Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The wildfires in Europe have prompted Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley to claim that the “angry Online Right” needs to accept Net Zero. But all his ‘facts’ are wrong, says Paul Homewood.
The wildfires in Europe have prompted Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley to claim that the “angry Online Right” needs to accept Net Zero. But all his ‘facts’ are wrong, says Paul Homewood.
The Online Right is going wrong, eschewing compassion or charm, talking itself into corners of angry irrelevance. The evidence is stacking up – we only have to look out of our windows.
Take climate change. This is no longer a matter of speculation: the wildfires of Europe, pitiless and persistent, are the way we live now.
As with so many of his ilk, Stanley confuses weather with climate. Take the latest fires in France.
Yes, the wildfires are running above average this summer in Europe, but there have been other years as bad and worse. But much more importantly, the data since 1980 show that wildfires around the Mediterranean have not been getting worse:
European wildfire trends
Stanley cannot even get his facts right, claiming that in past times France endured roughly 15 fires each year. The true figure is around 100.
Stanley then claims that Europe is thought to have lost around 10 million tons of forecast grain production last month. Annual output is around 500 million tonnes on average, making that loss just 2%. The historical record shows that annual output regularly rises and falls by much bigger amounts than this.
He then quotes a British farmer:
“Last year it was really dry,” a farmer from Merseyside told the BBC: “2024 was really wet. There’s no clear pattern other than extremes. … We might as well not bother growing things and leave the farms empty.”
It is, of course, called weather!
Last year was a long way from being the driest on record – there have been 26 drier summers in England. Nor was the previous summer particularly wet.
It is a fact that, when it comes to rainfall in England, “extremes” are the norm! But there are no trends towards either wetter or drier summers.
He dismisses the Right’s criticism of Net Zero that the UK cannot make a jot of difference as we only produce 1% of the world’s CO2 by saying we should think about the Third World. According to Stanley:
In reality, if anything, poor countries are more worried about climate change than we are – for the simple, horrible reason that they are more vulnerable to its effects.
Every year, an average of 110,000 people are displaced by natural catastrophe in Bangladesh alone. This is a country where more than half the population works in farming, yet one-third of its agricultural GDP is expected to vanish by 2050.
Bangladesh has always been prone to natural disasters. But this is where his whole argument falls flat on its face.
Far from the picture he paints, Bangladesh’s agricultural sector is thriving. Cereal production, which includes rice, hit new highs in 2023 and 2024 and has doubled since the 1990s. Agricultural GDP has tripled in that time as well.
A half of the country’s population was in extreme poverty in the 1980s, according to the World Bank. That proportion is now just 5%. GDP per capita is four times higher than it was just 30 years ago.
Life expectancy is much higher and child mortality has plummeted. By all measures, the people of Bangladesh are unimaginably better off than they were just a generation ago.
The same, of course, applies to pretty much the whole of the developing world, with the exception of war-torn countries such as Sudan and Somalia.
Bangladesh cereal and rice production trends
None of this would have happened without fossil fuels.
Without fertilisers and mechanisation, all made possible by the fossil fuels he demonises, millions of Bangladeshis would literally starve to death.
Is that what Tim Stanley wants? What right does the West have to dictate to the Third World how its people must live their lives?
He claims that rolling out renewables in the UK will bring lower prices and energy security. I don’t know what planet he is on, but the current push to Net Zero is having the very opposite effect.
Right-wingers have always been pragmatic types. If renewable energy really offered all these benefits, the market would automatically embrace them. They would not need the unaffordable subsidies, carbon taxes and mandates we have now, which are wrecking the economy and leaving us perilously exposed to blackouts.
Renewable energy is fine under the right circumstances. Solar panels in the Gobi Desert, for instance, or hydro power in Norway. But here in the UK, we only really have wind power – and we cannot rely on it when the wind stops blowing for weeks on end in winter.
Until somebody comes up with a better idea, we will still need fossil fuels, whether Tim Stanley likes it or not.
The lawfare operation Good Law Project has demanded the UK broadcast regulator Ofcom stop the Murdoch-owned Talk station broadcasting “climate misinformation”. In campaign literature it claims that “toxic channel” Talk, “regularly spouts misinformation about the climate crisis”, using a headline claim that a guest recently said climate science “doesn’t add up to a row of beans”. Alas, this is wholly incorrect.
The lawfare operation Good Law Project has demanded the UK broadcast regulator Ofcom stop the Murdoch-owned Talk station broadcasting “climate misinformation”. In campaign literature it claims that “toxic channel” Talk, “regularly spouts misinformation about the climate crisis”, using a headline claim that a guest recently said climate science “doesn’t add up to a row of beans”. Alas, this is wholly incorrect. Your correspondent should know, I am supposed to have said it. What in fact I observed last November to presenter Ian Collins (here, at one hour 15 minutes) was that Net Zero promoters “were backing it up with science that doesn’t add up to a row of beans”.
As an independent journalist covering climate and Net Zero for a number of years, I would never dismiss the entirety of climate science in this childish way. A check via Grok confirms this statement. There is some good science around climate and there is a great deal of bad, at times fraudulent, work. Misrepresenting my words could be considered highly damaging, libellous even, although on this occasion I am inclined to discount malevolence in favour of incompetence. I could demand a correction, but on the other hand, who gives a toss.
The Good Law Project is an activist operation promoting what are described as progressive causes. It receives funding from individual donations, but also collects cash from foundations such as Joseph Rowntree, the hard-Left money tree. Also listed as a donor is Dale Vince, owner of the state-subsidy dependent Ecotricity. This latest attack on science and political free speech also involves an outfit called Stop Funding Heat (SFH). This is a small band of activists that recently persuaded Damian Carrington of the Guardian to take up its cause. He quoted campaigners who claimed Ofcom was allowing GB News and others to “flout” accuracy rules and broadcast “climate change denial”. Just two broadcast media in the UK offer any critical perspective on climate change. The rest hide behind the preposterous notion that the science is ‘settled’ and use this convenient bias to promote the Net Zero fantasy.
In a letter dated January 26th on behalf of SFH to Ofcom, the Good Law Project says its client has submitted 71 complaints since April 2024 about “climate misinformation and bias broadcasting” by GB News and Talk. Except for two still under review, all are noted to have been dismissed. It further states that information from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Guardian reveals 1,221 complaints about the alleged misinformation were submitted to Ofcom over the last five years. Each of these complaints was rejected.
Five specific Talk broadcasts are singled out for attack. Many of the comments complained about are simply political opinions protected, one might still hope, under freedom of expression laws. For instance, on November 27th last year, presenter Mark Dolan said that “if we didn’t have this insane, self-destructive, zealous approach to Net Zero, the crazy, unsustainable target – then many of those tax rises, if not all of them yesterday would simply not have been necessary”. Here we have robust commentary on a Labour Government driving the country’s finances off a cliff – last time anyone looked, it was allowed. On the same broadcast, Daily Sceptic contributor Ben Pile commented that electric vehicles were” an attempt to make people obedient, not an attempt to offer a climate solution”. Those who know Ben are aware that he is perfectly capable of making an intellectual argument that forcing people to buy EVs is making them obey a political command.
In addition to the “row of beans” quote, I was also accused of stating that people had been “crying wolf” about climate change. Forty years of constant climate scares that never occur is the unanswerable proof that backs up this claim. I am also said to have “misrepresented facts” and cited false claims. Needless to say, I am obliged for the lecture on misrepresentation from this particular source.
The political writer Brendan O’Neill offered the opinion that Labour’s energy policies were “suicidal”, “driven by pseudoscience in many cases” and “a kind of cultish behaviour”. For Exhibit A in consideration of unfalsifiable pseudoscience, we need look no further than the media and lawfare friendly field of weather attribution. Author Rupert Darwall referred to claims of climate breakdown and said it was “absolutely outrageous that they are scaring children about something that is not going to happen”. Exhibit B might be the numerous reports of children and young adults needing therapy for so-called climate anxiety.
Green activists and lawfare merchants are encouraged to tittle tattle to Ofcom because the state regulator still holds that the scientific principles behind what it falsely claims is a ‘theory’ of anthropogenic global warming are broadly settled. The legal case is advanced that alternative explanations and opinions must be inaccurate and are therefore in breach of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code. But as Eric Worrall recently pointed out, the problem with enforced agreement on the facts is that in science, “there is no such thing as a fact which cannot be challenged”. Perhaps these wise words could influence any ‘sod off’ reply that Ofcom makes to the complaining letter.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
In the cacophony of voices clamouring for a hasty ‘energy transition’ away from fossil fuels, there are several tropes that are regularly employed by devotees of the Church of Climate. Over the past few decades, these tropes have been weaponised to convince lay people to cede all power to climate bureaucrats to ‘save the planet’. One trope that permeates the mass media and writings by ‘climate experts’ like Michael Mann and Bill McKibben is ‘cheap’ solar and wind energy.
In the cacophony of voices clamouring for a hasty ‘energy transition’ away from fossil fuels, there are several tropes that are regularly employed by devotees of the Church of Climate. Over the past few decades, these tropes have been weaponised to convince lay people to cede all power to climate bureaucrats to ‘save the planet’. One trope that permeates the mass media and writings by ‘climate experts’ like Michael Mann and Bill McKibben is ‘cheap’ solar and wind energy. This is despite the debunking of the magical thinking of the ‘new’ energy economy by those who understand and respect the laws of physics and economics.
Another trope that has gained traction among green ideologues is the ‘primary energy fallacy’. Social media commentary is peppered with references to this fallacy, frequently invoked to show that fossil fuels need not be replaced ‘one-to-one’ by ‘efficient’ renewable energy. This notion, peddled by advocates of wind and solar power such as Dr Jan Rosenow, Senior Research Associate at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, argues that traditional metrics of primary energy consumption — measuring the raw energy extracted from nature before conversion — systematically underestimate the contributions of renewables.
Why? Because fossil fuels like coal and gas lose much of their energy as waste heat during electricity generation, while wind turbines and solar panels deliver electricity with near-perfect efficiency. Thus, the argument goes, comparing energy sources on a primary energy basis penalises ‘efficient’ low-carbon technologies and inflates the role of ‘inefficient’ fossil fuels. It’s a clever rhetorical device that paints unreliable, intermittent renewables as the unsung heroes of decarbonisation.
A fallacy which isn’t
But scratch beneath the surface, and this ‘fallacy’ reveals itself as little more than a sleight of hand, a convenient narrative to prop up costly and unreliable energy sources at the expense of economic rationality. Drawing on the incisive analyses of advocates of energy literacy such as Lars Schernikau and Ronald Stein, it’s clear that the real distortion lies in ignoring the full system-level costs and inefficiencies of wind and solar as well as the multiple uses of oil and gas as feedstock for myriad products.
Far from being a progressive insight, the primary energy fallacy critique serves to obscure the harsh realities of intermittency, resource intensity and escalating costs that plague the push for renewables. In an era where energy security and affordability are paramount — especially for developing economies in Asia, Africa and Latin America — this misdirection threatens to impose vast financial costs on societies already straining under fiscal and trade deficits.
Primary energy, as defined by institutions like the International Energy Agency (IEA) and BP in their annual statistical reviews, tallies the unprocessed energy from sources such as coal, oil, gas, uranium, wind and sunlight. It relates to the total energy content of natural resources before any conversion processes take place. When converted to electricity, thermal sources like coal-fired plants operate at efficiencies of around 35-40%, with combined-cycle gas turbines reaching up to 60%. The rest dissipates as heat.
In contrast, wind and solar convert their ‘primary’ inputs — kinetic wind energy or solar irradiance — directly into electricity with minimal thermal losses, approaching 100% in accounting terms. A simple example illustrates the point: 100 units of gas primary energy might yield only 40 to 60 units of electricity, while 100 units from wind deliver the same 100 units as usable power. On primary energy charts, gas appears to contribute more, making renewables seem marginal.
Yet this comparison is myopic, confined as it is to the electricity sector, which accounts for just about 20% of global final energy consumption. The bulk of energy use — some 80% — occurs in non-electric forms: industrial heat for steelmaking and cement production, gas for cooking and home heating, petroleum for transportation, and petrochemicals for everything from fertilisers to plastics. Here, fossil fuels often deliver energy services with far higher efficiencies than the pro-renewable narrative admits. Direct combustion of gas for heating, for instance, achieves 80-90% efficiency, dwarfing the losses in electricity generation.
Renewables, by their nature, produce only electricity – intermittently at that — leaving vast swathes of the energy economy untouched without massive, inefficient ‘electrify everything’ efforts. As Dr Schernikau aptly notes in his writings, primary energy remains ‘king’ because it captures the raw inputs needed across the entire energy system, not just the narrow slice of grid power.
The indispensable role of fossil fuels extends far beyond energy provision requisite to modern civilisation. As Ronald Stein emphasises in his work, including the book Clean Energy Exploitations, oil and gas are the foundational feedstocks of over 6,000 products that underpin human progress, from plastics and cosmetics to pharmaceuticals and ammonia for fertilisers.
These materials cannot be replicated by so-called renewables like wind and solar, which generate only electrons and offer no viable pathways to synthesise the complex hydrocarbons essential for everything from medical devices and electronics to agricultural inputs that feed billions. Stein’s energy literacy advocacy highlights how decarbonisation zeal overlooks this reality: without fossil-derived ammonia, global food production would plummet, exacerbating hunger in developing countries already facing population pressures.
Petrochemicals derived from crude oil enable the sterile packaging for vaccines, the durable materials for wind turbine blades (ironically) and the synthetic fibres in clothing. Attempting to ‘electrify everything’ ignores that these products require molecular building blocks from fossils, not just electricity, rendering the transition not just costly but fundamentally impossible without alternatives that don’t exist at scale. This dependency underscores why primary energy metrics are vital — they reflect the total resource base sustaining not only power but the myriad goods that define quality of life.
Moreover, the efficiency boast of renewable energy enthusiasts crumbles when we consider the intermittency of wind and solar energy — sources that generate electricity only when nature cooperates, typically at capacity factors of 15-40% for wind and 10-25% for solar, compared to 80-90% for baseload coal or nuclear. This variability demands a ‘redundancy’ infrastructure of dispatchable power backup plants, largely fossil-fuelled, to fill the gaps. It is tantamount to paying twice for the same thing.
The real costs of ‘cheap’ renewables
In Germany, the poster child for the Energiewende (energy transition), wind and solar, now comprise over 50% of installed capacity, yet the country has had to maintain and even expand coal and gas-fired plants as backups. These backups operate at low utilisation rates, burning fuel inefficiently and inflating primary energy use. Grid-scale battery storage, often touted as the solution to intermittency, remains prohibitively expensive and resource-intensive. Even Tesla’s Megapacks can provide mere minutes or hours of backup for utility-scale needs, and scaling to days or weeks during periods of Dunkelflautewould require astronomical investments in rare earths and minerals, much of it controlled by China. Germany and fellow energy-suicide countries such as the UK now boast among the world’s highest electricity prices.
Schernikau’s system-level analysis exposes the core deception: while individual wind turbines or solar panels may appear efficient, their integration into a reliable grid erodes that advantage. To achieve dispatchable power — electricity available 24/7/365 with stable voltage, frequency and phase — renewables necessitate overbuilding by factors of three to five times or more, plus ancillary systems like short-duration batteries and upgraded transmission lines.
These additions consume vast amounts of primary energy in mining and manufacturing, often unaccounted for in standard metrics. For example, producing one TWh of lifetime electricity from solar requires 340-560 kilotons of steel plus copper and rare earths, compared to just one to two kilotons of steel for coal or gas. Wind fares little better, demanding 30-50 kilotons of steel and three to six kilotons of copper per TWh. Mining these materials is energy-intensive, predominantly powered by trucks and mining equipment powered by fossil fuels, embedding hidden primary energy costs that the IEA’s ‘partial substitution method’ conveniently ignores by assuming near-100% efficiency for renewables.
Selected materials required by electricity generation technology. Source: Schernikau based on Department of Energy, USA. See also here.
This brings us to the energy return on investment (eROI), a metric that measures how much usable energy a source delivers relative to the energy invested in its extraction, processing and deployment. At the system level, wind and solar’s eROI plummets to 5-10 to 1 for solar and 10-20 to 1 for wind (even lower with battery storage), versus 25-30 to 1 for coal and gas and over 75 to 1 for nuclear. Schernikau highlights that renewables’ short operational lifetimes — 10-20 years for wind, 12-15 for solar — mean that they must be replaced two to four times over a 40-60 year fossil plant lifecycle, generating mountains of waste and further primary energy demands. Global primary energy statistics underplay this; in 2024 IEA data, wind and solar’s 4,655 TWh of primary energy yielded 4,623 TWh of electricity, but this excludes the energy for overbuilding and backups.
The analysis provided by renewables cheerleader the International Energy Agency leaves out the fact that as renewables penetration as a percentage of total grid generation increases, the marginal value of each additional renewable kWh diminishes. This leads to higher system costs and, counterintuitively, potentially even greater primary energy use overall.
Critics of primary energy metrics acknowledge efficiency gains in end-use technologies like electric vehicles (EVs), which are three to four times more efficient than internal combustion engines. But they too warn of over-optimism, noting that electrification amplifies resource demands: EVs require six times more critical minerals than conventional cars, and scaling renewables for an all-electric world would demand 12-16 times more minerals overall, plus over 100 times more land.
Land use is no trivial matter: solar farms at 5-7 MW per km2 and wind at 1-2 MW per km2 sprawl across vast areas, sparking opposition across rural communities in the US, Europe and the UK. In the US, the work of Robert Bryce on a renewables rejection database has tracked this phenomenon in detail. The damage to ecosystems and flora and fauna caused by wind and solar farms has sparked opposition by rural communities and conservationists around the world. It should be noted, however, that often rentier solar and wind energy companies with business models which harvest subsidies and reap guaranteed profits can buy farmers out in the agricultural sector.
Habitat destruction in areas set aside for solar and wind farms – which disrupts traditional livelihoods, hurts property values, wrecks vital croplands, ruins scenic vistas and kills birds, bats and other wildlife – has been amply documented over the years across rural communities around the world. We have yet to consider supply chain vulnerabilities of renewable energy systems and geopolitical risks — China dominates 80% of rare earth processing as well as dominating the global production of wind and solar energy components.
The full cost of electricity (FCOE), which includes intermittency and grid integration, reveals renewables as far costlier than the misleading ‘levelised cost of electricity’ (LCOE) metric suggests. In Europe, household electricity prices have doubled since the early 2000s, largely due to renewable subsidies and grid upgrades. Germany’s Energiewende has cost over €500 billion, yet emissions reductions stall as coal lingers for reliability. Developing nations, where energy demand is booming, cannot afford such experiments; Asia’s coal fleet, the world’s largest, continues to expand rapidly because it delivers affordable, dispatchable power.
What primary energy fallacy?
In truth, the ‘primary energy fallacy’ is a fallacy in itself, a distraction from the unpopular truths of energy physics and economics. By fixating on narrow efficiency gains, ideologues overlook how wind and solar, at scale, regress humanity toward low net-energy systems reminiscent of pre-industrial eras. Primary energy metrics, far from obsolete, illuminate the total inputs required for industrial societies that promise prosperity for the vast majority of people in the Global South. Until breakthroughs in storage render intermittent energy sources viable without mandates and massive subsidies, fossil fuels — and yes, even “beautiful, clean coal” with pollution-limiting filters and equipment — remain indispensable.
Decades of delusion and fanaticism over man-made climate crises predicted by junk science models collided with reality at the conclusion of the UN’s chaotic climate jamboree this year at Belem, Brazil. The concluding global outcome document of COP30 – which was not attended by the leaders of the world’s most prolific emitters of greenhouse gases, China, the US and India – had stripped out any mention of eliminating fossil fuels. This though did not stop UN bureaucrats from telling its members that they should triple their spending on the ‘climate crisis’ over the next decade.
Policymakers would do well to heed energy experts like Schernikau and Stein. Chasing luxury beliefs do not cost well-heeled climate bureaucrats and renewables ideologues much, but the burdens of irrational energy policies will be borne by the world’s poorest. The real path forward lies in pragmatic, technology-neutral approaches that prioritise energy abundance over austerity.
Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.
In Part 1 we looked at 25 examples in the last couple of years or so of how the BBC is misinforming the public about climate change and climate-related policies. In Part 2 we will look at another 25 items:
In Part 1 we looked at 25 examples in the last couple of years or so of how the BBC is misinforming the public about climate change and climate-related policies. In Part 2 we will look at another 25 items:
A BBC report in April 2024 claimed that “coral around the world is turning white and even dying as recent record ocean heat takes a devastating toll”.
Bleaching is a perfectly natural and common event which occurs for all sorts of reasons, including when the water gets too cold. It does not mean the coral is dying. Bleaching occurs naturally when coral expels algae to switch to a type better suited to new conditions. Far from coral dying out around the world, coral scientists say that it is doing fine.
The BBC spent most of the summer of 2023 blamingclimate change for the severity of wildfires around the Mediterranean. When the EU finally published wildfire data for last year, it emerged that the area burnt was close to average. Since the 1980s, area burnt has been declining.
A long BBC article in May 2024 stated that “aircraft turbulence is worsening with climate change”.
However, a recent detailed study by the US National Transportation Safety Board examined flight records between 1989 and 2018. It concluded that there has been no increase in incidents of severe flight turbulence, measured as a proportion of flight hours.
BBC Verify, the organisation’s unit of supposed disinformation experts, decided to waste money writing a long hit piece on a young Kenyan farmer who had dared to campaign for Africa to be given full access to fossil fuels. This apparently made him a “climate denier”. Quite why the BBC saw him as such a threat is a total mystery.
During June 2024’s election coverage, BBC Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt stated that new solar or wind projects generate power at a lower cost than new gas generators. He was commenting on Reform party policies. At the time of the election, the contract price for offshore wind was double the cost of gas power. This is still true now.
In the summer of 2024, the BBC reported on what it described as an unprecedented heatwave in Delhi, even though temperatures at the time were normal for the time of year.
The next day, it claimed climate change made the late May/early June US Southwest heatwave 35 times more likely.
Again, the claim was absurd, as the temperatures recorded were perfectly normal for the time of year. In Phoenix, Arizona, for instance, temperatures hit 113°F, well below the record of 122°F for June which was set in 1990
A BBC report on polar bears informed us “the species is in decline, and scientists attribute it to the loss of sea ice caused by global warming”.
Polar bears are frequently used by the BBC to push climate propaganda. But scientists say the opposite – that the world population of polar bears has nearly tripled since the 1960s and that numbers are now stable, a fact since admitted by the BBC Executive Complaints Unit.
The BBC reported a projection of potential global changes if the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) collapses, which it suggests could happen as early as 2050.
Icy winds howl across a frozen Thames, ice floes block shipping in the Mersey docks and crops fail across the UK. Meanwhile, the US east coast has been inundated by rising seas and there’s ecological chaos in the Amazon as the wet and dry season have switched around.
Contrary to BBC claims, data show that the AMOC has been remarkably stable for the last 40 years.
A BBC Sounds broadcast last autumn stated that extreme weather, caused by climate change, is making farming impossible in many parts of Bangladesh. This, so we were told, has increased the risk of more girls being pushed into child marriage.
But far from farming becoming ‘impossible’, agricultural output, particularly of cereals, has rocketed in recent years in the country and now stands at record levels. The same is true of the area harvested, according to official UN data.
Moreover, the share of the population living in extreme poverty in the country is now at record lows
According to the BBC’s Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, Somalia recently experienced its worst drought for 40 years – an event scientists estimate was made 100 times more likely by human-caused climate change.
The BBC report omitted data indicating that Somalia has become wetter since the mid-20th century, with more severe droughts occurring in earlier periods.
According to a BBC report three years ago, “for decades [India’s} monsoons have been drying up”.
The opposite is true. Severe droughts in the 1960s, 70s and 80s were catastrophic in India. Since the turn of the century, rainfall has been above average.
Another tenet of faith for the BBC is that global warming is making hurricanes more powerful. As regular as clockwork, the end of the Atlantic hurricane season in November last year brought forth the usual BBC propaganda that a higher proportion of hurricanes are now turning into major hurricanes, meaning they reach the highest wind speeds.
This false claim, however, is strongly contradicted by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Its latest review of hurricanes could not be clearer, stating:
There is no strong evidence of century-scale increasing trends in US landfalling hurricanes or major hurricanes. Similarly for Atlantic basin-wide hurricane frequency (after adjusting for changing observing capabilities over time), there is not strong evidence for an increase since the late 1800s in hurricanes, major hurricanes or the proportion of hurricanes that reach major hurricane intensity.
Even more deceitfully, the BBC included an infographic plotting major Atlantic hurricane activity since 1920 which showed the numbers ballooning in recent years. But NOAA notes that many mid-ocean hurricanes went undetected before satellites existed. The BBC is comparing chalk and cheese.
Why let a tragedy go to waste, when you can use it for propaganda?
The tragic flooding in Valencia last autumn brought the standard BBC kneejerk response that extreme rainfall events like this one are getting more common.
However, the daily rainfall data for Valencia, which goes back to 1937, show no such trends.
A few days later, however, the BBC’s Science Correspondent informed us that the winds from Storm Darragh were made 5% stronger by climate change. His so-called proof of this came from weather attribution computer models.
Maybe next time he should report the actual data instead, which, according to the Met Office, clearly show that windstorms in the UK were much more powerful in the 1980s and 90s than anything seen since.
In their end of year report, the BBC told us that billions had been challenged by extreme weather brought by climate change. The claims were based on what are known as ‘Weather Attribution Computer Models’, rather than on actual data.
The article listed a few random weather events, droughts, floods, hurricanes and heatwaves, with no attempt to show that they are either becoming more frequent or extreme, or that they were not simply run of the mill occurrences that happen every year.
Indeed, subsequent analysis demonstrated that there was nothing unusual at all about any of the examples used.
The Los Angeles fires at the start of this year were quickly blamed on “climate change charged droughts” by the BBC.
When it was pointed out that the weather in that part of California had been no drier than many other years in the months leading up to the wildfires, the BBC then said that a period of unusually wet weather had increased the growth of flammable grass earlier in 2024, which was followed by very dry conditions – what it called “whiplash conditions”, which climate models said were getting worse because of global warming.
Once again however, the computer models were thoroughly contradicted by the actual data, which show no such trends either in wet or dry weather.
The BBC have spent years pushing renewable energy, frequently peddling the myth that it is cheaper than fossil fuels. They were at it again earlier this year, with a report by BBC Verify titled ‘If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren’t bills coming down?’
Nowhere does their report mention the £15 billion worth of subsidies, direct and indirect, for renewable energy which is added to electricity bills this year.
Renewable energy is more expensive than fossil fuels, not less so. That is why the UK has some of the highest electricity prices in the world.
The BBC always loves to use human tragedy stories to fuel its climate propaganda.
Recent summers have seen continuing apocalyptic coverage by the BBC of Mediterranean wildfires, often accompanied by claims that they have been made worse by climate change.
At the end of the year, official data from the EU showed that wildfire activity was below average last year, and only slightly above in 2023.
You may have noted in some of the earlier items the BBC’s reliance on ‘Weather Attribution’ to back up claims that climate change is making weather worse. Dressed up as ‘science’, weather attribution is merely computer modelling which can be programmed to come up with whatever daft conclusions you want.
Often, they are contradicted by real world data. Unsurprisingly, they have been rubbished by many proper scientists, dismissed as “weather alchemy” designed to generate quick headlines.
Following a complaint, the BBC Executive Complaints Unit was forced to publish a correction that the claims should not have been presented as fact and that the article failed to meet the requirements for due accuracy.
Another example of the BBC’s bias towards renewable energy took place in a World at One interview in April between the BBC’s Sarah Montague and Adam Berman of the renewable lobby group Energy UK
The topic was why UK electricity prices are so high. Berman went on at great length to put the blame on the high price of gas, while claiming that renewables were cheaper, without any challenge from the interviewer.
During the interview, the significant direct expense involved in subsidising renewable energy was never brought up.
When these subsidies are taken into consideration, electricity generated from wind, solar, and biomass facilities continues to be significantly more costly than that produced by gas power stations.
This little episode underlines the repeated failure of the BBC to get a broad range of opinions on topics like these. An independent energy expert would quickly have dismantled the false claims of the industry lobbyist.
Yes, just like clockwork, the BBC wheeled it out again in August, following an incident on a Singapore flight, in which some poor chap died. Flight turbulence is getting more frequent and severe because of global warming, shrieked the BBC.
The US National Transportation Safety Board has thoroughly examined turbulence. Having examined flight logs for all US flights between 1989 and 2018, it concluded that there are no increasing trends in the frequency of severe turbulence.
Yes, another story wheeled out each year! According to the BBC:
Parts of the Great Barrier Reef have suffered the largest annual decline in coral cover since records began nearly 40 years ago. AIMS warns the habitat may reach a tipping point where coral cannot recover fast enough between catastrophic events and faces a “volatile” future.
What the BBC failed to report was that coral cover on the GBR was at a record high last year. Even after losses this year, it still stands as the fourth highest on record.
I must apologise for cheating here, because this final BBC report comes from 2004. But it was too good to resist!
It told us that the Maldives would soon be underwater.
Since then, 12 new airports have been opened on the Maldives, plus a new passenger terminal at the Velana International Airport.
Tourist numbers have tripled to more than two million last year. Tourism now drives 28% of GDP, supported by more than 170 resorts. Last year alone, another seven new resorts were opened.
Far from disappearing beneath the waves, the Maldives seem to be thriving!
Over the last few days the UK has experienced balmy spring weather with temperatures often settling in the low 20s Celsius. The Met Office has been out in force colouring the maps orange and declaring ‘extreme’ highs all over the green and pleasant land. Or more accurately, a remarkably few chosen spots across the g&p land. Net Zero promotion demands ever higher temperature recordings so only unnaturally heat-ravaged sites provide most of the daily records.
Over the last few days the UK has experienced balmy spring weather with temperatures often settling in the low 20s Celsius. The Met Office has been out in force colouring the maps orange and declaring ‘extreme’ highs all over the green and pleasant land. Or more accurately, a remarkably few chosen spots across the g&p land. Net Zero promotion demands ever higher temperature recordings so only unnaturally heat-ravaged sites provide most of the daily records. I looked at the last nine days of Met Office records to Sunday May 18th and can reveal that nearly nine out of 10 local ‘extreme’ daily temperature highs were posted in junk Class 4 and super junk Class 5 sites with internationally-recognised ‘uncertainties’ of 2°C and 5°C respectively.
Certain locations crop up constantly in the records. In nine days the Scottish sites at Aboyne and Tyndrum recorded area highs eight and seven times respectively. In England, Coton-in-the-Elms recorded seven daily highs while Kielder Castle posted six. Of course the recording of highs in these corrupted sites didn’t mean the air temperature was representative of the wider surrounding area. It just meant that the sites were poorly located next to unnatural heat sources and were producing a false natural air record, recently re-badged by the Met Office as a so-called ‘extreme” high. Until the Met Office sorts out its largely junk-class 380-plus weather station network, these records and recordings are largely meaningless.
Every day the Met Office posts a daily high temperature for 16 locations around the UK. In the nine consecutive days under review, I initially found that 83.8% of the highs were recorded in Class 4 and 5 sites rated by the World Meteorological Organisation to have the large ‘uncertainties’ up to 5°C. No less than 36.6% of records came from Class 5 sites that have no qualifying criteria for accuracy and can be located anywhere. Quite how any Class 4 and 5 site can be used to calculate a national let alone a global temperature has long been a mystery, and their central use to promote the Net Zero fantasy is a scientific and political scandal. But I looked further into the claimed records and found the overall picture was even worse than it first appeared.
The above picture from Google Earth shows the location of the Kirkwall weather station marked in red. It is claimed to be a Class 2 site, a pristine rating with no ‘uncertainties’. The Met Office has very few of these Class 2 rated sites, with 78% of its stations to be found in the bottom two junk categories. But there is no way this is a Class 2 site. It is located at Kirkwall airport, barely 50 metres from what appears to be the aircraft park. Nearby buildings, car parks and roads provide ample opportunities for heat corruptions. Yet six times in the last nine days Kirkwall was said to hold the temperature record for Orkney and Shetland. I removed the supposedly ‘non-junk’ Kirkwall from the overall calculation with the result that no less than 87.4% of daily highs are in the junk classes.
Of course it beggars belief that on a large island comprising four different nations and wide variations in geographical locations the same old suspects keep recording the hottest daily temperatures. Was nowhere warmer for seven days in the East Midlands than Coton-in-the-Elms? What is so special about Kielder Castle that on six days it was hotter than everywhere else in North-East England? Should heat lovers in Northern Ireland and Wales move to Castlederg and Porthmadog respectively where they would have enjoyed five days of record highs? Scotland is often on the chilly side, so can we assume that house prices have a premium in Tyndrum, where in the nine days under review it only twice lost the highest temperature spot in the Central, Tayside and Fife region?
Earlier this month, citizen super sleuth Ray Sanders examined the central England Class 5 weather station at Coton-in-the-Elms and concluded: “There are worse sites … but not that many.”
Late last year, Science Feedback ‘fact checked’ articles published by both the Daily Sceptic and Ray Sanders detailing the junk status of most of the Met Office sites and its invention of temperature data from over 100 non-existent sites. Written largely by the Met Office, the ‘fact check’ suggested that stations rated internally as ‘Unsatisfactory’ did not meet the required standards for data validity, and recordings would not be used in the official records. A recent Freedom of Information request revealed that just 27 sites had been placed on the meteorological naughty step. As they used to say in the Wild West days of the City of London, self-regulation. like self-abuse, leads to exceedingly short sight. Nevertheless if the Met Office, marking its own homework, says the 27 sites are rubbish, who are we to argue?
It is therefore a surprise to see that Castlederg is on the ‘Unsatisfactory’ list and, as noted above, it produced a recent local record five days out of nine. It is possible the list has been updated in the last few months and Castlederg has been removed. It would be interesting to discover if it was on the list on July 21st 2021, when a Northern Ireland record temperature of 31.3°C was declared at the site. Other unsatisfactory sites quoted in the last few days include Redesdale Camp and Hawarden, the latter being a Class 4 airport location that holds the national temperature record for Wales set on July 21st 2021.
Why is all this relevant and important? As we have shown many times at the Daily Sceptic, this super-heated data is fed into the mainstream to promote the political needs of Net Zero. Just one example out of many saw Justin Rowlatt from the BBC reporting last July that climate change is dramatically increasing the frequency of “extreme” high temperatures in the UK, “new Met Office analysis has confirmed”. Rowlatt also observed that there had been a 40% increase in the number of “pleasant” days, defined as around 20°C. “These changes may sound positive,” wails the BBC activist-in-chief, “but the UK’s shifting climate represents a dangerous upheaval for our ecosystems as well as our infrastructure.”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Green Blob-funded Climate Central is celebrating a significant fearmongering coup having persuaded the BBC’s lead weather presenter Simon King to sub and publish its press release claiming that since 1970 the average UK spring temperature has increased by 1.8°C. It is said to be the fastest warming season in all the UK’s four nations.
Green Blob-funded Climate Central is celebrating a significant fearmongering coup having persuaded the BBC’s lead weather presenter Simon King to sub and publish its press release claiming that since 1970 the average UK spring temperature has increased by 1.8°C. It is said to be the fastest warming season in all the UK’s four nations. Alas, it is almost a shame to spoil such a good story by noting an obvious cherry-pick missed by King and the fact that the warming according to the Met Office was only 1.3°C. As the graph below shows, 1970 was a low point in the UK temperature record at a time when global cooling was all the rage. The rise from 1945 is just 0.8°C, a figure that happens to approximate with a 1°C rise in global temperature over the last century.
Needless to say, the longer-term trend is not such a good yarn and not one likely to appeal to Climate Central, a green billionaire-backed activist operation that produces custom-made climate catastrophe agitprop specially curated for unquestioning activists working in mainstream media. For Simon King, the ‘boiling’ spring story is another BBC classic, following hard on the heels of his suggestion that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) “appears to be getting weaker”. This story was timed just days after an important paper in Nature inconveniently stated that the AMOC current that includes the Gulf Stream had shown no decline in strength since the 1960s.
Spot the difference
The average spring temperature for the UK has increased 1.8°C since 1970, making spring the fastest warming season for the UK as a whole.Climate Central Press Release
The average spring temperature has increased by 1.8°C since 1970, making it the fastest warming season for all four nations of the UK.Simon King, Lead Weather Presenter, BBC
Regurgitating pre-prepared, cherry-picked material does of course serve a useful purpose since the regular ‘Spring has Sprung Early’ story can be given its annual outing. King notes that data given to BBC Weather by Nature’s Calendar – a “citizen science” project by the Woodland Trust – are said to demonstrate how climate change is triggering natural events. Both bluebells and frogspawn are appearing earlier in March and April respectively, it is reported. Inevitably the disinformation Net Zero lecture follows: “And climate change is leading to more extreme weather which is also causing confusion among some species.”
On balance, a slightly warmer climate with longer growing seasons is almost certainly good for nature. But, as ever in the UK, the climate picture is mixed. March is the start of Spring but April is when it starts to really build. As the graph below shows, the average April temperature in the UK has actually fallen over the last 20 years.
Of course caution is required in taking Met Office temperature figures at their face value following recent revelations, covered extensively in the Daily Sceptic, about massive unnatural heat corruptions around measuring sites and the invention of figures at no less than 103 non-existent locations. Nearly 80% of Met Office weather stations across the UK are rated in junk classes 4 and 5 with internationally-recognised ‘uncertainties’ of 2°C and 5°C respectively. The Met Office has failed to preserve the integrity of its network, with sites commonly next to busy roads and car parks, airport runways, solar farms and electricity substations. The recent growth of urbanisation and the massive heat it generates across many Met Office sites has corrupted the data. Thus, it might be considered scientifically reasonable to knock off some warming when comparing recent temperatures to possibly more accurate measurements 80 years ago. Using current recordings, it can be observed that spring is on average 0.8°C warmer than around 1945, but the true figure could be closer to around 0.5°C, or even lower.
Climate Central has impressive form in spinning climate catastrophe tales to gullible boobies. It had great success with the Mirror in November 2022, which ran a load of hooey claiming that much of London would be under water within 80 years. Climate Central provides a flood predictor tool that activists can use to claim inundation in a location of their own choosing. Local landmarks well above sea level can be shown to be disappearing beneath the waves since the tool uses sea level increases over 30 times faster than current rises. Reporter Sam Elliott-Gibbs noted the existence of “terrifying new maps” of the UK that predict towns and cities “will be vanishing into the sea”.
Climate Central is a well-funded green propaganda operation based in Princeton, New Jersey. The group says it works with news outlets “to produce compelling and scientifically accurate stories”. No fewer than 33 foundations and “leadership donors” are listed with heavy backing thought to have been provided by Eric Schmidt, the former Chairman and CEO of Google. Among the activist academics involved is Michael Oppenheimer, Professor of Geoscience and International Affairs at nearby Princeton University. This chap is noted for once remarking: “We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialisation we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.” Perhaps he had Europe in mind as well, particularly the UK where the state-dependent broadcaster pumps out climate catastrophe copy that is used to provide cover for Net Zero-obsessed governing elites set on de-industrialisation, destroying food security and reducing living standards.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
Last month a group of scientists published a paper in Nature stating that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) had shown no decline in strength since the 1960s. Helped by publicity in the Daily Sceptic, the story went viral on social media, although it was largely ignored in narrative-driven mainstream publications. The collapse of the Gulf Stream, a key component of the AMOC, is an important ‘tipping point’ story used to induce mass climate psychosis and make it easier to impose the Net Zero fantasy on increasing resentful and questioning populations.
Last month a group of scientists published a paper in Nature stating that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) had shown no decline in strength since the 1960s. Helped by publicity in the Daily Sceptic, the story went viral on social media, although it was largely ignored in narrative-driven mainstream publications. The collapse of the Gulf Stream, a key component of the AMOC, is an important ‘tipping point’ story used to induce mass climate psychosis and make it easier to impose the Net Zero fantasy on increasing resentful and questioning populations. Obviously, reinforcements to back up such an important weaponised scare needed to be rushed to the front and the BBC has risen to the challenge. The AMOC “appears to be getting weaker” state BBC activists Simon King and Mark Poynting. Their long article is a classic of its kind in trying to deflect scientific findings that blow holes in the ‘settled’ narrative.
In the Nature paper, three scientists working out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution stated that they came to their conclusion showing the stability of the AMOC after examining heat transfers between the sea and the atmosphere. It was noted that the AMOC had not weakened from 1963 to 2017, “although substantial variability exists at all latitudes”. This variability is the basis for much of the Gulf Stream fear-mongering. The BBC notes that the presence of larger grains of sediment on the ocean floor suggests the existence of stronger currents, pointing to a “cold blob” in the Atlantic that appears to have cooled of late. Thin pickings, it might be thought, to run an article titled ‘Could the UK actually get colder with global warming?’ The Woods Hole scientists note that records “are not long enough to differentiate between low frequency variability and long-term trends”.
The Nature story is not the only recent scientific finding that suggests the Day After Tomorrow alarm about the AMOC is a tad overdone. In 2023, Georgina Rannard of the BBC reported that “scientists say” a weakening Gulf Stream could collapse as early as 2025. There was no later reporting, needless to say, of subsequent work from a group of scientists at the US weather service NOAA that discovered the huge flow of Gulf Stream tropical water through the Florida Straits had remained “remarkably stable” for over 40 years.
Of course the BBC, along with most of the legacy media, has form as long as your arm when it comes to producing deflective copy seemingly designed to head off inconvenient scientific findings. The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is the largest and best observed collection of tropical coral in the world. Any sign of ill health is a boon for green propogandists who argue that warming measured in tenths of a degree centigrade will destroy an organism that has survived for millions of years in temperatures between 24-32°C. For the last three years, coral on the GBR has hit recent record levels with scarcely a mention in mainstream media. Days before last year’s record was announced, the places where journalism goes to die were full of stories from a paper that conveniently noted climate change posed an “existential threat” to the reef. “The science tells us that the GBR is in danger and we should be guided by the science,” Professor Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong told Victoria Gill of BBC News. Professor McGregor’s statement was an opinion readily broadcast by the BBC, a courtesy that does not appear to have been extended to the fact that coral on the GBR was at its highest level since detailed observations began.
It beggars belief that the BBC and all its fellow alarmists can run this stuff with a straight face knowing that crucial scientific information is missing from their reports. Important findings from reputable sources emerge about the current stability of the Gulf Stream and the response is to blow more smoke around that raises wholly unnecessary fears.
The main concern is that the AMOC “could suddenly switch off”, state King and Poynting. To back up their statement and provide the inevitable political message they note the comment of Matthew England, Professor of Oceanography at the University of South Wales: “We’re playing a bit of a Russian roulette game. The more we stack up the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the more we warm the system, the more chance we have of an AMOC slowdown and collapse.” Now look what you plebs have done with your steak chomping, gas-guzzling central heating and naff holidays in Benidorm, is an unpleasant subtext here.
Of course, keen and dedicated followers of climate alarmists will note a master craftsman at work. In 2023, aided by 35 million computer hours and using an improbable rise in temperature of up to 4°C in less than 80 years, Professor Matthews suggested that there was a dramatic slowdown in deep Antarctica ocean currents. Melting Antarctica ice could lead to a 40% slowdown in just 30 years. The fact that Antarctica has barely warmed in 70 years is ignored.
Who needs Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters when we have the BBC.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
After a year of damaging revelations about the state of the Met Office’s temperature measuring network, the Green Blob-funded ‘fact-checker’ Science Feedback has sprung to the defence of the state-funded U.K. weather service. It has published a long ‘fact check’ seeking to exonerate practices that have recently come to light including the locating of stations with huge heat corrupted ‘uncertainties and the publication of invented data from 103 non-existent sites.
After a year of damaging revelations about the state of the Met Office’s temperature measuring network, the Green Blob-funded ‘fact-checker’ Science Feedback has sprung to the defence of the state-funded U.K. weather service. It has published a long ‘fact check’ seeking to exonerate practices that have recently come to light including the locating of stations with huge heat corrupted ‘uncertainties and the publication of invented data from 103 non-existent sites. Inept is a word that springs to mind. At one point, Science Feedback justifies the estimation of data at the non-existent stations by referring to the hastily changed Met Office explanation for station/location long-term averages. The original and now deleted Met Office webpage referenced station names and provided single location coordinates including one improbable sitting next to the sea on Dover beach. This would appear to be a new low in the world of so-called fact-checking – designating copy as ‘misleading’ based on an explanation changed after the article was published.
The first Daily Sceptic article reporting on the existence of 103 non-existent stations can be read here. The second appeared last month here and detailed the unannounced web changes and the obvious cover-up intended to deflect criticism from the invented station data.
Under the verdict “misleading” Science Feedback claims that the average data going back 60 years for stations is not “fabricated” but estimated using “well-correlated related neighbouring stations”. This is said to be a scientific method that is published in peer-reviewed literature. The Met Office discloses it has “relatively few” stations with 30-year data from which long-term averages can be calculated. The distinction between estimated and fabricated is moot. A pundit calling the winner of a sports match before it has taken place is an estimation of the result, and the opinion is no less a fabrication or invention however distinguished the pundit and however well-regarded any peers signalling agreement might be.
Let us examine the claim of “well-correlated neighbouring stations” by taking an example from the Met Office’s now renamed “location-specific long-term averages” climate database. Cawood in the West Riding of Yorkshire is a pristine Class 1 site designated by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) as providing uncorrupted data over a large surrounding area. It also has an immaculate record of temperature recordings from the same site stretching back to 1959. But no rolling 30-year average for Cawood is provided. Instead the Met Office flags data for five other sites between two and 27 miles distant. Unlike Cawood, all of these have average data despite the fact that four no longer exist and the fifth, High Mowthorpe, is 27 miles away and at a 163 metres higher elevation.
Again we are obliged to the super sleuthing of Ray Sanders for bringing the Cawood data to light. He is not inclined to be charitable and notes:
The Met Office has opted not to perform a simple long-term averaging representation from just one Class 1 site’s readings (with no other inputs required) and in preference has supplied no fewer than five alternative much inferior sites with all manner of adjusted, amended, modified and likely corrupted so-called ‘data’ to confuse the public. The term ’smoke and mirrors’ comes to mind.
Why is the Met Office not showing the data for the long-running Class 1 Cawood site, he asks, adding: “What are you trying to hide?”
The Science Feedback puff for the Met Office takes aim at both the investigative work conducted by the Daily Sceptic and Ray Sanders who publishes on the Tallbloke’s Talkshop blog. It has all the hallmarks of being written in collaboration with the Met Office since its long and detailed explanations have mostly come from the latter.
Science Feedback is a partner with Meta where it acts to “verify the credibility of viral content” on Facebook and Instagram. In 2020 it was given seed funding from the Google News Initiative, “to build a database of fact-checked content, allowing to identify sources that repeatedly spread misinformation”. Regular readers will recall that Google has past form in trying to disadvantage inconvenient temperature information on the internet. In 2022, Dr. Roy Spencer’s page detailing accurate satellite temperature data, showing less long-term warming than that claimed by surface measurements, was kicked off Google AdSense for publishing “unreliable and harmful claims”. The decision looks more stupid by the day with Spencer’s UAH measurements confirming the recent short-lived spike in the global temperature. Regular readers will also recall that at a 2022 World Economic Forum ‘disinformation’ seminar, the UN’s global communication chief Melissa Fleming noted that her organisation had partnered with Google to ensure that only UN-approved climate research results appeared at the top of search inquiries. “We are becoming more proactive, we own the science and we think the world should know it,” she boasted.
Last March, the Daily Sceptic shocked the climate science world by revealing via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request that nearly eight in 10 Met Office sites across the U.K. were so poorly sited in junk Class 4 and super junk Class 5 that they had WMO ‘uncertainties’ of 2°C and 5°C respectively. Yet these measurements, used to calculate data to one hundredth of a degree centigrade, are a key climate indication backing the Net Zero fantasy.
Science Feedback states that the Met Office “clearly explains” on its website that many of its stations are of higher classes 3 and 4. Looking at the block graph above, a more accurate and clearer explanation would be that most, indeed almost all, of its stations are in Classes 4 and 5. The Met Office notes that WMO guidelines do not state that Class 5 sites cannot be used for climate reporting. In fact the WMO guidance states that a Class 1 location can be considered as a reference site, while a Class 5 site is a “inappropriate environment for a meteorological measurement that is intended to be representative of a wide area”. What this means is that ‘record’ temperatures collected besides airport runways swept by jet exhaust are useful for pilots operating in the immediate environment but are a bit of an ask when it comes to pumping the Net Zero climate emergency narrative.
As explained to Science Feedback by a Met Office spokesman, continued the curious fact check, “data will only be quoted in climate records if the weather station it comes from meets inspection standards”. Well it seems that that this depends on who is conducting the “inspections” – not the WMO, that is for sure. According to information released under a FOI request to Paul Homewood, the Met Office states it will only quote records from classes 1 to 4. Data from Class 5 “will be flagged and not quoted in national records”, it adds.
In reality, the Met Office barely pauses for breath in its rush to declare recent Class 5 site records. These include the highest daily maximum temperature in Northern Ireland set in 2021 at Castlederg. The highest January monthly temperature was set last year at Achfary and this Class 5 site also holds the record set in December 2019. Three U.K. area records have also been set at Class 5 locations including England NW, East Anglia and England SE and Central S. This latter record was provided by St. James’s Park, which was one of five sites that were said to top 40°C on July 19th, 2022. This particular event was lauded at the time by the Met Office as a “milestone in climate history”. The record 40.3°C was a 60-second spike of 0.6°C recorded around the same time as three Typhoon jets were landing at RAF Coningsby, while another 40°C site was Northolt airport, also designated Class 5. In total, all but two claimed records since 2000 arise from Class 4 and 5 locations.
The Met Office explains to Science Feedback that it continues to use its higher-class stations because it has its own “long-standing inspections standards”. In other words, it marks its own homework as the block graph below, again the result of an FOI request, shows.
Clearly a big improvement since the Met Offices rates over nine out of 10 of its stations as ‘Excellent’, ‘Good’ and ‘Satisfactory’. Those of a cynical nature might riff on the warning from an earlier age that self-regulation, like self-stimulation, leads to blindness. Just 27 ‘Unsatisfactory’ stations, presumably real shockers, are to be found on the naughty step. The in-house inspections are said to “ensure data quality and minimise uncertainty”. If a site falls below the acceptable inspection standards it will be either closed or its measurements will not be used in climate records, promises the Met Office. Possibly an outbreak of extremely short sight explains why the highest recorded ‘record’ temperature in Wales was recorded at the ‘Unsatisfactory’ site of Hawarden Airport in 2022.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
We must not dwell too long on private misfortune nor ought we to speculate on Mr. Dale Vince’s alleged lavish lifestyle of fast cars, quaffing Dom Perignon, designer clothes, yachts and private jet travel. Mrs Vince is in a divorce court giving details of conspicuous consumption, with her ex suggesting he has been inspired by the “concept” of lower consumption since the 1980s. Such is the disputatious way with these trying family battles, it is good manners to stay silent.
We must not dwell too long on private misfortune nor ought we to speculate on Mr. Dale Vince’s alleged lavish lifestyle of fast cars, quaffing Dom Perignon, designer clothes, yachts and private jet travel. Mrs Vince is in a divorce court giving details of conspicuous consumption, with her ex suggesting he has been inspired by the “concept” of lower consumption since the 1980s. Such is the disputatious way with these trying family battles, it is good manners to stay silent. Except perhaps to note that Mr. Vince has made his fortune from collecting over £110 million in taxpayer windmill subsidies and has been making a bit of a virtue of late about everyone cutting down on consumption to save the planet. Nobody it seems is safe from his proselytising. While Vince runs his onshore wind farms, children as young as seven are being educated in the technology of the past by his foundation-funded Ministry of Eco Education (MEE). Fed a diet of climate and ecological catastrophe, the children are also being encouraged to build their own model wind turbines.
At this age, children probably don’t understand what electricity is and a primer explaining the difference between an amp and a volt might be more useful. Or perhaps just learning to read and count properly. Times change, but probably not very much. When your correspondent was seven, the nuns at his Catholic primary school were very excited by something called the Second Vatican Council and scrapbooks were kept about something that in truth meant nothing to Dartford schoolchildren. I have it in mind that slightly older pupils were making models of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Get them young and you get them for life, as the Jesuits say. Meanwhile, any doubts about the existence of the Almighty would have been met with condign punishment similar in some ways to Vince’s recent suggestion that “climate denial” should be illegal.
Whether or not Vince has been glugging vintage shampoo and shopping at chic clothing emporiums, his Ministry of Eco Education is one of the finest moral fashion accessories money can buy. It recently said its ambition was to insert its curriculum into 1,000 schools with green messaging on transport, nature and society.
Its stories seem designed to scare the living daylights out of anyone lacking the intellectual ability and wider education to question the climate Armageddon presented. All seven-year-olds in fact. They would not, for instance, be able to challenge the claim made by MEE that around the world “diversity is being annihilated at a terrifying rate”. Population sizes of thousands of species of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles are claimed by MEE to have fallen by 60% since the 1970s. No source is provided for this imprecise claim, but variations of it are common in alarmist circles. Some of the evidence suggests otherwise. A bedrock scares repeated endlessly in the mainstream is that 69% of vertebrates across the planet have declined since 1970. The figures are provided by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London. However, a group of Canadian biologists recently revealed that the figure was a statistical freak. They pointed out that the estimate was driven by 2.4% of wildlife populations, adding: “If these extremely declining populations are excluded, the global trend switches to an increase.”
According to a paper on MEE’s website identifying the foundations of its eco curriculum, the Earth’s environment is breaking down with warmer temperatures wreaking havoc causing an increase in ‘extreme’ weather and leading to a sixth mass extinction. It can of course be argued that slightly warmer temperatures bouncing back from a recent colder period have been almost entirely beneficial for life on Earth. Food supplies have risen, and famine is at bay in many parts of the world, carbon dioxide has significantly ‘greened’ the planet, mass extinction scares are the product of computer models, most ‘extreme’ weather events are not becoming more frequent or more severe and there is barely a scintilla of evidence to suggest humans have a hand in their frequency or ferocity. On this latter point, even the IPCC confirms, at least for now, this interpretation of the science. Presumably, such reassurance is not to be encouraged in the classroom – indeed it seems that according to Vince any ‘denial’ of climate science that is thought to be ‘settled’ should be against the law.
While primary schools seem to be the main target of MEE, there are hopes to extend it to the secondary sector, while the material is also said to be suitable for home educators. A recent MEE presentation highlighted the work of an MEE London-based home educator who was using MEE materials entitled ‘The future of electricity’. Those great unreliables wind and solar had pride of place but given that windmills first started operating in Britain in the reign of Henry II (1154-89), perhaps the materials should be called “The past of electricity’. Children as young as seven are encouraged to build their own wind turbines using Lego and the blades should turn when placed near a fan. Children are keen on animals, so it is just as well they are not told that wind turbines around the globe kill millions of bats every year. The giant turbines being planned to blanket Britain should make a good start on the next mass extinction. Blades almost as high as the London Shard will efficiently sweep the countryside of tonnes of wildlife from the smallest fry to the largest eagle. If the blades don’t get the bigger birds, the vast number of new high-capacity electric cables and pylons probably will.
What happens to the children’s toy windmills when the fan are switched off would be a good question for them to ask, although it might get a similar response to innocents in a former age inquiring of Sister Agnes if God actually existed.
Day-to-day running of MEE seems to be in the charge of Paul Turner. who styles himself a “Radical Geographer Paul” on his website. Among his noted activities is “teaching climate breakdown” along with providing material asking, “who owns England” and “should land be returned to the masses”. He claims to be inspired by the radical theatre collective called Three Acres and a Cow. The show’s cast includes a Kohenet Hebrew Priestess and a “radical queer Christian activist” who these days spends most of his time “gardening with asylum seekers”.
Turner’s site also links to the Radical Geographers’ Handbook, which provides a definition of radical geography. It is said to recognise the need for a “reclamation of geography from its imperialist past, showing how geographical knowledge and thinking could play a key role in radical, social, political and environmental activism”.
How school geography has come on from rocks, contours and map reading! Apparently, useful observational and practical skills are not nearly as interesting for some teachers as converting young children into parent-nagging activists. Let loose in schools, the radical geographer is charged to declare a climate and ecological emergency, sell his or her car and walk everywhere (not you Dale) and “teach what you love and not to the exam”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
If you think the U.K. Met Office is adept at producing junk temperature measurements and statistics, just wait till you see what the Department of Net Zero and Energy Security (DNZES) is up to. Its compilation of 30-year temperature averages for its Energy Trends publication is so flawed, it might be easier and more cost-effective just to make the figures up.
If you think the U.K. Met Office is adept at producing junk temperature measurements and statistics, just wait till you see what the Department of Net Zero and Energy Security (DNZES) is up to. Its compilation of 30-year temperature averages for its Energy Trends publication is so flawed, it might be easier and more cost-effective just to make the figures up.
The DNZES figures, both monthly and annual, are said to provide average temperature, “heating degree-days” and deviation from long-term measurements. Just 17 Met Office stations are used although, curiously, 21 sets of information arise due to site double counting. Eight of the stations consulted are in Class 4 sites with internationally-recognised ‘uncertainties’ of 2°C, while four are in Class 5 with possible errors up to 5°C. The data are not only corrupted by unnatural influences but also slewed by less than obvious geographical sitings. No measurements are taken in Northern Ireland, most of Scotland or mid and north Wales. The entire south-east of England is represented by Heathrow Airport, one of the worst places possible to gain an idea of surrounding air temperature.
The eight Class 4 sites are Glasgow Bishopton, Bingley, Crosby, Nottingham Watnall, Coleshill, Aberporth, Hurn and Plymouth Mountbatten while the four Class 5 are Leuchars, Durham, St. Athan and Boscombe Down. Quite why four of the 17 sites are double counted “to produce the national averages for temperature correction” is not immediately clear. Admittedly the Met Office does not have many Class 1 and 2 sites, but quite why these cannot be used rather than the hopelessly corrupted bunch identified is again not immediately clear. But it gets worse.
Hat tip again to Ray Sanders, the citizen journalist who is carrying out a forensic examination of the entire Met Office temperature gathering operation. Noting that the DNZES statistics stretch back to 1980, he observes that doubled-up Rostherne was only opened in 2012. Glasgow is also short of a few years having started in 1998, as is Coleshill (1997), St. Athan (1997), Leconfield (2002) and Weybourne (1991). Just two Class 1 sites are used, neither of which existed in 1981. “This concoction of historic averages is reminiscent of Dungeness where stations that do not exist are attributed averages by what are no better than mathematical conjuring tricks,” Sanders states. The Dungeness note refers to the recent discovery that the Met Office has been inventing temperature averages for over 100 stations, a practice, and a subsequent attempted cover up, the Daily Sceptic recently reported here and here.
Sanders also casts a critical eye on the Leconfield site. This is a Class 3 station with uncertainties of 1°C but its doubled-up data arises from a location with “multiple issues”. In Sanders’s view, the site should be at least Class 4 due to nearby roads and tarmac. There is also the “serious issue” of a newly-built solar farm with 4,248 heat-producing panels standing just 80 metres (at its closest point) from the measuring device. “There are even bigger problems with the way in which its temperature readings are subsequently manipulated by Government departments that is almost unbelievable,” he adds.
The end result of all these shenanigans can be seen in the table below. The average temperature for the period 1991-2020 was said to be 10.3°C, a figure that according to the Met Office has never been reached in a single year. The highest recorded temperature was 10.03°C in 2023.
It’s becoming clearer by the day that the Met Office’s temperature measuring operation is amateurish and unsuitable for the serious scientific purpose of underpinning the Net Zero agenda. Little care seems to have been taken over the siting of measuring devices, with nearly eight out of 10 stations based in junk classes 4 and 5 with huge uncertainties identified by the World Meteorological Organisation. Alarmists frequently talk about the dangers of warming of as little as one tenth of a degree centigrade but Met Office figures (and those of other state-funded meteorological organisations around the world, which suffer from similar problems) are incapable of providing measurements to this degree of accuracy.
Meanwhile, DNZES is in the hands of an extremist gang of weird political wonks led by the Mad Miliband. They are unlikely to lose much sleep over a few inaccurate temperature details when there is work to be done saving the planet. Dodgy temperature figures, hockey sticks and purple weather maps have been creating mass climate psychosis for years – the job is almost done. Now is time to make a real move on the hated free enterprise industrial society and the plebs who seem to take an unnatural enjoyment in the improved living standards it offers. Step forward Miliband’s right-hand man and the former Chief Executive of the Climate Change Committee, Chris Stark. Commenting on the Net Zero imperative, he recently said: “We are likely to see a move towards a more stick-like intervention into the future if we are not able to act.”
Things are getting hot – these people are ready to strike.
Chris @StarkClimate when CEO of the Climate Change Committee recommended the Net Zero target for 2030.
Speaking at the @wef we “need to change behaviours” using “carrots & not so many sticks.” He warns of more sticks.
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