Welcome to the Highlands

Welcome to the Highlands, the land of  sparkling Burns, The Heather hughed Glens, High Mountains where the Eagles soar, a land of Deer and Salmon, Kilts and Pipes. The Corbetts, the Grahams and the Monros. A place to revitalise the Spirit and the Soul. This is a land of proud people, people that will give any man the time of day.

But today a certain sadness pervades all. In a desperate drive for fame our politicians have sold Scotland and its wild places to the lowest bidder. The march of the wind factories is heard in the Glens. Tourism for Scotland is dead. Our way of life crushed beneath the greed of mostly foreign adventurers and aided by our Government and Planners.

This is the opportunity for all you to have your say and perhaps we will save something for our children.

The first great requisite of motive power is; that it shall be wholly at our command, to be exerted when, and where, and in what degree we desire.The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear.

William Stanley Jevons (1865)

“God never made an ugly landscape. All that sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.”

— John Muir

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”

— John Muir

Minutes of Meeting Thursday 1st February 2024(Draft)

Minutes of Meeting held on Thursday 1^st February 20234at Beauly Bowls Club starting at 7.30pm.

Apologies: Cllr. Chris Balance, Cllr. David Fraser

Present: Steve Byford, Duncan Fraser, Mary Graham, Mark Hedderwick, Andy Fraser, Iain Stewart. Graham Mackay, John Graham(secretary), Cllr. Emma Knox            

Minutes of Meeting 7th December 2023: Proposed: Graham Mackay, Seconded: Duncan Fraser

Police Report: No report but their was a Community Liaison van in the Square on the 24^th January, 2.00 to 3.00pm

Matters Arising:                         

• Teanassie School ASN Room: The Secretary confirmed that the Ward Discretionary Fund application for the ASN Room for £750 has been approved and we are just awaiting funds in our bank to transfer to the School. Steve Byford confirmed the grant from Ffordes had now been sent and the possible grant from ACF will be decided on Monday 7^th. The Children had made a card and signed it in thanks for the swimming lesson transport grant. 
• National Parks Consultation at Kilmorack Hall. Several Councillors had attended and whilst support for our environment and the ecology made the project interesting the experience with Planning in such as Cairngorms and the high cost of administration with limited seats on the authority for locals raised concerns. The general opinion is to maintain a watching brief. It is quite probable that the Scottish Government will favour a central belt application or even an Island one.
• Kilmorack Community Hall SSEN presentation. This was promoted as the final presentation of the plans for the Kilmorack substation and replacement transformer. General view is they had not listened to any of our concerns. The Secretary was asked to convey our ongoing concerns to SSEN. Non-sequiturs of 10-12%grades on site roads when access through Altyre far exceeds that and not using cut and fill which will result in literally thousands of tons of aggregate to be imported for the footings. The information at the public meeting was lacking important details re the building dimensions and height, all of which were mentioned to SSEN after the last public event and are not shown on their amended ‘final’ plans for the substation site. Flat roof to pent roof makes a considerable difference to the visual impact.
• Roads and ditches: Recent weather events have left the roads, verges and,  in particular, passing places below par and the Chair asked that the Secretary contacts The Highland Council to see if we could have a road sweeper for a day to clear a lot of the storm debris and stones/mud left on the road from overflowing drains and ditches. Also to see what plans are in place for the spring to attend to the many problem areas already advised.

Chairman’ Business: No report

Secretary: Visit Inverness Loch Ness networking event invitation.

Treasurer:

• Balance stands at £2958.17 after hall hire for Beauly Bowls Club has been paid.

Planning: Planning application 23/05612/FUL for two camping pods was discussed in some details. Concerns from a local resident Brenda Paton were considered. Access to the road just by a blind corner  and drainage were considered to be issues and those comments will be conveyed to the Planning Officer..

ANOB:

Meeting Closed: at 21.07hrs (9.07pm)

Next Meeting: Thursday 7^th  March 2024 at Beauly Bowls Club starting at 7.30pm 

Signed:

And then they came two by two

I find it impossible to write about wind farms now, not that there isn’t much to write but because there is so much. We have Scottish Government, The Highland Council, Westminster, National Grid, Ofgem, the new Energy Infrastructure Tsar(sorry Commissioner), The New Energy Act 2023 which is in the Lords right now and everyone of them bowing to their God head Net Zero. As with the likes of the Taliban there is no appeasing the Net Zero zealots. So where does that leave the ‘little’ people. That is a good question. I think the Covid pandemic empowered Politicians and even more so Civil servants to ride roughshod over basic law and basic humanity. Like all religions in history the end justifies the means.

So where do we go from here. The Guardian, that left wing guardian, last week suggested that the Pylons were the next big area of conflict with Net Zero. Reality is dawning in the corridors of power but not on a moral front but a financial one. Simply said we cannot afford Net Zero. The Elizabeth Line(Crossrail), HS2, the 500% increase in electricity distribution infrastructure, myriad of 200m wind farms all reliant on subsidy(often in the form of constraint payments), the farce of electric cars and lack of charging facilities which that Industry now reliant of subsidy(the electricity industry) expects HMG to magically find a few more £billions for. We basically bankrupted the UK over Covid and the bank has run dry. You cannot continue to borrow money at this rate or the pound will have no value. At the present time the National Debt is £2.5 trillion which equates to £38,000 for every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom. Repayment on that debt is £9.8 billion per annum. With that in mind can the UK afford the £ billions of extra infrastructure of the electricity network, presently estimated between £381 billion and £1.4 trillion(the last figure offset by savings[?] of £1.1 trillion). On our experience with all major projects we would suggest this as a optimistic forecast. If our coffers were overflowing and migration was under control this might just be about doable. In our present position – Nah!

So the Councils tinker with 20mph zones, the Mayor of London has his Ulez which is a proverbial lead balloon. We promote EV which we can’t really afford and drop like the proverbial stone in value as they drive off the forecourt. No one seems to have the balls to stand up and say NO! This is madness.

The PM has reacted to Net Zero and cars but there is an elephant in the room that no one has mentioned. As EV ownership reaches a critical mass, not only is fuel tax revenue or the reduction of it going to become an issue, but the profitability of petrol and diesels forecourts will mean a large reduction in petrol station throughout the land and especially in remote rural areas, those for which EVs are least suitable. Those advocating road charging will be rubbing their hand in glee and we can fail to realise that this new technology will cost far more to the car driver and push many of the poorer in our communities away from personal transport. The Old and the Poor will be those that suffer a drastic reduction in their quality of life and their mental wellbeing trapped within 25 minute cities. Not the High Tech ones of planners dreams but the ghettoes of the poor and disenfranchised.

So that is why I am effectively lost for words, shuddering at every wind farm proposition, despondent at every pylon line, angry at every lie from the energy industry, staggered by the arrogance of politicians, planners and corporate bodies that demand to over-ride local democracy and planning law and weeping for the desecration of our land either for an EU wet dream of every country having a Hi Speed rail link (TEN-T) which for the UK is the vanity project we call HS2 or the planned desecration of the Highland of Scotland, and in reality parts of East Anglia, to provide excessive levels of power to London and the SE of England to power their EVs, I-pads, air source heat pumps and the plethora of things that a 21st century urbanite cannot do without and the surpluses to be sold to other EU countries that have seen the light and rolled back on their Net Zero ambitions. That is assuming anyone wants to buy our excess electricity. As technology changes and alternatives such as SMRs become available the UK may have three white elephants blighting our landscape. A dysfunctional and uneconomic HS2 which goes from nowhere to nowhere, a million rusting and disused wind turbines and a string of un wanted and in fact not needed towers and pylons destroying our Scottish, and East Anglian,Tourist Industries.

Oh and whilst about it why not destroy farming for solar farms, re-wilding and tree planting so that those urbanites, tired of city life, that move to the Country and price locals from the housing market don’t have to endure the flatulence of cows and the crow of the Cockerel and don’t have to endure abuse from those rural types when their dogs attack sheep and they leave the gates open after their country ramble. Much better for the Politicians to force all from farming and grow our beef in a factory. Even if it costs five times as much!

Understanding the future

For those not immediately in their path they may be able to live with the pylons but not the expansion of wind farms to cover every hill and not the substations and battery storage that trails in the pylons wake. Just look at the applications currently swamping Highland Council. Windfarms around every corner and three battery storage proposals in the Wester Balblair/Strathglass area alone. This truly is carpet bagger territory. This is the bit the London Intelligentsia don’t get. And living with does not relate to enjoying or being happy with. It is a step don’t the road against mental wellbeing. A wide open vista feeds the soul. An industrial complex does the opposite. And think on this Countryfile viewers, this 400Kv line is only the start. As more windfarms, onshore and off, are approved that 400Kv line will be too small and a second and even third line will join it. By 2050 on these proposals the Highland will be simply a part time(when the wind blows) wind factory and only those too poor to move will remain trapped in it’s embrace. The second clearances are only just around the corner unless we can stop this before it starts! And one day reliable 24/7/365 energy will take over, possibly SMRs, and this infrastructure and desecration will be redundant.

And Just let them burn. The future of battery storage

I was amazed to discover that despite every tom, dick and harry being consultees for any Battery Storage facility, which have a record of catching fire, the SFRS(Scottish Fire and Rescue Service) are not consultees and whereas with a building they would be involved at the warrant stage, health and safety aspects for energy facilities are the responsibility of the design engineers and ultimately if something were to happen HSE. Talk about shutting the door after the horse has bolted. In all fairness the planning officers have been trying to get ScotGov to address this shortfall but so far to no avail. What has this to do with the 400Kv Pylon line. Succinctly the result of the construction of the pylon line is a green light for the carpetbaggers of wind farms, solar farms and battery storage. I took note of the fact that Health and safety are the responsibility of the design engineers and from that we must assume that it is the same with SSEN and the Pylon Line. Mines have the Inspector of Mines, the nuclear industry has the Nuclear Energy Authority, Ships are answerable to the HMCG. Even Prisons have an Inspectorate. It would seem that the electricity industry does not. Seeing the proliferation of renewables and the explosion(SIC) of substations is it not time the electricity industry has an independent assessment authority. There is a Regulator(Ofgem) but according to their website their duty is to deliver a Net Zero economy and keep prices affordable. And one could never say they are independent as they are very much in bed with the transmission companies and National Grid ESO. This truly re-enforces the concern of CB4PC that there is no critical oversight. No one to say do we actually need this.

All reactions:

16Lyndsey Ward, Angus Farquhar and 14 others

SSEN are environmentally green?

SSEN use Gas insulated transformers in their substations the gas is sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). It is a man made gas, a greenhouse gas. Here is a snippet from the National Grid website …

‘SF6 is one of the most potent greenhouse gases we know. Its high atmospheric stability and ability to trap infrared radiation means it’s far more potent at warming the earth’s atmosphere than CO2 over longer periods of time.

In fact, it’s estimated that, over a 100-year period, SF6 is 23,500 times more effective at trapping infrared radiation than CO21, meaning that 1 kg of SF6 has the same impact as 23,500 kg of CO2. Once in the atmosphere, it has an atmospheric lifetime of 3,200 years, which means it can accumulate without degrading for millennia to come.’

On top of that is the tens of thousands of tons of concrete and steel required to deliver the pylons which they ssem so keen to inflict on the populace. Green? I think not!

The new expansion

Well I think everyone is aware of SSEN expansion with literally hundreds of miles of 400Kv overhead lines in the mix let alone the substations at Keith and Fenallen which will cover the area of 29 football pitches. Have no misunderstanding that a new generation of wind farms will follow. Already we know of SSE Renewables touting for Fairburn Extension which will be 14 turbines at 200m blade tip height. And that is just the start. Now I can’t fight every single application but there is a new web site CommunitiesB4PowerCompanies https://www.communitiesb4powercompanies.co.uk/ which need your support and yes! your donations. This is not only a Highland problem but nation wide from east Anglia to Wales, From John O’Groats to London, even as far as Somerset. Remember that competition to design new towers. They have some down there which area. proving very noisy and b. are now built in China as the original manufacturer went out of business. Probably waiting for Ofgen to make their minds up. A sad fact of some much UK manufacture waiting for government contracts. This new website will identify the problems we all face. There is little doubt that the SNP and Greens intend the next Highland Clearances. We see on the west coast the attack on the local fishing industry. For every man that works on a boat there are a further twenty on shore. No fishing industry, no support structure. Similar on the East Coast where the Tourist Industry supports literally thousands of jobs. Destroy the vistas of the Highlands and you destroy Tourism. As hotels, B&Bs and holiday cottages empty so to do those in the support industries find their livelihoods dwindle. And make no bones, this is not just the march of the towers across the Highland and the Moray coast, it is all the additional wind farms onshore and indeed off. Just look at the figures that Ofgem and the Scottish Government quote. The Western Isles will become a desert. Probably that is why the SNP have not been upset with the ferry fiasco. They know no one will need them in a few years time. No fishing, no tourism and thousands of wind turbines cloaking the islands. The attraction for the SNP is a method for funding their independence. Mind you look at all else they have done and one can be assured this would fail too.

Is the CPRE for for purpose or a mouthpiece for Political ambitions?

THE IMPACT OF WIND ENERGY ON WILDIFE AND THE ENVIRONMENT Papers from the Berlin Seminar

I apologise if I start at the end but I think that is a good place to see where you are going to:

Concluding remarks
Hilmar Freiherr von Münchhausen, German Wildlife Foundation
This paper, produced by the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the German Wildlife Foundation, takes a Europe-wide look at the conflict between wind energy and nature conservation. In many European countries, people are opposing wind energy projects that are destroying wildlife habitats. We need to be aware that all energy sources have a negative impact on the environment and nature. It is therefore all the more important to generate reliable scientific results about these impacts. The German PROGRESS study, which reviews the effects of wind energy on bird life, shows the great effort and difficulty involved in collecting meaningful data. The study is so valuable because it provides scientifically sound quantitative results. This is of the utmost importance for a fact-based political discussion. In particular, the consequences of wind turbines in forests are serious for many types of wildlife. We observe with great concern the massive expansion of wind power in Germany’s forest areas. The lack of public consultation in the planning of wind energy projects are shown by the examples from Ireland. It is worrisome when valuable landscapes are given official protection, yet those protections become completely ineffective where the construction of wind turbines is concerned. It is rather alarming that there is collusion between the wind industry and actors in the planning and approval process. As a financially independent advocate of nature conservation and species conservation, the German Wildlife Foundation is implacably committed to the protection of wildlife and its habitats. At the same time, we are working on the subject of wind energy with the same vigour as we do in the field of forestry, agriculture or hunting. An open and constructive debate on the consequences that wind energy can have on wildlife – from insects to black storks to wildcats – is more than overdue. It is important to make people aware of the conflicts affecting nature conservation and ultimately to educate policy makers. The German Wildlife Foundation regards wind energy as an important contributor to the energy mix of the future. Its further expansion in Germany, Europe and also worldwide, however, should not be promoted at any price. For Germany, at least for the construction of wind turbines in the forest, we demand a moratorium. This would allow us to reconsider the future course of action and, on the basis of scientific findings and national and European nature conservation laws, to adopt a far-sighted course in line with the precautionary principle that is enshrined in environmental policy. We thank everyone who contributed to this paper. May its contents find their way into the social and political decision-making process so as to guide the future of wind energy in Germany and Europe.

The Report that is the forerunner to these comments is contained in this link We would congratulate the Global Warming Policy Foundation and The German Wildlife Foundation for producing this. It makes somewhat sobering reading and does much to re-enforce views that we have held for some time often based on anecdotal evidence. This provides the bones that hold the whole body of evidence together.

Net Zero – A Green Light to the Wind Industry?

It would seem that May’s Net Zero speech has been seen as a green light to the Wind Farm Developers. These recent applications are massive or extensions to extensions for already massive wind farms. They are certain they are pushing on an open door and with Boris’ urban credentials I fear that they may be right. London’s electric future will be ‘financed’ by Scotland wild lands.

The concern is the sudden level of Section 36 applications lodged with the Scottish Energy Consents Unit. A while back I thought that the removal of subsidy would dull the enthusiasm of the renewable carpet baggers although profits were still there to be made. One speech by a discredited Prime Minister on the way out mixed with a crazy and orchestrated Climate Disaster message more often seen in 4th rate American afternoon TV programs has opened a Pandora’s Box of opportunity for the wind industry. To attain even a small percentage of May’s ambition would mean re-introduction of subsidy and an explosion of renewable energy tied to massive battery banks. That the end of result would be a disaster for the UK and it’s industry is simply ignored by the Politicians who are smarting from the opprobrium lauded on them by the general public after there gross mis-handling of Brexit. That an orchestrated promotion of Climate Extinction has been seen by the Political Classes as a bandwagon they can jump on and win support from The People is simply dishonest when leadership should be the order of the day. Decades ago the UN’s IPCC promised Climate Disaster so we may well ask why has’t it arrived yet? Of course good science and honest reporting give the lie to the mis-information promoted by the Climate Chaos kings and queens. And therein lies a problem. Until we have some honesty the carpet baggers of the wind industry, the Climate conference enthusiasts, Smart Meter evangelists and every other snake oil salesman/woman will be promoting their self interest. Be it Elon Musk and his electric transport future or Boris and his bikes, we are all in for a bumpy ride. And that throws up a concern. The Political future: neither Boris or Hunt fill me with any hope of a sensible discussion on our future energy needs. Lobbyists and charlatans will be knocking on No.10’s door which will be forever open to a quick fix and a sound bite. I am not sure how the subsidies will be re-introduced but in one way or another they very probably will and you can bet your bottom dollar that it will be the consumer that pays. In Scotland the green light will shine forth for the wind industry and I don’t think anywhere is safe. Second, third and forth extensions will be nodded through, Wild land will be seen as a great opportunity and every hill and glen will be faced with an attack by the carpet baggers. Long term the intermittency of wind will fail us and the alternatives of fracking and nuclear will become the only game in town with massive wind farms rusting and bankrupt every which way we look. The true and real Armageddon. And Climate will just go on being the climate and weather events will go on being weather events, be they the one hundred years flood or the scorching summers of our childhood or just a normal rainy and cold winter.

Although it’s been melting for 20 years, the Jakobshavn Glacier in West Greenland – famous for producing the iceberg that sank the Titanic – has now started growing again.

A Geologist’s opinion!

Educated opinions challenge the Political Dogma of Climate and yet we hear far too few of them. The Political Dogma fuelled by the fanatiscm and religious fervour of The Extinction Rebellion Faith will create a growth of wind energy the likes of which we have yet to see. SSE quotes an expenditure requirement of £2.2 billion on infrastructure requirements in the far North to deliver renewable energy to the Central Belt. The majority from new wind farms unidentified and lauded to supply the growth of electric cars. Unless the truth is heard and the lies de-bunked we will be faced with an Armageddon of renewable energy far beyond our worst fears. 

25 SIMPLE BULLET POINTS PROVING CO2 DOES NOT CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING: BY A GEOLOGIST FOR A CHANGE (DR ROGER HIGGS)

JUNE 10, 2019 CAP ALLON

Dr Roger Higgs, Geoclastica Ltd, Technical Note 2019-11, 6th April 2019, on ResearchGate (LINK HERE)

We urgently need to expose the ‘CO2 = pollutant’ fallacy being forced upon your children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces by schools, universities, governments and mainstream media worldwide, and to denounce it in scrupulously truthful terms easily understood by the public, including those youngsters themselves.

Here are the 25 bullet points proving CO2’s innocence:

1) Geologists know climate change unrelated to atmospheric CO2 occurred throughout Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history. Yet the IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has no geologists among the hundreds of appointed authors of its Fifth Assessment Report of 2014 and its Sixth Report due in 2022 (see my Technical Note 2019-10). Thus IPCC incredibly lacks both geological input and long-term perspective.

2) IPCC’s very existence relies on public belief in manmade or ‘anthropogenic’ global warming (AGW) by CO2 emissions. Moreover its appointed authors, mostly government and university researchers, are nearly all biased by strong vested interests in AGW, i.e. reputations (publications, lectures) & continuance of salaries & research grants. Similarly, major universities have abandoned their scientific impartiality & integrity by hosting research institutes mandated to confirm & act on AGW, e.g. Grantham Institute (Imperial College), Tyndall Centre.

3) The often-repeated ‘97% consensus among scientists that global warming is man’s fault’ (CO2 emissions) is untrue. It refers in fact to surveys of just a relatively small group of ‘climate scientists’ (a fairly new type of scientist, with strong incentives for bias; see Bullets 2 & 15), moreover only those who are ‘actively publishing’.

4) ‘Climate change denier’ & ‘global warming denier’ are despicable & dishonest terms for ‘AGW doubters’. No educated person disputes global warming, as thermometers measured 1°C rise from 1850 to 2016 (with pauses).

5) The ‘Greenhouse Hypothesis’, on which IPCC’s belief in AGW is based, is that atmospheric gases trap heat. But this old (19th century) notion is merely an idea, not a hypothesis, because it is untestable, impossible to prove in a laboratory as no experimental container can imitate Earth’s uncontained, well-mixed atmosphere.

6) IPCC computer models are so full of assumptions as to be extremely unreliable, e.g. forecast warming for 1995 to 2015 turned out to be 2-3 times too high ! A likely reason is that the greenhouse idea is nonsense, as explained in recent publications by several scientists. See Bullet 19 for an equally drastic failure of IPCC models. See also: https://www.wnd.com/2017/07/study-blows-greenhouse-theory-out-of-the-water/ and https://principia-scientific.org/r-i-p-greenhouse-gas-theory-1980-2018/

7) For about 75% of the last 550 million years, CO2 was 2 to 15 times higher than now. Evolution flourished, CO2 enabling plant photosynthesis, the basis of all life. Extinction events due to overheating by CO2 are unknown. !!

8) Through the last 12,000 years (our current Holocene interglacial period), CO2 was a mere 250 to 290 ppm (parts per million), near plant-starvation level, until about 1850 when industrial CO2 emissions began, making CO2 climb steeply. Nevertheless CO2 today it is still only 412ppm, i.e. under half of one-tenth of 1% of our atmosphere

9) Until man began adding CO2 about 1850, warming (determined from ‘proxies’ like tree rings) since the 1600AD Little Ice Age peak was accompanied by slowly rising CO2 (measured in ice cores). A simple explanation is CO2 release by ocean water, whose CO2-holding capacity decreases upon warming.

10) Supporting this sign that CO2 is a consequence, not cause, of global warming, a published study of 1980-2011 measurements showed that changes in warming rate precede changes in CO2’s growth rate, by about a year.

11) Since the 1850 start of man’s additions, CO2’s rise has generally accelerated, without reversals. In stark contrast, the post-1850 to present-day continuance of warming out of the Little Ice Age was interrupted by frequent small coolings of 1-3 years (some relatable to ‘volcanic winters’), plus two 30-year coolings (1878 to 1910, 1944 to 1976), and the famous 1998 to 2013 ‘global-warming pause’ or ‘hiatus’ (Wiki).

12) This unsteady modern warming instead resembles the unsteady rise of the sun’s magnetic output from 1901 toward a rare solar ‘Grand Maximum’ peaking in 1991, the first in 1700 years !

13) Modern warming reached a peak in February 2016. Since then, Earth has cooled for 3 years (now April 2019).

14) The ‘Svensmark Theory’ says increased solar magnetic flux warms Earth by deflecting cosmic rays, thus reducing cloudiness, allowing more of the sun’s warmth to heat the land and ocean instead of being reflected. In support, a NASA study of satellite data spanning 32 years (1979-2011) showed decreasing cloud cover.

15) Vociferous IPCC-involved climate scientist Dr Stefan Rahmstorf (Wiki) of the German government’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, recipient of a US$1 million personal research grant from a private foundation, wrongly said in his 2008 article ‘Anthropogenic Climate Change’: “there is no viable alternative … [to CO2 as driver of modern warming from 1940 to 2005 because] … different authors agree that solar activity did not significantly increase” during that period. Yet nine years earlier, in 1999, famous physicist Dr Michael Lockwood (Wiki; FRS) wrote, in ‘A Doubling of the Sun’s Coronal Magnetic Field During the Past 100 Years’, published in prestigious Nature journal: “the total magnetic flux leaving the Sun has risen by a factor of 1.4 since 1964” and 2.3 since 1901 !! See for yourselves the striking overall 1964-91 climb in solar-magnetic output, recorded by the strong overall fall in detected neutrons (proportional to cosmic rays), in graph 3 here: https://cosmicrays.oulu.fi

16) Lockwood showed averaged solar magnetic flux increased 230% from 1901 to 1995, i.e. more than doubled ! The final peak value was 5 times the starting minimum value ! Bullets 17 & 18 likewise back Svensmark’s theory…

17) … after the previous solar Grand Maximum (4th century, long before industrial CO2), in the next decades Earth warmed to near or above today’s temperature. Then ‘sawtooth’ cooling proceeded, through the Dark Ages and ‘Medieval Warm Period’, into the Little Ice Age, paralleling a 1,000-year unsteady solar decline; and …

18) … before that, between 8000 and 2000BC, Earth was occasionally warmer than today for hundreds if not thousands of years, as shown by tree rings, shrunken glaciers, etc.. Then unsteady cooling from 3000BC into the Little Ice Age paralleled unsteady solar decline following the Holocene’s ‘super-Grand’ Maximum near 3000BC.

19) This 4,500-year cooling contradicts IPCC computer models that instead predict warming by the simultaneous (slow) rise in CO2. This is the ‘The Holocene Temperature Conundrum’ of Liu et al. (2014). See also Bullet 6.

20) Embarrassingly for AGW promoters, the 8000-2000BC warm interval (Bullet 18) was already, ironically, named the ‘Holocene Climatic Optimum’, before today’s CO2/AGW hysteria began. The warmth probably benefitted human social development. Indeed, it was cold episodes, bringing drought and famine, that ended civilisations.

21) Cross-correlating post-1880 graphs of solar-magnetic flux versus Earth’s temperature suggests a 25-year time-lag, such that the 2016 peak temperature corresponds to the 1991 solar peak. The lag is probably due to the ocean’s high thermal inertia due to its enormous volume and high heat capacity, hence slow response to warming.

22) IPCC, ignoring the possibility of such a time-lag, claims that simultaneous global warming (until 2016) and solar weakening (since 1991) must mean that warming is driven by CO2 !

23) The last interglacial period about 100,000 years ago was warmer than our Holocene interglacial. Humans and polar bears survived ! CO2 was then about 275ppm, i.e. lower than now (Bullet 8).

24) The simultaneous rise of temperature & CO2 is a ‘spurious correlation’. Warming’s real cause was a solar build-up to a rare Grand Maximum, which man’s industrialisation accompanied by chance. So IPCC demonising CO2 as a ‘pollutant’ is a colossal blunder, costing trillions of dollars in needless & ineffectual efforts to reduce it.

25) Global cooling now in progress since February 2016 can be predicted to last at least 28 years (i.e. to 2044), matching the sun’s 28-year decline from 1991 to today, and allowing for the 25-year time-lag (Bullet 21).
Inescapable conclusion: the IPCC is wrong − the sun, not CO2, drove modern global warming.

By DR ROGER HIGGS (http://www.geoclastica.com + https://www.researchgate.net)

Contact: rogerhiggs@hotmail.com for literature sources for any of the aforementioned ‘Inconvenient Facts’

Grand Solar Minimum + Pole Shift

It is not only the tails that are missing on the Isle of Man!

A great post from Wind Energy’s Absurd. 

It is great that such as GWPF (The Global Warming Policy Foundation), WEA and Scotland Against Spin collate and research the truth behind the wind industry. When we are faced by the trade bodies of Renewables UK and Scottish Renewables with the funding of the wind farm companies behind them to lobby politicians and basically promote blatant lies supported by a raft of consultants who, shall we say, are very aware from whence their cheques commeth, it is necessary to have the voice of reason. Without the efforts of unpaid but knowledgeable supporters we would be in a worse place. A concern has to remain that the Netherlands has followed the maxim that wind farm objectors are terrorists after unsubstantiated threats to developers. We would argue on the similar basis that many wind farm developers must be terrorists. WEA and SAS have always pursued a lawful and non confrontational attitude to developers, relying on the planning laws to argue our cases. They may have a record of demonstrating and lobbying against the Scottish Government but that is no different to any interest group. If the SNP ever ban that Democracy will have died. However this article on avian attrition and the fanaticism of the Climate Mantra may change all our positions. Bad enough that the Scottish Ministers and Energy Consents ride roughshod over local democracy and wild land designations. For them to be following the Holy Grail of a Climate Emergency moves things to a totally different level. As onshore bodies we have watched the growth of off-shore wind with a certain amount of horror but we are fairly powerless in these matters. Seal, dolphins and whales have no votes. Neither do puffins, shags and terns.

The recent report of severely diminished Manx sea bird numbers has sent alarm bells around the true environmentalists – anti wind campaigners.

A tot up of turbines numbers in the close vicinity has shown the scale of the devastation in the Irish Sea.

If we only take into account those near the Isle of Man – so that discounts around 355 turbines in the Irish Sea – already operational are another 327 turbines. We will list them with those harvesting the seabirds later.

What is shocking is that the Manx government has a allowed the main wind villain (Danish Orsted) in these seas to scout around and see if they want to spear yet another vibrating monstrosity in the same area. Around 700MW is being mooted about so if we take a punt at 7MW turbines that will add another 100 turbines into the mix. Around 430 turbines. If the birds are getting wiped out with 327 it is entirely possible that another 25% with be sliced and diced and their body parts will float away never to be found or counted if this new abomination is constructed.

We would urge the Manx government to use their brains – not common when windy fever hits – and stop this now.

The main perpetrator is Denmark’s Orsted – formerly Dong Energy. Let’s have a look at them all shall we?

Barrow: 30 turbines
Dong/Orsted

Walney Phase 1 and Walney Phase 2: 102 turbines
Orsted 50% SSE 25% PGGM* 25%

Walney Extension 87 turbines
Orsted

West Of Duddon Sands 108 turbines
Orsted 50% Spanish owned Scottish Power Renewables 50%

Total turbines: 327

*PGGM – Privately owned Dutch investment manager

Back to the birds!

Photo by John on Pexels.com

Manx BirdLife seabird census says the Puffin has all but been wiped out – it is not clear why or when. There are reports of an increase in just three species – Manx Shearwater, Cormorant and Common Guillemot.

‘Of cause for concern are the declines in Northern Fulmar (down 65%), European Shag (down 51%), Black-legged Kittiwake (down 34%), Razorbill (down 55%), Black Guillemot (down 65%) and the three principal gull species, Lesser Black-backed, Herring and Great Black-backed (down 68%, 82% and 79% respectively)’.

Not only is this a massive ‘cause for concern’ but we wonder about the rest of the impacts that must surely be felt wherever gigantic offshore turbines are placed. As well as those other 355 in the Irish sea we have many hundreds more around our coasts. All slicing and dicing our sea birds and doing untold damage to the marine life.

In Scotland the positively deranged Scottish government has approved around 1000 offshore monsters in the Solway Firth, Moray Firth, Firth of Forth, Firth of Tay, Peterhead ……

The country will soon be surrounded and migratory and domestic birds that fly out across the sea and return to the coast with be under severe threat and we will never get to know the truth of what happens to them and in what numbers. No doubt climate change or Brexit will be blamed as populations dwindle to unsustainable levels.

Will the whales and dolphins in the Moray Firth, so loved by tourists, survive or will they relocate or become disorientated with the vibrations from the turbines and beach themselves?

Time will tell. For those who have been heard to say not onshore put them offshore how will they feel when the true toll of the carnage is revealed?

Jason’s excellent piece here:

http://jasonendfield.weebly.com/…/isle-of-man-sea-bird-popu…

Manx BirdLife:

http://manxbirdlife.im/seabirdcensus2017-18/

Offshore abominations in the Irish Sea:

https://en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in_t…

Offshore wind bandit Orsted:

https://orsted.co.uk/Generatin…/Offshore-wind/Our-wind-farms

Manx / Orsted speculation:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-46020997

Where have all the job gone Nicola? Indonesia by any chance?

The political machinations between the wind industry and the government run deep. Pie in the Sky Salmond promised us a Saudi Arabia of wind. Paul Wheelhouse and Nicola Sturgeon promised deals to generate 130,000 jobs in Scotland. Funny, haven’t we heard those figures about ten years ago. Now Bi-Fab has a skeleton staff and we suspect EDF are having their offshore wind farms built in Indonesia. Now even the apologists for wind cannot talk of re-industrialising Scotland. A recent Guardian article, and the Guardian has been no friend to wind farm objectors, has exposed the reality of job creation from the renewable industry. However there are three realities here. Overseas job creation and hemorrhaging of UK finance to offshore and foreign companies, a Climate Emergency that is a political interest of the like of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, WWF and now Climate Extinction, and the wholesale destruction of some of the greatest scenery that Scotland has to offer that actually generates real income through Tourism, our greatest asset. So over the lasts weeks we have seen the realities of Climate activism and a drive to electrification of our transport network creating an un-level playing field and providing an opportunity for the renewable industry to lobby our politicians, pushing on an open door.  The realism of those that challenge the mantra of the climate industry have not the funds, and possibly no longer the energy, to fight well funded and media savvy activists. The Renewable Industry spokespeople were ridiculously easy to ridicule and expose as charlatans. The new people’s movement of Climate fanaticism is another thing and plays to the bias of the BBC and the urban millenials. We are but a sideshow and have the real concern as ending up as collateral damage. The BBC show a Greenland glacier, quote it’s depth of 32 kilometers and that it will have melted in three years causing catastrophic sea level rises. The scientists tell us over the last three years it has increased in mass. Guess which one will be remembered? The Catastrophe not the Reality. The drive to EV cars is relentless, not built on reality but built on EU fines for not attaining unjustified CO2 reductions. The fact that batteries will probably create more CO2 in their construction and distribution that they will ever save. The high acceleration ability of EV cars and their battery mass will probably cause more deaths on our road and range anxiety more stress related illness than we have today. But the elephant in the room is that the grid is not capable of providing the power needed to electrify our whole transport network. Even if we turned to nuclear our grid system could not provide the connection without an expenditure of trillion of pounds that we don’t have. What we do know, but our politicians fail to grasp, is that intermittent wind and solar will not supply the necessary energy needs. I look at today’s, now redundant, power stations and think of the old saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Industry needs abundant cheap  power. We are going down the road in supplying limited, intermittent, expensive power. Not logical in my book. So why are we in this state. A political vacuum created by the government’s inability to deliver Brexit and a bandwagon the politicians have jumped on to please the urban millenials who have fallen under the influence of FoE, WWF, Greenpeace, UEA and the Climate Catastrophe banner. Why fight a real battle when you can tilt at windmills? I think that is where we came in.

Beware The Elephant Trap

A Discussion has been instigated by Doug Brodie of Nairn with the wannabee PMs and I make no apology for printing it. The drive behind wind energy is based on the Climate philosophy of a group of interested political ‘charities’ and activists. Make no mistake if they win Scotland and it’s seas will become a proverbial pin cushion of turbines of dimension previously un-imaginable. The drive to electrification and away from fossil fuels dictates the extended use of wind and solar, a technology incapable of delivering the massive growth in power supplies needed for a carbon free(??) future.

Dougal Quixote

To: Mr Boris Johnson MP, Mr Jeremy Hunt MP

bcc: Selected politicians and climate realists

Dear Messrs Johnson and Hunt,

Re: Beware the elephant trap

This is a “second barrel” follow-up to the email I sent you a few days ago warning you to beware of the politically-created elephant trap of “climate change” and of giving any off the cuff support to Theresa May’s unachievable £1 trillion “net zero emissions” plan. In fact if you have any sense you will rule it out altogether, along with the infeasible Climate Change Act 80% decarbonisation while you are about it.

Several of my highly qualified bcc addressees responded to you with their own comments which you will already have seen but the other addressees have not. I have collated these responses below together with the original email to reinforce my message on the delusional thinking amounting to self-harming lunacy of your (whichever of you inherits this mess) climate and energy policies.

We seem to be living in a post-Enlightenment age of unreason where emotions and technically illiterate wishful thinking trump hard facts and the unbending laws of engineering. Establishment politicians have created a climate change monster but will they end up being destroyed by it themselves? They don’t even realise they are hurtling towards what is sure to be a humiliating collision with reality.

Yours faithfully,

Douglas Brodie BSc

Nairn

 

Collated responses to the original email

———————————————————————————

From Lord Lawson of Blaby,

Very sound advice.

Nigel Lawson

———————————————————————————

From Dr Euan Means of Energy Matters,

Dear Messrs Johnson and Hunt,

I endorse the advice just offered by Mr Brodie. Look around at your built environment and realise absolutely everything you see was built using energy from fossil fuels. All of our wealth and prosperity is founded on fossil fuels. Our food production is 100% dependent on fossil fuels as are the processing, distribution and retailing networks. And yet the Conservative Party is now planning to phase out the very source of our prosperity and existence.

And then look around and find anything useful ever built using only electricity from wind or solar power. It simply does not exist, it is a false and empty promise. Show me a wind turbine built using only renewable energy. Concrete, steel and neodymium are incredibly CO2 intensive to obtain. Show me a dumper truck working in a mine or quarry built from solar power. I look around and see fields of rape seed, mountains despoiled by wind turbines and increasingly, productive agricultural land given over to solar farms. I also see the poor being taxed via renewable levies to line the pockets of unscrupulous renewable energy developers. It is a downright disgrace that the Conservative Party has supported this scam.

… redacted … If I wanted to vote for Marxist policies I’d be voting for Jeremy Corbyn.

Yours sincerely,

Euan W. Mearns BSc PhD

UK Government to Announce New Energy Policies

PS note the date

———————————————————————————

From Dr Phillip Bratby,

Dear Messrs Johnson and Hunt,

As a retired physicist, who for many years studied heat transfer, fluid flow and thermodynamics, worked on complex computer models of systems of similar complexity to the climate and worked in the electricity supply industry, I fully endorse Mr Brodie’s advice to you regarding the “climate change” scam (or “climate emergency” or whatever it is termed this week) and your disastrous policy to combat this non-existent problem.

I don’t suppose that you are even aware that the only “greenhouse gas” in the atmosphere that has a significant impact on the climate is water vapour, whereas carbon dioxide has no measurable impact on the climate.  Water vapour can constitute up to 3% of the atmosphere, whereas carbon dioxide is only 0.04%, or in round terms 0%!  Good luck with trying to change the climate by reducing emissions of water vapour.

It is unbelievable that Conservative Party is in thrall to the “climate change” scam, an issue promoted by global socialists, and is prepared to kill off the economy and return the UK to pre-industrial conditions just to pander to the so-called Greenblob.

Yours faithfully,

Phillip Bratby BSc, PhD, ARCS

Devon

———————————————————————————

From Mr Paul Homewood of the award winning blog Not a Lot of People Know That,

I heartily endorse this advice from Douglas Brodie.

 

May I refer you to the articles I have recently posted on net zero emissions.

 

May I ask that you personally study the Committee on Climate Change’s Net Zero Report, which lays down how they see the UK moving to zero emissions, before the government takes further precipitate action.

 

Fine intentions are all well and good, but the public will be rightly furious when they find out they will have to pay the bill. Even the CCC admits the cost will rise to £50bn a year, which equates to about £1800 for every household in the country.

 

This figure is almost certainly a gross underestimate, as it would appear the BEIS have already worked out. For instance, the CCC’s proposals to replace gas boilers in homes with heat pumps (which cost five times as much) and hydrogen networks will, according to their own numbers, cost £28bn a year alone.

 

If any of this bill is picked up by the government, as the CCC suggest, this will simply divert money from areas where it is desperately needed, such as health, education and social care.

 

The damage to our industrial competitiveness will also be massive, as other countries have no intention of following suit.

 

As a very minimum, can I suggest that you formally ask the National Audit Office to verify the CCC’s costings, and produce a detailed cost and benefits analysis, before any further commitments are made.

 

Paul Homewood

Sheffield

———————————————————————————

From Mr Hugh Sharman of Incoteco,

Doug,

Thanks! I admire your persistence!

You may have missed the following articles:

The massive raw materials constraints against meeting UK net zero emissions

10 years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries before global reserves run out

These data show very clearly, to anyone who takes the facts of geology and chemistry seriously, that UK’s net zero emissions target, by way of the electrification of almost everything, is simply not feasible and can not, in any case be implemented as currently advised.

———————————————————————————

From Mr Ed Hoskins of edmhdotme,

Dear Messrs Johnson and Hunt,

 

I wholly endorse the views expressed by my colleague Douglas Brodie in his excellent email: “Beware the elephant trap”. You will be putting the future prosperity of the UK at risk if you disregard what he has to say.

 

In contrast to your obsession with global warming, the prospect of the earth moving in a cooling direction is something to be truly worried about, both for the biosphere and for mankind.

 

According to the Ice core records, our precarious Holocene interglacial has been cooling since before Roman times.  Spending any effort, let alone GDP scale costs, trying unilaterally to stop something that has not been happening for the last three millennia is monumentally stupid.

 

As for your futile, failing attempts to decarbonise the UK economy, let me refer you to my recent website paper:

 

https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/global-man-made-co2-emissions-1965-2018-bp-data/

 

Yours faithfully,

 

Ed Hoskins BDS (Lond) B.Arch Dip. Arch MA Cantab. RIBA

———————————————————————————

To: Mr Boris Johnson MP, Mr Jeremy Hunt MP

bcc: Selected politicians and climate realists

Dear Messrs Johnson and Hunt,

Beware the elephant trap

Congratulations on reaching the last two of the prime minister contest and may the best man win.

I would like to caution you both to play down the politically-created elephant trap of “climate change”. You might even dare to question it against the current hysteria of striking brainwashed school children. It would be prudent to backtrack on the support you casually gave on the recent BBC TV debate for the unachievable £1 trillion “net-zero emissions” policy which Theresa May wants to lumber us with without any mandate.

The fact is that on current climate and energy policies it will only take a multi-week period of no wind and no sun in cold midwinter such as we had in 2010 to bring the country to its knees. Blinkered pursuit of these policies is sure to end in tears.

Establishment politicians seem not yet to have twigged that the same leftist elitist internationalist thinking that caused them to be so out of touch with the electorate on Brexit has led them to make the same mistake on man-made global warming (or “climate change” to use the propagandist modern parlance). It is evident that establishment “Project Fear” propaganda has driven both campaigns.

The facts show that global temperatures have shown sustained warming for a span of little more than 20 years (centred on the 1980s and 90s) out of almost the last 75 years. It beggars belief that the entire man-made global warming scare is founded on a brief spurt of warming at the end of the last century which has since levelled off and which in any case was most probably due to natural causes.

Our unilateral decarbonisation efforts are totally futile and irrelevant on the world stage. Global emissions have been on a rising trend for decades driven by steadily increasing global energy consumption and there is no possibility of this global trend changing in the foreseeable future no matter what unilateral tinkering we undertake here in the UK.

The stark truth is that the world is collectively 85% dependent on fossil fuels for the energy needed to sustain our current civilisation while the global contribution from intermittent wind and solar is little more than negligible at 1.2%. Anyone who believes that these global engineering realities can be utterly transformed in a few short decades is living in cloud cuckoo land.

I have recently posted online two short pieces summarising the delusional thinking amounting to self-harming lunacy of our current climate and energy policies. I would urge you both to read them and share them with your colleagues. They are:

Arguments against alleged man-made global warming and its impossible so-called solution

and

Arguments against a net-zero emissions policy

My stance is not wholly negative as I support adopting a more rational climate policy of adaption as and when necessary, as Lord Lawson has advocated for many years.

Yours faithfully,

Douglas Brodie BSc

Nairn, 21/6/19

I am going to unashamedly copy a comment from the news papers.

THERE is nothing to be gained from decarbonising to help the climate but vast resources and money would be lost, for no useful return.

It seems that Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace protesters, Tory Party leadership candidates and many worried people must be unaware of the following points:-

1)The UK emits less than 1.2 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases, Scotland a tenth of that. These are negligible amounts.

2) More than 50 per cent of the planet’s CO2 emissions come from China, the United States, India and others not curbing their CO2 output. Several nations are extending coal mining.

3) By decarbonising, we cannot help the climate of Scotland or the rest of the world. The cost is potentially ruinous to our finances, homes, industry and transport.

4) Anyway, there is no proof that man-made climate changes are significant, nor of any climate benefits from cutting CO2 release.

Therefore, protesters, politicians and worried citizens can be safely reassured; we could avoid decarbonisation, which will help neither us nor our planet.

Will those in charge ever waken up to such good news and act accordingly?

(Dr) Charles Wardrop, Perth.

Another comment by Doug Brodie

Arguments against alleged man-made global warming and its impossible so-called solution

It is hard to understand why any rational person would be in thrall to the politically-contrived theory of alleged dangerous man-made global warming when the alleged problem remains unproven and unconvincing, when its proposed globalist “solution” would be so damaging to our global civilisation as to be utterly unachievable short of an implacable totalitarian world government being installed and when the climate change movement has been mired in dishonesty (or noble cause corruption to be charitable) since its very beginning. What sort of a movement is it that needs to constantly insult the intelligence of the general public with such high levels of spin, dissembling and blatant lies? Establishment politicians have created a climate change monster but will they end up being destroyed by it themselves?

It all started when American lead author Ben Santer was prevailed upon politically (probably by climate fanatic Vice President Al Gore) to flagrantly change the conclusion of the 1995 UN IPCC climate report, contrary to the latest scientific data and against the opinions of his fellow scientists, to say that there was “a discernible human influence on global climate”. The politicians used this false “evidence”, given under duress, to launch the man-made global warming scare they had been itching to start for years. The scientists have been in the pockets of the politicians ever since. Almost a quarter of a century later that supposedly discernible “human influence” in the form of a signature tropospheric “hot spot” has never been seen: if it had been found we would have heard all about it.

We’ve had our school children brainwashed in the establishment’s climate change orthodoxy, for example by being force fed Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” climate change documentary which a high court judge ruled was riddled with scientific errors. The infamous “hockey stick graph” which featured prominently was only proved to be a fraud years later due to the lack of cooperation by its climate scientist authors who refused to make public their flawed data and algorithms. It is not uncommon nowadays to hear children (and MPs) saying they wish they could “reverse climate change”, as if a simple cut-back in the use of fossil fuels could bring about such a change in the global climate. What sort of unscientific nonsense are susceptible children being taught? It sounds like the absurd notion that the level of CO2 in the atmospheric acts like a control knob for the global climate which if “turned down” could take us back to the cooler conditions of the early 1970s or even to the freezing conditions of the Little Ice Age, the coldest period of our precarious inter-glacial.

We’ve had the 2009 Climategate revelations of climate science skulduggery, complicity to deceive, blocking of FOI requests and other professional malfeasance, including the ostracising of honest dissidents who refused to toe the party line on the establishment’s man-made climate change dogma, the whole affair disgracefully whitewashed by an establishment apparatchik.

We’ve had the head of the UN blatantly insisting that the “science is settled” which is patently untrue given the large number of independent dissenting voices, for example Emeritus Professor of Physics Hal Lewis who declared “The global warming scan … is the greatest and most successful pseudo-scientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist”. We’ve had top UN IPCC officials openly revealing their ulterior political motives which have very little to do with climate, such as “to transform the world’s economic development model” and to negotiate “the distribution of the world’s resources”, themes of anti-capitalist global social engineering and wealth redistribution.

We’ve seen how the Summary for Policymakers reports of the UN IPCC are written by politicians and issued months before their Science reports which get retrospectively revised as necessary to support the predetermined political conclusions. The UN IPCC dishonestly presents itself to the public as a scientific organisation when it is first and foremost a political organisation, always careful not to disclose its deliberately restricted mandate to assess only human-induced risks to climate, not climate in the round. This restriction allows them to surreptitiously downplay natural causes of climate change such as oceanic effects, cosmic rays and solar activity including UV and magnetic field effects, omissions which render their “one-trick pony” (man-made CO2) climate reports practically worthless to anyone other than agenda-driven politicians. The UN IPCC itself has admitted that “the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible”.

We’ve had made-up propaganda like the fake “97% Consensus” which went viral after being published by an overtly propagandist organisation, endlessly repeated by climate alarmists, politicians and the mainstream media despite having been comprehensively debunked. One of the main authors of that fraud writes regularly in the Guardian under the masthead “Climate Consensus – the 97%” which tells us all we need to know about the shameless propaganda of the climate-obsessed Guardian and, by association, of the wider climate alarmist establishment. The ironic result is that politicians have scared themselves witless about climate change through their own politically-sponsored propaganda.

We see how politicians point-blank refuse to discuss concerns from worried constituents (or anyone else, not that the mainstream media ever questions the establishment’s climate change narrative) about their unworkable and damaging climate change plans, fobbing-off all arguments with boilerplate platitudes and assertions such as “an existential threat to the planet”, the “overwhelming consensus” and how it is essential to “set a good example” to the rest of the world.

We see how establishment climate scientists always act to exaggerate the alleged threat, suppress debate and crush dissenters. We’ve seen how they retrospectively adjust their temperature data to make modern global warming look worse than it is, exposed by Climategate emails and confirmed by independent researchers. Climate alarmists run wild in this unenlightened age of unreason, making claims with little or no basis in science. We are subjected to a steady stream of untrue scare stories such as starving polar bears and walruses falling off sea-cliffs to their death, all allegedly due to man-made global warming when in reality polar bears are thriving, as are walruses to the extent that their unfortunate but long-established out-hauling behaviour is due to their current population being at the upper level of sustainability.

Barely any bad weather event occurs anywhere in the world without hysterical, knee-jerk “climate emergency” claims from politicians and environmental activists that it is all the fault of “climate change”, the all-purpose weasel phrase adopted by the global establishment after alleged man-made global warming stalled around the turn of the century – the well-documented so-called “pause” which establishment climate scientists were oh so reluctant to acknowledge, finally conceding it in 2014. Since then we have had a spike of natural El Nino warming which has now largely dissipated, with no sign of any slow but steady alleged man-made global warming. These alarmists make their “climate emergency” claims without a shred of scientific evidence, not understanding or simply ignoring the fact that it is not valid to argue “man-made climate change” in the absence of any contingent “man-made global warming” or indeed that the climate was much worse in terms of well-documented storms and floods during the cold conditions of the Little Ice Age than it is now. It is a disgrace that establishment climate scientists seldom if ever call out such false claims.

We’ve had cheating by European car manufacturers to fake the emissions ratings of their diesel vehicles. We are subjected to the technically illiterate, untrue slogan that electric cars are “emissions-free” (of CO2), with politicians setting up the car industry for an even bigger fall over EVs than they did with diesel cars.

We have politicians constantly trying to bamboozle us (and themselves) with their false accounting on emissions. They boast about their supposed progress to date but they never acknowledge that the big reduction in UK emissions since 1990 came mainly from the one-off “dash for gas” switch from coal to gas in electricity generation and the past 30 years of deindustrialisation due in large part to self-imposed green energy price hikes. They overstate their progress by not counting the foreign emissions of the imported substitutes (which will usually burn more net global emissions than the home-produced originals with the perverse result that offshoring actually makes alleged man-made global warming worse) nor indeed the foreign emissions of all our other imports including electricity which are set to increase steadily as their ruinous climate policies force more and more of our manufacturing industry and power stations out of business.

Politicians pretend that burning wood in power stations is emissions-free when it is actually worse than burning coal. They pretend that wind power is emissions-free by ignoring the emissions of the supporting/duplicating fossil fuel power stations without which wind power cannot operate on the grid. They also pretend that wind power is cheaper than fossil fuels when the basis of their comparison is totally invalid, like comparing crab apples to luscious oranges. They pretend that electric vehicles will be a climate panacea when depending on decarbonisation progress their global net emissions savings (taking account of all the mining and processing of battery raw materials) could turn out to be minimal or even negative if unexpected circumstances (e.g. loss of gas imports) force continued use of coal.

Such blatant deception (or sheer ignorance) is unacceptable, especially in the absence of any due diligence study to weigh the costs of the societal upheavals and privations they want to impose on everyone against the supposed benefits. Politicians should learn from Germany which has so far spent over $900 billion on its “Energiewende” but is on course to flop on its emission targets. They should learn from France where President Macron was recently shown the limits of public tolerance to green policies which impose pain on ordinary people. It is surprising that the 27% of Scottish households reported as being already in fuel poverty has not provoked more of a public outcry.

We’ve noted the total failure over the past 25 years of all the establishment’s flawed climate model predictions of dangerous man-made global warming and their irresponsible lack of acknowledgement of this failing for so many years, possibly soon stretching into decades. Politicians are so wedded to their self-righteous, virtue signalling crusade to “save the planet” that they can’t bear to face the possibility that they might have to backtrack.

Most of all we’ve had the establishment political class pretending they are “tackling climate change” (to use their dishonestly unrealistic phrase) when after over a decade of Climate Change Act striving they have barely scratched the surface of decarbonising the economy because, as they were warned, the task is far more difficult than they naively imagined. Following years of vast expenditure and disruption, the UK flagship renewables of wind and solar power contributed just 3.1% of UK final energy consumption in 2018 while fossil fuels contributed 79%, down just 1% from 2017 [ref: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2019]. Meanwhile, global CO2 emissions have continued to rise year after year driven by steadily increasing global energy consumption, with no possibility of this global trend changing in the foreseeable future no matter what unilateral tinkering we undertake here in the UK. The stark truth is that the world is collectively 84.7% dependent on fossil fuels (plus 6.8% hydro and 4.4% nuclear which many greens abhor) for the energy needed to sustain our current civilisation while the global contribution from intermittent wind and solar is little more than negligible at 1.2%. Anyone who believes that these global engineering realities can be utterly transformed in a few short decades is living in cloud cuckoo land.

As the politically correct 2019 BP World Energy Review glumly admits “There is a growing mismatch between societal demands for action on climate change and the actual pace of progress, with [global] energy demand and carbon emissions growing at their fastest rate for years … and with renewables accounting for only around a third of the increase in total power generation”.

The UK government claims that its Clean Growth strategy has boosted the economy but most common sense economists would argue that our modest economic growth since 2008 has been achieved despite our debilitating climate change policies. These policies are achieving next to nothing other than to make us all worse off thanks to self-imposed sky-high energy prices, causing businesses to contract or close down (e.g. British Steel) and setting us up for future power cuts and electricity rationing as a result of over-investment in inappropriate technologies, especially in Scotland where a massive energy deficit is looming from the imminent shut down of its two remaining nuclear plants. The unbending laws of engineering and the hard rules of financial discipline dictate that a so‑called “low‑carbon economy” powered largely by energy-sparse, expensive, unusable at scale weather-dependent renewables is technically and financially infeasible.

Unbelievably in the face of this engineering reality and in these times of so-called austerity, our self-deluded, self-indulgent politicians led by political failure Theresa May are planning without any mandate to pour over £1 trillion down the drain (and UN modelling suggests that it would run to considerably more) over the next three decades in a futile attempt to eliminate UK fossil fuel CO2 emissions completely. Why do none of them ever do the basic arithmetic on what they are hoping to achieve – it’s not rocket science?! It is sheer wishful thinking to imagine that the current 3.1% of UK primary energy consumption supplied by intermittent wind and solar energy could ever be expanded enough to displace 79% of fossil fuel energy, never mind that such an expansion would be technically unworkable.

Establishment politicians are clearly out of their tiny minds (and technical depth) as explained in my Arguments against a net-zero emissions policy which also dissects the climate scare in more detail. They are taking the electorate (and themselves) for fools, steadily digging a deeper and deeper hole for themselves. Any serious attempt to implement such a policy would wreck the economy, reduce the populace to penury and leave the country lumbered with a grossly inefficient and fragile energy infrastructure. Given that the UK is responsible for just 1% of global emissions, our pointless sacrifice would have negligible impact globally. The “Precautionary Principle” is not an acceptable option for such a herculean undertaking which is certain to fail (especially given that the less ambitious Climate Change Act 80% target is already struggling) when the alleged problem of man-made global warming remains indiscernible and unproven in terms of empirical evidence.

The idea (from Ed Miliband who lumbered us with the 2008 Climate Change Act and who has never held down a real job in his life) that we can boost the economy through unproductive green jobs like insulating houses, installing charge points and planting trees coupled with the deployment of yet more expensive intermittent renewables and expensive energy-squandering (not to mention dangerous) technologies like hydrogen domestic heating and carbon capture and storage is beyond ludicrous. Hopefully the common sense rationalists of the Brexit Party will finally force reality to be confronted regarding the absurd UK establishment political consensus on “climate change”.

Douglas Brodie, BSc

Nairn, June 2019

PS: For a much longer exposition from November 2017 with extensive hyperlinks see The Infeasibility of our 80% Decarbonisation Plans.

 

Is the end really nigh?

No, I am not talking about climate cataclysm, extinction rebellion or climate emergency. I am talking about the elevation of Boris to Prime Minister. In 2013, as Mayor of London he declared wind and solar an abomination. Last week he praised them in his column in the telegraph. What has changed? The fiasco of Brexit, or at least the UK Parliament’s handling of it which is at best lamentable, at worst opportunist and criminal. Politicians of all Parties are look on with disgust by the great British public. What better way to pander to the short memories of their voters than follow the Climate bandwagon. So where did the Climate panic originate. A triumvirate of the BBC, Friends of the Earth and the University of East Anglia may be a good place to look. So who are the beneficiaries of the Climate emergency. Well the wind farm companies and their backers must be ordering their new executive jets and luxury yachts as the politicians reprise the subsidies, albeit by the back door. Certain hedge funds and equipment manufacturers will no doubt be licking their lips as well of the lobbyists and legal sharks that infest the waters around the renewable industry. One thing that can be sure is that most of the beneficiaries will not be UK companies or UK workers. The casualties will be those unwelcome hosts to wind farms and their infrastructure and the PBI who pay all the bills through their electricity costs. Over the last decade we have fought and turned the tables in so many cases. But can we fight the images of Greta Thunberg and the political opportunists of the leadership election? Not with the Biased Broadcasting Corporation lauding the Climate activists from David Attenborough upwards.

Doug Brodie’s views (and a lot of other people too)

Arguments against a net-zero emissions policy

Believers in alleged dangerous man-made climate change are so blinkered by their obsession that they simply don’t see that their absurdly over-hyped cause is hurtling towards a humiliating collision with reality. Climate-obsessed politicians are taking the electorate (and themselves) for fools over their irresponsible fantasy of achieving net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, as recently proposed by the politicised Committee on Climate Change (CCC). They are mindlessly aping the deranged UN IPCC which came up with this “Hail Mary” of an idea in its recent 1.5ºC Special Report, a last desperate attempt to scare the world into compliance. By going along with this totally infeasible report our politicians are demonstrating that they have lost all touch with reality. Diligent analysis of the CCC’s net-zero plan shows that it is utterly infeasible both technically and politically and if pursued unilaterally could cost the UK £50 billion a year but would do nothing to “save the planet”, not that it needs saving as explained below. In the title words of John Redwood’s new book on the electorate’s disparaging regard for the establishment, more and more ordinary people are now saying “We don’t believe you”.

This credibility gap was on open display recently in the House of Commons when MPs debated this issue and there was just one contrarian voice, Christopher Chope, who was rudely ignored by the groupthinking majority. Our politicians were warned a decade ago that trying to power the UK economy with intermittent renewables was an appalling delusion but in their quasi-religious climate change fervour they chose to ignore the advice of their chief scientific advisor, Professor Sir David Mackay. More recently the government commissioned a report by energy and economics expert Professor Dieter Helm which slated the “spectacularly bad“ decarbonisation decisions taken by successive governments. In denial as always, they kicked that report into the long grass but are happy to take the advice of a brainwashed 16-year old Swedish school girl. This irresponsible, self-indulgent virtue signalling over net-zero emissions shows that a wholesale clearout of most of our incumbent parliamentary representatives is long overdue, the sooner the better before they do any further damage to our economy and energy infrastructure, hopefully to be replaced by common sense rationalists like Mr Chope.

Politicians turn a blind eye to the fact that there is no empirical proof that man-made CO2 is having any dangerous effect on global climate, only establishment assertions based on the “garbage in, garbage out” climate computer models of the UN IPCC whose past predictions of scary temperature increases have all failed miserably. These climate models fail for the simple and obvious reason that they postulate atmospheric CO2 to have far more influence on global warming than is actually the case. The same erroneous mathematics dictates that unfeasibly severe cuts in global fossil fuel consumption are needed to “save the planet”, cuts which simply cannot be achieved using current renewables technology. It has not yet dawned on climate change fanatics that the UN IPCC has lost all credibility after all its failed predictions of climate thermageddon in the face of benign actual climate observations and after its recent call for utterly infeasible massive global CO2 emissions reductions. The UN IPCC is fatally hoist on the petard of its own climate pseudo-science.

Global warming should not be a concern for any rational, unbrainwashed person given that it has been going on since the 1500s (well before industrialisation) as the planet has gradually emerged from the terrible conditions of the Little Ice Age, a fact we can deduce from the Met Office’s Central England Temperature series, the oldest temperature record in the world. Moreover this graph’s modern-day “hockey stick” uptick, which mirrors that of other global temperature series, is small compared to larger upticks which have occurred in the distant past, in particular the dramatic uptick which occurred between about 1695 and 1735. That early uptick must have been due to natural causes as only trivial amounts of coal fire burning and iron smelting went on at that time. That gives a default indication that the modern-day warming centred on the 1980s and 90s was also due to natural causes, most probably cyclical solar and oceanic effects.

This simple inductive reasoning on the likely cause of the warming of the 1980s and 90s is supported by the fact that, despite steadily rising man-made CO2, global temperatures underwent a prior 30-year cooling trend from the mid 1940s to the mid 1970s which was so pronounced that it led to alarm calls in the 1970s that the planet was about to enter a new Ice Age, then the brief warming of the 80s and 90s followed by a 20-year “pause” from the turn of the century to the present time after stripping out natural ENSO events which have nothing to do with man-made CO2. How credible is it that alleged CO2-induced global warming could suddenly switch off in the 1940s after a 30-year warming trend from about 1910, then on again around the mid 1970s, then off again around the turn of the century? Answer: It’s not credible at all. The natural ENSO influences on global warming are clearly shown by the modern satellite temperature record when correlated with the so‑called Multivariate ENSO Index (red = warming El Nino, blue = cooling La Nina). Note the preponderance of warming El Ninos over the warming period of the 1980s and 90s.

These facts show that global temperatures have shown sustained warming for a span of little more than 20 years (centred on the 1980s and 90s) out of almost the last 75 years. It beggars belief that the entire man-made global warming scare is founded on a brief spurt of warming at the end of the last century which has since levelled off and which in any case was most probably due to natural causes. Politicians are taking us all for fools by spouting untrue nonsense about steadily rising global temperatures due to human influence. We remember the climate science chicanery revealed by Climategate and we say to the establishment, “We don’t believe you”.

The rational man in the street also knows that it is nonsense to declare a “climate emergency” as our simple-minded MPs recently did given the benign weather we have enjoyed over recent decades, interspersed with infrequent, historically and statistically unexceptional bad weather events. The hysterical knee-jerk claims from politicians, made without a shred of scientific justification, that almost any bad weather event anywhere in the world is due to “climate change” (more correctly “alleged but as yet unproven man-made global warming”) is easily debunked by the “pause” in global temperatures over the last 20 years. The climate change scare has become an unscientific busted flush. For example, every single climate disaster predicted in 1999 by arch-alarmist George Monbiot has been proved wrong. Yet still we are subjected to a constant barrage of unfounded “climate porn” from climate alarmists and the complicit mainstream media.

As for supposedly “tackling climate change”, the ideology-driven, wishful thinking establishment ignores the simple facts that global energy consumption and concomitant CO2 emissions have been on a rising trend for decades, that the world is collectively about 85% dependent on fossil fuels for energy and that intermittent wind and solar together contribute less than 1% of global energy supply. Anyone who believes that these global engineering realities can be utterly transformed by 2050 or that an intermediate 45% cut in global emissions can be achieved by 2030 is living in cloud cuckoo land. It is inconceivable that the rest of the world (bar maybe the likes of the EU, California, Norway and New Zealand) would follow us in such a self-harming net-zero emissions policy. All we would achieve by pursuing such a policy would be to impoverish ourselves (already 27% of households in Scotland are in fuel poverty) and destroy the global competitiveness of our economy. Given that the UK is responsible for just 1% of global emissions, our pointless sacrifice would have negligible impact globally.

Across the EU, not one of the 28 member states is on track to meet their current, relatively unambitious 2030 climate targets. The UK government’s Climate Change Act policy of 80% decarbonisation by 2050 is in deep trouble, on a collision course with engineering reality. Lord Lawson’s climate thinktank recently issued a report predicting that, if pursued, the CCC’s more ambitious net-zero emissions plan “is very likely to end only in humiliating and distressed policy correction”, a safe prediction given that since the introduction of the Climate Change Act in 2008 UK power emissions have fallen by just 10% of total 1990 emissions, the only savings that can be legitimately attributed to climate policy, and the UK economy is still 80% dependent on fossil fuels for energy.

His report also argues that the deterioration in UK productivity growth over recent decades is substantially associated with the implementation of policies to reduce energy use and carbon emissions, yet our technically and economically illiterate politicians want to ramp up the deployment of inefficient renewables which will make UK productivity even worse. Analyst Rupert Darwall agrees, despairing of the lack of rigour in the CCC’s report and describing its desperate theme as “to boldly go where no economy has gone before – but with fingers crossed behind backs”.

In conclusion, pursuing a “net-zero emissions” policy is pointless, firstly because there is no credible proof that the planet needs to be saved from alleged dangerous man-made global warming. Secondly, it is technically impossible to achieve using current renewables technology. Here in the UK, the government’s emissions cutting progress to date has been of very little consequence because almost all of the UK’s decarbonisation efforts have been focussed on electricity supply which in 2017 equated to just 17.3% of UK final energy consumption. Difficult to use intermittent wind, daytime-only solar and negligible wave power together contributed just 3.7% of UK energy supply in 2017. Solar power cannot be relied upon as its national supply falls to a trickle throughout midwinter when power is needed most. Wind power cannot be relied upon as the entire UK is sometimes becalmed for days on end and it is technically infeasible for grid-scale battery storage to provide sufficient backup. Thirdly, most of the rest of the world will not follow our unilateral example in such a self-harming policy. Under the Paris Agreement the developing economies including China and India have no obligation to cut their emissions and are clearly taking no notice of what we do here in the UK. They are all building lots of cheap, reliable coal power stations much faster than we in the West are building expensive, ineffectual wind farms.

The CCC’s unsustainable, pie in the sky net-zero emission proposal should be binned forthwith. We need to adopt a more rational climate policy of adaption as and when necessary coupled with serious research and development into alternative forms of sustainable energy for the future, most probably with a heavy emphasis on nuclear, both modern fusion and fission. Any politician who supports the current inane clamour to declare a climate emergency or to pursue a net-zero emissions policy, like those in this cross-party alliance of 179 MPs (overwhelmingly Remainers), is totally detached from reality and needs to be voted out of office at the earliest opportunity.

 

The Ignorati

As we are often called Climate Deniers for challenging the rubbish that comes from so many I would like to introduce a new term for those that follow the Extinction mantra – the ignorati (The wilfully ignorant; those who choose to ignore inconvenient facts or make public claims based on falsehoods) Likewise it would be relevant to those that believe that wind farms will save the world. Those the believe that electric cars are the future

and those that believe the sun always shines on solar panels and the wind always blows somewhere.

http://omnipotentpoobah.com/2010/10/15/the-ignoratti-are-becoming-the-new-ruling-elite/

Sweden’s Climate Child

Does it not strike you as strange that the mother of this Climate child has already written a book and will make millions from it if the promotion of her daughter goes to plan. Seeing CO2 and being believed by her followers is very worrying. But then most people believe that water vapour from cooling towers is smoke, full of particulate and noxious gases, and the renewable industry has chosen theirs photos carefully to promote that myth. Perhaps it reflects also how our politicians have lost any credibility that some people chose to look to quasi religious figures for comfort. I think we should be terrified, not of Climate change, but of a new world order. There seems to be little study of history and climate but plenty of belief in Climate Gurus who are launching the new religion. There is actually nothing new in the Climate but modern 24hrs news and views from rarely suitably qualified talking heads has brought world disasters into our homes. In the past we heard ten thousand people had been drowned in Bangledesh on the 9,00pm news followed by how Morris Dancers were declining in numbers due to the lack of people happy to prance around with bells on their legs. That was the perspective of the BBC and the man on the Clapham Omnibus. Same way as the BBC tell us all about the aid we are sending to disaster affected areas but neglect to mention all the other aid from less favoured nations. Always followed by a fund raising message from the Disaster Emergency Committee (the major charities effectively). Cynic that I am! Now we get blow by blow reporting from the scene of the calamity on a multitude of news channels 24hrs a day. Sorry guys, nothing new here to see. Just our perception that it is worse. It always was bad but we lived in sublime ignorance. One might almost suggest that since we are remote from such events we need to personalise them into our own lives. Therefore the ignorati (The wilfully ignorant; those who choose to ignore inconvenient facts or make public claims based on falsehoods) march to London and other cities to demonstrate about ‘an extinction event’. Guys, if it happens it will be a meteorite and I doubt we will even know about it until it is too late. Now I will be declared a climate denier. Climate changes and has done since the dinosaurs walked the earth. What we need is a balanced discourse about the future, about our use (and over use) of the world’s resources,  our management of our ecology and a balanced approach to our energy. And that means working with farmers, supermarkets and distributors on our food. Keep the politicians out of the equation. They know little anyway. Balance these with our ability as a nation to pay the costs of these requirements. And stop shouting a mantra that has no practical application in the real world.

Just a thought. The last ice age arrived in six months!

The Trashing of the Isles?

An element of confusion here. Last week SSE announced OFGEM’s approval of the undersea Western Isles connector but today OFGEM announce they are not minded to approve the £600m line for only two windfarms. Now we do know that there are others in the pipeline but delays in providing the connection have pushed them into the long grass. Now will someone quickly cut the grass and make them re-appear? However they may them be out of date for applying for CfD subsidy. At the same time OFGEM approved the Shetland Isles undersea cable subject to Viking Windfarm being awarded CfD payments. Confusion rains. The threat of Western Isles undersea cable still looms large but for the moment and the threat has been delayed rather than struck out.  I will therefore leave my comment as is

When will last defence against trashing the Western Isles be breached? Ofgem announced itself not minded yet to approve the Western Isles undersea link which not only will bring about the destruction of much of the beauty of the Western Isles but also heralds the building of a massive converter station at Wester Balblair with massive undergrounding or new towers in an area just recovering from the extention of Wester Balblair for the Beauly Denny line. That the cost of this white elephant(c. £600million) would fall on the consumer goes without saying, and for now is the reason OFGEM have deferred approval, but this also heralds a growth in wind power in the Highlands that supports SSEs policy of de-carbonisation. Coire Glas Hydro scheme has already been enlarged before even the first sod is turned. Only one part of hydro and small hydro that is being planned for the iconic glens. The perceived growth of electric cars and the delays and cancellation of nuclear projects has created a panic in the higher echelons of the energy industry which we in the Highlands are going to pay for. We are already seeing the ambition of battery storage in both Wester Balbalir and Fasnakyle with massive container cities planned to house the batteries. The clearances of the Highlands is coming shortly and the Scottish Government, or at least the SNP, will be as guilty as any 18th Century landlords. Of course they will blame Westminster and on this they may, for once, have a point. To Claire Perry Scotland is somewhere north of Watford Gap that is ripe for exploitation. After all no one lives there. Oh what fools we have clasp to our bossom.