ โ which is the ultimate social credit score and even more invasive than a carbon tax. Either climate change is being crushed under the weight of financial reality, or else itโs become irrelevant as newer, more potent scares appear. Sorry to be a cynic. The only thing that has materially changed about reality in the last week are bad loans rattling the stockmarkets.
A major turning point?
The Bank of England has been pumping climate fear for years, and like the chief Octopus โ it has been organizing other central bankers:
The move marks a sharp break from the emphasis Mark Carney put on climate during his term as BOE governor from 2013 to 2020.
Rishi Sunak, during his term as chancellor of the exchequer in 2021, updated the BOEโs monetary policy remit to โreflect the governmentโs economic strategy for growth that is environmentally sustainable and consistent with the transition to a net zero economy.โ
BOE officials led by Carney have been among the most vocal in speaking about the climate-related risks facing the global economy in the coming decades. They helped build the Network for Greening the Financial System, a group of almost all the worldโs top central banks coordinating best practice on oversight.
The Bloomberg reporters also mention that Michael Bloomberg, the owner,ย โbacked Mark Carneys work on the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosuresโ. Itโs all so cosy isnโt it? Presumably Bloomberg himself could easily confirm this story or bury it if he wanted too. Something has changedโฆ
Giant, huge, US carbon monster drilling oil project: all OK now?
Black is White, Up is down. And after Biden did everything to avoid approving oil drilling on US soil, even being nice to Venezuela, heโs just done exactly that:
Having entered office vowing โno more drilling on federal lands, periodโ, Mr Bidenโs hand has been forced by soaring energy prices, which have fuelled inflation.
The Willow Project, which has been led by oil behemoth ConocoPhillips, could produce more than 600 million barrels of crude oil over the next 30 years.
Does carbon dioxide matter, or doesnโt it?
Obviously, this week is a convenient week for announcing major backflips and hoping people wonโt notice.
This has to be done, Anderson added, within the next five years.
โThe chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero,โ Anderson said, with 75 to 80 percent of permanent ice having melted already in the last 35 years.
What nonsense. We said so back in 2018, and nothing has changed. At least Forbes hasnโt done a Greta, and has left the article online (so far).
Keep that delete button handy Greta. There is no climate emergency โ and youโre young enough that you will live to see more embarrassments. And a little advice, maybe you should hold off republishing more dire predictions from Professor Anderson, at least any predictions with a due date near future enough to be embarrassing.
Proposed law: Germans who do not change over to โclimate friendlyโ heating systems will face hostile fines.ย
As we reported here, German Economics Minister Robert Habeck plans to ban gas and oil heating systems in favor of climate-friendly heating systems. as early as 2024.
All gas and oil heating systems will need to be replaced after 30 years of operation, with no possibility to repair and keep them going.
The government plans to clamp down severely on owners who choose to violate the proposed regulations.
50,000 euro fine for non-compliance
โThose who fail to comply with the replacement obligation are to pay a fine of up to 50,000 euros.โ reports Blackout News here. โPlans to ban gas and oil heating systems from 2024 have taken many Germans by surprise. If a heating system has to be replaced in the coming year โ whether due to a defect in the old gas or oil heating system or due to a new building โ a climate-friendly alternative must be installed. These include heat pumps, fuel cells or pellet heating systems, for example.โ
โThe measures are intended to serve as a deterrent and ensure that defective systems are actually replaced with more climate-friendly options,โย Blackout Newsย adds.
Fierce oppositionโฆdead on arrival?
The plans drafted by Habeck and the German government, however, have run up against fierce opposition since they become known. Opposition parties have sharply criticized the plans, and others within the government view the proposed measures as a problem.
Already Germans are reeling from exorbitantly high energy prices and many can no longer afford to heat their homes and keep the lights on as inflation erodes earnings. Being forced to install expensive โclimate friendlyโ heating systems will only massively add to the burden and so the plans are already unpopular.
Itโs highly doubtful the government will be able to find a majority to enact the plans into law, unless, that is, the aim is to put the far right parties into power.
Interest rate rises are supposed to squeeze out the dumbest investments, so it is fitting that one of the first casualties of this boom-bust cycle is a green banker, mostly doomed by loaning half their cash to the same bankrupt Big-Government that created the green improbable fantasy industries which SVB was largely serving.
SVB was a โGreenโ Banker. We know this, not because newspapers are saying that now, but because of the emergency flares released on behalf of the victims. The New York Times tells us that the collapse of SVB is going to hit green tech hard because SVB clients included 1,550 companies dedicated to โfighting climate changeโ.
If only SVB had served coal miners or gas frackers instead they might still be in business? The deposits they needed would have kept on coming as the profits flowed in.
David Gelles,ย New York Times,ย naturally, misses the whole point:
In reality, climate start-ups threaten the bank, and climate finish-ups threaten the country.
The bank had relationships with more than 1,500 companies working on technologies aimed at curbing global warming.
The bank, the largest to fail since 2008, worked with more than 1,550 technology firms that are creating solar, hydrogen and battery storage projects. According to its website, the bank issued them billions in loans.
Groupthink strikes again. The majority of the solar or climate market just banked with the herd:
โSilicon Valley Bank was in many ways a climate bank,โ said Kiran Bhatraju, chief executive of Arcadia, the largest community solar manager in the country. โWhen you have the majority of the market banking through one institution, thereโs going to be a lot of collateral damage.โ
It was a Ponzi scheme
During the pandemic, fluffy money, made from nothing by Big Government to โsave the economyโ was put into stupid businesses to โsave the planetโ. The businesses put their cash into Silicon Valley Bank, which got so much cash, it couldnโt do anything with half of it โ except give it back to Big-Government in the form of a loan called a Treasury Bond โ thus completing one full Cycle of Stupid. Money printed from nothing, achieved nothing, and went back home. On the way a whole lot of people got paid to pretend to change the weather. But money printing causes inflation, and in inflationary times interest rates have to rise. So it follows that when easy money flows into your wallet, easy solutions, like fixed loans with low interest are the stupidest possible solution.
SVB was promising to guard Green-tech money, but it was locking it away in long term loans, and essentially relying on a regular flow of deposits coming to keep earlier depositors happy:
Silicon Valley Bank Collapse Is A Blow To Clean Energy Tech
by Mark Le Dain, Forbes
โฆthis will be a massive blow to the cleantech ecosystem.
After COVID the assets of SVB rapidly grew. New spending dynamics meant money was flowing into tech vs the traditional economy, and those companies were also able to raise funds as well. This money had to be parked somewhere and a lot of it ended up at SVB. Itโs rare for a bank to have a concentrated deposit base grow so quickly but, in any regard, they needed to invest it. To invest the deposits the bank targeted long-dated treasuries, with slightly higher interest rates but less liquidity. Even if this was a bad decision banks usually find a way out of it because deposits keep coming, allowing the bank to layer on other types of investments. Many banks will also typically hedge their interest rate exposure. There doesnโt appear to have been hedging though and deposit growth slowed as interest rates rose. The companies were no longer raising funds and instead using their existing funds to run the business. These dynamics meant deposits were now declining at the same time the investments, these long-dated treasuries, were losing value. As the bank announced it had to sell some of these instruments at a loss, and raise capital, people were worried and it resulted in an old-fashioned bank run.
There is no free lunch. By definition, if someone is making windmills to change the weather, and people are still throwing money at them, then money is โeasyโ and inflation is coming.
Ultimately, because the government was already broke, and money printing causes inflation, it meant interest rates would have to riseโฆ As sure as night follows day and birds fry midair at Ivanpah.
Government committee to stop bank collapses, didnโt see this comingโฆ
The USA has a committee to stop this sort of thing, but even they were more worried about climate risks than national ponzi schemes:
SVBโs collapse on March 10 begs the question where were the regulators?
By Liz Peek, Fox Business
Authorities should have been on high alert. They were not. Consider the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the body created in 2010 after the financial crisis, which was meant to avert just this sort of collapse. The council is chaired today by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and includes 9 other voting members including Fed Chair Jay Powell, the heads of the FDIC and the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (CFPB), Gary Gensler, head of the SEC.
The councilโs website defines its task as โidentifying risks to the financial stability of the United Statesโฆโ
The council last met on February 10 via videoconference. The readout of that meeting shows the group previewed its 2023 priorities, which included โclimate-related financial risks, nonbank financial intermediation, Treasury market resilience, and risks related to digital assets.โ
Climate change, which it describes as โan emerging threat to U.S. financial stability,โ is identified in the 2022 annual report as a โkey priorityโ and has been one of the councilโs principal preoccupations for the past two years.
Devotion to climate change is a pathological social disorder. Whole civilizations get swept awayโฆ
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