Even the Fonz only got to jump the shark once. But every day is a happy day for the IPCC, seemingly intent on plumbing new depths of climate alarmist gimmickry with every passing report. Its ‘now or never’ latest offering comes in a long line of sci-fi fantasy episodes, guaranteed to run for many more seasons.
The Guardian reports that scientists have said it is a final climate warning for governments. According to the BBC, scientists say carbon dioxide must peak within three years, and even then we must invent machines to suck the gas out of the atmosphere. The IPCC says diets and lifestyles must change. Having the right policies in place will enable the changes in our lifestyles and behaviours to take place, co-chair of the latest report Priyadarshi Shukla told the BBC.
Mr. Shukla was an interesting choice to co-chair the report. Until August 2017, he was Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, specialising in energy and environment modelling. Amongst his published work is a contribution to Fair Weather? Equity concerns in climate change.
Sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere is typical fantastical IPCC. The technology is expensive, largely untried and uses huge amounts of energy. Maybe, with the face mask fetish still going strong in many parts of the world, humans could be persuaded to wear some kind of attached breathing receptacle to trap the three billion tonnes of CO2 they emit each year. Two figures always missing from IPCC reports are what temperature and CO2 level they consider most suitable for the Earth’s atmosphere.
At the heart of IPCC catastrophising is the prediction of a large rise in the global temperature. The BBC sums it up well: “First, the bad news – even if all the policies to cut carbon that governments had put in place by the end of 2020 were fully implemented, the world would still warm by 3.2°C this century.”
This improbable temperature leap arises from the notion that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to a 6°C warming. There is no credible scientific proof for this guess, but it accounts for years of inaccurate ‘Garbage In, Gospel Out’ climate model forecasts. The detachment of forecasts from reality is clearly shown by the Remote Sensing Systems graph below.
The thick green line shows the actual global satellite temperature as measured at the University of Alabama. The forecasts started to soar upwards about 20 years ago, at a time when the science was declared ‘settled’, and green activists took complete control of the climate change agenda. As we have seen in previous articles, and is confirmed in the graph, global warming started to run out of steam a couple of decades ago, and has been at a standstill for the last 90 months. The suggestion that the green line will suddenly shoot up vertically is an invention of these activists. In order to accommodate the predicted now less-than-80-year rise, the graph would have to double in height.
Why is this IPCC stuff – deeply flawed at best, political propaganda in reality – being continuously produced? As we did with the last IPCC report, let’s look at the people who write it and see if we can spot any actual scientists. By scientists I mean physicists and chemists, people who analyse empirical data and spend their lives trying to prove and disprove scientific hypotheses. One of which, of course, is the still unproven hypothesis that humans cause all or most global warming.
This exacting definition of scientist must necessarily not include those who sign up to notions of post-normal science, where an extended community adds local knowledge and value judgements. As before, we will select a small representative group. There are 239 listed authors including 20 British contributors. We will look at the areas of expertise of the first 10 in that latter group.
Michael Grubb is Professor of Energy and Climate Change at UCL. At masters level he is said to teach a course on the economics and political economy of energy and climate mitigation policy. The home page of Professor Chukwumerije Okereke notes that he is “globally recognised leading scholar” on matters including climate governance and international development, with expertise in climate justice and busines climate strategies. Jason Lowe is Head of Climate Services at the Met Office. Robert Matthews leads the Forest Mensuration Modelling and Forecasting Science Group at Forest Research. Julia Steinberger is Professor of Societal Challenges of Climate Change at the University of Lausanne. Patrick Devine-Wright is a Professor of Human Geography at Exeter University. According to his home page he has been ranked in the world’s top 1% of social science by citation in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Frank Geels is Professor of Systems Innovation at Manchester University. Yacob Mulugetta is Professor of Energy and Development Policy at UCL. Nicholas Eyre is Professor of Energy and Climate Policy at Oxford University. On his LinkedIn page, Smail Khennas is described as a “senior energy expert Energy and Climate Change”.
All these people are no doubt expert in their fields. But it is surely reasonable to ask, where, in what is billed as a scientific report written by scientists, are the scientists?
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor
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The risk assessment and cost/benefit analysis will make interesting reading….
I mean…..obviously they’re going to do a risk assessment and cost/benefit analysis….you know…..like they did for the covid lockdowns……..
In 2019 Net Zero was passed without a debate or a vote. No questions were asked about cost or viability. Who in any walk of life does anything as absurd as this? ——–No one in their right mind goes into something not knowing the likely cost or whether it is even possible. Except eco socialist governments spending other peoples money. ———But ofcourse you know that already.
Are they mad?
Yup …. Certifiably Insane.
But still, we pay!
I think we now have to recognise that the baddies in James Bond books are no longer fiction and are out there doing their best to destroy the world, but in such a way as to reserve a safe space for themselves to reside.
And to think they called us the ‘fruitcakes and loonies’ !
Idiocy. In 1974 the same cadre of idiots wanted Nixon to nuke the Arctic to save us from the ice age. Now DARPA et al are launching chems into our atmosphere whilst another group of morons want to bury plant food.
The Dark Ages are Now.
There is no Science in the climate cult. Net Zero Science.
When I was studying A level Geology in 1970 I remember clearly the teacher communicating the popular concern at the time that we were heading for an ice age!
Being in an interglacial, your Geology teacher is correct:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interglacial
But the time scales are much longer than a few decades.
We still are!
Why not Pump this CO2 into a greenhouse and grow some fast growing biomass plants like cannabis then bury them? It should eventually turn into coal (if you buy the fossil fuel theory – see Saturn’s moon Titan )🤷♂️
And speaking of moons, it rains plastic on one of Jupiter’s.
Oh ,that can’t be good for Ganymede sea creatures!
Maybe Greta should go there and protest against plastic rain! Or, just go there!
Time to invest in shares in the moons of Jupiter? Stake your claim now!
A wise idea. I think that commercial greenhouses achieve enhanced CO2 levels by dint of using the exhaust from their gas fired heaters at present. Perhaps the CCS sellers will try to flog tankfuls of it that they’ve captured elsewhere? Of the course, the overall efficiency of it would go down the drain.
I suppose the buried vegetation would begin to decompose, releasing – well, hopefully CO2 but if anaerobic decomposition, it could be methane, with explosive results. It’s not the worst ‘geoengineering’ idea, though.
What is it with our government and their urge to impose under-tested and vastly expensive ‘solutions’ to barely existent ‘problems’?
You could also just release it into the atmosphere, being a trace gas essential for all life and completely non-toxic below a level of several thousand parts per million. Why let cannabis plants have all the fun?
How about growing tomatoes?
We do that already. Though it would increase that ‘evil’, profit. 🙂
In short yes they are totally mad, they make flat earthers look utterly rational. Believing the earth is boiling in an ice age is akin to believing in fairies. These ppl deserve no sympathy at all, they can only expect our utter loathing and total contempt.
This sounds like a great depopulation strategy.
It might be a bit windy up here at times but living on top of a hill now seems like a very good idea 🙂
It would take a special sort of stupid person to agree to this and one of the special sorts of stupid and the one that inked a lot of this into law announced her stepping back from politics yesterday.
it is my belief that Davos is a one world government project review board and the main stake holders go over there with their progress updates and check the monies for services provided in their anonymous Swiss bank accounts.
‘Are they mad?’—Yes. Certifiable.
I’m a layman, but I look at it this way: I need oxygen to keep me alive. Plants produce oxygen as a byproduct of utilising carbon dioxide to feed themselves, so CO2, currently at a near historical low of 415ppm (plants die below 200pmm) is a good thing. Optimal CO2 concentration for maximum plant growth is thought to be around 1,000ppm. Why would any sane person tinker with CO2 levels at all, when 500m years ago, when the earth’s average temperature was 10 degrees C, they varied between 3,000 and 9,000ppm?
Plants do not create O2, they are just part of a cycle.
But CO2 is the building block for plants; no plants = no animals and no Humans, because animals either eat plants or if not, eat the animals that do.
https://www.britannica.com/science/photosynthesis:
Photosynthesis, the process by which green plants and certain other organisms transform light energy into chemical energy. During photosynthesis in green plants, light energy is captured and used to convert water, carbon dioxide, and minerals into oxygen and energy-rich organic compounds.
I seem to remember that nuclear power was demonised because the waste had to be buried underground, and who knows what might happen if some unforeseen geological accident should happen.
What about a Friends of the Earth T-shirt: “Carbon Storage – No Thanks”
In fact stored nuclear waste is safer than stored CO2, the latter kept under pressure can escape back into the atmosphere, the former is fused in glass pellets so cannot escape into the environment.
I wonder how the company plans to prevent all the CO2 leaking away from their storage system? They can’t possibly line the ‘tanks’ (caverns?) with anything that could possibly be impervious to CO2.
CCS seems to me to be a bonkers idea that will never be implemented at any scale. Why not just stop burning wood pellets at Drax and leave the trees in the ground? However, I’m a bit sceptical about the calculations used in the article. Is it valid to base calculations for long term storage on the energy densities employed in a system where the primary purpose is short term energy storage? Wouldn’t a CCS system operate at much lower pressures?
The UK always seems to have to be “world leaders” in every Green absurdity there is. All to achieve what? A tiny drop in global emissions that gets wiped out faster by the rest of the world in a matter of days. Apparently the amount of CO2 we reduced since 2008 was replaced by the rest of the world in only 140 days. It is the case that UK politicians, not just the current government, are determined to push ahead with NET ZERO no matter the cost. ——-I will repeat that— NO MATTER THE COST.—- But the cost to who? The answer is YOU. But even if there is a climate problem why the mad rush when the rest of the world are emitting CO2 like it is going out of fashion? ——The answer to that lies in the Politics. It is the politics of the UN and Sustainable Development. So our own politicians are ignoring the welfare of their own citizens and are going to impoverish them and take away their access to affordable energy to get a little gold star on their lapel from the world government in waiting. —-The current political class are a truly disgusting set of traitors we never had before, and Thatcher will be squirming in her grave at these eco parasites.
It’s 2050, we’ve implemented CCS at great costs to the country. Our industrial base has gone and the agricultural sector is producing a fraction of the food it was 20 years earlier. Food production cannot meet demand because large swathes of land have been rewilded, fertilisers have been banned, tractors can only operate for a couple of hours on a full charge and WW2 style food rationing has returned. Along comes some wealthy businessman, with friends in high places, who made their money from 20 years of government subsidies for CCS, with the solution to our food shortages. Increase agricultural yields by growing all our food in sheds and greeenhouses and pumping them full of the ‘waste’ CO2 that they own to increase yields. Of course their ‘green solution’ (much like that of Drax today) is all smoke and mirrors with little clarity about the actual CO2 cycle. What’s not to like?
Let’s hope that the plan never sees the light of day (pardon the pun) and that the lunacy is exposed for what it is. Injected how and where? In abandoned coal mines? Tin mines? Or does this involve ripping up the countryside and creating huge holes? It sounds as daft and dangerous as Gates’ plan to shield the sun’s rays. All the most ridiculous plans involve some seemingly coke-addled daydream at massive scale like those stupid films about landing on asteroids to blow them up or re-igniting a dying sun. I don’t even want to talk about risk assessments or cost benefit analyses because those give some sort of credence to what is undeniably, certifiably insane. And all because these idiots in the CCC think we are in a climate crisis. No, the only crisis is their inability to use their common sense and reasoning.
“ridiculous plans” ————But remember we have forced ourselves in law to achieve Net Zero. This means jumping through all manner of impossible hoops and spending astronomical sums of money or face criminal prosecution and being sued. We are also heading down the road of imprisoning our own citizens if they fail to implement green absurdity.
Laws can be repealed especially if they are unjust or, as I say, ridiculous. Going along with insanity is insane. If we all end up in prison because we refuse to abide by what is palbably insane then so be it. Remember, varmint, this is not about us and our relative comfort but for those who come after who have no voice yet and no agency. We have to do what is right because of what we already know about the lies and distortion that this whole stinking pile of green manure is based on.
“We have to do what is right” ——-But the “we” cannot just be a few disgruntled contributors to the Daily Sceptic. The problem with getting everyone to go against this eco tyranny is that mainstream media have it in the bag. Most people are way too busy with work and family life to question any aspect of this energy/climate issue. They think that Investigative Journalists on the telly are doing that for them so that when they tune into their 6 O’Clock News they think they are getting an accurate picture of the state of the climate and the green energy solutions necessary to fix the alleged climate crisis. ——–This is why I have been saying on these pages for sometime that DS readers ranting on in this little echo chamber is like trying to hurt a dinosaur with a cocktail stick. —What is really required is mainstream news documentaries like eg “The Great Global Warming Swindle” a documentary by Martin Durkin that first appeared on Channel 4 in 2007. But OFCOM which is basically censorship, prevent that from happening. Fighting the Climate Industrial Complex is Jack versus a Million beanstalks or David versus a whole planet full of Goliaths.
I know that, varmint, and understood that a long time ago. It’s why I turn up at my local councils and ask them awkward questions. It’s why we, here in Dorset and Wilts, are running talks with interesting speakers on a whole range of subjects – 5G, Food security, energy, healing, common law etc etc. It’s why we’re organising our own spoken word events. I realised that we had to start local. However, I still maintain ‘we’ have to do what is right and that is called resistance for when they try to do what they did again. We are hardly sitting on our thumbs in an echo chamber – we’re actually doing stuff! So, keep your cocktail sticks sharp and keep pricking!!
The first law of thermodynamics is based on the law of conservation of energy, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can be transferred from one form to another.
Renewable energy? Renewable? No such f#@king thing!
Not too dissimilar to government agendas, initiatives, interventions, policy, all of which are in a stable state whilst on paper until initiation which results in discord and costs, both of which are carried by the populous.
That always makes me laugh too.
Plus they call intermittent electricity production that cannot sustain supply, sustainable energy.
And windmill enthusiasts are too ignorant to understand that the blades remove energy from the wind, thus slowing it velocity and therefore there is a limit to how many at a location because of the necessity to arrange them so one windmill doesn’t ’take the wind’ of another.
If I remember correctly, CO2 is not very stable in liquid form requiring a reasonably stable storage environment of low temperatures and high pressure, but prefers gas or solid as a state. Also we have to assume (quite logically) that the earths crust is never stable and varies in stability from place to place.
So the solution to the purported extinction we are facing, if we do not seek net zero, is to store a gas in a potentially unstable and volatile condition, in a potentially unstable environment.
The annoying thing about this is that if it did go TU, I would not have the time to raise a glass and say FU.
Or just leave it to natural process and plant cellular respiration to store it. Coal and oil are all ‘carbon capture’ and carbon storage; solar storage too.
Since 2 000AD, carbon capture has taken place over an area the size of the USA – this is evident from the plant growth that has resulted particularly around deserts and in other dry places.
Mad – clinically, yes. Psychopaths who want to destroy Humanity or at least reduce it to a state of enduring poverty
They’re not mad, just very stupid, corrupt and gullible.
They also understand that this will most likely never happen – it’s just a great way to eco-launder vast public funds into their and their friends’ pockets in plain sight.
How completely terrifying this all is! To be ruled by madmen who seem to have no idea of science – wow, it is too awful to Mahoney. The only comfort is that it would be a quick way to die (‘The bodies of the dead showed no signs of trauma or struggle; these people had simply died where they were’). BUT: God is ultimately in control, whatever anyone thinks.
I’d rather live near a nuclear waste storage facility.
Funny how that gets so much attention and risk assessed to hell.
“Of course to actually achieve Net Zero …”
There is no necessity whatsoever to achieve ‘Net Zero’ which in any case is impossible unless we all stop breathing – since humans exhale CO2.
Net Zero and the idea (only in the western world?) that humans can somehow manipulate the Earth’s climate by the minutest variation of a single parameter is symbolic of breathtaking ignorance.
Here is a quote from Michael Crichton’s excellent book, “State of Fear”:
And even today, after five billion years, our planet remains amazingly active. We have five hundred volcanoes, and an eruption every two weeks. Earthquakes are continuous: a million and a half a year, a moderate Richter 5 quake every six hours, a big earthquake every ten days. Tsunamis race across the Pacific Ocean every three months.
Our atmosphere is as violent as the land beneath it. At any moment there are one thousand five hundred electrical storms across the planet. Eleven lightning bolts strike the ground each second. A tornado tears across the surface every six hours.
And every four days, a giant cyclonic storm, hundreds of miles in diameter, spins over the ocean and wreaks havoc on the land.
The nasty little apes that call themselves human beings can do nothing except run and hide. For these same apes to imagine they can stabilize this atmosphere is arrogant beyond belief. They cannot control the climate.
The reality is, they run from the storms.
I love the expression “nasty little apes”!
I’m sure this idea will never get out of the starting blocks on any meaningful scale. But in the meantime a small number of people will have made vast sums of money through tax payer funded subsidies, selling this crackpot idea to their mates in government.
Anyone got a tame terrywrist (is there such a thing) that can go to Sardinia and explode a tiny little bomb on the test storage facility as a proof of concept?
Lunacy of the highest order.
A few simple lessons in thermodynamics would instantly show that compressing CO2 to “store” it is unviable, and would very significantly reduce the efficiency of the gas turbines. Seperation of CO2 from the other atmospheric gases and water vapour from turbines is also energy intensive, as is pumping the stuff all over the country. This plan is the stuff of dreams, completely unreal!
Releasing chilled, pressurized CO2 in liquid form would quickly turn to snow, since liquid CO2 cannot exist in normal atmospheric pressure. It would be a snow volcano! The horror!
Seems like an expensive way of achieving their depopulation targets!
YES – they are certainly mad – and unimaginably stupid also.
Hello Chris Johnson. Thank you for your article. I sent it to someone who is pro-Net Zero and their response was: “Looks like they are conflating two different technologies to scare people. One is using compressed CO² as an energy store. The other is liquifying it to store it long term. So the figure they are quoting is a fabrication.” To be honest, I don’t know one way or the other, but would like to get to a true answer on the matter. Do they have a point?