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.
Axios Atlanta recently published an article titled “Pollen season in Atlanta is getting worse, thanks to climate change,” claiming that rising temperatures caused by climate change are making allergy season more severe. Axios’ article is misleading at best and misses a larger point.
Axios Atlanta recently published an article titled “Pollen season in Atlanta is getting worse, thanks to climate change,” claiming that rising temperatures caused by climate change are making allergy season more severe. Axios’ article is misleading at best and misses a larger point. Data and historical trends indicate that while pollen levels fluctuate, factors like urbanization and land use changes—particularly the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect—are far more significant contributors to Atlanta’s pollen patterns than their so-called local climate change.
“A warming climate means that allergy season is starting earlier and lasting longer,” write Kristal Dixon and Alex Fitzpatrick for Axios. “Longer, warmer growing seasons are leading to earlier pollen releases and higher overall pollen levels.”
Dixon and Fitzpatrick ignore several key facts in their attempt to connect long-term climate change to longer allergy seasons. For example, Atlanta’s well-documented Urban Heat Island effect—caused by dense infrastructure, concrete, and asphalt trapping heat—plays a much larger role in local temperature trends than any global warming influence. The city has expanded significantly over the last few decades, increasing localized temperatures and extending the growing season for plants.
According to a NASA analysis of Atlanta’s UHI effect, the city consistently experiences significantly higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas due to human-made structures retaining heat. This localized warming—not global climate change—is a key driver of temperature-related shifts in pollen cycles.
This pair of Landsat satellite images provides two views of urban Atlanta, Georgia, on September 28, 2000; the urban core is in the center of the images. The top image is a photo-like view of the area, where trees and other vegetation are green, roads and dense development appear cement-gray, and bare ground appears tan or brown. The bottom image is a land surface temperature map, in which cooler temperatures are yellow and hotter temperatures are red. Source: NASA
Second, pollen levels are heavily influenced by regional vegetation patterns and CO₂ fertilization effects, which lead to healthier plant growth.
As pointed out in a Climate Realism article, pollen season is largely dependent on precipitation levels and natural climate variability, not just temperature. When there’s more rain, plants produce more pollen. Conversely, droughts can suppress pollen levels. Climate models do not reliably account for these local and regional factors, yet Axios presents the issue as if it is solely driven by global temperature changes.
Additionally, previous claims about worsening allergy seasons have not held up to scrutiny. For example, a 2022 Climate Realism analysis debunked similar assertions by showing that pollen trends vary by region and that some areas are actually experiencing less pollen, not more. Furthermore, studies cited in mainstream media often rely on cherry-picked data from limited time frames rather than examining long-term historical trends.
Axios embraced Climate Central’s use of “consecutive freeze-free days” as a proxy for pollen season noting that between 1970 and 2024 the number of consecutive freeze free days increased it cities like Reno, Myrtle Beach, and Toledo. Interestingly, it didn’t provide any data addressing whether incidences of treatment for allergies or sales of allergy medicine increased in those cities corresponding to the increase in days between and without freezing temperatures. And, despite climate change being a supposedly global phenomenon, it turns out the number of cities experienced a decline in the number of consecutive freeze free days, so the logical question to ask, did reported incidences of allergy attacks, or sales of allergy medicine, as a proxy, also decline. If Axios asked those questions it certainly provided no answer to them in the article, yet that is a reasonable connection to make if one is asking whether climate change is impacting allergies.
Even if climate change, as opposed to other factors, is causing longer allergy seasons, this misses a larger point, the positive benefits of a decline in freezing temperatures. The Axios story mentioned one in passing but failed to expand on it writing, “[a]bove-freezing temperatures allow for better plant growth.” While the suffering of allergy sufferers should not be ignored, as Axios notes, allergies are treatable, but fewer below freezing days and nights benefit plants, pollinating insects, and humans alike.
Climate Realism has made this point in repeated posts, here, here, and here, for example. Global greening has contributed to the largest decline in global hunger in history. Greater plant growth not only removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but the allergy causing pollen it emits is great for pollinating insects like bees, and birds.
More directly, copious peer reviewed reports confirm that cold temperatures are responsible for 10 times more deaths than hot temperatures. As a result, as the number of freezing days has declined, the number of deaths attributable to non-optimum temperatures has also fallen sharply, preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. (See the table, below)
Table. Total global cold related deaths vs. heat related deaths by region from 2000 to 2019. Data source: Monash University press release.
Instead of taking a broad, evidence-based approach, Axios in its attempt to connect worsening allergies to climate change it has once again resorted to alarmist claims without addressing all relevant factors. Atlanta’s allergy season is influenced by many variables, including land use changes, dense urban landscaping with pollen producing plants, increased green space, and urbanization. Blaming climate change without considering these other influences misleads the public and fosters unnecessary panic. If the media is truly interested in informing the public, they should focus on all contributing factors that might be causing a longer allergy season. They could also discuss the tremendous global net benefits of fewer freezing days.
In Economical With the Truth I took issue with a BBC Verify report that asked, “If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren’t bills coming down?”. It ignored lots of the net zero-related reasons for this, and largely blamed gas prices, while continuing to claim that renewable energy is cheap, and will deliver lower prices in due course.
In Economical With the Truth I took issue with a BBC Verify report that asked, “If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren’t bills coming down?”. It ignored lots of the net zero-related reasons for this, and largely blamed gas prices, while continuing to claim that renewable energy is cheap, and will deliver lower prices in due course.
It may as well have been a dry run for a report released today by Energy UK (“the voice of the energy industry”), and which makes many of the same claims, while indulging in some short-term special pleading.
Although Energy UK claims to be the voice of the UK energy industry, it is completely signed up to the net zero agenda, fossil fuel outfits don’t seem to get a look-in, and it might as well describe itself as the voice of the renewables industry (which is doing rather well, given that it already has its own trade body – Renewable UK). Energy UK’s most recent chief executive was Emma Pinchbeck, who is now chief executive of the Climate Change Committee. The Energy UK board she leaves behind includes top people from Centrica, Drax, E.ON UK, EDF, and a new chief executive who is on the board of Green Alliance and who, prior to joining Energy UK, led work on net zero, the future energy system and decarbonisation at Citizens Advice. Its Chairman is David Laws, former leading MP for the Liberal Democrats, a party also extremely keen on net zero. Others have biographies that tell us they variously held roles across low carbon generation at Equinor, Orsted and EDF Energy; have worked in the Executive teams at Ofgem and National Grid ESO, leading a range of operational functions, with responsibilities spanning decarbonisation, network development, and security of supply; helped to deliver the CBI’s “ground-breaking” report on climate change in 2007, which helped shift the perception of the role business can play in the low-carbon economy, and set up and led the CBI’s climate change team before becoming Director of Infrastructure; and so on. We get the picture.
No surprise, then, that today’s report, which runs to just 15 pages, including frontispiece, executive summary, and lots of large graphs, seeks to tell us that we need to decarbonise faster to enjoy cheaper electricity prices, but that we might need some government (aka taxpayer) help in the short term to get there.
It tells us that UK energy bills are too high, and that the consequence is that growth is being held back and living standards are being damaged – at least we can agree about that. 40% of customers struggle to afford energy, over three million households live in fuel poverty, and energy debt is running at a record high of close to £4 billion. Fortunately, the government has committed to reducing bills by “up to” £300 by 2030, and reducing our reliance on international gas prices is the only long-term answer (apparently). The problem is, although the report reiterates (without evidence) that the “Clean Power mission” will lead to lower energy bills, there’s a bit of a problem with that happening by 2030. They are supremely confident that “Clean Power” will achieve tangible results in the next decade, but there’s still an issue:
Whilst wholesale prices may start to decrease by 2030, it’s expected that increases in other parts of the bill may offset these reductions. This presents a clear problem.
It’s all gloriously vague, but – so they say – a rapid acceleration of critical network connections could reduce bills by £100, and extending the length of the Contracts for Difference from 15 to 20 years could enable an additional £20 reduction (apparently). But savings are only going to be achieved by behavioural changes by customers – heat pumps, solar, EV charging, and other forms of consumer “flexibility” (weren’t we told that this wouldn’t be necessary?).
Hilariously (well, it would be hilarious, were it not so serious) we are told that one of the main reasons bills are so high is because:
Many of the costs of transition to a clean energy system are being levied on energy bills, rather than being paid for through general taxation. This includes increases in existing schemes such as Contracts for Difference (CfD) and the Capacity Market, as well as new charges to fund investment in technologies such as nuclear, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage.
Shocking, isn’t it? What is the government thinking of? The huge extra costs of “Clean Power”, which mean that it isn’t cheap at all, are visible for energy users to see, right there on their energy bills. Far better to pretend, and to fund the costs through general taxation (which we all pay anyway) and to pretend that energy bills are cheap!
There follows a graphic which explains that annual bills by 2030 will be impacted by various factors:
Distribution networks account for £138 as local grids are reinforced to cope with rising demand.
Transmission networks account for £40 to fund long distance lines to connect more capacity.
Capacity market accounts for £21 to pay for backup generation.
System operations account for £32 because curtailment cost could double by 2030.
Contracts for difference account for £34 – they are likely to increase as more capacity comes online.
Legacy renewables subsidies account for £121. It is hoped Renewables Obligation and Feedin Tariff costs will start tapering away from 2027, saving around £10 off typical bills by 2030, but there will be some costs until the 2040s.
They hope that gas will set the price of electricity less frequently. They assume that this will gradually save the current cost of £311.
Supplier costs and VAT account for £208. They assume that these won’t change significantly.
Key mechanisms to reduce bills
There follows a table which includes some of the same fallacious thinking as that above which seems to think that energy costs are covered by general taxation so that they don’t appear on our energy bills then they are not costs at all. For instance, “targeted customer support” (essentially taxpayer money being diverted to help those customers who are struggling the most) could save £400 per annum for the 3.17 million households currently in fuel poverty. Then there’s the £13.2 billion already committed to in the Labour Party manifesto to “invest in energy efficiency”, which might save £140 per annum on the average bill. But it all still costs the taxpayer.
Making British business more competitive
Businesses are just as impacted by high energy costs as households – especially manufacturers competing with foreign firms who face much lower costs, including those in Europe, the United States and China. Most of these options will also reduce costs for businesses because they lower the total cost of the system. Businesses can also be supported by more targeted policies, including investment in electrification, exemption from certain costs (like the supercharger) and a review of non-domestic policy costs.
Can you spot the flaws? No questions are asked as to why countries with proportionately much less “Clean Power” – especially the US and China – have “much lower costs” than UK businesses. “Supporting” businesses by more targeted policies and exemption from certain costs is moving the deckchairs on the Titanic – we are still heading for the iceberg.
Optimising the energy system to deliver savings
Here we really enter Looking Glass World. First up is “maximising flexibility”, which really amounts to insisting that consumers use energy when they don’t want to and can’t have it when they would like it. “Flexibility” is a euphemism for rationing in this context. It’s also only really effective for households with batteries, heat pumps and EVs, and even they are said to be in line for possible (“could” is the word they use) savings of just £115 per annum. For the rest of us (we might, for instance, run dishwashers overnight) “smaller reductions” will be achieved. You can say that again. Pressing on with the roll-out of smart meters is also part of this wizard wheeze, despite the problems they have experienced to date, and the ongoing huge costs (£18 billion?). Bizarrely, this section of the strategy is described as having minimal costs.
Working with our European neighbours, they say, could save £10 billion this Parliament. Where that figure comes from is a mystery, since they talk of annual savings of £120-£370 million. They want us to link carbon trading systems, and to achieve more efficient electricity trading arrangements. It isn’t explained, but I assume that this is a reference to the use of the interconnectors. Given that we are massive net importers of electricity via said interconnectors (and we tend to offload when it’s windy and sunny, and buy during dunkelflautes), it’s difficult to understand what benefits we can achieve here. Do they really think our continental neighbours will pay higher prices to us for electricity when there’s a glut and charge us lower prices when there’s a shortage? This section ends with a bizarre – and very discouraging – paragraph:
If this issue is not resolved over the coming years, the costs to households and businesses is forecast to increase substantially in the 2030s given the combination of highly interconnected European markets and the UK’s role as a net electricity exporter.
Net electricity exporter? Really?
I have to quote the next paragraph in full, both because of the reality of the costs it expresses, and the naivety of the thinking as to how those costs can be reduced:
The system operator manages the electricity system in real time by paying power stations to turn their production up and down. The cost of this will increase from £2.4 billion in 2023/24 to an estimated £4.7 billion in 2030,20 although successfully achieving Clean Power by 2030 will play an important role in reducing these costs. Charging and discharging batteries is often the cheapest way to balance the system. However, over three-quarters of the time21 the system operator uses a more expensive power station – often a gas plant – because its systems were not designed to cope with lots of small batteries. Continuing to upgrade the national control room will allow us to use more, cheaper batteries as well as encouraging further investment in clean energy. Giving the system operator a clear objective to operate the system more effectively – from system planning to re-dispatching power stations and encouraging all flexibility to participate in markets – could significantly reduce costs.
Investing public money in a strategic and targeted way to deliver significant guarantee bill reductions
Here the paper doubles down on the idea that re-directing taxpayer’s money to ease the burden on bill-payers (“The only way to lock in significant energy bill savings by 2030 is by injecting public money into the energy system) is somehow a solution to the problem of the high costs associated with rushing to decarbonise the grid by 2030. They clearly don’t understand (or don’t want to accept the reality) that is simply robbing Peter to pay Paul (or, often, robbing Peter to pay Peter).
Energy bills are high because some of the costs of decarbonising the energy system are added to energy bills (or, as they would have it “Energy bills are artificially inflated by the costs of government policies recovered from bills, costing the typical household £180 per year). This discourages households from switching to electricity for heating, via devices such as heat pumps. The answer is – to them – blindingly obvious:
Removing all policy costs would cost around £6.5 billion a year and save households between £130 and £370 per year. The Government should also ensure that future policy costs such as CCUS, hydrogen, and nuclear don’t exacerbate the gas to electricity price ratio.
Of course, the £6.5 billion removed from bills every year will be added to our taxes instead. The same is true of their proposed expenditure of £1.5 billion per annum from general taxation to help bill-payers in fuel poverty. And it’s also true of the £13 billion warm homes plan, which they reckon will save £140 per annum on the average bill. That last proposal might have more logical merit than the others, but I’d like to see a detailed costing acoompanied by a realistic cost/benefit analysis first.
Capitalising on the benefits of a rapidly evolving energy system
This strikes me as a strange heading for the section that follows. NESO, they say, estimate the cost of achieving “Clean Power” by 2030 at £200 billion.
In the short run, that investment must be paid for. It can be paid for either by taxpayers or billpayers, now or in the future. The more costs are moved away from current consumers, the lower bills will be in the short term.
This is just more of the same. Transfer the costs from bills to general taxation. Hope the consumers see lower bills and that they don’t realise that this is paid for by their higher tax bills.
They recognise that the massive, planned extension of wind power will be paid for via the Contracts for Difference (CfD) regime. In order to bring down the annual costs of CfDs, they suggest extending their life from 15 to 20 years. Investors will no doubt love the extended government price guarantee (how many businesses enjoy such a guarantee over 15 years, let alone 20?), but the claimed annual saving for consumers of £15-20 per annum is dubious, and is in any event paltry given the extent to which the agenda has raised costs to date and continues to do so.
They acknowledge that “[a]chieving clean power by 2030 will require £60 billions of investment in energy transmission. This will ultimately be recouped via energy bills” but they believe that accelerating critical connections (this “will require boldly driving them through the planning process”) could save £50 per household in 2030 (and not before then). Wow! Trash the planning process so that infrastructure developers can ride roughshod over local communities and keep your fingers crossed that in five years’ time it will possibly knock £50 per annum off our bills.
The next suggestion is little better (possibly worse):
To achieve policy cost rebalancing for non-domestic users, legacy renewables policy costs and Climate Change Levy payments should be moved off energy bills. This reduction in electricity bills would be partly funded by gradual increases to gas CCL rates leaving £1-4 billion of revenue a year to be covered by general taxation and hypothecated CBAM and ETS revenues. This proposal could save UK supermarkets up to 15% on their energy costs, which could translate to cheaper groceries for British households. A typical pub not serving food would see very little change in its short-term bills (+/- 5%), but would be incentivised to electrify its operations, saving around 15% on its energy costs.
All highly dubious, and involves no reduction in costs, simply a policy of moving bill costs to general taxation again. This doesn’t make anybody better off at all, but no doubt it helps the energy companies.
Where does this leave us?
The report ends by asking this question. Where indeed? Not in a good place, that’s for sure.
The Guardian, of course, reports on all this in a reasonably favourable way, and concludes with a quote from DESNZ:
As shown by National Energy System Operator’s independent [sic] report, clean power by 2030 is achievable and will deliver a more secure energy system, which could see a lower cost of electricity and lower bills.
The operative word is “could”. One thing is clear – UK bill-payers face some of the highest energy bills in the world and the next five years are likely to see them increasing substantially. Energy UK’s proposals don’t deal with that fundamental problem. At best we will be paying those extra costs via general taxation rather than via our energy bills, but however they cut it we will all be much worse off.
In a post in December 2021, I first asked which state, or country would be the first to hit the “Renewable Energy Wall” — described as “a situation where the electricity system stops functioning, or the price goes through the roof,” or some other aspects of impossibility become so unavoidable that the zero-carbon fantasy must be abandoned.
Although the coming of the Wall has been obvious to intelligent observers for a long time, the green energy fantasists had set their statutory and regulatory mandates sufficiently far into the future that there was no immediate reckoning. But now, five and more years on, that is starting to change. The first of the impossible mandates are suddenly looming. The arrival of President Trump on the scene has also been a huge negative for the green energy crowd. But for today I’ll focus on a subject that has much more to do with reality than with any action of the President. That subject is fully electrified heavy-duty trucks.
Here in New York, our State and City governments have gone nuts adopting one after another green energy mandate that is impossible and will never happen. The majority of them came with the State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) and the City’s Local Law 97, both adopted in 2019. For the most part, the impossible mandates only begin to kick in in 2030. So, no Wall there yet.
All-electric heavy duty trucks? Did anyone think this one through? Clearly not. The New York Post today reports that two upstate legislators of the Democratic Party have now introduced legislation to postpone the electric heavy-duty truck mandate until 2027. The legislators are Jeremy Coney Cooney of Rochester and Donna Lupardo of Binghamton. The two call the mandate “nearly impossible for the trucking industry to comply with.” Here is one among several noted problems:
The legislators noted that an average diesel truck can be refilled in about 10 minutes and can drive for about 2,000 miles. By comparison, an electric, zero-emission heavy-duty truck takes approximately 10 hours to charge and can run for about 500 miles. . . . “Battery charging times are . . . a challenge and will remain so until new technology emerges and is commercialized,” [Lupardo] said.
Does anybody really think that this battery charging issue is going to be solved within a couple of years? People have only been working on batteries that are suitable for this purpose for about 100 years or so. Other issues noted by the legislators include “lack of charging infrastructure” and “cost.” On the cost front, it the Post reports that the price of a fully-electric heavy-duty truck can be as much as triple that of a diesel competitor with comparable load capacity. Exit quote from these legislators:
“As we transition to a clean energy future, there is no point in putting an entire industry at risk in the process.”
Needless to say, all of the New York environmental groups are lined up on the other side. From the Post:
[E]nviromental groups opposing the proposed rule delay include the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, Environmental Advocates of NY, Earthjustice, Environmental Defense Fund, New Yorkers for Clean Power, Sierra Club, Tri-State Transportation Campaign and Union of Concerned Scientists.
Here is their perspective on the matter:
“Delaying implementation is not only a foolish response to a false crisis whipped up by manufacturers, who are looking to rig the market in their favor, but it will lead to more ER visits, people suffering from asthma, and increased health costs, particularly for communities of color and low-income,” said a memo co-signed by the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. “Our organizations urge the governor and the legislature to stand up for vulnerable communities and reject this legislation, and any effort like it.”
The enviros seem to think they can get their way by claiming to speak for “vulnerable communities.” As far as I’ve ever been able to determine, greenhouse gas emissions have almost nothing to do with rates of asthma or other health issues. I live right here in the middle of Manhattan, with hundreds of diesel trucks passing by each day, and we don’t have noticeably worse health than people anywhere else. Meanwhile, don’t “vulnerable” communities, or at least low-income ones, have an interest in not having the cost of delivering their groceries and other goods increased by a multiple by an all-electric truck requirement?
So far, here at the consumer level, the impact of the electric truck mandate has not been noticeable. The mandate only applies to manufacturers’ sales, not to the actual fleets of the truck operators. The manufacturers seem to have figured out some workaround for themselves that is working at least for the moment. (Maybe they are making a few electric trucks that may or may not work and selling them to themselves or friends for a dollar.). But that won’t help for long. The 7% goes to 10% next year, 15% in 2027, 20% in 2028, 25% in 2029, and on up from there.
California apparently has tried to apply its percentage mandates to the fleets of the truck operators, rather than just to the sales of the manufacturers. That has been nixed by the incoming Trump administration.
There are ten states (including California) that have adopted the California rules on fully electric heavy-duty trucks. As far as I can determine, New York is the first one showing signs of blinking. Without the miraculous arrival of some new technology within the next year or two, there is no way that this can go on much longer. The likelihood of the miraculous new technology is about zero.
The initiative of Assemblymembers Cooney and Lupardo is unlikely to succeed this year. Next year, or maybe the year after, it will likely be a different story.
BMW has decided to suspend the originally planned production of the all-electric E-Mini models at its British plant in Oxford for the time being. Instead, these models will be manufactured in Leipzig and China in the future.
BMW has decided to suspend the originally planned production of the all-electric E-Mini models at its British plant in Oxford for the time being. Instead, these models will be manufactured in Leipzig and China in the future. The decision is a setback for the British automotive industry, which relies heavily on investments in electromobility (automobilwoche: 24.02.25).
Original plan: E-Mini from Oxford from 2026
BMW had originally planned to start production of two all-electric Mini models in Oxford from 2026. In the long term, the plant should produce only electric vehicles from 2030.
For this conversion, the company had announced an investment of 600 million pounds (about 724 million euros) in 2023.
Reasons for the production stop
BMW cites the uncertainties in the automotive industry and lower demand for electric vehicles than expected as the main reasons for the stop. The timeline for the introduction of E-mini production is therefore currently being revised. In addition to market conditions, possible trade barriers and tariffs after Brexit also play a role. According to reports, there were discussions between BMW and the British government regarding the future competitiveness of the Oxford site.
Production of combustion models continues
The Mini plant in Oxford will continue to produce models with combustion engines for the time being. However, BMW emphasizes that the plant will continue to play a central role for the Mini brand in the future. In addition, the company is in close contact with the British government to find possible solutions for the subsequent production of electric vehicles in the UK.
Impact on the automotive industry
BMW’s decision shows that the automotive industry is in a phase of uncertainty. Several manufacturers are adjusting their strategies due to weakening demand for electric vehicles, and experts believe that further adjustments in the production plans of various companies could follow. Whether BMW will still produce the E-Mini in Oxford at a later date remains open for the time being.
President Trump has suggested that water be transported from the Pacific Northwest to California to help fight fires and for agricultural use.
This idea was strongly criticized by many, including the authoritative Seattle Times ClimateLab, which is supported by disinterested, civic-minded advocacy groups and individuals
President Trump has suggested that water be transported from the Pacific Northwest to California to help fight fires and for agricultural use.
This idea was strongly criticized by many, including the authoritative Seattle Times ClimateLab, which is supported by disinterested, civic-minded advocacy groups and individuals (see below).
But perhaps, examining the weather situation this year, President Trump’s error was not in the general idea, but in the direction of water flow.
Specifically, California should consider sending water to the Pacific Northwest, particularly this year.
To illustrate, below is the latest 180-hour forecast precipitation accumulation over the western U.S.
The mountains of northern California and the Sierra Nevada will receive at least twice what will fall on the Cascades and Olympics.
Los Angeles, yes, LA… will get about the same precipitation amount as Seattle.
Do you want to be shocked? If so, look at the forecast precipitation during the next week at Blue Canyon Airport on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada (just northwest of Lake Tahoe). The high-resolution US GFS model is going for about 50 inches of snow!
This pattern has happened again and again this winter. As a result, the reservoirs in California are above average, with some close to being full, EVEN BEFORE the massive CA snowpack starts to melt.
Contrast California’s wet bounty with the current situation of the Yakima drainage, which is currently well below normal (see below).
Now that I have convinced many of you of the necessity of shipping water north from sodden northern California to the parched Pacific Northwest, is this idea practical?
It may be!
Far easier than the famous water works of southern California, in which water from the Owens Valley was shipped hundreds of miles to LA across formidable terrain.
Using Google Maps, it only took me seconds to find a nice route from the wet northern CA mountains to the dry domain of Yakima and eastern WA. I am sure many of you could do better.
Mostly level or downhill…and I have hardly optimized the route!
In short, out-of-the-box thinking is needed to allow the West Coast to deal with the frequent north-south imbalances in precipitation. Northern CA water is not fated to only go south. In many ways, going north is more practical.
You may have heard a cringeworthy advert on the radio recently from the Woodland Trust.
It features a woman putting on a soppy voice droning on about the “climate crisis”. She is advertising this campaign:
The climate crisis is having a profound impact on nature. It’s urgent that we understand how wildlife is coping with shifting seasons, warmer temperatures and unpredictable weather patterns.
Climate change has already accelerated spring’s arrival by an average of 8.4 days compared to the early 1900s. Now, we need you to help us find out whether the signs of spring are changing too.
Let us know whether you’ve spotted any of spring’s three vital signs – frogspawn, a singing song thrush or flowering blackthorn. Your records are crucial in helping us understand current threats and how climate change is affecting the health of nature.
So don’t wait – scroll down to submit your records before 31 March 2025 and play your part in nature’s recovery.
Is that the extent of the crisis then? Spring coming 8 days earlier than a century ago?
In other words, we now typically get the sort of temperatures on 1st March that our great grandfathers had on the 8th March!
Or to put it another way – Oxford now gets the same temperatures in spring that London had a century ago.
And this is causing a “profound impact” on nature? Seriously?
In any event, as we have always known, nature does not do averages. Spring temperatures have swung up and down by as much as three degrees from year to year. Yet nature seems to have managed perfectly fine.
Indeed, it is arguable that spring weather is much more predictable now than in earlier decades:
But the facts don’t fit with the Woodland Trust’s climate agenda.
The Energy Secretary hopes to pave the way for a mass expansion of Britain’s electricity grid through the countryside by lowering annual average bills by £250 for residents near new pylons.
However, energy experts and campaigners described the move as a “bribe” and warned it would inflate costs for millions of other households who will effectively be required to subsidise the discount.
Jeremy Hunt, the former Conservative chancellor, previously explored the policy, but the Treasury is understood to have raised concerns that it would just leave the rest of the country facing higher energy bills.
It is understood that the Government will fund the scheme through an obligation on suppliers. Companies are expected to recoup the costs by passing them onto customers.
Thomas Edwards, at energy consultancy Cornwall Insight, said: “That money would need to come from somewhere.”
One industry insider added: “It’s a tax on bills to pay for bribes.”
Jack Richardson, the head of policy at Britain’s largest energy supplier Octopus, wrote on social media site X: “Compensation might be justified but it’ll ultimately push up bills further for others.”
Under Mr Miliband’s plan, households living within half a kilometre of new or upgraded infrastructure could have their average electricity bill reduced by nearly 40pc.
The greatest threat to sustainable energy for the 21st century is the global warming scare. Climate‐related pressure to artificially constrain use of fossil fuels … based on incorrect assumptions.
Earlier this year, Our World in Data published a Daily Data on global air pollution. Hannah Ritchie, deputy director and science outreach lead, wrote:
Global emissions of local air pollutants have probably passed their peak. The chart [below] shows estimates of global emissions of pollutants such as sulphur dioxide (which causes acid rain), nitrogen oxides, and black and organic carbon. These pollutants are harmful to human health and can also damage ecosystems.
It looks like emissions have peaked for almost all of these pollutants. Global air pollution is now falling, and we can save many lives by accelerating this decline. The exception is ammonia, which is mainly produced by agriculture. Its emissions are still rising.
Hannah Ritchie notes that some countries are lagging, getting worse. Those are the impoverished countries that rely on wood and dung burning, but there is also good news.
——————-
The overall improvement has been documented for the U.S. and metro areas therein, as well as in China, India, and the EU. Child air pollution fatalities are declining. And all this while the usage of fossil fuels has increased around the world in recent years and decades.
These dramatic gains were hardly predicted by the anti-industrial environmentalists. They now define carbon dioxide emissions as a “pollutant” (it is not) to make their case. But CO2 enrichment is a positive externality, not a negative one.
Conclusion
Improving emissions with greater usage underscores the increasing sustainability of fossil fuels. As I wrote for the Cato Institute more than a quarter-century ago:
Environmentalists support a major phase‐down of fossil fuels (with the near‐term exception of natural gas) and substitution of favored “nonpolluting” energies to conserve depletable resources and protect the environment. Yet energy megatrends contradict those concerns. Fossil‐fuel resources are becoming more abundant, not scarcer, and promise to continue expanding as technology improves, world markets liberalize, and investment capital expands.
Add natural gas to the list. But there was one major threat to energy sustainability, I wrote in 1999:
The greatest threat to sustainable energy for the 21st century is the global warming scare. Climate‐related pressure to artificially constrain use of fossil fuels … based on incorrect assumptions.
Sensational new discoveries arising from long-forgotten early aerial photographs indicate that ice has remained stable and even grown slightly since the 1930s over a 2,000 km stretch of East Antarctica. In a recent paper published in Nature Communications, researchers from the University of Copenhagen came to their conclusions by tracking glacial movement in an area with as much ice as the Greenland ice sheet. The findings are unlikely to feature in narrative-driven mainstream media. The silence will probably replicate the response to another recent paper that found the ice shelves surrounding Antarctica grew in overall size from 2009-2019.
Sensational new discoveries arising from long-forgotten early aerial photographs indicate that ice has remained stable and even grown slightly since the 1930s over a 2,000 km stretch of East Antarctica. In a recent paper published in Nature Communications, researchers from the University of Copenhagen came to their conclusions by tracking glacial movement in an area with as much ice as the Greenland ice sheet. The findings are unlikely to feature in narrative-driven mainstream media. The silence will probably replicate the response to another recent paper that found the ice shelves surrounding Antarctica grew in overall size from 2009-2019.
The Copenhagen scientists examined hundreds of old aerial photographs taken for mapping work in 1937. The images were supplemented with a number of photographs taken in the 1950s and 1974 of the same area and a 3D computer reconstruction was produced. This allowed the researchers to examine the evolution of glaciers over a significant time period. In order to determine if recent trends exceed the scale of natural variability, long-term observations are said to be vital.
“Compared to modern data, the ice flow speeds are unchanged. While some glaciers have thinned over shorter intermediate periods of 10-20 years, they have remained stable or grown slightly in the long term, indicating a system in balance,” it was noted.
Actual long-term scientific observations will always beat media-friendly computer-modelled pseudoscientific opinions and alarm drummed up by short-term outliers. The authors note that using data from historical sources such as early photographs provides extensive coverage across large areas with detailed temporal and three-dimensional information. Geological evidence covers longer time scales with temporal uncertainties of thousands of years, while estimates from ice cores are generally very local and spatially confined. In Antarctica, it is pointed out, the scarcity of historical climate data makes climate reanalysis estimates before 1970 “largely uncertain”, while “observed trends cannot clearly be distinguished from natural variability”. Not that this stops mainstream activists such as Clive Cookson at the Financial Times who reacted to a recent two-year downward spike in Antarctica sea ice with the suggestion that the area faced a “catastrophic cascade of extreme environmental events… that will affect the climate around the world”.
Of course a “system in balance” is the last thing a Net Zero-obsessed mainstream wants to hear about. The Antarctica Circumpolar Current is the strongest flow of water on the planet and on March 4th the BBC brought news that it was “at risk of failing”. New research is said to suggest that the current will be 20% slower within 25 years “as the world warms, with far reaching consequences for life on Earth”.
Fresh ice melt water is said to cause major changes in the density structure of the ocean, leading to a projected slowdown of the current. Inexplicably, the BBC report failed to note that the prediction was generated by a computer model which had been loaded with a ‘pathway’ that assumed global temperatures would rise up to 4°C within less than 80 years. The clickbait-searching scientists behind the findings observed the recent rapidly declining sea ice in Antarctica, but failed to report a more recent recovery. At the end of 2024, the extent of sea ice was roughly the same as the 1981 to 2010 average. According to the US-based National Snow and Ice Data Centre, “this provides a sharp illustration of the high variability of Antarctica sea ice extent”. And recent examination of earlier photographic evidence provides more insights, with early Nimbus weather satellite images revealing that the 2023 decline was similar to that seen in 1966.
Regular readers of the Daily Sceptic will of course be aware that Antarctica is a difficult place to whip up climate panic, although it must be conceded that mainstream science and media have spared little effort in attempting to do so. Over the last seven decades there has been little or no warming over large areas of the continent. What warming there has been, on the west side, is directly on top of a large number of volcanoes. A recent paper from Singh and Polvani found that Antarctica sea ice “has modestly expanded, a finding that seems to confirm the work on the ice shelf increases between 2009-2019. Warming has been “nearly non-existent” over 70 years, state Singh and Polvani. According to NASA figures, the ice loss is 0.0005% a year. As an example of how humans cause the climate to warm by burning hydrocarbons and eating meat, Antarctica leaves a lot to be desired.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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