Day: March 5, 2024

Alaska’s “Green” Plan B: Political Energy is Back

“The prospect of Alaska becoming Germany energy-wise is a troubling concept to imagine. At least Germany had industry and an economy to destroy…. It’s up to us to elect common-sense realists instead of ideologues.”

From The Master Resource

By Kassie Andrews

“The prospect of Alaska becoming Germany energy-wise is a troubling concept to imagine. At least Germany had industry and an economy to destroy…. It’s up to us to elect common-sense realists instead of ideologues.”

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy’s plan for a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to mandate unreliable and costly sources of energy has stalled out, thanks to Jesse Bjorkman, Chair of the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee. But sinister private interests and ethically corrupt bureaucrats are out to force a Green New Deal on taxpayers and ratepayers under a new guise.

Governor Dunleavy has now teamed with the Alaskan House Energy Committee to push for an equally bad Clean Energy Standard (CES). Introduced February 20, House Bill 368 is titled “An Act relating to clean energy standards and a clean energy transferable tax credit; and providing an effective date.”

Putting the Fix In

A year ago, Governor Dunleavy tasked the Alaska Energy Security Task Force to create an energy plan (government plan) to lower Alaskan electricity rates to 10¢/kWh (his “moonshot”). Currently, Alaskans pay about 24¢/kWh, one of the highest rates in the country. RPS was a key component of the original draft plan, but at the 11th hour, CES became the new Trojan Horse. 

The fix was in. No stakeholders relevant to the development of our reliable sources of energy were on the task force assigned to create a comprehensive statewide energy plan. “Stakeholders” who actually have invested in, know well, and are ready to extract and utilize readily available local coal and gas were excluded from planning and considerations. The result? An energy plan to “Adopt a Clean Energy Standard with incentives to diversify generation.”

Dueling Plans

The Regulatory Commission of Alaska (RCA) unanimously opposed the RPS legislation in December 2023. House Bill 368, a Clean Energy “Standard,” appears to be the first of many standards tied to what is to come from the Electric Reliability Organization (ERO).  

Although this legislation comes ahead of the ERO Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), new standards and modifications are subject to the review by the RCA. The ERO concept was signed into law in 2020 and was heavily supported by our friends at the Renewable Energy Alaska Project (REAP). The duties of the ERO include developing reliability standards that provide for an adequate level of reliability of an interconnected electric energy transmission network and the development of integrated resource plans. In part, the ERO legislation states:

An electric utility must participate in an electric reliability organization if the utility operates in an interconnected electric energy transmission network served by an electric reliability organization certificated by the commission.

The idea, according to REAP, is for ERO to

remove barriers to renewable energy development in a number of ways. It will mandate non-discriminatory access by independent companies that wish to sell renewables into the grid, take a first step toward eliminating redundant fees to transmit power along the grid and establish a transparent, public “integrated resource planning” process to determine what new generation projects the region will build in the future.”

Many climate alarmist groups that are demanding mandates to Alaskan energy were involved in the creation of the ERO. The Alaska Institute for Climate and Energy (ALICE) provided a study on a ~5 billion dollar Eklutna Pumped Energy Storage Solution, per Governor Dunleavy’s request. According to ALICE

The science is clear: the world, including Alaska, must reduce Greenhouse Gas (GhG) emissions from burning fossil fuels to net zero by 2050 to keep our planet below 1.5-degree Celsius warming and avert dangerous run-away climate change.

And

The interest of consumers are not best served by relying on private companies with a profit motive as the only potential actors. IPPs, member-owned utilities, and the state should all be able to pursue beneficial renewable energy, storage, and transmission projects

Moving the Railbelt utility system off fossil fuels (currently 85% of our generation) to a fully integrated and resilient wind-solar-storage powered system serves the highest public interest as we face the existential threat of climate change. We urge the RCA to do everything in its power to facilitate that immediate and rapid transition on the Railbelt and throughout Alaska.

More central planning where we can least afford it.  Witness the devastation that occurred in 2021 with Winter Storm Uri in Texas under the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)’s central planning of electric utilities.

Alaska’s Electric Reliability Organization is Railbelt Reliability Council, RRC, whose mission is

Serve the public interest and provide the greatest long-term value to the Railbelt by working collaboratively and transparently to establish and uphold protocols that sustainably balance safety, reliability, cost, and environmental responsibility. 

The RRC will insert themselves into the process and centrally plan for the utilities on the railbelt that provide power to 75% of Alaska’s population. The utilities under their planning purview include Homer Electric Association (HEA), Chugach Electric Association (CEA), Matanuska Electric Association (MEA), and Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA) which currently have boards that represent the needs of the rate payers. 

The council is made up of a 15-member board, many with questionable proclivities as it relates to the future reliability and affordability of our power, given their backgrounds and roles they currently occupy at their day jobs.

This central planning “service” comes to us with a surcharge. Although the surcharge has already made it onto the bills of rate payers—(see ERO Surcharge on your electric utility bill)—the RCA has suspended the tariff and has approved the surcharge on an interim basis. The current interim surcharge for Chugach Electric ratepayers is $0.00054 per kilowatt hour (kWh).

With reliability being the key word to the Railbelt Reliability Council, what does allowing renewables onto the grid have to do with reliability?  Nothing. All the central planning processes that are being rapidly established, along with the allowance by the RCA for independent power producers to enter onto the grid will come at great costs with no clarity or accountability as to who represents the rate payer. This is done on purpose to avoid liability. 

The development of the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) will be key to the transformation of our grid. The ERO must consider reliability and cost factors, however they will be able to weigh in on other interests that will have a negative impact on rate payers such as the narrative that the earth has reached global boiling and the installation of windmills and solar will have an effect on the sun.

In a white paper by REAP on the need for an Independent System Operator, the word affordability appears zero times; reliability appears two times (and not in reference to reliability as a priority); renewable appears at least twenty times. and climate appears five times. It is abundantly clear how these competing priorities will be weighed when you have the likes of Chris Rose with REAP and IPPs with self-serving interests to sell their renewable energy representing this “reliability council.”

Independent Power Producers

The ability for Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to enter onto the grid and amendments to regulations to facilitate integration were adopted and approved by the RCA in late 2015.  Utilities are rapidly being compelled to sell off their generating capacity to independent power producers. 

Much of this is due to unrealistic decarbonization goals that are being adopted by utilities. IPPs are allowed to steal money from ratepayers by supplying unreliable energy paid for with special funding and subsidies, while the host utilities bear the costs to make them reliable. In other words, IPPs are opportunistic ticks on the backsides of humanity, allowable only by coopted, feckless, corrupted politicians and bureaucrats.

Present an IPP whose intent is to serve the interests of the country and state, provide reliable and affordable energy that stands on its own without reliance on the utility and I will stop complaining.

“Clean Energy” Standards

In a conversation with a member of the House Energy committee, it was stated that Governor Dunleavy wants an RPS because he needs assurances for investors from the lower 48. The narrative? This CES bill is a compromise from the mandates within the RPS bill. As RPS appears to have died in the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee, the governor is taking another run at compliance and preparation for his investors. But Governor Dunleavy’s trumped letter to Warren Buffet (please read it) is a subterfuge for the politically correct in place of the economically correct.

Clean Energy Standards require that a minimum share of a utilities electricity to be generated from “clean” sources.  They require utilities to buy wind and solar power regardless of their cost. The idea has been sold by using half-truths that these clean sources are cheaper. They are “cheaper” on the backs of our children and grandchildren through taxpayer subsidies, only to later compromise the reliability of the grid, eventually resulting in costly increases to the ratepayer.  (Think of a “cheaper” car with a trick motor having a lot of problems down the line.)

Similar to how electric vehicles are sold as being cheaper, the costs are hidden with everyone else paying for the infrastructure, the same concept applies here where our utilities foot the bill for making the grid 100% reliable. Wind and solar cannot compete with conventional energy such as natural gas and coal, so the greens need a law to force utilities to adopt the use of their whirligigs and whatnots. Clean Energy Standards are hidden energy taxes. 

CES is being sold as an acceptable stand-in for RPS because there are no mandates to reach a certain percentage of renewables as of a certain date. This too is a half-truth. 

The legislation states the load-serving entity’s portfolio shall include clean energy in the following percentages:  35 percent by December 31, 2036, and 60 percent by December 31, 2051. 

Clean energy is defined as follows:

  • When generated by a load-serving entity, does not release carbon dioxide or releases carbon dioxide in an amount that is offset by the amount of carbon dioxide the load-serving entity absorbs or removes from the atmosphere;
  • Is generated from coal with a sulfur content of one percent or less by weight;
  • Is generated from renewable energy resources; or
  • Is generated from nuclear energy;

The bill states that new construction of a large power facility cannot be detrimental to meeting the clean energy standard.  This means that we cannot bring new sources of energy found in abundance in our own state unless we play the unproven and wildly expensive game of carbon offsets or carbon capture.  One of the main priorities laid out by the Alaska Energy Security Task Force is to “significantly increase load to drive down energy rates” couple that with this CES mandate that new sources must fall into the clean energy category, I see this hardly different from the RPS mandated percentages. 

While we have more time allowed to meet the percentages and the utilities have no fee per se, but when you combine the Railbelt Reliability Council and their interests, the Independent Power Producers and their interests, the result isn’t necessarily a mandate but our co-ops being under the gun to adapt to the whims of investors and environmental special interests to integrate their toy things onto our grid. Our co-ops have boards that represent the rate payers and our needs.  This process and legislation usurps that completely.

Intermittency Risks

Weather happens in Alaska regularly. And when it does, wind and solar are absolutely useless. An example of this is the CIRI wind farm. When we were most desperate for the power in late-January, its fairytale 17MW nameplate was nowhere to be seen. At the most critical time, in a 24-hour period, 2% of name plate was achieved. It was nothing but a big hunk of ugly yard art.

Imagine any other endeavor where an 2% success rate is acceptable. The gas plants held up their end of the bargain that day. Eklutna hydro was spooled up to 100% capacity and generated 100% of nameplate capacity. As far as the Railbelt Reliability Council should be concerned …. Reliably renewable is an oxymoron.

All of these policies and processes together are critical to compromising the system, disenfranchising and separating the ratepayer from ownership. In turn, this will allow for more renewable generation such as wind and solar farms with our co-ops transforming into nothing more than a beat down and unreliable billing function.

What comes during and after the co-ops are rendered useless surely won’t be fun to live though. Jenn Miller with Renewable IPP, gleeful about the construction of the largest solar panel farm in Willow, Alaska, said it best “The state’s power portfolio could be more like Germany’s – Germany gets a similar amount of sunlight to Alaska, but about 10% of its power comes from solar energy….”  The prospect of Alaska becoming Germany energy-wise is a troubling concept to imagine. At least Germany had industry and an economy to destroy. I suppose it is better to be a has been than a never was. Poor Alaska never stood a chance.

In August of 2023, the North American Reliability Corporation (NERC) identified energy policy and grid transformation as the top two risks among five significant evolving and interdependent risks to grid reliability. According to the report:

Existing resource sufficiency requirements and underlying studies are based on a pre-decarbonization paradigm that traditionally focused on peak capacity requirements and assumed energy sufficiency would result; traditional resource adequacy planning is capacity focused…. With a higher proportion of variable and renewable fueled resources evolving, this aspect of resource adequacy must be more specifically assessed.” 

Hint: We are warned. Clean Energy Standards is energy policy to be avoided. 

What Can Be Done?

In a state where we are in an “energy crisis,” shoehorning our utilities to buy unreliable sources of energy is the last concept that we need to adopt.  House bill 368 for CES is in the special energy committee.  Call and email the chair, Representative George Rauscher. 907-465-4859.  Representative.George.Rauscher@akleg.gov. 

To date, two hearings have been held on this bill.  The hearing held on February 29th was from invited testimony from Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation who stated there is no source of uranium, no current spent fuel storage capability, no known deployment timeframes and provided no costs.  The next hearings are scheduled for March 5th and 6th at 10:15 AM for more invited testimony.  If you do not have time to call in or email, you can submit a Public Opinion Message (POM).  The Public Opinion Messaging System allows you to send a fifty word message to individual legislators and entire committees. 

Coal. The Alaska Energy Security plan states that Alaska’s known coal reserves could “power the entire country for decades if not centuries.”  218 pages with a 1714 page appendix and nothing stated about expanding the use of coal in our energy crisis.  Rejuvenate Healy Coal. 

Natural Gas. What is the yearly cost to make the gas field viable compared to all of these other fairy tales that have received far more attention than expanding and upgrading the generation infrastructure and production we already have?

Alaska should be more like Kansas.  Declare sovereignty:  Article XIII of the Kansas Republican Party Platform States:

Kansas leaders should not be allowed to arbitrarily deny permits to build new power and energy-producing plants. Carbon dioxide, one of the most common gases on earth, should not be declared a pollutant nor used as an excuse to deny the construction of new power plants. We oppose so-called Cap and Trade legislation. We oppose efforts to force communities to engage in sustainable development under guidance from the federal government or the United Nations.

Adopt resolutions.  “Whereas irrefutable evidence demonstrates that ill-health effects to mankind and the environment are occurring due to the side effects of industrial scale wind installations. These occurrences are widespread, wherever these installations have been constructed; Therefore, be it resolved, the Republican Party of Kansas, in view of the preponderance of evidence, will support candidates and legislative intent regarding energy policy that will serve to provide protection to our citizens security, physical health, financial health, access to reliable energy and property rights across all Kansas counties.”

Support common sense candidates in your local utility board elections. The incumbents up for reelection at Chugach Electric voted to support decarbonization initiatives and Renewable Portfolio Standards.  These concepts have been proven to dismantle utilities and co-ops across the country when implemented. Chugach Electric has elections beginning mid-April with two candidates that fit that bill. Please make a plan to vote and support Todd Lindley and Dan Rogers. Visit their website at https://www.votechugachstability.org/  

It’s up to us to elect common-sense realists instead of ideologues. Let’s challenge our friends and neighbors to increase turnout this year from 16% to 18%. 

Another Deceptive Front-Page Climate Story in the Seattle Times

Another highly deceptive and error-filled climate story in the ST.  One predicting more than a doubling of wildfires over western Washington and Oregon by mid-century.

From The Cliff Mass Weather Blog

Cliff Mass

The Seattle’s Times ClimateLab writers have done it again.

Another highly deceptive and error-filled climate story in the ST.  One predicting more than a doubling of wildfires over western Washington and Oregon by mid-century.

The trouble is that this story is based on a highly problematic paper published in February in JGR Biogeosciences (see below).   A paper that is missing the key element of Westside wildfires and makes predictions that are unsupported and highly exaggerated.

Before anyone suggests I should not comment on this work, let me note that I am doing research on EXACTLY this topic.  I have read all the relevant papers.  The authors of this paper cite several of my previous papers on the topic.

The Key Control of Westside Fires Was Ignored

Both this article and the Seattle Times article ignore the central fact about major wildfires occurring west of the Cascade Crest.  

Let me explain.

Westside fires are infrequent for a reason:  the region west of the Cascade crest is generally too moist to burn.   Precipitation is abundant west of the crest (see below) and for most of the year cool, moist marine air from off the Pacific (whose temperature is about 50F) floods over western Washington and Oregon.

Moisture vegetation and ground surfaces, as well as cool/moist air.    Wildfires don’t have a chance and are thus rare.

But there is an atmospheric “trick” that can make Westside wildfires possible:  strong easterly (from the east) winds.   Winds that are generally dry and warm, and capable of pushing the moist/cool marine air out to sea.

Virtually all major Westside fires are associated with strong easterly winds.  

The air starts relatively dry over eastern Washington and Oregon.  As it descends the western slopes of the Cascades and coastal mountains, it is warmed by compression, causing relative humidity to plummet.

The warm, dry air associated with powerful downslope winds can rapidly dry surface fuels, no matter how moist they were days or weeks before.  The strong winds can also start fires, by damaging electrical infrastructure. among other ways.

I have looked at every one of the Westside fires of the past 120 years– all of them were associated with powerful easterly winds.   

Examples include the Yacolt Burn near Vancouver, WA in 1902, the Tillamook Fires of the 1930s, and the 2020 fires over western Oregon (there are more).  Being a little warmer or drier the days before would have made little difference to these fires:  the easterly winds were the key.

Tillamook Burn, Clatsop County Oregon

So if you want to know how Westside fires will change over the next century, you MUST determine how the easterly winds will change.

Unfortunately, the JGR paper does not examine this issue at all.  The Seattle Times article ignores the issue as well.

You probably are asking yourself:  Will strong easterly winds strengthen or weaken under global warming?   

I have examined this question with high-resolution regional climate models (and published the results in the peer-reviewed literature).  It appears easterly winds will WEAKEN, which would reduce Westside fires.    The Seattle Times article doesn’t provide that critical information.

But the problem with the Seattle Times article and paper it cites does not end there.

The paper assumes the same distribution and frequency of fire starts as today and then uses the output from global climate models to see how the fires would change as the earth warms.

Unfortunately, they used a highly unrealistic and aggressive global warming scenario (RCP 8.5) that greatly exaggerates any global warming impacts.   

The global model also is far too coarse to get the local meteorology correct. For example, THERE ARE NO CASCADES in the simulation at all.

Finally, let me note there are many other problems with the paper and even more in the Seattle Times story.

The ClimateLab series in the Seattle Times is pushing incorrect and hyped climate information.  The reporters do not evaluate the validity of the exaggerated claims they report.  This is not quality journalism and misinforms citizens who need accurate information about climate change.  

Jobs Per Unit of Energy in the UK

At this point I should mention the obvious point: jobs in energy are a cost, unless you are exporting energy and getting paid for it. The key metric is productivity. You cannot argue that we need more farmers (I’m sorry, farmers, I love you!) unless the quantity of produced food goes up. You don’t employ more gardeners… if your garden is shrinking…

More jobs is not necessarily a benefit

From Climate Scepticism

BY JIT

(Prompted by Mark’s piece about solar panel manufacturing in the EU.)

Last year, I plotted some figures showing elementary facts about UK energy use. One thing I didn’t plot was jobs in energy.

Now, Mark frequently points out green job losses and other failures in Where Did All the Green Jobs Go? What I’m going to show here is how much energy the UK consumes, and how many workers provide that energy.

At this point I should mention the obvious point: jobs in energy are a cost, unless you are exporting energy and getting paid for it. The key metric is productivity. You cannot argue that we need more farmers (I’m sorry, farmers, I love you!) unless the quantity of produced food goes up. You don’t employ more gardeners… if your garden is shrinking…

The first figure shows, on two separate Y axes: (i) the UK’s final consumption of energy in thousands of tonnes of oil equivalent and (ii) the number of jobs in the energy industries, in thousands.

The UK’s energy consumption peaked at the turn of the millennium and has been declining ever since. There are a number of reasons for this, and depending what your beliefs are, it is possible to battle over those reasons. More efficient use of energy? Loss of energy-intensive industries?

(Of interest also is the fact that the UK ceased to be a net exporter of energy in 2004.)

The number of jobs in energy declined from the 70s onwards (and probably since before then; the statistical release I have to hand begins in 1980 for jobs but only 1990 for energy). This reflects the loss of jobs in coal (and inasmuch as coal use switched to gas, reflects an improvement of productivity). Employment in energy reached a nadir in 2005 and then began to climb.

This climb was not matched by a climb in energy consumption. It occurred as energy consumption was falling.

Now, if you divide one set of numbers by t’other, you get the productivity of employment in energy. Productivity maxed out in 2005, and has been sliding ever since.

So:

Maximum energy use: 2000

Last year as net exporter of energy: 2003

Peak productivity: 2005

I leave it to readers to interpret the meaning of these figures and dates.

The data came from here.

Image: Archive.org (1910 ish).

Confronting The Fear Of Climate Disasters

Over the period 2000 to 2021 the global value added of agriculture, forestry and fishing rose by 84 percent from about USD 2.0 trillion to USD 3.7 trillion per year. In other words, global agricultural production was not “reduced” by disasters.

From The Friends of Science Calgary

Executive Summary

Contributed by Robert Lyman © 2024. Robert Lyman’s bio can be read here.

Proponents of the thesis that humans are causing catastrophic climate change insist that changes in the earth’s climate observed over the past century and a half are causing significant increases in extreme weather events and major economic losses.

Confronting-the-Fear-of-Climate-Disasters-FINALHerunterladen

United Nations organizations often support this view. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) regularly issues reports on climate change and weather as though the two are inexorably linked. In May 2023, the WMO published a report entitled Economic costs of weather-related disasters soars but early warnings save lives. The reported economic losses rose significantly from about USD$184 billion in the 1970s to about USD 1.47 trillion from 2010-2019.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) periodically issues reports describing how disasters, linked allegedly to climate change, are harming agriculture and food security. In 2023, it issued a report entitled The Impact of Disasters on Agriculture and Food Security. It warned that “disasters are producing unprecedented levels of damage and loss to agriculture around the world…Research aimed at deciphering the impact of climate change on agriculture indicates that climate change is likely to lead to more frequent anomalies and a decrease in agricultural production.”

Both reports neglected to provide context for their findings. In more than 80 percent of the disasters in the developed countries cited by the WMO, the economic losses were equivalent to less than 0.1 per cent of the countries’ gross domestic product. Over the period 2000 to 2021 the global value added of agriculture, forestry and fishing rose by 84 percent from about USD 2.0 trillion to USD 3.7 trillion per year. In other words, global agricultural production was not “reduced” by disasters.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seeks to define and assess what it considers to be real or potential adverse effects of climate change. Every few years the IPCC publishes an “assessment report” in which it attempts to set out the state of the knowledge. The most recent report was the Sixth Assessment Report, published in 2021. The executive summary of this report states that evidence of observed changes in extremes and their attribution to human influence has strengthened, in particular for extreme precipitation, droughts, tropical cyclones and compound extremes (including dry/hot events and fire weather).It gives an impression, reflected in media reports, that the world faces a grave situation.

A more detailed reading of the assessment reveals an entirely different conclusion.

The most revealing part of the report concerns the probability and timing of the emergence of “climate impact drivers” and the related “impacts” and the IPCC’s collective judgments about whether the impacts are already occurring or may be expected to emerge in future. The only impacts for which the IPCC has a “high confidence” of impacts already increasing are in mean air temperature, extreme heat, mean ocean temperature, and atmospheric carbon dioxide at the surface. There is also “high confidence” of decreases in the dissolved oxygen in the ocean and in lake, river and sea ice. There is a “medium confidence” that ocean salinity at the surface has already occurred. There is also “medium confidence” that decreases in cold spells and in permafrost have already occurred.

For the rest of the potential climate impacts, there is a “low confidence in the direction of change” of most of the impacts that get almost endless media attention, including precipitation, aridity, drought, fire weather, cyclones and severe wind storms, snow and sea ice, sea levels, coastal erosion, ocean acidity and air pollution. The dire outcomes that so many in governments and the media predict are, in many cases, not confidently foreseen by the IPCC scientists even under the worst-case scenarios.

Maybe the mainstream media should report this.

The Guardian Should Know That One Mild Winter Is Not Climate Change, Nor Is It Alarming

A recent article in The Guardian, “Vanishing ice and snow: record warm winter wreaks havoc across US Midwest,” describes the very mild winter much of the American Midwest has experienced this year, claiming that it is due to climate change. While a declining trend towards less-severe winters may in part reflect modest warming, the intensity of this winter’s warmth is more likely explained by El Niño.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A recent article in The Guardian, “Vanishing ice and snow: record warm winter wreaks havoc across US Midwest,” describes the very mild winter much of the American Midwest has experienced this year, claiming that it is due to climate change. While a declining trend towards less-severe winters may in part reflect modest warming, the intensity of this winter’s warmth is more likely explained by El Niño.

The Guardian asserts that ice cover across the Great Lakes has been declining since the early 1970s, writing that while the historic average for mid-February is around 40%, “this year it was about 4%.” Grand Forks, North Dakota; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Minneapolis-St Paul, Minnesota, are listed as having recorded their warmest winter, and the Guardian links to evidence in the form of an article from weather.com. Interestingly, directly beneath the states listed in the weather.com post referenced in the article is this statement, “[t]he Twin Cities’ warmest winter, by the way, was 146 years ago in 1877-78, when Rutherford B. Hayes was president.” The Guardian neglected to mention that.

Climate change is the culprit, claims The Guardian, but their own weather.com source lists two natural causes for this year’s mildness, including El Niño and a lack of “persistent blocking patterns – such as the Greenland block – that pull cold air from Canada and lock it into the U.S. for longer than a few days.”

Regarding El Niño, weather.com says “[w]armer winters are typical across the northern tier of states during a strong El Niño.”

Continuing, weather.com reports:

Despite a few recent storms, this season’s winter storm pace across the country is the slowest in 10 years.

That’s left just 14% of the Lower 48 covered by snow as of Feb. 26.

The warmth also left Great Lakes ice cover at a 51-year low for mid-February, including an ice-free Lake Erie and just a few small bays of Lake Superior with any ice.

In case you missed the point, the ice was this low 51 years of global warming ago, when the Earth was not only cooler, but it was in a cooling trend. A recent post at Climate Realism covers this specific subject in more detail, with H. Sterling Burnett writing “the last time the Great Lakes ice coverage was this low in January was in the early 1970s, a time when global average temperatures were cooling, which many scientists claimed at the time could be a sign of a coming ice age.”

In fact, ice coverage data for the Great Lakes show that coverage is highly variable from year to year. Plotted annual maximum data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory show as much. (See figure below)

The data across all the Great Lakes do indicate that recent years have seen more below-average years, but high years are still found, and it depends on the individual lake. On Lake Superior, Erie, and Huron, for example, most winters touch the 90% ice coverage range. On Lake Michigan, which has lower ice coverage averages, the record ice coverage is tied between two years; 1977 and 2014. Lake Ontario likewise traditionally has less coverage, and has its record high in 1979, and second-highest ice coverage in 2015.

The Guardian also says that a “report published in January found that the number of -35F (-37.2C) readings in northern Minnesota have fallen by up to 90%,” they point out that low temperatures play a role in weed and pest control, which is true enough, however they neglect to mention that extreme cold kills human beings as well, and at much higher rates than extreme heat does. They also fail to mention that longer, colder winters result in fewer crop rotations and production.

In Climate at a Glance: Temperature Related Deaths, multiple studies back up the fact that cold is deadlier than heat all around the world. One study, published in the Lancet in 2021, found that while 600,000 people die globally from heat, over 6 million die from cold. (see the figure, below) Further, cold related deaths have declined at more than double the rate that heat related deaths have increased.

The table below provides some of the temperature related death numbers.

COLD RELATED DEATHS BY REGIONHEAT RELATED DEATHS BY REGION
 Africa 1.18 million Africa 25,550
 Asia 2.4 million Asia 224,000
 Europe 657,000 Europe 178,700
 South America 116,000 South America 25,250
 UK 44,600 UK 8000
 US 154,800 US 18,750
 China 967,000 China 71,300
 India 655,400 India 83,700
 Australia 14,200 Australia 2300
Total: 6,189,000Total: 637,550
Table 1. Global cold related deaths vs. heat related deaths from 2000 to 2019. Data source: Monash University press release.

The number of severely cold winters may be modestly trending downwards around the Great Lakes and across portions of the American Midwest, but almost everyone would agree that fewer -35℉ days is a blessing not a curse. This year’s winter is particularly mild not because of climate change but because of natural weather patterns, and a long-term trend in declining extreme cold is actually better for human survival. Contrary to The Guardian’s reporting, climate doomsaying is not an appropriate response to the available data.

A New 1787-2005 Temperature Reconstruction Determines The Coldest 50-Year Period Was 1940-1993

The warmest 50-year period in northeastern China occurred from 1844-1893.

From NoTricksZone

By Kenneth Richard

The warmest 50-year period in northeastern China occurred from 1844-1893.

Li et al., 2024

“Compared with single years, in general, high or low temperatures that persist for many years will more significantly affect the growth of trees [30]. When we defined years with T12-1 ≥ −10.73 °C (Mean + 1σ) and T12-1 ≤ −12.61 °C (Mean − 1σ) as extreme warm years and cold years, respectively, the reconstruction for the period of 1787–2005 contained 31 cold years and 36 warm years (Table 4). The extreme cold/warm events lasting for three or more consecutive years were discovered in 1965–1967 and 1976–1978/1791–1798, 1844–1849 and 1889–1891. An 11-year smoothing average of the reconstructed T12-1 series was performed to reveal multi-year and interdecadal variations and to detect the several prolonged cold and warm periods (Figure 5d). After smoothing with an 11-yr moving average, cold periods occurred in 1822–1830 (mean T12-1 = −12.7 °C) and 1957–1970 (mean T12-1 = −12.7 °C), while a warm period occurred in 1787–1793 (mean T12-1 = −10.4 °C) (Figure 5d). Rapid and sustained cooling was observed in the reconstructed series in the years 1790–1826 (T12-1 range −10.3 °C to −12.8 °C, mean = −12.0 °C) and 1939–1969 (T12-1 range −11.6 °C to −12.7 °C, mean = −12.1 °C), where the rates of cooling were about 0.067 °C/year and 0.035 °C/year, respectively (Figure 5d). The two cooling events may be due to the decrease in solar activity [48,49,50]. Using a 50-year time scale, the highest temperature occurring during 1787–2005 was from 1844 to 1893 (T12-1 range −12.79 °C to −9.41 °C, mean = −11.15 °C), similar results were also obtained by Zhu et al. and Jiang et al., while the lowest temperature was from 1940–1993 (T12-1 range −13.57 °C to −10.26 °C, mean = −12.13 °C) (Figure 5d) [33].”

“Recent studies have underscored the strong correlation between changes in Earth’s climate and solar activity. The prevailing belief is that during periods of lower solar activity, such as the Dalton Minimum (c. AD 1790–1830) [51,52,53], Earth’s temperature is expected to decrease. Our reconstruction reflects these expectations, displaying low values from AD 1790 to 1830 that coincide with the Dalton Minimum of diminished solar activity (Figure 7a). Conversely, during periods of heightened solar activity, the climate tends to warm, as observed during the Roman warm period (400–10 BC) and the medieval warm period (900–1200 AD) [53]. It was found that the upper temperature of the troposphere and stratosphere was synchronous with the 10–12 years cycle of solar activity [54]. The 12.9 years cycle correspond with the sun spot cycle [55,56,57,58]. Correlation analyses revealed a significant positive correlation between the annual reconstructed T12-1 and the number of sunspots from the previous December to the current January, with r = 0.22 (N = 188 years, 1818–2005, p = 0.011). The 73-year cycle may be linked to the 50–80 years Lower Gleissberg cycle [31], reflecting changes in solar radiation intensity [57]. A noteworthy relationship between the reconstructed series and sunspot numbers was identified during specific periods, including the 1790s–1840s, 1850s–1870s, 1920s–1930s, and 1950s–2000s (Figure 8B). Additionally, other studies in northern China have also detected cycles of approximately 10 years [25,58,59] and approximately 70 years [45], suggesting potential effects of solar activity in the region.”

Image Source: Li et al., 2024

CFACT says offshore wind violates Clean Air and Clean Water Acts

In formal comments, CFACT has asked EPA to assess the adverse impact of the giant Virginia offshore wind project on air and water quality. The issue is far-reaching because all big offshore wind facilities could have these adverse effects.

From CFACT

By David Wojick

In formal comments, CFACT has asked EPA to assess the adverse impact of the giant Virginia offshore wind project on air and water quality. The issue is far-reaching because all big offshore wind facilities could have these adverse effects.

CFACT points to three specific impacts, two of which come from what are called the “wake effects” of operational offshore wind facilities. Both effects have been observed and modeled in large European offshore operations. I discuss these wake effects in my article HERE.

The first effect CFACT calls the reduced energy air plume. They explain it this way:

“The wake effect is the well-established fact that the air flow downwind of an operating wind turbine has significantly less energy than the air flow upwind. This is because the turbine’s job is to remove energy from the air flow, converting it into electricity. By some estimates, 50% of the energy is removed.”

The Virginia offshore wind facility is removing energy from a 150-square-mile area, thus creating a massive reduced energy plume. The adverse impact is that this plume could increase the ozone levels in nearby urban areas. Ozone flourishes in low energy air.

Immediately onshore from the Virginia wind facility lies the city of Virginia Beach. This sounds like a little tourist town, but it is, in fact, Virginia’s biggest city. It is half again bigger than Pittsburgh.

Virginia Beach is presently in compliance with the EPA ozone standard, but not by much, so the adverse impact of the offshore wind-reduced energy plume is a serious concern. This will be a concern for other coastal urban areas that are onshore of big wind facilities. EPA should be required to take a hard look at this potential impact of reduced energy air on ozone compliance.

The second wake effect is, in a way, the opposite in that there is too much energy. Each wind tower causes turbulence in both the air flow and the water currents as they pass by. This turbulent energy disturbs the sea floor so much that it creates a suspended sediments plume that flows with the current.

Here again, we are talking about a 150-square-mile plume generator, so the result could be massive. There is a large body of scientific literature on the potential adverse impact of these sediment plumes on marine life.

CFACT points out that EPA appears to be ignoring this serious impact in violation of the Clean Water Act. An impact of this magnitude should require a permit under the CWA, but no such permit has been made public.

Perhaps it has not occurred to EPA to apply the CWA to offshore wind facilities.  But it should. The law applies to the “navigable waters” of the US. The Virginia facility is certainly in navigable waters, as several shipping lanes have to be rerouted around it. All the offshore wind facilities presently in development had better be in US waters as the Feds are collecting billions in lease payments for them.

At this point CFACT is merely raising the question, why isn’t the Clean Water Act employed in offshore wind industrialization?

The third issue CFACT raises is technological. EPA is considering issuing an air quality permit for the construction and operation of the Virginia facility. Their primary concern is the exhaust emissions from the huge number of boat trips involved.

CFACT points out that other countries are starting to use electric boats in order to avoid these emissions. In fact, there are service boats specifically designed to be charged directly from the wind facility’s output.

The Clean Air Act requires EPA to call for the best available control technology. Electric boats would seem to fit this requirement, and the firms employed in carrying out this construction should be required to deploy them.

Given these facts, it appears the EPA has not been doing a proper job of offshore wind impact assessment and permitting under both the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

CFACT-Comments-on-CVOW-air-permitHerunterladen

X Users Didn’t Like a Paper’s Tone and Findings, So They Got It Rejected

At Frontiers in Psychology, it seems that users on X are now part of the peer review process.

By Ross Pomeroy

At Frontiers in Psychology, it seems that users on X are now part of the peer review process.

On January 4th, the paper “Meta-analysis: On average, undergraduate students’ intelligence is merely average,” was accepted to the journal. That same day, the abstract was published with the notice that the “final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.”

Soon thereafter, the paper went viral, quickly accruing over 54,000 views, wide discussion on X and Reddit, and coverage in popular media (including RCS). It garnered this attention for its intriguing yet simultaneously obvious finding: over the past 80 years, as a far greater proportion of North Americans attended college, the average IQ of college undergraduates dropped from around 120 to 102, just slightly above the average of 100.

As the authors, Bob Uttl, a psychologist and faculty member at Mount Royal University, and his students Victoria Violo and Lacey Gibson, noted, “The decline in students’ IQ is a necessary consequence of increasing educational attainment over the last 80 years. Today, graduating from university is more common than completing high school in the 1940s.” College students no longer come solely from the ranks of the highly intelligent and privileged, they come from all corners of society. Uttl and his colleagues noted that this has implications. For example, academic standards and curricula might have to be adjusted. Moreover, employers can’t assume that applicants with university degrees are more capable or smarter than those without degrees.

A little over a month after Uttl, Violo, and Gibson’s paper was accepted and the abstract published, they were abruptly notified by email that it was rejected. They were apprised that Specialty Chief Editor Eddy Davelaar, a Professor of Psychology and Applied Neuroscience at Birkbeck, University of London, overrode the three peer reviewers who approved the paper and even his own handling editor. His reasons were subsequently forwarded to Uttl and his colleagues.

While Davelaar raised a couple of issues with the paper’s methods, the vast majority of his focus was on its tone. He wrote that the use of the word “merely” in reference to college students’ just-above-average IQ was “demeaning.” He also noted that the authors’ critiques of other scientists’ works “could have been packaged more sensitively.” He also called unfounded the authors’ opinion that the widening participation policies of universities were the cause of undergraduates’ falling IQs.

In emails viewed by RealClearScience, Uttl extensively refuted Davelaar’s issues the same day the paper was rejected (Feb. 6), to which he received no reply from Davelaar or Frontiers for six days. On February 12, Frontiers replied saying that Davelaar’s concerns remained. If they were addressed, “the manuscript could be reconsidered for publication.”

Uttl subsequently published his refutations of Davelaar’s methodological criticisms online. Lending strength to his arguments is that fact that three peer reviewers and even Davelaar’s own handling editor did not find fault with Uttl’s paper.

Davelaar’s problems with the paper’s tone and conclusions were harder to address, because they were his opinions. It seemed strange that an editor’s opinions should supplant those of the paper’s authors. It’s not his paper, after all.

In response to a request for comment, Frontiers stated that an article can be rejected at any stage before official publication. A public relations manager then quoted their editorial process, “…if a manuscript does not meet our editorial criteria and standards for publication, or if peer-review or research integrity concerns are raised by any review participant or reader (abstracts are published online ahead of official publication), the journal’s chief editors and Frontiers’ Chief Executive Editor will investigate these concerns, regardless of peer review or acceptance stage.”

Frontiers added:

The Speciality Chief Editor (SCE) reviewed the paper in line with our clearly stated editorial process when concerns were raised about the abstract, particularly about underlying bias. The SCE assessment concurred with some reviewers’ judgements, identifying substantive flaws in the meta-analysis and bias in the tone of the paper. The authors were given further opportunities to revise the paper in line with reviewer and SCE comments. These requested revisions were not made but once again disputed. 

RealClearScience reached out directly to Davelaar for comment, but he has not replied.

Uttl was curious what brought on the sudden rejection of his already accepted paper, so he asked representatives at Frontiers. He was told that “several posts” on X triggered Dr. Davelaar’s review. As readers were only able to view the abstract, and thus weren’t able to assess the authors’ methodology, it seems clear that they complained purely about the authors’ tone and provocative conclusions. Davelaar only found ‘problems’ with Uttl, Violo, and Gibson’s methods afterwards.

Uttl and his co-authors were not apprised of the content of the X posts.

“I think an editor or whoever owes it to us to tell us what the issues are, allows us to respond, before rejection,” he told RCS in an email.

Uttl, Violo, and Gibson have since had their publication fees refunded and have submitted the paper for publication at another journal.

This article was originally published by RealClearScience.

How we halted the solar farm juggernaut

Take the 50-megawatt solar farm and substation on 178 acres of prime farmland that was approved by East Lindsey District Council in March 2023.

From The Conservative Woman

By Nigel Jacklin

A FEW weeks ago a small group of dedicated campaigners in Lincolnshire heard that they had successfully overturned a decision to use prime agricultural land as a solar farm. This was the most recent of a Lincolnshire hat-trick this year, suggesting not just that people are finally waking up to the importance of growing food in the UK, but that they won’t put up with detrimental proposals imposed from above.

Take the 50-megawatt solar farm and substation on 178 acres of prime farmland that was approved by East Lindsey District Council in March 2023. This was despite objections from residents, Natural England and even Lincolnshire County Council. Locals who had opposed the initial application in 2022 launched and funded a Judicial Review challenging the decision. Success! A court order signed on February 8 this year quashed the decision. The district council had to accept that their decision was unlawful on grounds that it ‘failed to have sufficient regard to material considerations in relation to the policy of the development of solar farms on best and most versatile land’. In other words the decision ran counter to published government policy  on land use. 

How did this all come about? What helped without doubt was that one of the campaigners, Ru Yarsley, was elected as an independent councillor in May 2023. Like me, she is a member of the Independent Network, a group which supports councillors and local election candidates. In January this year a fellow Independent Network member and Lincolnshire Independent councillor, Peter Overton, gave an impassioned speech at North Kesteven District Council on the same subject. Overton asked the council to support the county council’s position seeking to limit large industrial solar developments on agricultural land. The motion was passed unanimously.  

In his speech to the council, Overton pointed to the wider impacts of such developments through the destruction of rainforest and problems associated with lithium mining. When I spoke to him he had been calculating the impact of China’s use of coal power in the production of solar panels. He estimated that this would seriously impact ‘the global net benefit’ of such initiatives, especially in the first few years, and pointed out that to reach Net Zero we need to reduce our energy consumption. (While many readers will not be convinced by the Net Zero imperative, it’s important to point out that there are concerns amongst those who are, in particular when it comes to imports from China.)

Another success came on the same day, February 8, when South Holland’s District Council rejected a 48-megawatt farm at Holbeach on the principle of the  ‘best and most versatile’ (BMV) farmland north of Roman Bank (a bank built by the Romans to hold back the sea and allow the land to grow crops). The solar farm was not. Robert Gibson, leader of the South Holland Independents Group, said he was pleased they were able to shape the decision alongside the Conservative leadership group. When I spoke to him he said he was also opposing plans to run 87 miles of pylons through Lincolnshire taking energy from offshore wind farms to serve homes and businesses further south. 

Soon after these decisions, the Prime Minister promised a new focus on food security. Rishi Sunak was speaking on February 20 at the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) conference responding to criticism that agriculture is not being given the same strategic importance as energy and the environment.

From a farming perspective, moves to use prime agricultural land for solar farms are just the latest in a long line of ‘irrational interventions’ faced by farmers, most of whom would like to be left alone to grow crops and raise livestock. Sometimes it seems the last thing the clever people in SW1 want farmers to do is feed the nation.  

That was pretty much my ‘takeaway’ from a Better Statistics conference in Whitehall at which I spoke last week. The title was ‘Combating Climate Change – Where are we with Net Zero?’ I spoke alongside an Emeritus Professor and a Just Stop Oil activist. In his introduction Professor Piers Forster (interim chair of the UK Climate Change Committee) explained that the ways in which the government wants farmers to reduce emissions have yet to be devised. In return I suggested that they take into account the views of small farmers in particular and offered to help. I said I was unconvinced by their priorities and presented the results of a survey of farmers our group had conducted last year on behalf of the specialist agri-business communications consultancy RDP. It showed, I told them, that climate change is well down the list of their priorities, coming eighth in a list of ten concerns presented to them). What they are much more concerned about are costs, prices, red tape and the weather: ‘Problems associated with legislation or other measures introduced to tackle climate change’ are more important than ‘problems associated with changes in the weather due to climate change’.

The only ‘farmer’ who has spoken to me about climate change is an ex-corporate executive who runs a vineyard in Sussex. He explained that if it were not for climate change he would not be able to grow his grapes. He went on to tell me how the Romans had vineyards as far north as Yorkshire. We seem to be increasingly living in an age of logic-defying dogma.  

While all this work is being undertaken to change the nation’s electricity supply to wind farms and solar, I have no doubt that farmers will be more interested in JCB’s unveiling of a hydrogen fuel engine last year. My guess is they trust JCB more than they trust the government.

Met Office Must Account for the ‘Junk’ Temperature Data Propping up Net Zero Insanity

Pressure is likely to grow in the coming days for the U.K. Met Office to make a full public statement about the state of its nationwide temperature measuring stations.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

Pressure is likely to grow in the coming days for the U.K. Met Office to make a full public statement about the state of its nationwide temperature measuring stations. This follows sensational revelations in last Friday’s Daily Sceptic that nearly eight out of ten sites had huge scientifically-designated ‘uncertainties’ that essentially disqualified them from providing the accurate data required to promote the collectivist Net Zero agenda. Our report went viral on social media with over 1,300 retweets on X, and it was reposted on a number of sites. The investigative journalist Paul Homewood has covered the Met Office’s temperature claims for many years, and in the light of the new disclosures he noted that if it wanted to continue to use its existing station measurements, it should show a warning that the margin of error is so great “that they have no statistical significance at all”.

Specifically, nearly one in three (29.2%) Met Office sites are rated by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) as CIMO Class 5, and this comes with a warning of “estimated uncertainties added by siting of 5C°”. Class 5 can be termed a ‘junk’ rating since the WMO gives no guidance on where it can be located. The next to junk Class 4 comes with uncertainties of 2C°, while Class 3 has a 1C° warning. From information disclosed under a Freedom of Information request, the Daily Sceptic compiled the graph below that shows Class 4 accounted for 48.7% of the Met Office’s 380 recording stations. Only 13.7%, or 52 stations are free of ‘uncertainties’ warnings.

Net Zero promotion requires reasonably precise measurements of both local and global temperatures and these are simply not available. In the run-up to last year’s COP28 meeting, the BBC ran an explanatory article on the significance of the 1.5C° threshold, a rise of the Earth’s temperature based on the ending of the Little Ice Age. “Every tenth of a degree of warming matters, but as you get warmer each increment matters more”, said Myles Allen, Professor of Geosystem Science at the University of Oxford, and a co-ordinating author of the IPCC’s special report on 1.5C° in 2018. It is difficult to see how precision down to 0.1C° can be achieved by consulting current Met Office data, let alone the ability to claim to two decimal points, as the Met Office did, that last year in the U.K. was only 0.06C° cooler than the all-time annual record.

Comments on social media following the Daily Sceptic publication were often damning. On Homewood’s site, ‘YorksChris’ observed, “wow, this is horrendous… some of the locations of the so-called professional stations simply amaze me!”, while ‘magasox’ commented that this was huge, adding, “sceptics should shout it from the rooftops at every opportunity”. Heads, he felt, should roll, “but of course they won’t”. On the Daily Sceptic blog, ‘For a fist full of roubles’ looked forward to mainstream media latching on to this, “and revealing how the powers that be deliberately mislead us”. On the U.S.-based Watts Up With That? site over 300 posts greeted the news, with ‘UK-Weather-Lass’ stating: “It’s about time there was a public inquiry into how rotten and unfit for purpose the Met Office is, and why it is allowed to continue to be so.”

The problems with the Met Office data are mainly caused by increasing urbanisation which has encroached on the space around stations and corrupted measurements with artificial heat. Similar problems have been identified around the world leading to ever-increasing doubts about the accuracy of frequently quoted ‘global’ temperatures. Scientists estimate that heat corruption is likely to be responsible for up to 30% of warming claimed by the meteorological databases. The Met Office adds its figures to global compilations but the increasingly politicised state-funded operation also uses its data to declare almost constant temperature ‘records’. The Daily Sceptic has investigated the heat records declared since 2000 and found that all bar two should be disqualified. Many of them have been set in ‘junk’ Class 5 and most of the rest in Class 4.

Class 5 records include the highest daily maximum temperature in Northern Ireland, declared in 2021 at Castlederg. The highest January monthly temperature was set this year at Achfary and this Class 5 site also holds the record set in December 2019. Three U.K. area records were also set at Class 5 sites including England NW, East Anglia and England SE and Central S. The latter record was provided by St. James’s Park, which was one of five sites that was said to top 40C° on July 19th, 2022. This particular event was lauded at the time by the Met Office as a “milestone in climate history”. Another one of the 40C° sites, Northolt airport, is also Class 5.

According to the WMO, a Class 5 site is one where nearby obstacles “create an inappropriate environment for a meteorological measurement that is intended to be representative of a wide area”. According to a previous FOI request from Paul Homewood, the Met Office noted that Class 5 data, “will be flagged and not quoted in national records”. This does not appear to happen. On July 25th, 2019, the site at the Cambridge Botanic Gardens was credited with an new U.K. temperature record of 38.7C°. The Cambridge Botanic Gardens is a Class 5 site, and it still holds the July record for the region of East Anglia. All these records should be removed, or at least flagged with the large uncertainties set down by the WMO.

Ditto ‘near junk’ Class 4, where the crowd of record holders is higher. Class 4 sites include Charterhall where the highest Scottish temperature was set in 2022, and Hawarden Airport, home to the highest Welsh recording. A monthly U.K. record for August was set in 2003 at Faversham, while no less than five U.K. areas have records attributed to this class that comes with a WMO ‘uncertainty’ of 2C°. The all-time British record was set on July 19th, 2022 at a Class 3 site, which comes with WMO uncertainty of 1C°. Set halfway down the runway at RAF Coningsby, the record stood for just 60 seconds at 3:12pm, and was preceded by a rise and fall of 0.6C° either side of the event. A previous FOI from the Daily Sceptic disclosed that three typhoon fighter jets were landing on the runway at or around the time the record was set. All of these records should also be ditched as well, or given appropriate warnings.

So far as can be seen, no Met Office heat record has been set since 2000 at pristine Class 1 sites, which might not surprise given there are only 24 of them. Only two – the highest U.K. February temperature at 21.2C° and November at 22.4C° – have been set at near pristine Class 2 locations.

Most propagandising for Net Zero revolves around higher temperatures, and without this ammunition the project will quickly wither. It explains why these so-called ‘records’ are rarely out of the mainstream media headlines. The high temperature readings are weaponised at the national level, but local media is also targeted. This can be shown by considering the photograph below from Google Earth.

This is the site of the Sheffield temperature station. On July 19th, 2022, the local Star newspaper reported that the city had smashed the temperature record with over 39C° for the first time. According to the Met Office, the newspaper reported, the record reached 39.4C° on July 18th. The red marker shows where the Sheffield readings are taken, hard by a busy road with a large bus lane, surrounded by either city buildings or heavy vegetation, and located at or near what appears to be a concrete park. It might not surprise to learn that Sheffield is a Class 5 site.

The Met Office’s Chief Scientist and leading Net Zero promoter Professor Stephen Belcher states that “in a climate unaffected by human influence, climate modelling shows that it is virtually impossible for temperatures in the U.K. to reach 40C°”. It is not thought he was referring to the influence of typhoon jets or the 95 bus.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor