Tag: Amazon Rainforest

Humans Brought Fire to a Fireless Amazon and Reshaped It for 10,000 Years

Glacial- period (Last Glacial and earlier Pleistocene) paleoecological records from Amazonia and adjacent areas show that fire was rare or absent before human arrival, supporting the interpretation that Amazonian wet forests evolved largely without fire.

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New research shows that fire in the Amazon rainforest over the past 10,000 years has been almost exclusively human- driven, not a natural process, and has substantially shaped modern forest composition.

The study, “The pyrogeography of Amazonia: a Holocene perspective” by Crystal N. H. McMichael and colleagues (including Mark B. Bush), was published in June 2026 in the open-access journal Frontiers of Biogeography.

It is based on a compilation and analysis of 1,361 radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dates from 303 sites, covering soil charcoal fragments and burned archaeological materials.

Fire is essentially human- ignited in these wet forests. Pre- human (glacial- period) paleoecological records show charcoal absent or present only in minute amounts.

Examples include sites such as the Hill of Six Lakes (Brazil), Serra Sul dos Carajás, and especially the Campo Libre core on Ecuador’s Andean slopes, which recorded ~30,000 years without fire until humans arrived around 4,500 years ago. Researchers describe human arrival as introducing fire to a “naïve landscape” of evolutionarily fire-sensitive plants.

Spatiotemporal spread of fire (Holocene phases):

  • ~10,000- 6,000 years ago: Highly restricted, mainly in peripheral areas and along the main Amazon River channel.
  • ~6,000- 4,000 years ago: Rapid geographic expansion across most regions, coinciding with early maize cultivation in northwestern and southwestern Amazonia.
  • ~3,000- 2,000 years ago: Fire reached the deep interior (central Amazonia had been a relative fire-free refuge for millennia).

Decline in the last ~700 years (two phases): An initial drop ~600- 700 years ago supports an “early abandonment” or major pre- Columbian land- use shift (linked to a pollen surge indicating reforestation in some lake records). A larger decline followed the post- 1541 “Great Dying” (estimated 90- 95% Indigenous population loss from disease, warfare, and enslavement after European contact), reducing ignitions and allowing further forest recovery.

Ecological legacy: Intensified human- driven fire over the last ~2,000 years caused vegetation changes on a scale comparable to major climatic events (e.g., deglaciation or Pleistocene megafauna extinctions). It selectively favored more fire- tolerant species (such as certain palms) over fire-sensitive ones, leaving a lasting imprint on today’s plant communities.

This work challenges the long- standing idea of a largely “pristine” pre- Columbian Amazon.

Fire histories were not fully synchronous across regions, but the overall pattern of human introduction, expansion from periphery to interior, and later declines is clear from the summed probability distributions and related analyses of the dated materials.

The paper is open access via the journal (Pensoft and Frontiers of Biogeography).

The findings align with broader evidence that natural lightning- ignited fires are rare in intact humid Amazonian forest, while human activity has long been the dominant ignition source.

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Glacial- period (Last Glacial and earlier Pleistocene) paleoecological records from Amazonia and adjacent areas show that fire was rare or absent before human arrival, supporting the interpretation that Amazonian wet forests evolved largely without fire.

These records come primarily from lake and wetland sediment cores analyzed for charcoal (macroscopic and microscopic), pollen, phytoliths, and other proxies. Key examples cited in the 2026 pyrogeography paper and supporting studies include:

Campo Libre (eastern Andean slopes, Ecuador, ~2,700 m elevation)

  • A ~30,000- year sediment core from an alluvial terrace in a mid- elevation valley of the Quijos River.
  • No macroscopic charcoal was found in 122 samples spanning the full record.
  • Microscopic charcoal was also absent in samples dating between ~12,000 and 30,000 cal yr BP.
  • Fire (regional microscopic charcoal) first appears only around ~3,300- 3,400 cal yr BP, with clear human signals (maize phytoliths) beginning ~4,500- 4,700 cal yr BP.
  • The site underwent major vegetation shifts driven by climate and river dynamics (e.g., from active floodplain to palm forest around the Pleistocene- Holocene transition, then back toward swampier conditions), but these occurred without fire until humans arrived.

Hill of Six Lakes (northwestern Brazilian Amazon)

  • Multiple long lake records (e.g., Lakes Pata, Verde, Dragão, and more recent work on Lake Malachite) spanning up to ~170,000 years or the full deglacial period.
  • Charcoal is rare and present only in very low abundances (often tiny microparticles <40- 80 μm, consistent with distant sources) during glacial times.
  • The landscape remained continuously forested (with compositional shifts due to cooler temperatures, ~4- 5°C colder at the Last Glacial Maximum). Fire increases notably only in the Holocene, sometimes linked to possible early human activity around ~10,200 cal yr BP in newer records.

Serra Sul dos Carajás (southeastern Amazonia, Brazil)

  • Lake and bog records from this drier, plateau, ecotone region covering the last ~25,000- 26,000 years.
  • Charcoal was absent or present only in very low amounts in some locations until the deglacial period and onset of the Holocene.
  • Where glacial- period fire occurred, abundances were much lower than during the Holocene. Fires became more frequent during climatic transitions (e.g., dry- to- wet shifts around 11,000- 10,200 years ago) and later under seasonal conditions, with possible early human influence in the Holocene.

Additional context from related sites

  • Rainforest- savanna ecotones in Bolivia show very low and infrequent glacial- period fire.
  • Even in more fire- prone high Andean settings, pre-human charcoal levels are described as “miniscule” compared with post- human levels.

Natural (lightning- driven) fire was exceptional in these wet tropical systems.

Glacial climates were often cooler and, in many areas, drier or more seasonal, yet charcoal remained scarce.

This contrasts sharply with the Holocene, when human ignition dramatically increased fire frequency and spatial extent.

Amazonian plants are therefore largely evolutionarily fire- sensitive, making the introduction of regular anthropogenic burning a novel and transformative disturbance.

These glacial records form a critical baseline for the argument that Holocene pyrogeography in Amazonia is overwhelmingly human- driven.

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The pyrogeography of Amazonia: a Holocene perspective

The pyrogeography of Amazonia: a Holocene perspective is a 2026 open-access research article, published in Frontiers of Biogeography.

Fire in Amazonian forests rarely (if ever) ignites or spreads without human activity. Humans introduced fire to a previously “naïve” (fire- sensitive) landscape beginning in the late Pleistocene, early Holocene.

The study reconstructs the spatiotemporal patterns of this human- driven fire (pyrogeography) over the last ~10,000 years using a large compilation of radiocarbon dates.

Data and methods

Compiled 1,361 radiocarbon (¹⁴C) AMS dates from 303 sites across Amazonia (after excluding 32 modern dates post-1950, analyses focused on 1,329 dates spanning the last ~12,000 years).

Sources: individually dated charcoal fragments from soil surveys (paleoecological) and burned archaeological materials (described as charcoal or charred).

New dates added from soil charcoal in northwestern and southwestern Amazonia.

Analyses: summed probability distributions (SPDs), composite kernel density estimations (CKDEs), and regional permutation tests.

Regions examined (following ter Steege et al. 2013): northwestern (WAN), southwestern (WAS), central (CA), eastern (EA), southern (SA) Amazonia, and Guiana Shield (GS).

Main results

Earliest fires were concentrated in peripheral areas and along the main Amazon River channel (~10,000–6,000 years ago).

Geographic expansion accelerated ~6,000- 4,000 years ago (linked in part to early maize cultivation), with fire reaching the deep interior (including central Amazonia) mainly ~3,000- 2,000 years ago.

Peak fire likelihood occurred roughly 1,300- 500 cal BP (AD 700-1450).

Two-phase decline in the last ~700 years:

  • First decrease ~700- 500 years ago (supports “early abandonment” or major pre- Columbian land- use change/reforestation, consistent with some pollen records).
  • Second, larger decline after European contact (~AD 1541 onward), corresponding to the “Great Dying” (estimated 90- 95% Indigenous population loss).

Fire histories show some regional variation and are not fully synchronous, but the overall basin- wide pattern of peripheral- to- interior spread followed by later declines is robust.

The intensification and spread of human- ignited fire over the last ~2,000 years induced vegetation change at rates and magnitudes comparable to major climatic shifts (e.g., deglaciation or Pleistocene megafauna extinctions).

This selectively favored more fire- tolerant species (notably some palms) and left a lasting imprint on the composition and structure of modern Amazonian forests.

The work synthesizes and expands prior archaeological and paleoecological databases.

It reinforces that natural (lightning- driven) fire was exceptional in these wet forests before human arrival, as shown by glacial- period records with absent or minimal charcoal (e.g., Campo Libre, Ecuador: ~30,000 years without fire until humans appeared ~4,500 years ago).

The findings challenge notions of a largely pristine pre- Columbian Amazon and highlight the long- term role of Indigenous fire management in shaping today’s ecosystems.

The full paper is freely available via the journal site (Pensoft).

A contemporaneous press release from Pensoft Publishers summarized these results under the headline “Human- driven fires have shaped the Amazonian forest for over 10,000 years.”

Published: Frontiers of Biogeography (volume 19, e169863)

DOI: 10.21425/fob.19.169863

Authors: Crystal N. H. McMichael, Britte M. Heijink, Nina H. Witteveen, Annabel Zwarts, Mark B. Bush

Abstract

Amazonian forest fires rarely, if ever, ignite and spread in the absence of humans. The first colonization of people into South America happened in the late Pleistocene, and by 10,000 years ago, humans had introduced fire into a naive landscape. Here we build on previous databases of burned 14C dated archaeological material and 14C dated charcoal fragments retrieved from soils and reconstruct spatiotemporal patterns of fire in Amazonia for the last 10,000 years. We ask whether fire histories are regionally synchronous, and whether major demographic events such as the ‘Great Dying’ or ‘Early abandonment’ appear in the fire histories within or between regions. We found that most of the earliest fires occurred in the peripheral areas and spread into central Amazonian forests mostly around 2000–3000 years ago. The frequency and recurrence of burned 14C dated material also showed a two-phase decline over the last 700 years. Most regions show a decrease in fire occurrence ca. 700–500 years ago and then again during the last 400 years when European influence spread across Amazonia. The restructuring of Amazonian pyrogeography over the last 2000 years has likely played a large role in shaping modern forests.

Huge 2025 Rise in Ecuadorian Balsa Exports to Feed Wind Turbine Demand Raises Fears of Increased Illegal Logging

The rape of the Amazon rainforest to feed an exploding global demand for wind turbine balsa wood cores could be getting worse.

Along with the global slaughter of millions of bats and the decimation of local raptor populations, the looting of the Amazon for balsa is one of the dirty secrets of the ‘green’ power revolution.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

The rape of the Amazon rainforest to feed an exploding global demand for wind turbine balsa wood cores could be getting worse. According to local reports, the main balsa-producing country Ecuador has seen a huge 2025 rise in exports of the vital turbine core wood from US$218 million in 2024 to US$301 million. Last March, the Daily Sceptic reported exclusively on figures that suggested half a million mature balsa trees were being illegally logged every year in Ecuador and Peru to make up for shortfalls from sustainable plantations. The massive export rise over just one year hardly suggests the illegal deforestation is easing – if anything, it is a possible sign that the situation is getting worse.

Along with the global slaughter of millions of bats and the decimation of local raptor populations, the looting of the Amazon for balsa is one of the dirty secrets of the ‘green’ power revolution. For obvious political reasons, it cannot be mentioned in Net Zero-supporting mainstream media. Balsa is a tropical hardwood that is both lightweight and strong, and despite chemical foam alternatives, it is the material of choice for large 15 MW offshore turbine blades. According to a recent Mordor Intelligence report, foams can lose rigidity under extreme marine conditions – especially near the blade roots where stresses peak in structures that are almost as high as the Eiffel Tower.

Ecuador provides at least 70% of world balsa and China takes over half this supply as it attempts to dominate the global manufacture of wind turbines. It is thought that about 50% of global balsa production is used in turbine blades. Each blade is composed of 7% balsa, and it is estimated that each set of three can use up to 40 trees. Given what is known about annual balsa production, the scale of illegal logging and the requirements of turbine manufacturers, it is not difficult to arrive at a possible Amazon natural forest yearly loss of around half a million trees. The detailed figures can be found in our March article.

Balsa is a fast-growing wood that reaches the maturity needed for wind turbine use in about seven years. Until the soaring demand from turbines kicked in, it was harvested in sustainable plantations. But since the turn of the decade, this sustainable harvest cannot keep up with demand. In a damning 2024 survey, the Environment Investigation Agency (EIA) found that Ecuadorian exports were boosted by up to 50% following illegal logging in virgin rainforest.

The EIA report was damning. Investigators toured many of the illegal logging sites and charged that most, if not all, exporters turned to natural forests as a “convenient and immediate replacement” when plantations were quickly depleted of older trees. The areas under attack were noted to be some of the last intact forest landscapes in the country. They were said to be unique protected areas and emblematic indigenous territories.

One can only imagine the worldwide outcry if oil companies needed the wood for their own operations. But when alleged ‘green’ companies loot the forest, the blind eye turned is positively Nelsonian.

A continued lack of enough sustainable wood in Ecuador allied to a massive 37% increase in 2025 manufactured balsa exports hardly suggests a fall in illegal logging. Given that over 40 trees are required for a giant turbine, perhaps an educational plaque should be attached noting that at least 20 were illegally taken from the Amazon so this unreliable power machine can help us stop the Earth catching fire. (Other pseudoscience climate scares are of course available.)

Within days of the Daily Sceptic illegal logging article going viral on social media, a ‘fact check’ was published blowing smoke around similar claims. Green blob-funded Science Feedback didn’t mention the Daily Sceptic by name – it seems to have learnt we bite back – but it noted: “A common strategy that misinformers use against renewable energy is to claim that wind turbines or solar panels aren’t as green as they seem.” It is accepted that illegal balsa wood logging occurs, “but the main cause of deforestation in the Amazon is agriculture, not wind turbines or logging in general”.

So that’s all right then – if it were the main cause, we would have to get rather more upset about the matter. We should not minimise the illegal logging harms, continues the ever-reliable smoke blower. But is the entire wind industry now dependent on illegal Amazon wood? “Probably not” is the reply. A more relevant question would ask whether a significant portion of the wind industry was dependent on illegally obtained wood – and the answer would be: definitely yes.

“It is quite misleading to blame wind turbines for deforestation in the Amazon without crucial context,” Science Feedback observes. At this point, your correspondent started to lose the will to continue reading this tripe. One can only wonder how Science Feedback would spin our story that large areas of the Indonesian rainforest are being turned into open-cast mining pits to supply nickel and increase the range of high-end electric vehicles.

“Necessary thinning of overgrown vegetation designed to improve the overall health of the local ecosystem – and of course help stop the Earth going up in flames” would be our helpful suggestion.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.

Dear Bloomberg: Trump Can Be Against Deforestation in the Amazon While Still Thinking Climate Change Is Overblown

A recent article at Bloomberg, “Trump’s Tariff Wall Takes a Curious Woke Turn,” implies that it is hypocritical for President Trump to levy tariffs on Brazil over deforestation while saying that climate change is a hoax. This is nonsense. Climate activism does not hold a monopoly over environmental concerns.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A recent article at Bloomberg, “Trump’s Tariff Wall Takes a Curious Woke Turn,” implies that it is hypocritical for President Trump to levy tariffs on Brazil over deforestation while saying that climate change is a hoax. This is nonsense. Climate activism does not hold a monopoly over environmental concerns. It is perfectly reasonable to support other environmental causes, especially tangible ones like protection of the rainforest, while being skeptical of man-made climate change and all the burdensome and often authoritarian policies that are supposed to somehow stop it.

The Bloomberg article’s sub-header “A president known for calling climate change a hoax is threatening Brazil with tariffs over deforestation” implies that this is hypocritical. The author goes on to say:

President Donald Trump has shown few signs in his second term that he cares much about the future of the Amazon rainforest. Nor are there any indications that ending either corruption overseas or the use of forced labor are White House priorities.

Yet in recent weeks all three of those things have become justifications for proposed tariffs put forward by the Trump administration. So what should we make of that? Are Trump’s economic wars suddenly embracing a new humanitarian and environmentalist agenda? Or, just maybe, are we seeing a clever strategy unfolding that may make Trump’s tariffs more politically durable?”

The Trump administration is hypocritical, suggests Bloomberg, because Trump “called climate change a hoax and pulled the US out of international talks, axed financing for wind farms and just funded the first US coal-fired power plant in a generation.”

But just because one is skeptical of climate policy, which is what all of the above complaints are connected to, does not mean that other environmental concerns don’t matter. If President Trump does not believe that human emissions of greenhouse gases are causing weather to get worse, which he is correct about, then why shouldn’t he allow for more investment in reliable, cheap energy like coal, over expensive and ironically environmentally destructive wind power?

Conservationists hold that land and resources should be conserved for use, not preserved untouchably, and illegal deforestation, like poaching (illegal hunting) is certainly something that falls under the concerns of conservationists.

Organizations like the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation promote environmental and species protection but do not hold to the theory of a looming man-created climate catastrophe that requires world economies to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

It is true that the Trump administration did say that, among other issues, Brazil has failed to combat illegal deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, and also has levied unbalanced tariffs on U.S. ethanol exports.

Interestingly, the ethanol and deforestation issues are linked. Some Brazilian corn ethanol producers have recently come under suspicion of burning illegally clear-cut native wood in their plants because it is cheaper than using planted trees. Similarly, Brazilian sugarcane ethanol plantations were allowed to encroach on old-growth rainforest so that the country could increase ethanol production to meet climate goals. This is a case of climate policy coming up against traditional environmentalism: slashing-and-burning the rainforest to make more ethanol fuel or deforesting portions of the rainforest to build a highway for a climate conference.

It’s possible President Trump is using the deforestation angle cynically, as he is often known to do, but it is nonsense to say that concern about the rainforest requires one to also toe the line on climate policy.

The author of the Bloomberg piece, Shawn Donnan, seems to be more interested in ribbing Trump by accusing him of being “woke” than making a coherent argument. Scoffing that it’s some kind of hypocrisy to be worried about deforestation of the rainforest while calling out the scam that is climate alarmism only demonstrates Bloomberg’s and Donnan’s ignorance of the issues.

EXCLUSIVE: Half a Million Balsa Trees Illegally Logged in Amazon Rainforest Every Year to Feed Global Wind Turbine Demand

Over half a million balsa hardwood trees are being illegally logged in the Amazon rainforest every year to feed the massive demand for wind turbines in many parts of the world. Balsa is a lightweight but strong wood that is commonly used in the core of giant turbine blades. It can make up around 7% of the blade and each set of three can use up to 40 trees.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

Over half a million balsa hardwood trees are being illegally logged in the Amazon rainforest every year to feed the massive demand for wind turbines in many parts of the world. Balsa is a lightweight but strong wood that is commonly used in the core of giant turbine blades. It can make up around 7% of the blade and each set of three can use up to 40 trees.

This discovery is a genuine shock and follows an exclusive investigation by the Daily Sceptic. It adds to the huge ecological toll that the ‘green’ wind turbines are taking on the natural environment. These inefficient, unreliable, unsightly monsters require a large footprint on land and sea, kill millions of bats, decimate raptor populations, sweep the air of quadrillions of insects and alter local ecology on both land and sea. Nobody would install one in a free market, so they require vast financial subsidies to produce expensive electricity.

Given what is known about annual balsa production, the scale of illegal logging and the demands of wind turbine manufactures, it is not difficult to arrive at a possible Amazon forest yearly loss of over half a million trees. Most commercial balsa is exported by Ecuador and it has produced approximately 500,000 cubic metres annually in recent years, or about 80,000 metric tonnes. Around 55% of production is thought to end up in wind turbines and each group of three requires about 10.5m3 a set. Each set requires about 40 trees so annual balsa consumption for wind turbines equates to 1,047,619. Balsa is a relatively fast growing tropical wood and until the soaring demand from turbines kicked in, it was harvested in sustainable plantations. But since the turn of the decade, this sustainable harvest cannot keep up with demand. In a damning survey, the Environment Investigation Agency (EIA) found that exports were boosted by up to 50% following illegal logging in virgin rainforest.

Halve the turbine consumption of 1,047,619 trees and the illegal logging amounts to around 523,810 mature specimens. This figure is likely to be controversial so the Daily Sceptic has shown its workings-out in full. But any substantial annual cull is horrific, and far outstrips the one-off loss of 100,000 tropical rainforest trees logged to build a convenient road for delegates attending the recent ‘save the forest’ COP30 meeting in the Brazilian city of Belém.

Blind eyes are of course turned to the illegal logging, and have been for some time. In 2020, it was reported that 20,000 balsa trees were illegally felled between March and September in the Achuar indigenous territory along Ecuador’s Copataza River. Other reports refer to intense illegal logging, with some estimates noting the removal of 75% of the trees in some areas.

The EIA report that was published in 2024 was damning. Investigators toured many of the illegal logging sites and charged that most, if not all, exporters turned to natural forests as a “convenient and immediate replacement” when plantations were quickly depleted of older trees. The areas under attack were noted to be some of the last intact forest landscapes in the country. They were said to be unique protected areas and emblematic indigenous territories. Traders are said to have told the EIA that the logging of balsa was taking place “from north to south across most of the Amazonian provinces of the country”. It is estimated that at least 50% of production is currently being supplied by these illegal means. Blending of plantation wood with illegal logging is thought to vary between 10% to 70% depending on the exporter.

The EIA report gained little mainstream media or political attention when it was published, although the body is an established NGO, founded in the UK in 1984 with offices in the UK and Europe. For the narrative-driven mainstream, this type of upsetting news is simply too hot to handle.

However there have been attempts by turbine manufactures and supporters to suggest that balsa is being replaced in parts of the turbine core by various synthetic polymer foam substitutes. This is true, but balsa remains in popular use due to its excellent strength-to-weight ratio. Hybrid designs are said to have become more common, with balsa used in high-shear and other critical areas. In these areas it still holds an advantage over foams. But overall production figures suggest wind turbines are still using a great deal of the wood. Ecuadorean production is said to have spiked around 2020 with a previous sustainable total of 33,000 tonnes rising to 75,000, driven by Chinese turbines manufactures. It is a little difficult to get exact production figures but sources such as the EIA and UN Comtrade suggest exports of 80-100,000 tonnes in 2021, 60-80,000 in 2022, and 50-80,000 in 2023 and 2024.

After the spike, production has stabilised but at levels that can only have been possible by massive looting of the rainforest. It is obvious that a great deal of this is supported by huge increases in Chinese wind turbine manufacture. Overall figures for both domestic and export production are not available in one place, but credible estimate suggest monetary total of $8-12 billion in 2021 has risen to nearly $16 billion in 2024 with the projection for 2025 edging towards $18 billion.

The annual loss of balsa trees in virgin rainforests is unnecessary ecological rape traceable back to ideologues driving a hard-Left Net Zero fantasy. The Daily Septic has attempted to put an annual number on the loss using known figures. Our workings-out are supplied so others, if they wish, can contest our assumptions and maths and arrive at different conclusions. But few will be able to cover up the fact that there are very significant and continuing annual illegal logging balsa losses.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.

100,000 Rainforest Trees Likely to Have Died in Vain as COP30 Faces Brutal Net Zero Reality

Your correspondent is a kind chap who doesn’t care to intrude on private grief. For that reason I shall not be attending the upcoming COP30 conference in the Brazilian city of Belém. With the Net Zero fantasy falling to pieces, the faces of those attending will be as long as the local eight-mile highway that cleared 100,000 mature rainforest trees to help speed the 70,000 climate cultists on their way. In a pre-conference interview, the UN chief Antonio ‘boiling’ Guterres told the Guardian that “we don’t want to see the Amazon as a savannah”. As always, when the bloviating Guterres and the COP brigade rolls into town, you couldn’t make this stuff up, although they frequently do.

Construction work taking place in a forested area, with machinery and workers visible near a muddy pathway.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

Construction workers working on a dirt road in a forested area, with heavy machinery and trees in the background.

Your correspondent is a kind chap who doesn’t care to intrude on private grief. For that reason, I shall not be attending the upcoming COP30 conference in the Brazilian city of Belém. With the Net Zero fantasy falling to pieces, the faces of those attending will be as long as the local eight-mile highway that cleared 100,000 mature rainforest trees to help speed the 70,000 climate cultists on their way. In a pre-conference interview, the UN chief Antonio ‘boiling’ Guterres told the Guardian that “we don’t want to see the Amazon as a savannah”. As always, when the bloviating Guterres and the COP brigade rolls into town, you couldn’t make this stuff up, although they frequently do.

Alas, it seems some of the over-priced hotel accommodation might fall short of the usual standards of comfort expected by the annual saviours of the planet. It is reported that thousands of rooms in ‘love’ motels have been turned into ‘diplomatic suites’ by replacing heart-shaped beds, dance poles and leopard-print décor. It seems hourly rates are not on offer and prices are as high as $1,000 a night, with ceiling mirrors presumably thrown in at no extra charge. 

Whatever the rooms are called, it seems unlikely they will be occupied by the grander members of the corps diplomatique, such as East Timor’s Adão Soares Barbosa. He recently informed BBC radio that his country was very much affected by sea level rise, a claim that might be less risible if it was not for the fact that over the long term the land of East Timor is leaping out of the sea due to complex underground plate movements. In common with many other Pacific islands, East Timor is growing in size helped by natural forces that also include surface accretions. Despite this, hundreds of billions of dollars are being sought at this COP for alleged climate damage caused by wealth-producing industrialised countries burning hydrocarbons.

At the COP meeting, someone always ends up getting screwed. 

Alas, again, the money spigot has been turned off. In the United States, until last year the biggest supporter of all things Net Zero and the ‘climate-stopping’ Paris Agreement, the Donald has been kicking ten bells out of the whole boondoggle. Where possible, green energy projects have been cancelled, federal funding of climate alarmism wiped out, foreign aid to boost said alarmism overseas removed, while climate scientists have been told to stop peddling nonsense and resume the scientific process. The UN already knows what President Trump thinks of the Net Zero project – it’s a scam and a con job he told them at the General Assembly. They laughed at him during his first term, but they are not laughing now.

Few heads of state are expected to show up this year although the UK, secure in its role as the sacrificial canary in the Net Zero mine, is being represented by the Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer and the Prince of Wales. Not much point asking Starmer for more money, he is flat broke, while the Mountbatten Windsors have been having a few extra calls on their finances of late. While money will be in generally short supply, the tipping will be plentiful. Tips as in the Gulf Stream collapsing, the Arctic ice vanishing and the corals disappearing. However, many times we hear them, they remain firm favourites, something mere evidence and observation have little chance of ever removing from the public stages and prints. 

Things just ain’t what they used to be. Mark Poynting of the BBC, presumably one of those destined to travel down the Belém ‘Highway of Shame’ in the next few days, did his best with a “What is COP30 and why does it matter?” It was a dull, routine article, one that in future could easily be outsourced to AI. “A major step forward looks challenging this year, not least because of the effect of the Trump administration”, he concluded. Er, duh.

Elsewhere, support is slowly fading as the costs and impracticalities of Net Zero become apparent. Not to put too fine a point on it, renewables are useless for running a modern industrial economy and hydrocarbons are vital and likely to remain so. Who really wants to be on the side of those who would ban artificial fertiliser made from natural gas and condemn half the world to death by starvation? More questions are being asked about the underlying science of climate change, a subject that has been essentially banned by elite activists for the last 25 years. A considered and well-sourced report on the climate science that has not been able to speak its name for decades was written by five eminent scientists this year and officially published by the US Department of Energy. Activists were enraged and there were a number of ‘fact checks’ run by Green Blob-funded operations. Not a punch has been laid, but it has had the effect of pushing the entire debate into the open. The abuse showered on the five scientists has given a clear signal that politics has been at play here, not science.

COP30 is supposed to be significant since it is 10 years since Paris and the agreement that was supposed to save the world by a programme of global decarbonisation. But this year, barely a third of countries have submitted supposedly binding plans to decarbonise. The fact is that voters don’t care about decarbonisation schemes when they are asked to spend money. They will not pay to avoid imaginary climate scenarios based on junk climate models. Even if there is a problem, and natural weather variation makes that impossible to ascertain, the extent of generosity is limited. If the temperature ticks up a tad, so be it. The rises are tiny and have been seen countless times in the past. The USA is out of it, and the rest of the world is bound to follow in the end.

Last year, the president of COP29 in hydrocarbon-rich Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev praised oil and gas as “gifts from God”. This year as the war-on-humanity party reassembles in the Amazon, we remember the words of the Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu: “If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by”.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.

The Guardian and Guterres Are Wrong: Science Shows No Climate ‘Tipping Points’

A recent article in The Guardian, “Change course now: humanity has missed 1.5C climate target, says UN head,” claims that the planet is in grave danger of passing climate “tipping points,” as it is now inevitable that 1.5°C warming will be breached. Although 1.5℃ of warming may be locked in if not already surpassed, the claim that it signifies a dangerous milestone is false. Not only is the tipping points narrative bunk, but there is no evidence that 1.5°C warming is any particular threat. The purported temperature threshold was chosen arbitrarily and for political reasons rather than scientific ones.

A world map highlighting various climate tipping points, with locations marked and categorized by the levels of global warming at which they may occur.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

Screenshot of a The Guardian article discussing climate crisis with the word 'NONSENSE' stamped across it.

A recent article in The Guardian, “Change course now: humanity has missed 1.5C climate target, says UN head,” claims that the planet is in grave danger of passing climate “tipping points,” as it is now inevitable that 1.5°C warming will be breached. Although 1.5℃ of warming may be locked in if not already surpassed, the claim that it signifies a dangerous milestone is false. Not only is the tipping points narrative bunk, but there is no evidence that 1.5°C warming is any particular threat. The purported temperature threshold was chosen arbitrarily and for political reasons rather than scientific ones.

The Guardian’s story focuses on comments made by United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, who in advance of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, warned that it is “inevitable” that 1.5°C of warming will be breached, and it will result in “devastating consequences” for the planet. The Guardian says Guterres “urged the leaders who will gather in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belém to realize that the longer they delay cutting emissions, the greater the danger of passing catastrophic “tipping points” in the Amazon, the Arctic, and the oceans.”

There is no scientific basis for any so-called tipping points, and claiming otherwise is just fearmongering for political gain.

Beginning with the Amazon rainforest, the location of the next climate summit in November, Guterres reportedly warned that it could become a “savannah,” or a dry grassland. There is no evidence for this absurd claim. Like Guterres’ previous “boiling oceans” comment, it is purely fanciful hyperbole lacking any basis in fact. Guterres is referencing a period of drought suffered by parts of the Amazon basin in recent years, but that drought has not been historically unusual, and the recent localized areas of drought have not been more severe than previous drought periods. As discussed in the Climate Realism post “Media Outlets Continue Spreading False Amazon “Record Drought” Claims,” the Amazon has experienced periods of heavy rain and extended drought in the past that were worse than those we see now. Historic records do not show any worsening of drought in the Amazon. The threat that impacts tree cover is deforestation and clear cutting, not climate change.

The Arctic is also not approaching any dangerous tipping point. Should warming continue, ice extent will likely shrink, but it has not been happening at nearly as fast a rate as alarmists claim. Arctic sea ice extent has been stable since about 2010, indicating a new ice extent regime, and there is no telling how long that will last. If the past is any guide, sea ice might begin expanding again, as it has waxed and waned historically.

Finally, the ocean tipping point Guterres is referring to is the claim that coral reefs will die out as a result of ocean pH changes and higher temperatures, but again, science and paleo-history shows that corals are resilient to changes that are much more extreme than the modest warming of recent decades. As discussed repeatedly at Climate Realism, the world’s oceans are not at risk of becoming acidic and coral reefs are expanding their range and setting records for growth.

It is true that the “1.5°C threshold” is likely to be passed. But that does not mean anything, certainly nothing catastrophic. The 1.5°C warming limit was already passed in 2024 because of the El Niño conditions—with no cataclysm. This should not be of concern to anyone, because that limit is not a scientifically established value. The Guardian fearmongered about it in the past, which Climate Realism addressed here, and seems to have learned nothing. The 1.5°C number was arbitrary; established by an 11 member German political advisory board containing only one meteorologist. It is not a hard scientific threshold the way the boiling point of water is, though alarmists inappropriately treat it that way.

Guterres’ comments are not based on science, data, or even history. He is simply attempting to worry the public, with The Guardian’s complicity, in order to gain political leverage for negotiations at COP 30 even as a growing number of countries are downplaying climate concerns in the realistic assessment that other issues are more pressing and fossil fuels, for now, remain vital to prosperity.

100,000 Amazon Trees Chopped Down to Build Road for COP30 Climate Conference

Spare a thought for the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt as he considers his upcoming trip to the Brazilian city of Belém to report on COP30. Saving the world and its environment is his gig so how will he face the prospect of travelling down a new four-lane highway cut through the dense Amazon rainforest to help speed him and his 70,000 other political activists to their luxury hotels? Based on trees per acre, an estimated 100,000 mature specimens have been chopped down and logged to build the eight-mile Avenida Liberdade causing untold disruption to local wildlife.

Aerial view of a logging site in a dense rainforest, showing a dirt road with cut timber stacked on the sides, surrounded by lush greenery.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

Aerial view of a cleared path in the Amazon rainforest with exposed soil and construction activity, showing the impact of road development.

Spare a thought for the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt as he considers his upcoming trip to the Brazilian city of Belém to report on COP30. Saving the world and its environment is his gig so how will he face the prospect of travelling down a new four-lane highway cut through the dense Amazon rainforest to help speed him and his 70,000 other political activists to their luxury hotels? Based on trees per acre, an estimated 100,000 mature specimens have been chopped down and logged to build the eight-mile Avenida Liberdade causing untold disruption to local wildlife. Happily, all is not lost in despair. If he wishes, the BBC’s activist-in-chief can consider recent findings published in Nature Plants that increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have led to substantial growth in the remaining Amazon forest, with mature trees growing by over 6% a decade. Perhaps he could start promoting on the BBC the enormous benefits of CO2, rightly known as the gas of life. He could front a campaign to assuage his dented COP conscience along the lines: ‘Forward with Carbon Dioxide, not Chainsaws.’

Needless to say, the fatter trees of the Amazon have received little publicity in narrative-driven mainstream media. Extensive Green Blob-funded grooming is deployed to keep this type of inconvenient global ‘greening’ material out of the papers. Little mention is made of the astonishing CO2-fuelled growth in global vegetation seen across the planet in the last 40 years. Increases of around 15% are common, some deserts have started to shrink, and world famine has been alleviated by higher crop yields. SciLine is connected with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, publisher of Science, and it recently suggested that writers head off the ‘greening’ story by noting that “in many cases, CO2 disproportionately favours weeds over crops, causing more problems for agriculture”.

In 2022 Rowlatt authored an alarmist series on BBC Radio 4 and World Service called The Climate Tipping Points in which he highlighted the potential “collapse of the Amazon rainforest” as one of the major irreversible changes tiggered by global warming. Not yet, it seems, for while Rowlatt was spouting this computer model agitprop, the scientists out in the field preparing their recently published paper found “aggressive changes” in mature tropical forest biomass. Yet again, it might be noted, climate model predictions fail the test when confronted with actual scientific data. As MIT Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen has said about the evidence-lite climate dogma: “The narrative is a quasi-religious movement predicated on an absurd scientific narrative.”

The team of researchers found that over 30 years of Amazonian plant data records across 188 mature forest plots, the trees had become considerably larger over time. The basal area, the size of the tree trunk near ground level, increased by 3.3% a decade. Trees fight for light and space in close proximity and height, and size are an obvious advantage. While the larger trees were found to increase by over 6% a decade, the smaller plants also thrived, suggesting, the scientists note, that any recent negative climatic influences have been “more than alleviated” by the positive effects of increased resources such as CO2 fertilisation. In effect the smaller trees operating in more difficult low light conditions can use the extra CO2 to photosynthesise more easily and survive for longer.

In an article published in Watts Up With That?, Anthony Watts was clear on the important findings of the paper. It’s “plain old plant biology” he said, adding: “CO2 fertilisation is no longer a theory tested only in labs. This study confirms it at continental scale: Amazon forest are thriving, not suffering, in a world with more CO2.”

It’s likely that the Guardian will be assembling a team to travel the Avenida Liberdade Highway of Shame to attend the increasingly irrelevant COP Net Zero boondoggle. The newspaper recently reported that the big Amazon trees were more climate resistant “than previously believed”, proving that the ‘reverse ferret’ is alive and well in media land. “Previously believed”, of course, only applies to those who are unaware of the paleo record stretching back hundreds of millions of years. Perhaps it was a first for Popular Mechanics, which gave us its ‘Amazon’s Trees Are Weirdly Getting Bigger Every Decade, Which Defies Logic‘. Might be best not to give up the day writing job here. Finally, and perhaps scraping the barrel for any coverage of this important paper, NBC News noted the view of one scientist that fattening trees is “in some ways” a positive news story. “But it also means that the forest is now more vulnerable to losing those trees.” The obvious statement was then made that any benefit in larger trees sizes “can be quite easily negated by deforestation and logging”.

Something all those virtuous delegates to COP30 might just know something about.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.

The Amazon’s “CO₂ Problem”? Turns Out the Trees Love It – So Does the Media

For decades, we’ve been warned that the Amazon rainforest—the so-called “lungs of the planet”—was on the verge of collapse. Headlines screamed about tipping points, mass die-offs of giant trees, and irreversible climate catastrophe. Yet, buried in the data, something rather inconvenient has been happening: the Amazon is getting bigger, fatter, and taller.

Aerial view of a dense Amazon rainforest with lush green trees and a winding river running through it, surrounded by fog.

From Watts Up With That?

By Anthony Watts

Diagram illustrating the process of photosynthesis, showing the conversion of carbon dioxide, water, and energy into oxygen and glucose. Includes labeled components: Light Reactions, Dark Reactions, Thylakoid, Granum, and Stroma.

For decades, we’ve been warned that the Amazon rainforest—the so-called “lungs of the planet”—was on the verge of collapse. Headlines screamed about tipping points, mass die-offs of giant trees, and irreversible climate catastrophe. Yet, buried in the data, something rather inconvenient has been happening: the Amazon is getting bigger, fatter, and taller.

A new Nature Plants study, covering 30 years of field data from 188 permanent forest plots across Amazonia, shows that the average size of Amazon trees has increased by more than 3% per decade. In plain English: the forest isn’t shrinking in stature, it’s bulking up.

The researchers found:

  • Mean tree size up 3.3% per decade
  • Largest trees (>40 cm diameter) increased 6.6% per decade
  • Biomass increasingly concentrated in the biggest trees
  • No evidence of large-scale die-off from climate stress

In their words:

“We find that tree size has been increasing across all size classes… The observed patterns match the expectations from increased resource availability, particularly from rising atmospheric CO₂.”

So much for the “large trees are doomed” hypothesis.

This is the CO₂ fertilization effect in action. The key driver, according to the authors, is not some vague “forest resilience” or a miraculous recovery from past disturbance, but rather plain old plant biology: more carbon dioxide in the air means more raw material for photosynthesis.

CO₂ fertilization is no longer a theory tested only in labs. This study confirms it at continental scale: Amazon forests are thriving, not suffering, in a world with more CO₂ .

  • Big trees: with better access to light, they are expanding even faster, locking away more carbon.
  • Small trees: surprisingly, they’re also benefiting. With extra CO₂, understory trees living on the edge of survival at low light can now photosynthesize more efficiently and survive longer .

The result is a forest with both fatter giants and healthier smaller trees—something alarmist models didn’t predict.

News Coverage: A Rare Dose of Optimism; even the mainstream outlets couldn’t spin this entirely negative.

  • Phys.org summarized it as a “good news story,” noting that “the trees in intact forests have grown bigger; even the largest trees have continued to thrive despite these threats”.
  • NBC News ran with: “Giant trees of the Amazon get taller as forests fatten up on carbon dioxide”, pointing out that “We’re not seeing signs of them dying off… They are increasing in size and number as well”.
  • LiveScience said: Trees of all sizes across the Amazon rainforest are getting fatter due to climate change, a new study shows.

Of course, both outlets quickly hedged: warnings about future drought, deforestation, lightning, and the ever-present “tipping point” were sprinkled throughout. But the underlying data tells a different story: rising CO₂ is currently a net positive for the Amazon’s forests.

We’ve been told endlessly that rising CO₂ is a global disaster, turning forests into tinderboxes and deserts. Yet the Amazon—supposedly one of the most climate-sensitive ecosystems—appears to be doing the opposite: absorbing more carbon, producing more biomass, and thriving.

This doesn’t mean the Amazon is invulnerable. Deforestation is still a real threat (chainsaws trump CO₂), but the oft-repeated claim that climate change alone is killing the forest doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

My Final Thoughts

The real takeaway is this:

  • Rising CO₂ is not just a “pollutant”—it is also a powerful plant fertilizer.
  • Amazonian forests are currently benefitting, not suffering, from this change.
  • Predictions of imminent collapse have once again run headlong into inconvenient data.

When climate modelers assure us that “the science is settled,” it’s worth recalling just how often field data overturns the narrative. The Amazon was supposed to be collapsing. Instead, its trees are thriving.

That doesn’t sell headlines or funding proposals, but it’s what the evidence shows.

So, next time someone calls CO₂ “pollution,” remind them: without it, plants—and by extension, we—wouldn’t exist. And with a bit more of it, the world’s largest rainforest seems to be doing just fine.

Climate Scientists “Failure to Tell the Truth” Is why Net Zero was Abandoned?

“… they worry that if the true nightmare was revealed, … everybody … would … just give up …”

Alan Kohler. Source The New Daily

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… they worry that if the true nightmare was revealed, … everybody … would … just give up …”

Trump’s America is abandoning climate action and the fight just got harder

By Alan Kohler

…

Bulldozing the Amazon rainforest is a fitting way to mark 30 years of failure of annual gabfests that have released colossal amounts of carbon dioxide from the mouths of the well-meaning and burned tonnes of aviation fuel to get them there, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions not one bit.

…

Energy scientist, Vaclav Smil puts the total cost of achieving net zero by 2050 at $US444 trillion, or $US17 trillion a year for 25 years, “requiring affluent economies to spend 20 to 25 per cent of their annual GDP on the transition”. 

…

So net zero by 2050 won’t happen and the increase in global temperature will not be limited to the 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels that was agreed as preferred at Paris in 2015 – nowhere near it.

…

There has been systemic reticence on the part of scientists to spell out what’s actually going on, first because science is inherently uncertain, so they are always reluctant to be definitive, and second because they worry that if the true nightmare was revealed, politicians and everybody else would either refuse to believe it or just give up.

…Read more: 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-17/climate-change-religion-trump-zeldin-epa-wind-back-rules/105057538

The average temperature difference between the Aussie state capitals Melbourne and Brisbane is around 4ºC, so why isn’t everyone in Brisbane dying from climate change? How could global warming of 4ºC make Melbourne uninhabitable?

Cairns is about as much warmer than Brisbane as Brisbane is warmer than Melbourne. 4ºC warming wouldn’t even make Brisbane uninhabitable.

And of course you have prosperous and high population tropical cities like Jakarta and Singapore even closer to the equator than Cairns.

If all this isn’t enough, we have evidence from the distant past that warming is not a problem.

Our monkey ancestors also did well in a much hotter world. The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 5-8C hotter than today, was the age of monkeys. Our monkey ancestors thrived on the abundance of the hothouse PETM, and colonised much of the world, only retreating when the encroaching cold drove them from their new homes.

Fish also did pretty well during the PETM.

Study: Ancient Fish Thrived During PETM Extreme Global Warming

As for climate scientists failing to tell the truth to prevent Net Zero being abandoned, surely the time has come to stop hiding the truth and let it all out, and tell it how it is?

Net Zero is being abandoned anyway, so what do you have to lose? Please entertain us, don’t hold back – let’s hear your nightmare, let’s hear and read the predictions of your dying climate doomsday cult in all their glorious detail. Go out with a bang rather than a whimper.

Amazonian Rainforest Obliterated To Make Way For COP30

As any level-headed sceptic knows, a great deal of climate change activism is about posturing and virtue-signalling. No surprise then that part of an Amazonian rainforest has been obliterated to accommodate the upcoming COP30 summit.

The Daily Sceptic

By Sallust

As any level-headed sceptic knows, a great deal of climate change activism is about posturing and virtue-signalling. No surprise then that part of an Amazonian rainforest has been obliterated to accommodate the upcoming COP30 summit. The BBC has the story (so it must be true):

A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.

It aims to ease traffic to the city, which will host more than 50,000 people – including world leaders – at the conference in November.

The state government touts the highway’s “sustainable” credentials, but some locals and conservationists are outraged at the environmental impact.

The Amazon plays a vital role in absorbing carbon for the world and providing biodiversity, and many say this deforestation contradicts the very purpose of a climate summit.

Along the partially built road, lush rainforest towers on either side – a reminder of what was once there. Logs are piled high in the cleared land which stretches more than 13km (eight miles) through the rainforest into Belém.

Diggers and machines carve through the forest floor, paving over wetland to surface the road which will cut through a protected area.

Berry harvests have been destroyed with no compensation to the farmers. Wildlife has been disrupted too:

The road leaves two disconnected areas of protected forest. Scientists are concerned it will fragment the ecosystem and disrupt the movement of wildlife.

Prof Silvia Sardinha is a wildlife vet and researcher at a university animal hospital that overlooks the site of the new highway.

She and her team rehabilitate wild animals with injuries, predominantly caused by humans or vehicles.

Once healed, they release them back into the wild – something she says will be harder if there is a highway on their doorstep:

“From the moment of deforestation, there is a loss.

“We are going to lose an area to release these animals back into the wild, the natural environment of these species,” she said.

“Land animals will no longer be able to cross to the other side too, reducing the areas where they can live and breed.”

Needless to say, the underlying reason for this gratuitous destruction is political self-interest:

The Brazilian President and Environment Minister say this will be a historic summit because it is “a COP in the Amazon, not a COP about the Amazon”.

The President says the meeting will provide an opportunity to focus on the needs of the Amazon, show the forest to the world, and present what the federal Government has done to protect it.

Worth reading in full.

Meanwhile back in Britain, Britain’s eco-warrior Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, the tireless advocate of Net Zero at any price, is putting his money where his mouth is with his own brand of virtue-signalling.

According to the Telegraph, Mr Miliband has installed a heat pump in his north London home.

In 2023 his house was awarded an Energy Performance Certificate of grade D. A year later, with a heat pump installed:

The green heating system lowered the home’s carbon emission from 12 tonnes to 4.5 tonnes, but the property’s energy rating only rose to a C grade as a result.

Chris Norris, of the National Residential Landlords Association, said he was unsurprised a heat pump had “little impact” on Mr Miliband’s EPC.

He said: “At present, the metrics used are focused on cost of heating, and gas is significantly cheaper per unit than electricity.

“It is perfectly possible, as things stand, for an EPC score to deteriorate if switching from gas to electricity as the primary heating fuel. Changing this is one of the policies being consulted on by the Government.”

It seems two companies were involved in assessing the properly. Bizarrely:

Furthermore, the recorded floorspace of Mr Miliband’s property was assessed as being 252 square metres – 30 square metres less than had been recorded in the previous assessment only a year before.

There’s an explanation:

The assessor responsible for the new grade is a former hypnotherapist who retrained to be an assessor five years ago. He told the Telegraph that the training took “only around a week” to complete.

He said: “A lot of the time it’s low-paid – estate agents just use you. We’re the lowest of the low, really. EPCs don’t have a very good reputation.”

Dr Toby Gledhill, who led a PhD study into the flaws in EPCs, said of the Energy Minister’s assessments: “The floor area has shrunk quite substantially, by more than 10% between these two EPCs which are only a year apart.

“The smaller floor area means a reduced volume of space to heat, which leads to greater economy and this is reflected in the improved energy rating of the more recent EPC.”

In other words, the new EPC achieved a (slightly) higher grade because of the reduced heating requirements, not because of the heat pump.

The solution would appear to be simple: shut off as many rooms as possible in your home and see your EPC skyrocket. Then you can open them up again after the inspector has gone and save yourself the cost of a heat pump.

Or perhaps the Government could employ more hypnotherapists to encourage people to install more heat pumps?

Also worth reading in full.