The UK sends our King and Prime Minister to the COP event. Neither President Xi, head of the dominant CO 2 emitter or President Biden, Head of one of the other big CO 2 producers is going. These two produce around 30 times and 14 times as much CO 2 as we do. China adds as much extra CO 2 each year as the UK total. I appreciate some readers want to end the whole set of policies. I continue to advise against inflicting so called net zero policies on us which do not work in their own terms and do damage to our businesses and living standards.
The first issue COP 28 should sort out but will not is the mad accounting system. This says that if the UK shuts its steel works its CO 2 has gone down. World CO 2 however has gone up, as the UK imports steel it would otherwise have made, with more CO 2 in its production and transport than doing it at home. The UK government should want to change this instead of claiming credit for our big reductions based on shutting down too many activities to rely on imports. If world CO 2 has gone up how is that a win?
The second issue to examine should be the unpopularity of the green products government recommend as crucial to success. People are not rushing to buy electric cars, worried about costs, ability to recharge, insurance and battery life. They are even less keen on heat pumps, given the cost, the disruptive works needed to install and the costs of electricity to run them. The road to net zero needs people to buy in willingly to the new products and carry most of the costs of transition by buying new vehicles and heating systems.
COP 28 could do more thinking about what are practical and affordable ways of travelling their chosen road. Would it be better to introduce synthetic and sustainable fuels for existing transport as they plan with planes rather than trying to scrap all existing vehicles and replace with electric? Would it be better to develop synthetic fuels to mix with domestic gas and gradually increase the proportion instead of scrapping all domestic boilers? Have they assessed the amount of CO 2 created by the process of early scrapping of existing technologies and the need to mine and use the materials for battery and electric assembly?
The third issue is wrestling more honestly with the costs. The Conference papers say the emerging world needs to spend $5.9 tn between now and 2030 and will need help with that in the form of grants and loans from the developed world. COP 28 has claimed an early win by establishing a fund to provide money to countries adversely affected by climate change. This has been reported as around $400 m with the EU providing $225m, the UK $75m, the US a measly $16m and Japan a mere $10m . China has given it a miss so far. Quite a lot of these initial sums will go on lawyers, administrators and offices to set up the fund. The world is still struggling to achieve the $100bn a year of transfers from the advanced world long ago promised as an annual minimum for climate change policies overall. The UK has once again been generous. This is yet another unfunded spending commitment which will need to be borrowed. It is also more spending where Ministers will b e unable to check value for money or sense of how it is disbursed. Why not do these things under our own overseas aid budget direct?
December 2, 2023
You have said it all. Basically the whole venture is not financially viable. Rich people in poor, warm, countries need to send money to poor people in cold countries, regardless of their colour (of course) so that they can survive. Maybe ÂŁ100 Billion might just cover it for a year or so.
Perhaps our politicized King could answer all your questions, in Greek.
For the King of England to wear a tie flaunting the Greek flag in public is astonishing. Prince Philip, a Prince of Denmark and Greece, but primarily the husband of the Queen of England, would never have done so.
For the King of England to take part is such a political and decisive assembly, some 400,000 people attending at the cost of a massive anti-Green âfootprintâ, is astonishing.
Whose King does he want to be? Because I believe that he is not representing the British people in the way that he should. In addition to the antics of his younger son, the balance of being positive rather than negative is tipping for the British Monarchy.
December 2, 2023
Lynn Atkinson :
Agreed. You are right to ask the question “Whose King does he want to be?”.
Obviously not the King of Britain. Like many of our politicians, he has far bigger ambitions.
December 3, 2023
The King of Climate Delusion & Hypocrisy it seems. But this is totally in keeping with his desire to be the protectors of the various contradictory and often rather racist âfaithsâ and his love of quack medical treatments.
December 3, 2023
Thanks to Laurence van der Post! Imagine the King of England listening to a âman like thatâ from the bush!
December 3, 2023
Yes Iâm sure the Saxe-Coburg-Gothaâs were promised much – King of Europe ⊠or maybe even The World! đ€ (unless that one is already taken by His Unequalled King Boris đđ€Ł – wish I could say he had grown out of it âŠ.)
December 2, 2023
Leader of the House Penny Maudauntâs reply to the sensible question from Andrew Bridgen (on Twitter) on the many Antipodean vaccine caused (& very clearly timing with vaccine roll out) excess deaths was appalling. So is this women and her advisors just daft & totally deluded or are they just blatantly lying the latter seems the most likely. The truth will out, the statistics from all around the World are very depressingly all too clear Penny. It is you and this government (and Labour and the King too it seems) who are pushing this evil misinformation.
December 2, 2023
Your account demonstrates yet again the dominance of the chumps and charlatans in government and in parliament. Meanwhile I see the FT reports that the COP guest list nears 80,000!
December 2, 2023
John has the right ideas but would ‘they’ do as he tells them?There is a great resistance to common-sense in the corridors.
December 3, 2023
Well I can attest to the fact that the Civil Servants do indeed do as JR tells them. He was a âbreath of fresh airâ in Cardiff and he left the place in a much better state than it had been in when he arrived.
If politicians think their seat can be saved, they will kow tow to Lucifer. There are surprisingly few politicians who actually have political views. Maybe 10% (and Iâm being generous). The majority just want to be with the winners.
December 3, 2023
yes, but most of them have backed an outsider with a wonky leg, the favourites stay in the warm not out in the parade ring.
December 3, 2023
I saw an attendance of 70,000 reported. That’s 300,000 tonnes of CO2, assuming typical oil consumption of economy-class air travel. However, some of these people will have travelled first-class or in private jets. So possibly well over a million tonnes was emitted.
I doubt more & more that these people are serious about the technology. I think they just want to impose a much more dirigiste top-down government, the steps to be completed in 2030, and to replace nation states by a world state. They are probably fearful of peak oil and ‘overshoot’, which they dare not discuss in public. ‘Climate change’ is a fig leaf.
It may not even work. China’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ 60 years ago failed and had horrible consequences. (That’s command economies for you.)
December 2, 2023
China are v. sensibly largely making EVs, batteries, solar cells, steel, wind turbines and the many other industrial and tech. goods we import… using cheap coal, oil and gas power to do so. Then exporting these to us on diesel ships. The best (indeed only?) real way to be internationaÄșly competitive. The Sunak plan is to export UK jobs and whole industries for his deluded devil gas religion and his vast market rigging.
December 2, 2023
Well God has now been invoked via the Pope to ask us whether we want to live or die. No, Pope. God, along with the Chinese, is canny enough to know that systems can be perturbed but almost always find a route to return to equilibrium. The ice age came and went, without COP summits. Rather like masks for Covid, electric cars might tinker at the edges, or even do more harm than good, but frankly we are either -all doomed- or not, regardless of this tinkering.
December 2, 2023
Well is the Popeâs God no longer omnipotent then? Perhaps he/she/it or what ever pronoun they have nowadays has already planned a huge volcano, a meteor impact, a devastating new pandemic, a third World war, an ice age caused by decreased solar activity or similar – so as to redress the climate and/or population balance. Not that there is any real evidence it need to be redressed? He or whatever mist currently be having a good laugh at our half-baked attempts to reduce plant, tree, crop and 02 providing CO2 gas. Especially be using EV cars that in fact actually increase it compared to keeping you old one.
December 2, 2023
@Lifelogic +1
Comments in the Media suggest that Sunak & Hunt have steadied the ship with their latest pronouncements of their sleight of hand tax take, tuns out the take is greater than any perceived headline of savings and the ship with them at the helm is resting on the sea bed(bottom). And the Conservative Party? Those MPâs destined to be out of work? They have given up, resigned to the destruction of the Conservative Party and the UK
December 2, 2023
Some very good points here. We can only solve this, and other, big problems by international co-operation. A country that thinks it’s a good idea to withdraw from international commitments and Treaties is deluding itself.
December 2, 2023
@Lemming – who is that has voted the unaccountable to make those sort of commitments, just based on thier personal ideas, self-grtification and preferences. Did you vote in King Charles, Tony Blair or the majority of the other 8,000 hangers on? It is your freedom you are talking about giving up.
December 2, 2023
CO2 plant food is not causing any climate emergency, on balance it is a net positive. Even if it were World cooperation is not going to happen and anyway adaptation would be far cheaper and far more sensible than an insane war on CO2 tree food. If we had to cool the earth then cutting CO2 would be a hugely inefficient, expensive and ineffective way to do it anyway. The idea that CO2 is some world thermostat is scientifically absurd.
A bit warmer is far better than a bit colder anyway. And this most certainly in the UK 1c warmer saves hugely on heating for a start circa 10% plus longer growing seasons too.
December 2, 2023
âNeither President Xi, head of the dominant CO 2 emitter or President Biden, Head of one of the other big CO 2 producers is going.â
Very sensible of them both to save the energy and money and not have to listen to all that that virtue signalling, scientifically illiterate, pious & deluded drivel. From people arriving on their private jets with zero grasp of reality.
Biden gets one thing right at last.
December 2, 2023
They don’t a President shuffling off this mortal coil while in flight.
December 2, 2023
want …
December 3, 2023
Perhaps the President is more fragile than China, but China & Indiaâs immense population pulls most demand on resources.
People go through lengthy processes gaining qualifications just allowing them to drive a car, practise law and medicine, survey buildings and much else.
In contrast, folk can create any number of children adding the heaviest cause of increased demand on the planet without any thought or plan of how to cope.
December 2, 2023
High time everyone stayed away.
December 2, 2023
+1
December 2, 2023
Sir JR, you can see the reality. I can see it. Many posters on here can see it. Why can’t your Government.
December 2, 2023
Well said Albion , now where did that ÂŁ1.6 billion come from. We are a country with deep debt from the incompetence of our chancellors and this prime minister.
I have voted Conservative most of my seventy + years , but that has stopped, I have joined Reform Uk and I am working hard leafletting and pushing their policies. I will nolonger vote for a passing through foreigner!
December 2, 2023
Yep, more taxpayer money spent abroad by our Government, and all without our permission as forecast in my post comment earlier in the week.
It is reported that King Charles, Sunak and Cameron all travelled to the venue separately, all in different private type planes, indeed 70,000 people are forecast to go to this big meeting to discuss ways of saving energy and emissions, which just about sums up the screwed thinking by these one track useless idiots.
These so called experts (really) do not seem to have any common-sense, logic, or a clue about human nature, or the massive cost implications of what they are even talking about, let alone suggesting proposed solutions.
Sometimes it seems like the UK taxpayer is funding the people of the World !
December 2, 2023
You set out very clearly, Sir John, why COP 28 is a self-indulgent farce. Yet in your title you rebuke China’s President Xi for not turning up at it. Could it be that he agrees with you about the mad accounting system, the unpopularity of green products, and the absurdly high costs of Net Zero? Perhaps he also thinks what you may not be allowed to say, which is that the whole exercise is ultimately fraudulent and pointless. Well, at least he has a good business case for not saying it.
While countries such as Britain are prepared to pay China vast amounts for making EV batteries, windmills and other eco-goodies, why should Mr Xi worry? As long as China can open new coal mines and fossil fuel power stations to support all that manufacturing, he’s got a good deal.
December 2, 2023
I note you never mentioned the nuclear power option once, John?
The fixation with CO2 by the chattering classes who have been told it is the control knob of climate, needs to be corrected. The benefits to all life on Earth provided by the essential molecule CO2 can not be dismissed or denied. We need more CO2 in the atmosphere not less. We need the political class to start resolving the real issues facing the World and stop fixating on imaginary matters like human induced global warming via CO2 emissions.
It might also be worth mentioning this is Cop 28. There has been zero impact on CO2 emissions since the first COP. That kind of tells us, COP gatherings are an absolute waste of time and money.
December 2, 2023
Cop28= Do as I say not as I do, a gold plated hypochrocy.
The whole climate change theory is based on the idea that man is assumed responsible while the Sun is ignored. The Sun has controlled what goes on in the Solar System since creation and will continue to so do until it absorbs the Earth and all other bodies within it.
This does not mean that climate is not changing. It has always fluctuated and at times to extremes. Anyone who has grown things over the last twenty years knows of the change. How do you account for the increase in UK wine growing and its gradual move northwards.
Cop28 thinks, like Canute that it can reverse climate change trends, I very much doubt it. What it could do is mitigate against the effect, and secondly put an end to all the detritus and pollution that man inflicts upon the Earth, its beings, flora and fauna included.
In the UK alone we need sea defenses for the Yorkshire to Norfolk coast. Water companies that do not pollute. Desalination plants for the southern counties.SMRs throughout the country to create constant base load energy. Windmills can only exist with subsidy (tax) from the consumer. They might usefully be used to produce Hydrogen. In the interim we must use our own gas and oil under a business plan that does not expose end users to the effect of the world market cartel.
The necessary changes in UK behaviour must be for the benefit of UK citizens and be market led, not imposed based on pillow talk or vested interests. I do not see such thinking or action coming from the present Commons incumbents. A political revolution in the form of Reform is the only viable option.
December 2, 2023
â Neither President Xi, head of the dominant CO 2 emitter or President Biden, Head of one of the other big CO 2 producers is going. â
Neither should the UK have its heads attending. They could point to the absence of the two above.
However, they do because the globalists want them to and our leaders want to ingratiate themselves with these people rather than do their best for the people of this country.
You can point out the folly of the concept but you will simply be ignored – unless it lead to a violent revolution (which does not seem imminent).
December 2, 2023
What our so-called representatives in Parliament are doing is the reason many of them should, and will at the next election, lose the right to represent us in Parliament.
December 2, 2023
So important that May did no cost benefit analysis and MPs let it through parliament without debate. Cameron called out Red Edâs Marxist energy policy built on by May! It makes some rich but most much poorer!!
Covid scam anyone, forced wearing of face masks all lies by Tory govt. Covid inquiry benefiting who exactly?
Rogue parliament back. This time acting by stealth not to arouse public anger. Sunak acting against mandate to leave EU. Uni party ignoring public aligning tightly with EU against our wishes. EU courts laws and regs still applying, UK still being fined by EU for failing compliance!!
December 2, 2023
A time bomb left by the appalling, virtue signalling dope Theresa May. One even worse than the earlier Climate Change Act bomb left by Ed (tombstone) Milliband – but voted for by all but a tiny hand full of sensible MPs including JR, Peter Lilly, Ann WidecombeâŠ
December 2, 2023
Iâd like to know just how many directly tax-payer funded eg MPs, and indirectly funded eg universities, local government, charities and quango are going on the biggest holiday in Dubai âŠ.with the aim to tax & control the poor
December 3, 2023
a pleasant free jollie? what’s not to like?
December 2, 2023
Indeed if people are forced to use heatpumps and renewables many will only be able to afford to heat one room at best, so rather a waste of time insulating or installing it for the whole house!
December 2, 2023
@James1 +1
Thatâs the real situation they havenât realized who empowered and pay them.
There are clearly some good constituency MPâs out there, some even in the Conservative Party, but they are to be sacrificed on the self-gratify ego of those that donât care and have other places to be.
December 2, 2023
Why would China bother to turn up to Cop 28? According to a report I read a few years ago, they don’t believe in man made climate change. They are expecting a period of global cooling somewhere mid this century, and are preparing for that – hence all the coal fired energy.
December 2, 2023
China benefitting from the stupidity of countries like GB, N.I given away by Tory party. Biden did not turn up either.
December 2, 2023
It will only get worse now that Cameron can have more drinks with his Chinese friend.
December 2, 2023
Don’t get confused with Hunt or maybe the whole cabinet
December 3, 2023
a cabinet of drinks! I can still see the photo in the pub, pint in hand.
Cameron bubble ‘ this is a great one for my memoirs and international talking tour’.
Xi Jinping bubble ‘ stay deadpan, even if this coloured water is weird, the fool will sign up for many ÂŁbillions as if I am helping him’
December 3, 2023
Oh more than drinks, I think he would sniff at that!
December 2, 2023
Got it Hope, thick Cameron is going to be a big problem, no body respect the coward!
December 2, 2023
Well they need all the cheap & on demand coal fired electricity to supply the west with EV batteries, cars, solar cells, steel, wind turbines and similar intermittents that misguided governments foolishly subsidise with our taxes.
December 2, 2023
I certainly think a period of global cooling is just as likely as any further warming. Wait and see and adapt as may be needed be it hotter, colder, wetter or dryer.
A while back the alarmists were endless on about summer droughts and lack of water in reservoirs. Really it is a lack of reservoir capacity and far more people. No shortage of rain.
December 2, 2023
Remember when computers would make us all redundant?
December 2, 2023
That didn’t happen did it? Now it’s AI that is going to make many jobs redundant. As a retired software engineer, who read up on progress on AI until my retirement, I’m very dubious about this sudden advance, which, unusually, doesn’t seem to be attributed to anyone or group in particular.
December 2, 2023
âïž Right but they think we are thick enough to believe their lies
December 2, 2023
SJR: You’ve answered your own question about why countries like China are reluctant to give millions to a fund to support parts of the world ‘adversely affected by climate change’. As you say, a lot of it will be spent on lawyers, administrators and their offices, and who will check if it’s value for money?
No surprise that Britain and the EU are keen to support climate grifters, it’s good that the rest of the developed world isn’t so keen.
December 2, 2023
The public are getting sick of being lectured by the great and good about climate change and see it as a tax raising scam.
KC3 tells us that by 2050 there will be armagedon if we don’t cut our carbon footprint and arrives in his private jet together with 400 others. These people have no self awareness.
Well done China and the USA for ignoring the doom mongers.
December 2, 2023
70,000 delegates, arriving by fossil powered transport.
Lack of self awareness is putting it mildly.
December 2, 2023
+ the Lobbiests.
December 2, 2023
Agree – You only have to look out of your window, its winter & its bloody cold (-5) …nothing has changed, there isn’t any CC
December 3, 2023
and we still have potholes, ULEZ, dinghies arriving, taxation record breaking, SNP missing ÂŁ600,000 donations, street protests, train strikes, trans headlines and small Parties of little consequence. Heating and light from our friends over the Channel.
December 2, 2023
Good Morning,
Sir J, I cannot remember when I have read so much common sense in so short a space. Are you a lone voice in your party arguing for these checks on value for tax payers money?
I thought the Rachel Reeves made a strong economic speech for probity and cost management, but it would appear that both she and Starmer are a mere facade for the huge majority of lunatic socialists behind the curtain, who will usurp power from these weak leaders upon their election.
December 2, 2023
Coldest day this year and wind is providing 1.35gw.
Good job it’s Saturday.
December 2, 2023
+++
Oh no!
Havenât you charged up your solar heaters and solar boiler?
No wind powered kettle boiling merrily and cheaply in the kitchen?
That all-year-round recharging battery on the side of your house is there to keep you warm you know!
Donât stint!
Itâs all cheap and clean and lovely.
And it certainly wonât lead to warmingâŠ.of any sort whatsoever!đ„¶
December 2, 2023
Don’t worry we’re importing via europe interconnectors 12.4% of our energy (09:30hrs)
December 2, 2023
glen cullen: ” we are importing … 12.4% of our energy …”
Just as France is getting a shock as it’s imports of Uranium for her nuclear reactor fleet has been interupted from Niger. Whoops!
December 2, 2023
keeping our central heating running and lights on via another country’s fossil fuel.
December 2, 2023
Thats the magic of net-zero
December 2, 2023
So 5% of capacity but it also make gas, coal, wood etc. run less efficiently which prob. wastes more energy than they are actually generating.
December 2, 2023
My living room wood burner providing free heat with scrap wood.
Don’t tell Gove.
December 2, 2023
kiln dried of course? At least 2 years old?
December 2, 2023
Elm can be burned fresh. Itâs unique. Lots of elm disease in our area.
December 2, 2023
not in London I think?
December 2, 2023
Floodlighting at the footie?
Football League needs to start all games at 11am, 12 or 1.
December 2, 2023
Wind now down to 1.03GW, 2.55% of demand……
December 2, 2023
The people who want more global governance need a global scare story. It provides them with a reason for their drive towards a world run according to their own ideas of what is best for humanity. They have no interest in scientific truth, or, empirical evidence.
December 2, 2023
Cynic :
Absolutely correct.
December 2, 2023
Correct. It is just a SCAM designed to give a fig leaf of respectability to draconian legislation coming over the hill.
December 2, 2023
Cynic, +++++++++
December 2, 2023
Correct.
December 2, 2023
Net Zero is not about environmental protection and to suggest otherwise is a gross act of deceit
Western governments and their billionaire lackeys want to see an ordered world aligned along very different values, imposed by political agents of the State. Welcome to MARXISM C21 STYLE
These bastards who parade themselves across our TV screens, pontificating and warning are agents of a political creed whose purpose is beyond sinister
December 2, 2023
Correct. They want a Chinese-style society, controlled by surveillance and social credits, with a Technocratic Elite who are isolated from any kind of democratic control.
Although I suspect they’ll allow “our” Parliaments to continue – so they have a fig leaf to cover the tyranny – but completely powerless to change anything … like the Chinese/Soviet and EU ones.
December 2, 2023
But no one in china talks about net-zero or climate change
December 2, 2023
english.scio.gov.cn 27/10/2021 âResponding to climate change: Chinaâs policies and actionsâ.
As of Febâ23, China has 55 nuclear plants with 57GW in operation, 24 are under construction for 24 GW and 70 are planned for 88GW. ( interestingengineering.com 27/04/2023, economist.com 30/11/2023 âChina is building nuclear reactors faster than any other countryâ).
December 3, 2023
nor bat labs.
December 2, 2023
And by the way if the Treasury scum manage to impose digital cash on our world I believe its true purpose when it manifests itself will trigger a revolution ala Germany, 1989
December 2, 2023
What an appalling example of arrogance and hubris when our PM flew in to COP 28 in a private jet, made a completely political speech targeted at the British electorate, claiming credit for watering down our Net Zero commitments – and flies out again only 7 hours later. Without even showing the curtesy of discussing the issue with the assembled great and the good
Britain, which was widely admired when Alok Sharma was involved, has now lost a great deal of international credibility. The sooner the party replaces this appalling PM and finds someone who can revive it’s electoral prospects, the better
December 2, 2023
When Alok Sharma was involved he was widely resented around the world, not admired, for constantly lecturing them on climate change. Why should those countries shoot themselves in the foot just because a certain clique at the UN and their lackeys in Westminster want Britain to do that? His tearful performance at COP 26 in Glasgow was ridiculous and made this country look ridiculous.
December 2, 2023
I wonder who’s going to cry this year
December 2, 2023
On this very cold December day, wind power is providing only 2% of electricity generation. Solar 1%.
When the wind does not blow, wind turbines are useless.
Without the back-up of fossil fuels – what is your plan?
December 2, 2023
Well I agree that the appalling, multi-faced, totally dishonest, 4 pledge ratting, inflation creating (as Chancellor) PM should go. To be replaced ideally by a real EU leave person who understands that climate alarmism is a con trick and a mad deluded religion. Someone who will actually deliver on Sunakâs 4 pledges plus lower taxes hugely, cut the size of government and have a bonfire of red tape. Alas not much chance!
December 2, 2023
You sound like one of the communist true believers who carried on wedded to socialism in the USSR well after most had given it up as unworkable. There is no, as in zero, proof that the mild warming since the Little Ice Age has been entirely, or even mostly, man made. Why don’t you design a few “weight-down-old-mine-shaft” generators, as you previously advocated?
December 2, 2023
NickC :
The Royal Society’s “Large Scale Electricity Storage” report concludes that gravitational storage can only provide MWhrs when we need tens of TWhrs, 10 million times more. Certainly a project for wind turbine advocates.
December 2, 2023
@ Sakara Gold – your first paragraph contains the only words I have ever seen that makes me think very well indeed of Mr. Sunak. That is the way to treat a charlatan pressure group. Give him credit too for taking his boss and his foreign secretary each in separate jets.
December 2, 2023
Alok Sharma blew up one of our coal fired power stations, with renewables currently contributing insignificant power to the grid they are having to bribe people not to use electricity. Brilliant job Alok.
December 2, 2023
Iain Moore :
Here is the link to an official SSE video of the COP26 President, Alok Sharma MP, explosively demolishing a UK power generation asset, Ferrybridge Power Staion:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1429456184902393858/pu/vid/720×720/JwPnpycxEiyBmqVJ.mp4?tag=12
Our current Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (an oxymoronic department name) has confirmed at COP28 that we will have demolished all our coal powered stations by next year. What could possibly go wrong with this energy security policy?
December 3, 2023
I gather the US is also planning to close all its coal power stations by 2030. That will cause huge problems unless the order is rapidly rescinded, especially since they are doing so little to ensure supply of gas to areas that are already short of it – New York narrowly averted major power cuts a few days ago, and their wind investment policy is in disarray, just like the UK’s.
December 3, 2023
Cop28 president says there is âno scienceâ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels
Exclusive: UAEâs Sultan Al Jaber says phase-out of coal, oil and gas would take world âback into cavesâ
And itâs the Scientists of the west who have to sit like school children and hear this truth. Shame!
December 2, 2023
well worth looking at what India is up to too
December 3, 2023
They have âa special deal for you todayâ – they sell on Russian commodities with a nice margin, to the west.
December 2, 2023
Each COP is blah blah blah as the young woman says.
If you really believe the world is burning, sea rising – doom inevitable and 1.5C maximum rise must be avoided, then somehow China, India, USA must attend and accept swingeing reductions that will affect consumerism round the world.
Moving country excess production to the worst offenders is so much hypocrisy.
December 2, 2023
Greta Thunberg is so yesterday, Sky media are now rolling out the new child environmentalist, the 8 year old Aneeshwar Kunchala (BBC CBeebies)
December 2, 2023
Glen…I stand corrected. So we now have an environmentalist Dalai Lama?
December 2, 2023
It is also high time that China was publicly challenged over its manipulation of our universities’ funding to get its own way and avoid discussion on all things critical of the regime. This week saw a very good exposĂ© of what has been going on here, and no doubt in many other countries. Intelligence gathering is feeding military development with little recognition of what is happening.
December 2, 2023
MT :
Correct.
December 2, 2023
With all those kings, dictators, supra-national organisations and NGOs present it was very hard to spot a single democratically elected person.
In fact the of the few democratically elected people present less than a handful had a political mandate to implement the economic destruction of the tin-foil-hat green crazies.
All the others were either virtue signallers or grifting off the virtue signallers.
December 2, 2023
@Javelin +1, Welcome to the new World of the great WEF reset, supported by our own Parliament that refuse to act as the UK’s freelydemocraticaly elected legislators(Why are they there?). Preferring instead to take their orders of the unelected unaccountable rulers in foreign lands
December 2, 2023
Javelin, ++++++
December 2, 2023
Oh Sunak announced another ÂŁ11 billion down the drain with more windmills on the Dogger Bank. Donât even think he did nothing – heâs still digging, digging, digging âŠ.
December 2, 2023
Good piece.
I deplore the presence of our King at what is, essentially, a deeply-political event. He should have stayed here and saved the planet a couple of unnecessary, CO-producing flights. I see that David ‘Green Crap’ Cameron also went.
December 2, 2023
If anyone says that our King didnât wear a Greece flag pattern neck-tie yesterday at cop28 needs to go to âspecsaversâ
December 2, 2023
JR chose not to print my comment. But essentially Prince Philip would never have done such a thing!
December 2, 2023
As Neil Oliver saysâŠit is ALL b*ll*cks.
Not worth even trying to discombobulate.
Motives are probably as simple as stopping emerging countries from industrialising by steering them away from cheap fossil fuel towards expensive ârenewablesâ and making us 85% poorer. Lowering our standard of living.
But if they have known about this global apocalypse for so longâŠ..
(1896/1938?)
WHY no preparations??
In other wordsâŠwhere are the solar white goods?
December 2, 2023
Can we tell COP28 we can’t contribute to the fund because the UK is heavily in debt?
They should see if they can touch some rich individuals for cash. The UK is broke.
December 2, 2023
Actually, the King, Sunak and Call Me Dave went to represent the UK – all in separate planes and all adding to CO2 and giving us yet another example of rank hypocrisy.
None of them should have gone and certainly not Charles, since this is a political issue, made obvious by the number of politicians attending and Sir John’s complaint that Presidents Biden and Xi aren’t attending. Charles is breaking our Constitution by involving himself in a divisive political issue. Very many British people do not support the plan to bankrupt the country on the altar of Net Zero or the Government’s authoritarian policies, which will cost a fortune many do not have, in order to try and achieve it.
The UN driven fake crisis of “Climate Change” is just a scam, intended to transfer ÂŁtrillions from poor taxpayers in “the west” to globalist institutions, corrupt foreign governments and the legions of politicians and others who expect to make a great deal of money from it, not least the King and certain members of the House of Frauds.
December 2, 2023
Our 28GW of intermittent wind generating capacity is contributing a whole 1.4GW this morning on a freezing cold day. And the intermittent solar farms are contributing a big fat ZERO.
Reliable gas, meanwhile, is 23GW and reliable nuclear is 4.8GW.
https://energynumbers.info/gbgrid
Yet the numbskulls in the Establishment think that’s a good reason to stop using gas and spend ÂŁbillions on more windmills and solar panels, instead of correctly concluding that fracking for gas is the best way to secure our energy supply.
They disgust me.
December 2, 2023
Donna
I have to say, you wonder how much more obvious it has to become before the majority of MP’s start to wise up, and realise that their pledges about using and expanding renewables is the answer to our future power needs.
Solar produces nothing at Night, Windmills produce nothing day or Night if the wind does not blow.
It really does not take a lot of intelligence or thought !
December 2, 2023
I think that actually the point isâŠ
Their only objective is feudalism ( of sorts..Steampunk?)
Claims of âClimate changeâ are just a means to an end.
Look how they used the plandemic to further the agenda.
âTheyâ= whoever is really doing this to us.
December 2, 2023
Let us draw a brief comparison with apartheid era South Africa, deemed to be a nation beyond the pale and inflicted with sanctions by those who did the deeming, who were at least consistent in taking action that reflected their condemning of apartheid. That’s as brief as is needed.
Now let us return to the present day. How come the green religion’s high priests, and those nations who have established the green religion, are not calling for crippling trade sanctions against China and similar heretics? We all know why. These shindigs are ultimately nothing to do with environmentalism, the green cloak being a mere facade, and everything to do with (a) wrecking the quality of life for us ordinary plebs in developed Western democracies (b) redistributing wealth to the Third World without the full hearted consent of those whose national wealth is redistributed. The “do as we say, don’t do as we do” mentality of the principal players is insult to injury.
December 2, 2023
The more I see and the more I hear, the more that I view climate change as a vanity project for our recent PMs. What ever happened to common sense. It reminds me of HS 2. However zero carbon will destroy our country. The one which will win, will be China.
There is no real science behind zero carbon as many eminent Climatologists have proven. More and more of the electorate are starting to understand the situation. We are now in a situation, with the immigration fiasco and zero carbon, where the electorate could easily respond in a very negative way.
December 2, 2023
It’s high time that the UK didn’t turn up.
December 2, 2023
There is nothing good to be said about COP28 – the rich and the mighty pass off their crimes of using fancy jets to get to this jollie by saying they have bought carbon credits, while expecting us to cycle or walk everywhere, given their war on cars.
Wasn’t the Monarchy supposed to be above politics?
Look at the amount our PM has already pledged to fight alleged climate change – How many doctors and nurse could we get train on that sort of money?
The priorities here, at the COPs, are all wrong, terribly wrong. While the coming death of our industry will mean nothing to the overall count of Co2 — The world has gone mad and the UK is leading the charge!
December 2, 2023
Those demanding net zero CO2 (and beyond) for western democracies only (climate action is only #13 on the UNâs list of âsustainable goalsâ), the UN, the WEF, the CCC, our Parliament, the BBC/MSM and the many globalist funded think tanks etc. etc. claim the need for us to de-industrialise and undergo massive reductions in our living standards achieved through the rationing of energy, food, heating and travel using carbon taxes, electrification and chaotically intermittent renewable energy.
But this is to look at their demands through the wrong end of a telescope for there is no global warming emergency/crisis as a result of increasing levels of CO2 (natural or anthropogenic) as shown by the work of Professors Happer & Wijngaarden. The current global warming, which is small and beneficial, together with past global coolings is a perfectly natural phenomenon. To expect the global temperature to remain constant is just absurd. It has to go up or down!
For those pursing net zero CO2 the end game is the destruction of western democraciesâ meritocracy and wealth and the transition to authoritarian command economies with the ending of private wealth, ownership and freedom of speech using âsaving the planetâ as the excuse. This is the pursuit of âequityâ.
December 2, 2023
The Western World has gone MAD
December 2, 2023
International Aid was supposed to have been a catalyst to generate growth in developing countries , but what has been the outcome? The opposite . Even though it has spectacularly failed in its task, we end up lumbered with a bill for many billions every year , where our politicians don’t have the spine to scrap it.
Green bungs , whether called transition payments or climate reparations will achieve the same, NOTHING! It is just a costly virtue signaling exercise done at the expense of British people. One thing you can be sure off when we get claims from countries that their problems are the result of climate change, you won’t see our lily-livered political class suggesting their problems are of their own making , like over populating their countries and stripping out all the forests, etc. No our politicians will grovel to them, apologies for our existence, and ask them how much they want
December 2, 2023
“COP 28 High time China turned up” Why? it is nothing but a talking shop for the unaccountable unelected Socialist WEF cabal.
China is putting its people and its economy first. The complete opposite of our unrepresentative Conservative Government
December 2, 2023
A quick peruse of todays media on COP2, and up pops Tony Blair and Kiing Charles as unelected authorities still trying to manipulate a World Government for the benefit of the ruling class to suppress the notion of democracy further. These Guys and their WEF buddies do not want freedoms and democracy to flourish
December 2, 2023
Can anyone explain why the developed world is ârichâ and the emerging world is poor? It says the emerging world needs to spend $5.9 trillion between now and 2030 – and theyâll need money from the developed world.
How come âweâ have lots of money and âtheyâ donât?
Where has all âourâ money come from?
Why canât they get a load of money from wherever we got ours from?
How is it weâre a ârichâ country if we owe ÂŁ2.6 billion?
If weâre rich, why are so many people poor and some sleep in the streets?
Despite knocking about on this earth for 71 years and, at various times, giving these matters a great deal of thought – and some research – I am still baffled by the whole thing.
December 2, 2023
Unfortunately (from what I have read) it seems that the real agenda/objective/plan, the true, underlying reason for all the gross deception,has already been set in train.
A global central financial control bodyâŠthe old one wasnât working any moreâŠgoing soft at the centre or somesuch is being rolled out. Control of all assets on the planet.
August 2019 was apparently when it all started although planned for about 30 yearsâŠabout the same length of time that people have been called conspiracy theorists.
December 2, 2023
I find it scary that traditional livestock farming is now in their sites. I know the chemistry of this ideology, and its very dangerous. Such industries, like fishing, will never recover, and the social fabric of the countryside will be forever damaged, with food shortages, if not famine in their wake. Speaking up for good stewardship is one thing, but what is now going on is insane. Away with these lunatics, who also undermine and demoralize so many who work hard for the common good.
December 2, 2023
Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks,
and look well to thy herds.
For riches are not for ever:
and doth the crown endure to every generation? (Proverbs 27:23-24)
December 2, 2023
Sir John, I could not agree more with you. Today gas is providing about 60% of our present electricity needs for the third straight day in a row. I have not seen any credible solution – for this country’s circumstances – of what to do when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine and we no-longer have gas – apart from shiver in the dark.
December 2, 2023
As I write (09:28) the 28 GW of installed wind power (14 GW offshore + 14 GW onshore) is supplying 0.95 GW of power and the 14 GW of installed solar is providing 0.3 GW of power. So a total of 1.25 GW amounting to 3.3% of the 37.7 GW of demand.
Unbelievably I heard a Labour politician this morning extolling their 4th mission, to decarbonise our electricity by 2030, by quadrupling offshore wind, doubling onshore wind and trebling solar, oblivious to the fact that this would produce no more than around 9% of demand.
The solution given was to store electrical energy in batteries. Unfortunately the 50 TWhrs (electrical) storage requirement calculated by the Royal Society in their recent report âLarge Scale Electricity Storageâ for 2050, reduced to 28 TWhrs for 2030, would cost ÂŁ10 trillion based upon the ÂŁ75m cost of Europeâs biggest battery, 196 MWhrs, supplied by Tesla, located at Pillswood near Cottingham, East Yorkshire.
December 2, 2023
I object to our Kingâs attendance at this virtue signalling theatre. These are deeply controversial political events staged for the great and the good and totally disconnected from the people. The very title COP is a complete misnomer. This country emits less than 1% of world carbon dioxide emissions and unless and until countries emitting the greatest amounts of carbon dioxide decide to reduce their emissions we are simply wasting money we cannot afford to meet an unachievable arbitrary political objective. We should also remember reducing carbon dioxide levels is deeply controversial among the scientific community, indeed as Professor Steve Koonin says the science is not settled. Carbon dioxide is the vital component for ALL life on earth.
December 2, 2023
About time the whole thing was wound up. It’s nothing but a beano for the nobs and God knows what the carbon footprint is for that charade. They don’t intend to keep any of their promises or do any of their promised actions, so why do it? Without China the whole thing is meaningless even if they did do anything worthwhile. Someone somewhere is making a pile of money out of it and that’s about the size of it I reckon. No doubt our craven lot will come back full of ideas to tax us more and make us less competitive and will gold plate the next crazy idea they come up with whilst the rest of the world looks on and laughs.
December 2, 2023
ââŠ..COP 28 has claimed an early win by establishing a fund to provide money to countries adversely affected by climate change.â
There are no countries âadversely affected by climate changeâ. The small warming (0.13 degrees C per decade) coming out of the Little Ice Age is entirely beneficial, as is the increased level of CO2 which greens the planet and aids crop yields.
The planet has experienced warmer periods than today since the last ice age which BTW ended 11,000 years ago without any anthropogenic CO2 emissions causing the extensive warming. Each warm period has been extremely beneficial for life on the planet.
Table 12.12 on p1586 of the IPCC WG1âs own report shows there to be no worsening weather other than some slight warming leading to some melting of ice and snow.
In 2009 the BBC reported that there would be no summer Arctic ice by 2013. Well, the ice was still there this year. Now weâre told by Al Gore that the âoceans are boilingâ and by the UN Sec Gen that the âplanet is boilingâ despite the evidence of our own eyes.
How much longer are our politicians going to accept this nonsense?
December 2, 2023
They’re adversely affected by exploding populations they refuse/fail to control and environmental degradation they’ve created, generally by cutting down too many trees.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with climate change. But our treacherous politicians are quite happy to go along with the nonsense and send the bill for their virtue-signalling to British taxpayers.
December 2, 2023
âThese two [China and the US] produce around 30 times and 14 times as much CO 2 as we do. China adds as much extra CO 2 each year as the UK totalâ.
India and Indonesia are rapidly ramping up coal burning to produce electricity.
Good for them as any increase in CO2 greens the planet and increases crop yields.
The whole CAGW narrative is a scam. There is no global warming caused by increasing levels of CO2 (natural or anthropogenic) because of IR saturation as shown by the work of Professors Happer & Wijngaarden whose calculations on the real atmosphere, including water vapour (omitted in the IPCC models), fit so well with the measured data that they even show correctly that CO2 COOLS rather than warms above Antarctica.
To watch a video of Professor Happer explaining their work type âTom Nelson Will Happerâ into YouTube.
December 2, 2023
Why is your Government making the ordinary working family suffer when China and the USA are the biggest polluters and don’t intend to correct that. I am beginning to think that the information I am reading about enslavement of our nation is true. Down from smartphones for identification to getting rid of cash so that we can be traced and money turned off if we say something the authorities do not like, so we starve. We also have an unelected ex-MP as Foreign Secretary who seems to want to give everything we own or run away. He is totally out of his depth not having ever had a proper working class job. But what damage he will do us all.
December 2, 2023
Hi sir John
Why is the UK always willing to give tax payers money away ?
While we have massive debt.
Should we borrowing millions of pound just to give away even to countries like China.
We are a third world country should other countries be giving us money
Thanks
December 2, 2023
We need to make it illegal for any Government to spend (or give) money outside the U.K. Time these flights of fancy had their wings clipped.
December 2, 2023
+many
December 2, 2023
More evidence “People are not rushing to buy electric cars,..” from 3,882 car dealers who wrote to President Biden this week asking him to pull back on federal regulations that will mandate that two out of every three vehicles sold in the US in 2032 will be battery electric since BEVs are proving difficult to shift.
December 2, 2023
âI continue to advise against inflicting so called net zero policies on us which do not work in their own terms and do damage to our businesses and living standards.â
Why are China, India, Indonesia and others ramping up their coal burning electricity plants instead of renewables when we in the UK are told that renewables are 9 times cheaper than hydrocarbons?
The answer is because renewables are obviously not cheaper, unless of course you have a government rigging the market by adding carbon taxes to hydrocarbons, providing subsidies to renewables and completely ignoring that renewables provide only chaotically intermittent power and hence require the additional costs a completely parallel system for grid stability and long-term backup â using hydrocarbons! Such as needed today when there is virtually no wind and no solar.
Electricity storage is far too expensive to provide a solution, which is why there are no plans for storage for either the electricity decarbonisation date of 2035 or even the net zero CO2 date of 2050.
The real solution is nuclear fission which is affordable, reliable, abundant and secure. It can today even be load-following so requires far less energy back-up/storage if needed at all. It can be sited at existing nuclear sites saving an enormous cost to bring offshore wind energy onshore and it uses 1000 times less concrete and steel per unit of power than fixed offshore wind. The MWhr costs for SMR power is already 25% to 50% lower than the new AR6 fixed CfD offshore wind prices (ÂŁ100/MWhr 2023) and 20% to 30% of the price of floating offshore wind (ÂŁ242/MWhr 2023). See the HoC Energy Security & Net Zero Select Committee evidence session dated 15/11/2023:
https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/13815/pdf/
Other, newer, nuclear technologies will become even cheaper.
December 2, 2023
The UK’s $75 million is another disgrace, as you note unfunded, unvouched when disbursed, and I would add unprincipled when there is so much unmet need at home.
December 2, 2023
regular largesse with other people’s money (our tax!). Now if it was his – I’d clap.
December 2, 2023
Due to the levies imposed by Ed Milliplonker’s Climate Change Act, our CO2 producing factories are being closed and the manufacturing transferred to China. However, Climate activists believe that, as the goods being made are for the UK, the CO2 produced should be attributed to the UK and to other countries importing Chinese products! This brings China’s CO2, per capita, down to the same level as the UK. Thus, we have the worst of both worlds, losing our industry but still being blamed for the CO2.
December 2, 2023
Politicians of all sorts are all about words and little about effective actions . It would be interesting to know exactly what the costs are for this COP meeting ; the outcome is dubious in any event . The flights , the hotels , the meals ,the salaries , all of these things added up with little or no benefit . As far as I can see it is all about propaganda .
December 2, 2023
I raised the topic of synthetic fuels on this blog a couple of years ago so nice to see you picking up the baton. Even with the re-enabling of North Sea sourcing this should be a priority as it allows existing delivery infrastructures and business models to be used while increasing our energy security for when the wells inevitably run dry again. Even if the the climate cultists have their way eventually we must have a viable transition path for energy/fuel production and synfuels are a viable alternative for dispatchable energy. They could also be CO2 neutral.
The government should also have mitigation planning in place to ensure continuity of critical processing eg of the 5 refineries in England in light of the closing of Grangemouth.
December 2, 2023
dixie :
Correct and it would be far more sensible to keep the gas distribution network and all the gas appliances and supply green natural gas (green methane) rather than transitioning to either useless heat pumps or dangerous hydrogen.
Green methane can also be used to power existing ices with relatively minor modifications and end the forced imposition of impractical and dangerous bevs.
December 2, 2023
“The first issue COP 28 should sort out but will not is the mad accounting system. This says that if the UK shuts its steel works its CO 2 has gone down.”
Without this ‘mad’ accounting system, the anthropogenic warming scam perpetrated by the likes of India and saboteurs within the West, would not work would it? It would not only result in the closing down of our productive industries through ‘carbon counting’ and high cost undespatchable energy generation.
Therefore there is no excuse for typically ignorant politicians who don’t know the first thing about physics to go along with it, preferring to posture on the world stage by giving away the money we don’t have to ill-defined causes whilst damaging the life prospects of the people that voted them into office and causing real hardship amongst the poor.
The Tory party should be ashamed of itself; it does not deserve to govern our country. China is no doubt a terrible place as we continually read but it doesn’t appear to be going back down the road of Maoist economic insanity; quite the contrary.
December 2, 2023
Perhaps some countries don’t attend these shindigs where the hypocrites (including our King, PM and unelected Foreign Secretary) fly in their jets to tell us all we need to stop living our lives as we wish and obey their diktats, because they know it is all a gigantic scam to control and impoverish the majority for the benefit of a globalist cabal. They, cleverly, ignore the idiotic actions agreed and proposed thereby enriching their countries whilst our so-called servants of the people work against us and obey the commands of their globalist masters.
December 2, 2023
Excellent article – right on the button.
This should be compulsory reading for those people who claim that UK is doing too little.
Well said
December 2, 2023
“The UK sends our King and Prime Minister to the COP event.”
COP is a highly polarizing event. Ignore if you will the top panjandrum jetting in to Bon in their private jets to discuss ‘carbon’. It is not settled science and is highly controversial.
Hence, the King should not have attended there, since the convention is that the Crown is above politics.
By the way of a thought experiment, the Sun illuminates the daylight side of the earth every day with 1.36kW per square meter of energy. Yet every single unit of energy is dissipated into space during the night.
QED: The system is in balance and there is no man-made global warming.
December 2, 2023
Only a disk (the daylight side of the Earth) intercepts the energy from the Sun (as seen from a distance the Earth is just a disk). So surface of the disk is ÏR^2. The whole planet, a sphere, the surface of which is 4ÏR^2, emits long-wave radiation.
If you want to write an energy balance equation it would be:
1360 (1-α) * ÏR^2 = 4 ÏR^2 * ÏT^4 where R is the radius of the Earth, ÏR^2 the surface of the disk receiving the energy from the Sun, α the average albedo (the reflecting power of the surface-atmosphere system, about 0.3), 4 ÏR^2 the surface of the sphere that emits the long-wave (infrared) radiation according to the Stefan-Boltzman relationship (a fourth power of the temperature as seen from the ToA, Ï the Stefan constant 5.67*10^-8 W m^-2 K^-4 . That gives 254.5 K and that is the temperature of the Earth seen from space.
And this balance at the top of the atmosphere (ToA) does not say anything about the temperature within the atmosphere, and in particular about the temperature at the surface. This balance at ToA does not preclude âglobal warmingâ or âglobal coolingâ.
QED, so APL you have not proven anything, please go back to your favourite website about Earthâs Energy Balance.
December 2, 2023
hefner: “please go back to your favourite website about Earthâs Energy Balance.”
This one ?
“As an object heats up, it starts to dramatically increase the amount of heat energy it gives off. So the more Earth heats up, the more rapidly it will lose energy to space”
But you’re probably correct, what does NASA know about celestial bodies ?
December 3, 2023
The argument is that the energy balance is something defined at the top of the atmosphere, where absorbed shortwave (solar) radiation is balanced by outgoing long-wave radiation. In the long-wave the radiative temperature (obtained by translating the outgoing radiation into a temperature gives 255K, ie much colder than the average surface temperature (around 278K).
earthobservatory.nasa.gov, 14/01/2009, âClimate and Earthâs energy budgetâ.
December 3, 2023
“The argument is that the energy balance is something defined at the top of the atmosphere, where absorbed shortwave (solar) radiation is balanced by outgoing long-wave radiation.”
Which empirically is bullshit.
Solar radiation is broad spectrum. It includes X-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, radio and, as well as visible light ( Doh! ). I can’t vouch for the X-rays but can confirm infrared, radio spectrum emissions, visible light and ultraviolet reach the surface of the planet. But also, there is a lot less of those em spectrums available when we are in the shadow of the planet with respect to the sun.
The Global Warming(people ed) love to bullshit with their equations. When in fact it’s obvious to normal folk, that there is no global warming that is not driven by the Sun.
Folk that masquerade as experts have destroyed their own credibility over the last few years. I still don’t understand why Neil Fergusson is still employed by the government. He has partaken in numerous economic calamities but still sails on as if he’s done nothing.
Let’s not forget about the UEA scandal. etc ed
December 3, 2023
hefner: “Only a disk (the daylight side of the Earth) intercepts the energy from the Sun (as seen from a distance the Earth is just a disk)”
Which even from the perspective of an grossly over simplified model is incorrect, anyway. The daylight side of the earth is a hemisphere, not a disk, but not just that, it’s a rotating hemisphere, where the coldest part ( that which has been radiating its energy in to space for the longest period – 12 hours ), is continuously rotated into the daylight side, which is exposed to the sun’s radiation.
But let’s accept your model of the earth presenting as a flat** disk. You’d have to explain in your simplified model why the north polar regions – which sometimes have solar radiation continuously for eight+ months, isn’t a tropical paradise ( or desert ), rather than a barren frozen wilderness.
* Flat Earthers, on Redwoods blog? Ha!
December 3, 2023
If you had taken the time to read the nasa website I provided the reference of, you might have realised that, say, on equinoxes 22 March/September solar radiation falls perpendicularly to the surface at the Equator and with very slant angles in North and South Poles, with continuous evolution during the year. The actual diurnal and annual cycles of solar radiation is accounted for in weather forecast and climate models and obviously the fact that the slice of atmosphere crossed by solar radiation (and therefore potential absorption of that solar radiation above a given point) varies with this local solar zenith angle.
Which to me is nothing like what a Flat Earther would consider.
Look at the figure under âHeating imbalancesâ on the Earthobservatory.nasa.com website.
December 3, 2023
âWhich empirically is bullshitâ but has been confirmed since 1984 by satellite measurements, first the NASA Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), then the Earth Radiation Budget series of satellites, then followed up by the NASA CERES instruments (Clouds and Earthâs Radiant Energy System) onboard the Aqua, Terra and NPP satellites.
In total there are 38 years of measurements, which show that there is only a very small but growing imbalance between the absorbed solar radiation and outgoing long-wave radiation at ToA, likely to be linked to the growing âgreenhouse warmingâ of the planet.
22/06/2021 earthobservatory.nasa.gov âEarthâs radiation budget is out of balanceâ ⊠by less than 1 Wm^-2. (So could it be that the crude ToA calculation of my first comment was not so fanciful?)
31/08/2021 science.nasa.gov âSmall sensor could provide big insights into Earthâs radiant energyâ.
And BTW your bla bla blah about radio waves is irrelevant being multi orders of magnitude energetically smaller than the UVs, visible and near-infrared radiation from the Sun, and the UVs, Vis and near-IR radiation being accounted for within the response function of the filters of the radiometers embarked on these satellites.
December 4, 2023
Hefner: “In total there are 38 years of measurements, which show that there is only a very small but growing imbalance between the absorbed solar radiation and outgoing long-wave radiation at ToA, likely to be linked to the growing âgreenhouse warmingâ of the planet.”
So, we’ve 38 years of bullshit, then. Compared to empirical observation that the earth is not warming due to anthropogenic ‘greenhouse’ gasses.
I have to say this is extremely tedious. But, the gullible will insist on being gulled.
1) There is lots of evidence not least in the fossil record that the planet was generally much warmer in deep history.
2) Likewise there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that at other times too, it’s been a great deal colder on average. In the Northern hemisphere, which up until possibly 50,000 years ago was covered in glacial ice ( up to a mile thick in some places ), when the ice started to retreat. The UK especially has clear geological markers of extensive glacial erosion. Northern Europe too.
3) Scandinavia is still experiencing post glacial rebound. Where the weight of the retreated glacial ice is causing the crust of the planet to rise.
The point is, until the hysterical anthropogenic global warming mania took hold ( follow the money, as to why ) it was accepted that we are currently in, a post glacial warming period. So since that last glacial period, and the point of maximum ice coverage, of course, the earth’s temperature has risen.
But all of that is nothing to you, because you’ve got 38 years of satellite data for an extraordinarily complex system ( the met office spends billions sterling to get their weather forecast wrong, bless ’em ) that operates on a periodicity of hundreds of thousands of years. It being generally accepted that the earth has been warming since the end of the last ice age – maybe fifty thousand years ago.
But the 38 years of satellite data is enough for you! Huh.
December 4, 2023
hefner: “In total there are 38 years of measurements, which show that there is only a very small but growing imbalance between the absorbed solar radiation and outgoing long-wave radiation at ToA, likely to be linked to the growing âgreenhouse warmingâ of the planet.”
Finally. About that 38 years of evidence of an imbalance …
Usually, it goes without saying, ‘correlation is not causation’. But in this case it needs to be said. Correlation between 38 years of observed phenomena, and the, not yet proven, but alleged anthropogenic global warming, is not proof that one caused the other. Especially not in such an extremely comlex system.
December 5, 2023
Your original comment was : âQED, the system is in balance and there is no man-made global warmingâ.
But a/ the system is not in balance, b/ you have not shown there is no man-made global warming (in fact you have not shown anything) and c/ calling to the authority of NASA just blew in your face, didnât it?
December 6, 2023
“calling to the authority of NASA just blew in your face, didnât it?”
Let me think about that for a second. Ah, no!
” the system is in balance and there is no man-made global warmingâ.”
Yes, that is correct, the system is in balance ( has been for millions of years ) and there is no ‘man-made’
( or anthropogenic) global warming.
December 7, 2023
Sorry, you think you know things when in fact you do not. Your âcorrelation is not causationâ is just an empty comment wrt climate. More than 40 years of satellite measurements, more than 80 years of operational meteorological measurements, more than 150 years of developments in physics have pinpointed the physical mechanisms (from quantum mechanics to spectroscopy to radiative transfer to meteorology) that link an increase in âgreenhouse gasesâ thanks to their man-made production with a change (small certainly but cumulative) to the energy balance at the Earthâs surface-atmosphere system and consequently the âclimateâ.
December 8, 2023
Hefner: “Sorry ”
No need to be sorry, Hefner. If you deliberately choose to be gulled, that is, after all, your choice. Since you are so enthusiastic about the anthroporgenic global warming scam, you are welcome to pay my share of the taxes and carbon credits, etc.
Hefner: “you think you know things when in fact you do not.”
Actually, that statement exposes your own projection. It’s you that’s claiming you know the complex mechanisms in the atmosphere, the interaction of the atmosphere with the solar wind, and the interaction of the Solar cycle with our atmosphere, the interaction of our atmosphere with the magnetosphere. You also claim to understand the interactions of the flora and fauna on the planet with the atmosphere, not to mention volcanic activity. The only aspect of all of those things you are concerned with, is man made global warming ( which is a fantasy ). So as you say, you have an incomplete understanding of the dynamics of the atmosphere.
I admit that, but I know you global warming(advocates ed), know nothing either.
“In total there are 38 years of measurements, …” — Hefner (December 3, 2023)
“More than 40 years of satellite measurements, …”– Hefner ( December 7, 2023 )
You seem to have exaggerated your claims in just four days. Also contradicted yourself too.
But even so, you’ve only, at the maximum 40 years of upper atmospheric observation. Then you extrapolate that to hundreds of thousand even millions of years. To claim that the ( supposed ) warming trend is going to go on on its current trend. That is actually a schoolboy error.
You bank account has had credits over the last three days, You are now financially secure because you’ve extrapolated your balance for the next twenty years. See, it’s an up trend.
Hefner: “The argument is that the energy balance is something defined at the top of the atmosphere, where absorbed shortwave (solar) radiation is balanced by outgoing long-wave radiation.”
Please define ‘shortwave ( solar ) radiation’ because my ‘bla bla bla’ about solar radiation, was to point out that the radiation from the Sun hitting the earth is incredibly wide spectrum. And also define long-wave radiation. So we can understand what wave lengths you are
actually talking about.
Hefner: “small certainly but cumulative”
Where does your certainty come from ? As far as I can see, you have no grounds for it, at all.
Hefner: “And BTW your bla bla blah about radio waves is irrelevant being multi orders of magnitude energetically smaller than the UVs, visible and near-infrared radiation from the Sun, ”
So give us some definitions. ‘Cos otherwise your bla bla bla doen’t help bring clarity either.
December 8, 2023
JR: “(advocates ed)”
They are not global warming advocates. If they were just running around screaming ‘the sky is falling, the sky is falling’, you might have a point.
But they seek to enlist the state in their coercive measures. To force people to do their will. That exceeds the bounds of what reasonable people consider advocacy. My use of that descriptive term is accurate.
December 8, 2023
SW: Solar (or shortwave) radiation, from UV-C to near-IR, 0.18 ÎŒm to 4 ÎŒm
LW: Terrestrial (long-wave) radiation, from 4 to 100 ÎŒm.
Looking at reanalyses carried out by various meteorological centres (NCEP/NCAR (R1), NASA (MERRA2), JMA (the JRA55), ECMWF (ERA-Interim, ERA5) using all satellite, meteorological data available these last 40** years, give a consistent* picture of the evolution of the temperature, humidity and wind on the planet (plus other parameters) showing a small but cumulative warming of the Earthâs surface-atmosphere system.
* Consistent, ie, these various reanalyses are in very good global agreement with each other even when the analysis and forecast models used by these different meteorological agencies are quite different in their ways of handling the dynamics and physical atmospheric processes.
** it is 40 years because if direct broadband measurements of radiative fluxes at the top-of-the-atmosphere have only been available for 38 years, radiative fluxes (over the whole SW and LW domains [see above for the wavelength limits]) derived from narrow-band measurements of reflected solar radiation or long-wave âwindowâ radiation have been available for 40(+) years since at least the TIROS satellites, the first one having been launched in 1960, but the algorithms relating narrow-band (NB) radiances to broadband (BB) fluxes were developed and validated over the following 12-15 years using NB and BB radiometers first in laboratories then embarked on various aircrafts, then finally applied to actual satellite measurements.
December 10, 2023
Imagine there is anthropomorphic global warming, for one second.
How about governments stop exploding nuclear bombs in the atmosphere?
( or in the case of the international terrorist state the USA over two densely populated cities )
Since 1945, governments have exploded over two thousand nuclear devices the vast majority detonated by the USA. But according to people like Hefner, that’s nothing to do with the alleged anthropgenic global warming, it’s Mrs Miggings driving down to the shops that’s the cause of the alleged problem.
December 2, 2023
John, I would like this whole climate clown facade to be cancelled and the painful economic torture of British people to be ended. Can the UK please stop attending these stupid things. It ought to be obvious to everyone that the climate is not being modulate by CO2 but rather by natural processes. As you say we are a minor emitter of CO2 and CH4 (which do not change the weather or climate) and we are busily creating a big state, communist control everything government, with an economy which is struggling ever more. Our idiotic leaders are pushing for ever more controls to stop use of fossil fuels, to impose the use of ineffective tech that requires subsidies or which frankly will never be available to everyday citizens. Energy costs are rising impacting everything and crushing our GDP. You rightly point out that China, India and others more focused on increasing industrial, economic and military power with the side product that their citizen’s wealth and wellbeing is increasing, don’t humour climate nonsense and the energy, heat and transport impositions. A sane government would do likewise and cancel the Climate Change Act, Energy Act and go full reverse back to prosperity. Of course cleaning up the civil service, mainstream media and education are needed too.
December 2, 2023
Carbon dioxide is the gas of life.
Man made climate change is a myth a hoax and a SCAM.
Cop 28 is a disgusting, pointless, absurd, hypocritical insult.
December 2, 2023
Too True
December 2, 2023
China turn up? LOL there’s ‘no room for them at the Inn’. There are over 80,000 deligates attending and most will not be ariving by bicycle or on horseback. Hypocrisy squared with yet another junket waste of resources and increased CO2.
December 2, 2023
but reflect on all that networking for a future job!
December 2, 2023
“The UK has once again been generous.”
Yes indeed, our PM – like many of his predecessors – never holds back in his wish to burnish his credentials with his future employers. Very generous indeed…Remind me where the $75 million are coming from?…
Ah.
December 2, 2023
Sir John
Reading your Diary today and the greater number of comments that have been made all in tune with the real World, the whole World. Then reflecting that 90% of the World is engaged in seeking prosperity, moving forward. It then identifies the fraud of this Conservative Government and highlight the immense damage it is inflicting on the UK People and its economy.
Even yesterdayâs announcement of the so-called extra windmills this Government is intending to buy to fill up âdogger bankâ that get funded by the UK Taxpayer will be owned, run and subject to the whims of Foreign Governments are to be purchased from China the Worlds biggest polluter.
December 2, 2023
There was a time when the united nations was subservient to the countries of the world âŠnow its their lord & master
December 2, 2023
+++
You are right!
I wonder how it happened.
70 years and half a trillion $$$!
December 2, 2023
Anyway a more sensible country is too busy using fossil fuel to make windmill blades and plastic thingumybobs and raking in the profits to bother with ridiculous meetings.
December 2, 2023
We are flying on a wing and a prayer , with electricity generation in our country insufficient to meet demand .
The gap has been plugged so far by means of the interconnectors . One snapshot of the situation in recent days shows France supplying 7.3 % . We know France has an ageing nuclear fleet .
The energy gap is a threat . Should it be treated as the major imminent threat to us ?
The consequences of a grid failure are huge .
When we get up in the morning we switch stuff on and off we go never having to think about it .
When the grid does fail – why will it not since we are edging closer and closer on a path with ever higher risk – then the consequences are :
Everything Stops . No fuel for vehicles immediately at the pumps .No food deliveries to supermarkets. EV cant be charged .No clean water pumped from pumping stations .Trains stop . No home heating . No lighting but candles except for emergency lighting needed to evacuate people from places of employment ,but evacuate to where ?
etc. etc. Its a catastrophe .
A black start from a complete failure can take several days .
December 2, 2023
This whole wind turbine / solar panel / how much theyâre producing is, as they say, all well and good, but, in the scheme of things, irrelevant. What is heating our homes today? Gas, gas and more gas. What do with eco nutters propose to replace that? More gas fired electricity. They are lunatics.
December 2, 2023
Can we have a true report on the damage already caused to the Dogger Bank seabed and how this will be extended when yet more windmills are built there.
And who can sail in amongst them; if there are restrictions, who controls and claims ownership of the sea within the boundaries?
How much noise is created both above and below the sea surface? How much dust and other industrial pollution is created and how will this pollute the sea?
How many birds is it estimated will be killed annually, and how many have been killed so far?
How many fish and other sea creatures have been killed? Or maybe how many more have been created instead?
December 2, 2023
Whereâs the mandate from the people, whereâs the consensus from the voters, whereâs the instruction from the Tory membership and what happened to the MPs commitment towards their constituency before all else
December 2, 2023
âThe first issue COP 28 should sort out but will not is the mad accounting system. This says that if the UK shuts its steel works its CO 2 has gone down. World CO 2 however has gone up, as the UK imports steel it would otherwise have made, with more CO 2 in its production and transport than doing it at home.â
The plan is to first shut down all our industries and then introduce per capita CO2 accounting based upon consumption to cut off CO2 emitting imports and totally impoverish the country.
December 2, 2023
I saw something on the box a few years ago about âglobal dimmingâ. The argument made was that as the industrial revolution got under way and lots of dirty coal was burnt (cities in the UK were black with soot before the Clean Air Act of 1956), small soot particles went up into the atmosphere and lodged in clouds. This caused more sunlight to be reflected back into space causing a temperature reduction on earth.
If this is/was true, the (alleged) global warming underway now may be because we are no longer burning dirty coal.
When I was a kid virtually every home in London was heated using a coal fire. Chimney fires were a regular occurrence and there was a lovely yellow smog. All buildings were covered in grime and pressure washing offices and hotels etc. was an industry of its own in the 70s and 80s.
December 3, 2023
A bit more complicated than that. Carbonaceous aerosols (carbon particles) are not particularly good cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) as they are largely non-hygroscopic (do not combine easily with water droplets). But youâre right there is/was a thing called âglobal dimmingâ. Coal burning also produces sulphur dioxide SO2 that gives sulphate aerosols (the reason for the acid rain that Britain was âexportingâ to Scandinavia in the 60s, 70s and 80s) that are very good CCNs and which for a given amount of liquid water in clouds will produce smaller droplets making the clouds more reflecting.
And more reflecting clouds gives less solar radiation at surface level effectively hiding potential âgreenhouse warmingâ.
December 2, 2023
Re electric cars… it’s not just about costs and charging which are anyway important, I believe that electric cars are the new Diesel fiasco. The Government is wrong to push this as ‘the’ solution as we have seen in the past. The members of parliament are not so wise as expected, times change… quickly. Just to clarify, I am not a ‘climate denier’ but believe it is a cycle within our planet which is normal, qv Ice Age in the 17th century and warnings of more Ice Ages to come a few years ago. The present warming could be a result of the Industrial Revolution of 200 years or so ago, with all that ‘soup’ being pushed out. That’s life… and we should do our best but not panic and bankrupt ourselves.
December 3, 2023
Dash for Zero Carbon.
I was recently recommended to watch a video,by Professor Tom Nelson Will Happer, an eminent Physicist, on the Topic of CO2,the gas of life.It lasts about an hour, but unless you have a PhD in physics, may I suggest that you move directly to the 45minute mark. He explains why CO2 is the gas of life and he links it to what our elite are doing to us now. It is extra special. Please listen to the end, it is so worthwhile. We must stop this lunacy.
I would love to see JimDale, Sunak, Starmer, and Gutteres exposed to the full video and then to explain their current policies.
December 3, 2023
If they changed the accounting system the (unnecessary) measures could not be hidden in increased costs and extra taxation. The populace would feel the effects of the folly to try and curb carbon.
That might concentrate a few minds and raise a few pertinent questions.
December 3, 2023
King Charles should have never been allowed to attend COP 28 . His personal carbon foot print is estimated to be annually around 430 tonnes of CO2 whereas most people have a carbon footprint of just over 11 tonnes. When the king is challenged on this he always attempts to Greenwash his carbon footprint. Too many airplane and helicopter flights, too many homes , too many royal cars . Only when we see real change from the King will we believe he truly believes in reducing CO2. This government has never challenged him on this topic they want the rest of us to do the heavy lifting whilst the richest is society sit back and produce more CO2 than most of us .
All those who attended the cop28 are likely to have the largest CO2 footprints. Sir John, why don’t you challenge the Kings CO2 footprint and ask is he truly worthy to represent this country is reducing CO2 output.
December 3, 2023
Perhaps the scientists in China advise their government differently?
If they are aware that there is no climate emergency, then they will be more than happy to watch the West impale itself on net zero.
Bearing in mind that they are an autocracy run by their Communist party, which has geopolitical aspirations, they will see net zero as a great opportunity to overtake the West.
Also, they realise the futility of saying “What emergency?” even if they wanted to say it. They would be shouted down, suffer opprobrium etc (perhaps even sanctions in time). Their best strategy is the one they are pursuing – keep quiet – never interrupt your enemy when they are in the process of making a mistake.
December 3, 2023
And the accounting system… doesn’t that tell you something?
Are these people really that daft that they don’t see the obvious? And even when you point it out to them in many speeches and interventions in the HoC and elsewhere… still they don’t act as if they understand…
Is it not time to smell a rat? Clearly something else is going on.
The question you should be asking yourself is not “Why don’t they see that the accounting system is rubbish?” – it should be “What is really going on here?”. What is the real agenda behind net zero?
December 3, 2023
For those that these things interest, there is a new edition of âThe Blunders of our Governmentsâ (the original by I.Crewe and A.King) coming soon including the brilliantissime ones by Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and from the first year of Sunakâs. Unfortunately it might not be available for this Xmas.
December 3, 2023
And for those made unhappy by the 80,000 attending COP28 in Dubai, they might be relieved to learn that, according to the FT 01/12/2023, âUAE COP28 guest list led by bankers, lobbyists and ⊠housekeepingâ.
I feel so much better.
December 3, 2023
Why do you feel better hefner?
If a banker or lobbiest arrives as one of the 80,000 they have the same negative effect on the environment as the climate actionist billionaires in their private jets.
PS
Fancy you belittling the poorer ones who come and do the housekeeping.
December 7, 2023
The police anounce today that ÂŁ20m has been spent on the “Just stop Oil” protests. Hmm…where could that have been better spent? Send the bill to JSO
December 8, 2023
John do check up on the science which says that CO2 doesnât affect the climate. But youâre brainwashed by the BBC as is most of the pop!