Day: February 15, 2026

Kings College London: UK Climate Action Support Plummeting

A recent study from King’s College London (KCL) highlights a notable decline in the UK’s public sense of urgency around climate action and net zero targets, though overall support for the 2050 net zero goal remains relatively solid.
The research, conducted by the Policy Institute at King’s College London, in collaboration with Ipsos and the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations, is based on a representative survey of over 4,000 UK adults in August 2025.

declining-urgency-enduring-support-public-attitudes-to-net-zero-and-climate-policy.pdf

A recent study from King’s College London (KCL) highlights a notable decline in the UK’s public sense of urgency around climate action and net zero targets, though overall support for the 2050 net zero goal remains relatively solid.

The research, conducted by the Policy Institute at King’s College London, in collaboration with Ipsos and the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations, is based on a representative survey of over 4,000 UK adults in August 2025.

Professor Bobby Duffy, Director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London, described the results as showing a “striking decline in the public’s sense of urgency around climate action”, with support dropping across every tracked policy.

Professor Bobby Duffy, Director of the Policy Institute at KCL, noted: “This research reveals a striking decline in the public’s sense of urgency around climate action. The proportion who thinks we need to reach net zero sooner than 2050 has nearly halved since 2021, and support has fallen for every climate policy we’ve tracked over this period.”

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From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

But a majority still say Net Zero should be achieved by 2050 or earlier.

UK Urgency on Net Zero, Climate Support Plummets

King’s College London
Public support for UK reaching net zero by 2050 is waning

Read the research

declining-urgency-enduring-support-public-attitudes-to-net-zero-and-climate-policy (1.04MB pdf)

The share of the UK public who say the country needs to reduce carbon emissions to net zero sooner than 2050 has nearly halved since 2021, according to a major new study.

29% of the public now say the UK should achieve net zero before the government’s 2050 target – down from 54% in 2021, when this question was last asked.

The proportion who feel the UK either doesn’t need to reach net zero by 2050 or shouldn’t have a net zero target at all has risen from 9% to 26% over the same period.

But despite this declining sense of urgency, a significant majority (64%) still believe the government’s target for net zero should be at least 2050, if not earlier.

…Read more: https://www.miragenews.com/uk-urgency-on-net-zero-climate-support-plummets-1618630/

From the Kings College London Report.

Declining urgency, enduring support

Public attitudes to net zero and climate policy

Contact: bobby.duffy@kcl.ac.uk | gideon.skinner@ipsos.com
February 2026

Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy 

1. The urgency of achieving net zero

While the aim of getting to net zero still commands wide public support, the proportion of people viewing it as an urgent priority has fallen sharply.

The belief that the UK needs to achieve net zero sooner than 2050 is no longer the majority view among young and middle-aged people, but older people are now most sceptical

…Read more: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/declining-urgency-enduring-support-public-attitudes-to-net-zero-and-climate-policy.pdf

The entire study is well worth a read, its only 38 pages long, and the information is well presented, with lots of informative graphs.

The report contains some interesting hi-lights.

Support among green party voters has dropped substantially for key net zero policies like low traffic neighbourhoods, taxes on flying, EV subsidies and high carbon food taxes.

Older people are far more skeptical of pretty much every green policy dimension. If it was up to older people, Net Zero would be over. But there is still solid support amongst young people.

A substantial number of Reform voters (26%) support Net zero by 2050, surprising given Farage’s open climate skepticism. Perhaps Farage is appealing to them on other issues.

The study contains some interesting comparisons between US attitudes and British attitudes towards Net Zero. Unsurprisingly the USA is far more skeptical than Britain.

The study authors didn’t provide a list of questions in their report, though the survey was conducted independently by Ipsos. I’d have preferred more detail in the study details section on page 38, but it looks like they made an effort to produce unbiased results.

What can I say? This survey is both exciting and disappointing. It’s great to see the solid wall of BBC climate brainwashing is starting to crack under the strain of Miliband’s disastrous Net Zero policies, though I feel sorry for people caught up in the consequences of Net Zero through no fault of their own. It’s sad that a majority of people still appear to support Net Zero, even after years of hardship.

Change is coming – but Britain is out of time. Over the last 26 years industrial output has halved as a share of GDP. Britain is no longer a nation which manufactures its own needs.

A lack of domestic manufacturing capacity and failure to develop domestic energy resources such as the trillion cubic feet of frackable gas sitting under Lancashire, with even more gas recently discovered under Lincolnshire, fully exposes Britain to global supply and price shocks.

“Hygiene Poverty”: The Brutal Reality of Life in Net Zero Britain

Any further decline in the British economy, a near certainty under Mad Miliband’s net zero policies, will drive up inflation, and force British politicians to choose between brutal interest rate hikes or economy killing 1970s style stagflation. Things will get worse before they get better.

Climate Scaremongering or Legitimate Warning? BBC’s Rainfall Records Spark Fierce Debate

Paul Homewood criticizes a BBC Weather article from February 2, 2026, headlined “January rainfall in parts of UK breaks more than century- long record.” The BBC report stated that regions like Northern Ireland, south- west and southern England, and east of Scotland had one of their wettest Januarys on record, with Northern Ireland seeing its wettest in 149 years and some local stations (e.g., in Cornwall and Aberdeenshire) recording exceptionally high totals, often 70-300% above average in spots.

Paul Homewood criticizes a BBC Weather article from February 2, 2026, headlined “January rainfall in parts of UK breaks more than century- long record.”

The BBC report stated that regions like Northern Ireland, south- west and southern England, and east of Scotland had one of their wettest Januarys on record, with Northern Ireland seeing its wettest in 149 years and some local stations (e.g., in Cornwall and Aberdeenshire) recording exceptionally high totals, often 70-300% above average in spots.

The BBC’s reporting aligns with Met Office provisional data released around that time, which confirmed unusually wet conditions in many areas, some setting local records, others ranking among the top few historically, but not universally the absolute wettest ever in the named regions.

The Met Office and BBC often note that while individual years vary due to natural factors (like a southerly jet stream in this case), the trend toward wetter UK winters matches climate model expectations.

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The climate scaremongers: BBC reports about January rainfall are awash with lies

From The Conservative Woman

By Paul Homewood

GIVEN the media hype, you might think our weather had never been as wet as it was last month.

The BBC, true to form, came up with the headline ‘January rainfall in parts of UK breaks more than century-long record’. Their report went on to state: ‘Northern Ireland, South West and Southern England, and the east of Scotland all had one of their wettest Januarys on record.’

True to form, they were lying. In none of the regions mentioned were any records set. January 1877 remains the wettest January on record in Northern Ireland, while in the South West and Southern England, January 2026 ranked 12th and 6th wettest respectively. It was also very wet in East Scotland last month, but it still ranked only 9th.

Across the UK as a whole, it was not exceptionally wet at all – January 1928 still tops the list:

January is, of course, only one month of the year. When all months are taken into account, we can see that even in Northern Ireland it was not unusually wet last month. Indeed, it was only the wettest month since 2020. But that does not make for scary headlines.

One of the worst affected areas this year was Devon and Cornwall, with totals of more than ten inches in places including Torbay. That is certainly a rare event, but again not unprecedented.

In November 1929, for example, there were higher totals, and not just in Devon and Cornwall. Rainfall across most of Wales was even greater and the English Midlands and North West were also exceptionally wet:

image-28.png (622×768)

Met Office Monthly Weather Reports

Over the UK as a whole, rainfall in November 1929 was 30 per cent higher than last month. Moreover, believe it or not, the following month, December, was even wetter. The four-month period from October 1929 to January 1930 is the wettest period on record in the UK.

It is a fact that parts of Devon and Cornwall have always been prone to serious flooding in autumn and winter. History is littered with examples as far back as the Tiverton floods in 1625 and major floods in 1877, some of the worst on record. The Black Thursday floods in October 1960 were the worst on record in Exeter and more recently we had floods in 2000 and 2009.

metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/data/monthly/HadSWEP_monthly_totals.txt

There is a lot of detail here, but to sum up:

•         In the UK as a whole, it was not particularly wet – 197 other months on record that have been wetter.

•         Worst affected was the South West, but no worse than many other years.

Why was it so wet?

There have been the usual attempts to blame the wet weather on climate change. But as the Met Office’s own meteorologist, Alex Deakin, explained after Storm Chandra, the root causes are much more mundane.

For the last few weeks, the polar vortex has brought extremely cold, polar air down across most of North America. This has pushed the jet stream a long way south of its usual track and at the same time powered it up. As a consequence, a succession of storms, which generally build to the north side of the jet stream, has brought a lot of wet weather to the south of the British Isles and Western Europe.

To make matters worse, a dome of persistent cold polar air has built up over Scandinavia, trapping the low pressure systems over Britain.

It is merely weather and has nothing to do with climate change at all. Watch Deakin’s excellent report below:

There’s plenty more rain to come in the next few days and probably next week too, but could there be a sign of a change on the horizon

Mad Miliband plots solar farms in space

The latest bonkers idea from Mad Miliband:
As for “zero carbon”, how will they get all their satellites into space? By wind power?

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Doug Brodie

The latest bonkers idea from Mad Miliband:

From the Telegraph:

image

Solar farms could be deployed in space to help Britain hit net zero targets, according to a new report published by the Energy Department.

Under ambitious clean power plans, orbiting solar satellites could be used to capture the sun’s energy before beaming it down to an antenna on Earth to be converted into electricity.

The proposal has been cited in a new government study on the latest space technologies which suggests that solar panels could be installed on satellites on Earth before being launched into space.

It is perhaps the most radical proposal yet as Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, strives to achieve net zero by 2050.

“Space-based solar power could provide Great Britain with constant, predictable, zero-carbon power at the GW [gigawatt] scale that displaces both intermittent renewables and fossil fuel generation,” the report said.

“A space-based power system involves one or multiple satellites equipped with lightweight solar panels capturing the sun’s energy in space.

“The satellite generates electricity, converts it into microwave radiation and beams it to a ground-based rectifying antenna (rectenna). The rectenna converts the microwave energy into electricity.”…

The report was commissioned in 2021 by Kwasi Kwarteng, then the Conservative business secretary, whose brief included leading on net zero strategies and space technology.

He commissioned the Frazer-Nash consultancy to investigate the idea, with the final report finally published this week by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

It suggests that although initial costs would be high, they would plummet as the technology matured, potentially falling to between £87 per megawatt hour (MWh) and £129 per MWh by 2040.

This compares with a predicted cost of £150 per MWh for new nuclear. The latest offshore wind contracts saw operators offered about £90 per MWh for fixed turbines and £216 per MWh for floating wind.

This suggests that space-based power station operators could be given contracts for difference, giving them a guaranteed minimum price for the power generated. This is the same subsidy scheme used to support renewables such as wind.

However, the report warns that the UK Government would have to help fund initial development, suggesting that the best approach would be to fund a smaller system that could be scaled up later once investors had gained confidence.

Full story here. 

In other words, they want to waste billions of pounds on a project that probably won’t even work, that will, if it does work, provide electricity at a much higher cost and be vulnerable to attack. All in the hope that, when the technology matures, it might cost the same as nuclear power!

Why not let the EU or China waste their money first, and then copy their technology if it does work?

As for “zero carbon”, how will they get all their satellites into space?

By wind power?

We should also remember that satellites don’t stay aloft forever. And when they drop out of orbit, we will need to spend more money sending the next lot up.

No doubt the consultants who wrote this report are looking forward to more taxpayer cash to do more evaluation studies!

Another Climate Pipe Dream: Capturing Carbon Out of Thin Air

Removing one billion metric tons of CO2 would reduce the concentration by only 1/10 of 1 ppm and based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s climate sensitivity estimates, by 0.003 °C.

From Watts Up With That?

By Jonathan Lesser

Most policies designed to reduce carbon emissions have focused on reducing reliance on fossil fuels, primarily through state and federal mandates, including requirements to increase reliance on wind and solar power, replace oil and gas furnaces and water heaters with electric heat pumps, and force automobile manufacturers to sell electric vehicles that most consumers don’t want. These mandate “sticks” have all been accompanied by subsidy “carrots,” paid for by taxpayers and ratepayers.

Many of the subsidies were increased under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. But the largest subsidy of all was entirely new: A payment of up to $180 per metric ton to capture carbon dioxide, literally out of thin air, and thereby mitigate climate change by reducing the atmospheric concentration of CO2. The carbon dioxide captured by Direct Air Capture (DAC) could then be reused, for example, in enhanced oil recovery, or permanently buried underground.

A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report issued at the end of the Biden Administration estimated that the U.S. would need to remove between 100 million metric tons and 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide using Direct Air Capture technology to address climate change.

In essence, DAC involves large fans that draw outdoor air through liquid or solid media that capture CO2, remove it via chemical processes, and then compress it for transport and either use or sequester it. There are several dozen small DAC facilities in operation, mostly in Europe. The goal of DAC advocates is to build large-scale facilities, each capable of extracting 1 million metric tons of CO2 each year. Two companies, ClimeWorks and Carbon Engineering, have commercialized different technologies for DAC. Currently, the only large-scale facility is under construction by Occidental Petroleum in the Permian Basin of Texas. That facility, called Stratos, is designed to capture up to 500,000 metric tons of CO2 annually, which will be injected into the company’s oil wells to enhance crude oil production.

But as I explain in my new report, these technologies, and all potential DAC technologies, have an Achilles Heel: The laws of thermodynamics. Regardless of the technology employed, extracting CO2 directly from the atmosphere is inherently energy-intensive.

Because burning fossil fuels to power DAC facilities would reduce, or even negate, the carbon-reduction goal, DAC technologies have focused on using electricity generated from zero-emissions sources.

For example, the theoretical minimum of energy needed to meet a one billion metric ton objective would require the equivalent of 10% of all electricity generated in the U.S. in 2024. The practical energy required would be at least 30%, as no technology can be 100% efficient. Producing that much electricity would require building hundreds of new nuclear plants. If wind and solar power were relied on, it would require an area larger than the state of Florida, and hundreds of thousands of megawatts of battery storage facilities to compensate for wind’s and solar’s inherent intermittency. The cost to build the required generating capacity alone would be trillions of dollars. Building additional transmission lines and the DAC facilities themselves would cost hundreds of billions of dollars more. In total, the cost is likely to be over $400 per metric ton of CO2 removed. That’s far higher than even the most recent estimates of the social cost of carbon, which supposedly measures the damages to the climate from each additional ton of CO2 emitted.

Despite the huge energy requirements, the impacts on atmospheric CO2 concentrations and global temperatures would be minuscule. The current atmospheric CO2 concentration is approximately 425 parts per million (ppm).

Removing one billion metric tons of CO2 would reduce the concentration by only 1/10 of 1 ppm and based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s climate sensitivity estimates, by 0.003 °C.

That’s about 40 times less than the assumed margin of error in measuring global temperatures. Even if billions of metric tons of CO2 were captured and sequestered annually, the impact on world temperatures by the year 2100 would be too small to have any noticeable impact on the climate.

Finally, storing CO2 underground poses environmental and health risks because it could escape, as in Cameroon in the 1980s, when Lake Nyos “burped” several hundred thousand tons of CO2, leading to the deaths of 1,700 people and thousands of cattle. It would be unreasonable to assume that, after sequestering billions of tonnes of CO2 underground, similar events could not take place.

Taken together, these physical, economic, and environmental realities mean that DAC is a technology whose time will never come.

Jonathan Lesser is a Senior Fellow with the National Center for Energy Analytics. His report, “A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Using Direct Air Capture to Remove Atmospheric Carbon,” was just published.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

Why Rethinking Climate Change–Nicola Scafetta

A central theme is natural climate variability. Across the Holocene—the last 11,700 years—the climate system exhibited a Climate Optimum (6,000–8,000 years ago) and repeated oscillations: multidecadal cycles, centennial fluctuations, and millennial-scale reorganizations.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

[Top] Comparison of the harmonic empirical global climate model under the SSP2-4.5 scenario with the HadCRUT4.6 record (1850–2021) alongside the burning ember diagrams representing the five primary global Reasons for Concern (RFCs) under low-to-no adaptation scenarios, as reported by the IPCC (2023) AR6. [Bottom] Summary and analysis of the projected impacts and risks of global warming for the 2080–2100 period compared to the climate “thermometer” projections from Climate Action Tracker (2024). Credit: Gondwana Research (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.gr.2025.05.001

Nicola Scafetta writes at phys.org (site not known for skeptical thinking) Rethinking climate change: Natural variability, solar forcing, model uncertainties, and policy implications.  Exceprts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Current global climate models (GCMs) support with high confidence the view that rising greenhouse gases and other anthropogenic forcings account for nearly all observed global surface warming—slightly above 1 °C—since the pre-industrial period (1850–1900). This is the conclusion presented in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) published in 2021.

Figure 3: CMIP6 GCM ensemble mean simulations spanning from 1850 to 2100, employing historical effective radiative forcing functions from 1850 to 2014 (see Figure 1C) and the forcing functions based on the SSP scenarios 1-2.6, 2-4.5, 3-7.0, and 5-8.5. Curve colors are scaled according to the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) of the models. The right panels depict the risks and impacts of climate change in relation to various global Reasons for Concern (RFCs) (IPCC, 2023). (Adapted from Scafetta, 2024).

Moreover, the GCM projections for the 21st century, produced under different socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), underpin estimates of future climate impacts and guide net-zero mitigation strategies worldwide.

The prevailing interpretation is that only net-zero climate policies can keep future climate change-related damages within acceptable limits. Yet such policies carry extremely high economic and societal costs, making it essential to assess whether these certain and immediate costs are fully justified by the current state of climate science.

On the other hand, a closer examination of observational datasets, paleoclimate evidence, and model performance reveals a more intricate picture—one that merits open discussion among students, researchers, and anyone interested in how climate science is evolving.

My study “Detection, attribution, and modeling of climate change: Key open issues,” published in Gondwana Research, examines several unresolved questions in climate detection, attribution, and modeling. These issues concern the foundations of how past climate changes are interpreted and how future ones are projected, and they matter because climate projections influence decisions that will shape economies and societies for decades. [My synopsis: Scafetta: Climate Models Have Issues. ]

A central theme is natural climate variability. Across the Holocene—the last 11,700 years—the climate system exhibited a Climate Optimum (6,000–8,000 years ago) and repeated oscillations: multidecadal cycles, centennial fluctuations, and millennial-scale reorganizations.

Some longer cycles are well known, such as the quasi-millennial Eddy cycle, associated with the Medieval and Roman warm periods, and the 2,000–2,500-year Hallstatt–Bray cycle. These patterns appear in ice cores, marine sediments, tree rings, historical documents, and in both climate and solar proxy records.

Current GCMs, however, struggle to reproduce the Holocene Optimum and these rhythms. They generate internal variability, but not with the correct timing, amplitude, or persistence. When a model cannot capture the natural “heartbeat” of the climate system, distinguishing human-driven warming from background variability becomes challenging. This is particularly relevant for interpreting the warming observed since 1850–1900, because both the Eddy and Hallstatt–Bray cycles have been in rising phases since roughly the 1600s.

Figure 1. Anthropgenic and natural contributions. (a) Locked scaling factors, weak Pre Industrial Climate Anomalies (PCA). (b) Free scaling, strong PCA Source: Larminat, P. de (2023)

A portion of the post-industrial warming could therefore stem from these long natural oscillations, which are expected to peak in the 21st century and in the second half of the third millennium, respectively.

Another key issue concerns the global surface temperature datasets that serve as the backbone of global warming assessment. These datasets are essential but not perfect.

Urbanization, land-use changes, station relocations, and instrumentation shifts can introduce non- climatic biases. Many corrections exist, yet uncertainties persist. Even small unresolved biases can influence long-term trends.

The study highlights well- known discrepancies: satellite-based estimates of lower-troposphere temperatures since 1980 show about 20–30% less warming than surface-based records, particularly over Northern Hemisphere land areas.

Recent reconstructions based on confirmed rural stations also show significantly weaker secular warming. These differences underscore the need for continued scrutiny of observational records.

Solar and astronomical influences represent another area where science is still evolving. The sun varies in ways not fully captured by the simplified irradiance reconstructions used in many models. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that the climate system responds not only to total solar irradiance but also to spectral variations, magnetic modulation, and indirect effects on atmospheric circulation.

These mechanisms are still under investigation, and their representation in models remains incomplete, even though empirical evidence suggests that they may play a dominant role—potentially more influential than the simple total-solar-irradiance forcing currently implemented.

Moreover, despite ongoing controversy surrounding long-term solar variability, current GCMs are typically forced with solar reconstructions that exhibit extremely low secular variability. This helps explain why these models attribute nearly 0 °C of the observed post 1850–1900 warming to solar changes and simultaneously fail to reproduce the millennial-scale oscillations evident in paleoclimate records.

Direct comparisons between GCM global surface temperature simulations and observations also show that the models do not reproduce the quasi-60-year climatic oscillation associated with the 1940s warming period, and they tend to overestimate the warming observed since 1980. This “hot model” problem has been documented in several studies and appears to affect a substantial fraction of current GCMs.

All of this connects to a key parameter in climate science: equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS). The canonical estimate—around 3 °C for a doubling of CO₂, with a likely range of 2.5–4.0 °C according to the IPCC—derives largely from model-based assessments.

Empirical studies, including those that account more explicitly for natural variability, often suggest lower values, sometimes around 2.2 ± 0.5 °C, or even as low as 1.1 ± 0.4 °C if long-term solar luminosity varies significantly and if additional solar-related mechanisms influence the climate system—mechanisms not included in current models. If ECS is lower than commonly assumed, projected 21st-century warming would be substantially reduced under all SSP scenarios.

These graphs use Hadcrut4 and include the 2016 El Nino warming event. The exhibit shows since 1947 GMT warmed by 0.8 C, from 13.9 to 14.7, as estimated by Hadcrut4. This resulted from three natural warming events involving ocean cycles. The most recent rise 2013-16 lifted temperatures by 0.2C. Previously the 1997-98 El Nino produced a plateau increase of 0.4C. Before that, a rise from 1977-81 added 0.2C to start the warming since 1947.

The interplay between natural and anthropogenic factors is definitely more nuanced than often portrayed. When empirical models that include natural oscillations are used to project future temperatures, the result is typically moderate future warming rather than extreme trajectories. This raises important questions about the scientific basis for the most aggressive mitigation pathways.

The figure compares the warming expected from GCMs, as assessed by the IPCC, with the associated relative risks, alongside the expectations derived from the empirical modeling proposed in the paper. While net-zero pathways such as SSP1 are considered necessary to meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to below 2 °C by 2100, empirical considerations suggest that the same target could also be achieved under the far more moderate SSP2 scenario.

This distinction has major global economic implications, because the
prevailing climate- crisis narrative does not appear to be fully supported
by the evidence, and far less costly adaptation strategies could be
more appropriate than highly aggressive mitigation policies.

The study stresses the importance of addressing the key open questions of climate science. Climate policy should be informed by the full spectrum of scientific evidence, including uncertainties and alternative interpretations.

Ed Miliband’s Net Zero drive will trigger financial crash, former chief scientific adviser warns

The warning is attributed to Professor Michael Kelly, a Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge. He previously served as a chief scientific adviser to the UK government (in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills under the coalition government around 2010-2015, focusing on engineering and infrastructure issues).

The warning is attributed to Professor Michael Kelly, a Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge. He previously served as a chief scientific adviser to the UK government (in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills under the coalition government around 2010-2015, focusing on engineering and infrastructure issues).

In the article, Kelly argues that Ed Miliband’s aggressive push for Net Zero- particularly the rapid decarbonization of the electricity grid and the “Clean Power 2030” ambitions- will lead to a financial crash.

He is quoted directly: “Net zero will lead to financial crash and a lot of this investment to date will be abandoned. It’s an impossible program which will crash.”

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Ed Miliband’s Net Zero drive will trigger financial crash, former chief scientific adviser warns.

It follows predictions electricity prices could be even higher in 2030 than during the height of the Ukraine energy crisis.

Michael Kelly, Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge and a former Government chief scientific adviser, said the scale and cost of rebuilding the UK’s electricity grid is so vast the country is heading for an economic crash once the full impact of expensive energy triggers an inevitable backlash from households and businesses. GBN has the story.

His warning comes after Chris O’Shea, chief executive British Gas owner Centrica, said household electricity prices are on course to exceed the peak reached after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Our projections show that the UK energy system will be one where by 2030 the electricity price will be higher than it was at the peak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Mr O’Shea said. “A third of the cost of that electricity (by 2030) will be wholesale costs, and the other two-thirds will be system costs.”

At the height of the crisis, average annual electricity bills surged from £717 in 2021 to around £1,200 in 2023. Today, the energy price cap stands at £1,758 for a typical dual-fuel household. Energy debt has climbed from around £1.8billion to nearly £5billion.

Mr O’Shea insisted rising costs are not purely down to climate policy.

“Those system costs aren’t net zero costs, he said. “They are addressing years and years of underinvestment and whether we went for net zero or new fossil fuels, we would need to incur those system costs.”

Professor Kelly disagreed and instead blamed Net Zero. He said, based on his own calculations, the total cost of transforming the National Grid to support a net-zero energy system could reach £1.4trillion over 30 years — equivalent to roughly £50 billion every year. Even if the UK could secure the finance and materials, Professor Kelly calculated, the country does not have the skilled and professional human resources to get halfway to completion by 2050.

He also highlighted problems obtaining new high-voltage transformers that control power nationwide, which are in short supply worldwide. He said: “We have a three-year waiting list for high-performance transformers for the grid, and the total grid upgrade will cost £1.4trillion over 30 years. Where will that money come from?”

Prof Kelly said his estimate includes:

  • £700 billion for substations and local distribution upgrades
  • £500 billion for new power generation
  • £200 billion for transmission infrastructure

Read the full story here.

The Super Bowl Without EVs Tells You Everything

For the first time in years, there was no Super Bowl advertisement featuring an EV in a starring role. No celebrity endorsements, no sweeping promises about the “future of driving,” and no multimillion-dollar attempts to convince Americans that electric cars are inevitable. The only trace of an EV during the entire broadcast was a split-second glimpse of Volkswagen’s electric van, which is struggling with low sales, recalls and reportedly will not receive a 2026 version.

From Watts Up With That?

By Larry Behrens

Except for Seahawks fans or those who appreciate a stingy defense, the action on the field of this year’ Super Bowl left a lot to be desired. But off the field, between the kickoff and the final score, this year’s Super Bowl sent a message that didn’t need words: the moment for electric vehicles is over.

For the first time in years, there was no Super Bowl advertisement featuring an EV in a starring role. No celebrity endorsements, no sweeping promises about the “future of driving,” and no multimillion-dollar attempts to convince Americans that electric cars are inevitable. The only trace of an EV during the entire broadcast was a split-second glimpse of Volkswagen’s electric van, which is struggling with low sales, recalls and reportedly will not receive a 2026 version.

That brief cameo stood in sharp contrast to previous Super Bowls, when EVs were front and center. For several years, automakers used the biggest advertising stage in America to promote electrification, leaning heavily on celebrity appearances and high-production storytelling. The message they pushed was that electric vehicles were not only the future, but they were already mainstream.

Welcome to the reality of 2026.

The retreat began last year, when electric-focused car ads largely disappeared after surging during the Biden administration. Just as notable as the absence of EV ads was the absence of major automakers themselves. Ford and General Motors did not run headline-grabbing automotive campaigns at all.

That decision is difficult to separate from the financial reality facing both companies with EVs. Ford has lost nearly $20 billion on its EV business, while General Motors has reported losses around $6 billion. When EV divisions are bleeding cash, spending millions on Super Bowl commercials becomes increasingly difficult to justify. Advertising budgets shrink when the product being promoted isn’t delivering returns.

EV advocates argue that the slowdown is the result of fading federal subsidies rather than weak consumer demand. But sales data tell a different story. Even during the Biden years of generous tax credits, aggressive mandates, and saturation advertising, electric vehicles never captured more than a modest share of the market. According to Cox Automotive, EVs accounted for just 8.1% of total U.S. vehicle sales at their recent peak. The trajectory tells a better story. EV sales in the United States cratered 46% between the 3rd to the 4th quarter of 2025 as the government giveaways dwindled.

That figure came after years of extraordinary policy support and cultural promotion. If billions in taxpayer subsidies and relentless marketing still produce single-digit adoption, it’s clear we have a lemon on our hands.

For many Americans, the hesitation is practical, not ideological. Higher purchase prices, limited charging infrastructure, range concerns, and cold-weather performance remain obstacles that glossy commercials cannot erase. These are everyday considerations for families, commuters, and rural drivers who are the people automakers once hoped to reach through Super Bowl ads.

The absence of EV marketing during suggests the industry recognizes this reality. Companies do not abandon the most valuable advertising platform in the country unless its effectiveness is in doubt. If electric vehicles were flying out of the stores, automakers would be competing aggressively for airtime. Instead, they stayed silent.

The Super Bowl has long mirrored consumer culture. This year, that mirror reflected a shift away from electric vehicle hype and toward something more grounded. After years of promotion, EVs failed to justify their place on the biggest stage in advertising.

The message wasn’t delivered by a commercial. It was delivered by the absence of one.

The free market remains undefeated.

Larry Behrens is an energy expert and the Communications Director for Power The Future. He has appeared on Fox News, ZeroHedge, and NewsMax speaking in defense of American energy workers. You can follow him on X/Twitter @larrybehrens

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

Arctic Ice Nearly Average mid-February 2026

The arctic ice extents are now reported through mid-February 2026, showing rising refreezing rates bringing Arctic ice extents within 200k km2 of the 20-year average.  Remarkably, the last two days virtually matched the 2025 annual extent maximum of 14.48M km2 on day 80 of that year, compared to 14.44 on day 43 in 2026.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

The arctic ice extents are now reported through mid-February 2026, showing rising refreezing rates bringing Arctic ice extents within 200k km2 of the 20-year average.  Remarkably, the last two days virtually matched the 2025 annual extent maximum of 14.48M km2 on day 80 of that year, compared to 14.44 on day 43 in 2026.

The chart below shows the 20-year averages for Arctic ice extents mid-Febrauary along with 2026 and 2025, as well as SII v.4.

As stated previously, likely due to a wavy polar vortex, MASIE 2026 refroze slowly in January reaching a deficit of 622k km2 on day 26.  Since then, ice grew at a higher rate, ending this period 176k km2 below average, or 1% down. Note that compared to day 44 last year, 2026 ice is more than half a Wadham greater, 656k km2.  And as mentioned above, 2025 will not match yesterday until day 80. Note SII v.4 tracks lower than MASIE throughout, on average in deficit by 242K km2.

Region2026044Average day 442026-Ave.20250442026-2025
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere1442748114603337-17585613771518.64655962
 (1) Beaufort_Sea107107010703846861071000.7369
 (2) Chukchi_Sea966006965785222965989.1217
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea1087137108713251087137.230
 (4) Laptev_Sea8978458978387897844.80
 (5) Kara_Sea93502390943725586911762.3723261
 (6) Barents_Sea64960656642183185434920.5214686
 (7) Greenland_Sea772110625671146439635758.41136351
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence10402951429059-3887641335264.28-294969
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago8549318535311399854877.9653
 (10) Hudson_Bay126087012605952761260903.34-33
 (11) Central_Arctic32359303204874310563195022.3340907
 (12) Bering_Sea68976967151218256333643.58356125
 (13) Baltic_Sea155657889906666635593.84120063
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk742439914421-17198272046221977

The table shows that most regions are close to or above the 20-year average.  Two major deficits are in Baffin Bay and Sea of Okhotsk, partly offset by several smaller surpluses, mostly in Greenland Sea, Barents and Bering seas.

The Data: Dutch Meteorological Institute Reinstates Early 20th Century Heat Waves It Had Erased Earlier

Victory for climate skeptics, science in the Netherlands…erased historical heat waves get reinstated

From The No Trick Zone

By P Gosselin

Victory for climate skeptics, science in the Netherlands…erased historical heat waves get reinstated

The Clintel (Climate Intelligence) reports that the KNMI (the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute) has reinstated seven historical heatwaves from the pre-1950 era that had previously been “erased” from official records due to statistical adjustments.

Tropical days at De Bilt, version 0, 1 and 2 (staves) with non-linear trendline (orange solid line).
The trendline was calculated by the LOESS-function with span=20 points. Source: Clintel

In 2016, he KNMI updated its historical temperature data for the De Bilt weather station (the national reference point). Using a process called homogenization, they had adjusted old temperature readings downward to account for changes in measurement methods and station relocation. This process effectively removed 16 out of 23 recorded heatwaves between 1901 and 1951, leading to the public narrative that heatwaves were much rarer in the past than they are today.

KNMI had overcorrected the data – cooling the past

A group of four researchers associated with Clintel, led by Marcel Crok, challenged these adjustments. They argued that the KNMI had over-corrected the data. Their primary criticisms were:

  1. The KNMI compared De Bilt with a station 150 km away (Eelde) using a method that was arguably unsuitable for such a distance, and
  2. The KNMI used short comparison periods, which skeptics claimed introduced bias.

After the KNMI initially dismissed a 2019 report by the skeptics, the group published their findings in a peer-reviewed journal (Theoretical and Applied Climatology) in 2021. They demonstrated that by using different, more robust parameters—such as comparing De Bilt to more than one station and using longer timeframes—the number of “tropical days” (above 30°C) was significantly higher than the KNMI’s adjusted figures.

Following years of pressure and the peer-reviewed publication, the KNMI updated its homogenization method. According to the article, the KNMI’s new analysis—which now uses multiple reference stations (Eelde and Maastricht) and longer 15-year comparison periods—has resulted in the reinstatement of seven of the lost heatwaves.

Significance: more nuanced view of warming

The is a major victory for climate skeptics and a “point of principle.” It restores several intense heatwaves (such as those in 1911, 1947, and 1948) to the official Dutch record.

Clintel proves that official climate “homogenization” can be prone to errors that exaggerate the warming trend by cooling the past.

The authors note that while the “disappearance” of these heatwaves was used to support claims of unprecedented modern warming, their reinstatement provides a more nuanced view of historical climate variability in the Netherlands.

The reinstatement of the heatwaves shows that the KNMI has admitted that its previous adjustments had been too aggressive.

Full Clintel article.