Last month a group of scientists published a paper in Nature stating that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) had shown no decline in strength since the 1960s. Helped by publicity in the Daily Sceptic, the story went viral on social media, although it was largely ignored in narrative-driven mainstream publications. The collapse of the Gulf Stream, a key component of the AMOC, is an important ‘tipping point’ story used to induce mass climate psychosis and make it easier to impose the Net Zero fantasy on increasing resentful and questioning populations. Obviously, reinforcements to back up such an important weaponised scare needed to be rushed to the front and the BBC has risen to the challenge. The AMOC “appears to be getting weaker” state BBC activists Simon King and Mark Poynting. Their long article is a classic of its kind in trying to deflect scientific findings that blow holes in the ‘settled’ narrative.
In the Nature paper, three scientists working out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution stated that they came to their conclusion showing the stability of the AMOC after examining heat transfers between the sea and the atmosphere. It was noted that the AMOC had not weakened from 1963 to 2017, “although substantial variability exists at all latitudes”. This variability is the basis for much of the Gulf Stream fear-mongering. The BBC notes that the presence of larger grains of sediment on the ocean floor suggests the existence of stronger currents, pointing to a “cold blob” in the Atlantic that appears to have cooled of late. Thin pickings, it might be thought, to run an article titled ‘Could the UK actually get colder with global warming?’ The Woods Hole scientists note that records “are not long enough to differentiate between low frequency variability and long-term trends”.
The Nature story is not the only recent scientific finding that suggests the Day After Tomorrow alarm about the AMOC is a tad overdone. In 2023, Georgina Rannard of the BBC reported that “scientists say” a weakening Gulf Stream could collapse as early as 2025. There was no later reporting, needless to say, of subsequent work from a group of scientists at the US weather service NOAA that discovered the huge flow of Gulf Stream tropical water through the Florida Straits had remained “remarkably stable” for over 40 years.
Of course the BBC, along with most of the legacy media, has form as long as your arm when it comes to producing deflective copy seemingly designed to head off inconvenient scientific findings. The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is the largest and best observed collection of tropical coral in the world. Any sign of ill health is a boon for green propogandists who argue that warming measured in tenths of a degree centigrade will destroy an organism that has survived for millions of years in temperatures between 24-32°C. For the last three years, coral on the GBR has hit recent record levels with scarcely a mention in mainstream media. Days before last year’s record was announced, the places where journalism goes to die were full of stories from a paper that conveniently noted climate change posed an “existential threat” to the reef. “The science tells us that the GBR is in danger and we should be guided by the science,” Professor Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong told Victoria Gill of BBC News. Professor McGregor’s statement was an opinion readily broadcast by the BBC, a courtesy that does not appear to have been extended to the fact that coral on the GBR was at its highest level since detailed observations began.
It beggars belief that the BBC and all its fellow alarmists can run this stuff with a straight face knowing that crucial scientific information is missing from their reports. Important findings from reputable sources emerge about the current stability of the Gulf Stream and the response is to blow more smoke around that raises wholly unnecessary fears.
The main concern is that the AMOC “could suddenly switch off”, state King and Poynting. To back up their statement and provide the inevitable political message they note the comment of Matthew England, Professor of Oceanography at the University of South Wales: “We’re playing a bit of a Russian roulette game. The more we stack up the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the more we warm the system, the more chance we have of an AMOC slowdown and collapse.” Now look what you plebs have done with your steak chomping, gas-guzzling central heating and naff holidays in Benidorm, is an unpleasant subtext here.
Of course, keen and dedicated followers of climate alarmists will note a master craftsman at work. In 2023, aided by 35 million computer hours and using an improbable rise in temperature of up to 4°C in less than 80 years, Professor Matthews suggested that there was a dramatic slowdown in deep Antarctica ocean currents. Melting Antarctica ice could lead to a 40% slowdown in just 30 years. The fact that Antarctica has barely warmed in 70 years is ignored.
Who needs Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters when we have the BBC.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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I really don’t get how intelligent people can listen to this idiot’s drivel and not come to the conclusion that we need to get the state and the government out of our lives as much as possible.
What goes through the mind of an intelligent person that reads or hears this garbage and doesn’t instantly want to take a sledgehammer to the entire edifice of the state?
Fear? The hope there is someone better out there to manage our lives for us?
Someone please explain.
I think mainly the hope that there is someone better. Despite the best efforts of successive governments, we have grown more prosperous, so I think there is a good deal of complacency still, and people struggle to imagine things being any other way.
The prosperity argument is a hard one to bat back, I admit.
Not because it’s true but because it can only really be answered with a counterfactual which is impossible to prove
Our prosperity comes from the imgenuity and hard work of people and in spite of the state’s bureaucracy clumsy interference.
I don’t have much success with that though.
Exactly.
I find increasingly I tend towards a more ideologically driven approach – I believe in personal freedom of choice as “good” (within obvious limits that have applied for a very long time, like not murdering, stealing, raping, assaulting) in itself, regardless of outcomes. I think it comes down to how you feel life should be lived.
The renewable energy industry has been built upon taxpayer subsidies raised though a levy on our energy bills. Without those subsidies, there would be no UK renewable energy industry. NONE AT ALL. We are robbing Peter to pay Peter…
The prosperity sill growing thing is not as clear cut as people might think. There is most certainly a drop in living standards and one measure of prosperity is the cost and availability of energy. We now have the highest electricity prices in the world with the poorest affected the most. When you are paying more for energy it leaves you with less money to spend on other things. It also makes everything you buy more expensive as they all require energy to produce. The fact that a lot of people are not noticing a drop in living standards does not mean it isn’t happening, and trust me as this Net Zero nonsense continues living standards can only go in one direction —DOWN
What prosperity growth? The truth is that we have gone nowhere since 2008 and under Labour are fast getting poorer.
I was thinking of a much longer time period – let’s say since the end of WW2. Also even since 2008 arguably consumer goods have improved so people feel more prosperous.
Religion. Green Religion. State Religion. ‘Scientistic’ Religion. ‘Saving the world’ Religion. Religion old boy. No matter how idiotic, grotesque, stupid, insane, immoral or totalitarian the concept, as long as these arselings appeal to various Religious-ideals, the majority will support them.
I do agree that humans need religion in the broadest sense of the concept. A set of ideas and principles that provide structure and order.
The principles and ideas that prevail in out society now are pretty grotesque. Entitlement, self-victimisation, prejudice presented as fake caring. Basically the ideas that lead to a population of slaves clamouring for better conditions and a ruling class only to happy to be their masters and throw them scraps
I don’t. Am I not human, prick me do I not bleed?
And just coincidental that none of these ‘religions’ is any actual religion?
Don’t confuse intelligent with smart. If you notice, people who do and say very dumb things have high IQs, leading people to ask how somebody so intelligent could be that dumb.
And don’t confuse English English with American?
If the State stopped pretending it has all the answers to life’s problems and stopped interfering in our lives we would all be better off.
People need to stop believing it.
Hear hear!!!
Why isn’t Mr Miliband putting wind and solar farms close to where the demand is, thus reducing transmission costs, i.e. central London. Hampstead Heath, Regents Park, Hyde Park etc. are excellent sites, as an added bonus very close to where Mr Miliband lives.
Don’t give them more insane idea’s.
The wrong answer to an incorrect question.
Stop them all, rip up what’s been installed and revert the land.
Wind has no real utility, except maybe for a Scottish croft or remote community.
Solar only at the scale of a rooftop.
Thanks for the transcript of the interview. It doesn’t read well for the zealot. . I heard some of it – with intense irritation – the arrogance of the Minister was breathtaking & the usual inability to answer any direct question like why have our bills gone up – is the usual emptyheaded hot air. I still simply cannot understand that he is being allowed to bankrupt & deindustrialise the country when it is blindingly obvious it simply won’t work in the way he believes. Or ever. Can someone /anyone put him somewhere he won’t do any more harm – pleeeese?
Same here. It reminds me that it’s wise not to listen to Today on R4 these days!
Hmm -somewhere we could put Mad Ed? Bottom of a septic tank? Or a deep,deep slurry pit? Abandon him on the space station or just deep space with no space suit?
When I have heard him called ‘mad’, which is pretty often, I have supposed it just a bit of abuse but, having listened to the whole of that interview, I now think it a clinically accurate diagnosis. The interviewer kept asking for evidence that such-and-such was so and Miliband kept giving him his confidence that it was so. Perhaps that wasn’t mad in itself but what made it so was that Miliband gave it with such solipsistic confidence that he was giving what he had been asked for.
He is an eco nut job, but it isn’t just him that is bankrupting us. The whole Political Class are in on this Sustainable Development eco scam. It was the so called Tories that gave us the Net Zero Amendment in 2019. They all bleat about “saving the planet” but we need to remember the wise words of H L Mencken—“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it”
He’s very high on confidence, but has no answers to any questions and just bleats out the same message.
I can claim with great confidence that the sun will rise in the west tomorrow – but it won’t!
I could even make it government policy (if I were a Labour Minister) – reality doesn’t really listen to policy!
Odd – our neighbours got solar panels put on their roof, with battery storage (yeah, fire risk much…) as well as feed in tariff. They were told by the salesman that it would take about 10 years to get their money back and start making money. Given that’s what the salesman said, you have to think that’s a best-case estimate. So not sure where these instant savings would be. Unless Miliband is not taking into account capital costs.
He chooses to ignore reality, for some reason.
He just lies, all the time.
Plus he is a fundamentally stupid person, with no knowledge or understanding of anything outside labour party politics.
Not stupid, IMO. Just dishonest, vain, selfish, greedy.
Quite. ‘Day one return’ = ignoring upfront capital costs
He studied PPE at Oxford. There’s no way he doesn’t know he’s distorting the truth.
Also Maths, Physics, and Further Maths at A level.
His ‘stupidity’ is deliberate and wilful
That’s what I think about most of them. For example, I think it’s quite possible that Johnson’s bumbling uncle shtick is an act.
He has to ignore reality because he’s a leftie.
Net Zero may or may not create “hundreds of thousands” of new jobs, but how many nasty, dirty fossil fuel-related jobs will be “uncreated” at the same time? Will there actually be any net gain?
And he won’t allow us to drill for our own oil and gas, so of course we’re going to be heavily reliant on imports…
“at the moment we’re in the grip of fossil fuel markets, controlled by petrostates and dictators …”
All because successive UK governments have systematically gone about the destruction of our own extremely well endowed fossil fuel businesses; four hundred years plus in coal reserves, possibly one hundred years worth of frackable gas and maybe as much again in the North Sea but we are fossil fuel poor.
It is beyond argument therefore that Miliband fits into one or both of the categories liar and stupid.
The question Ed Miliband didn’t answer is an ‘investment’ of £200,000,000 which saves £70,000 pa will take 285 years (and eight and a half months) to pay for itself, ignoring inflation.
It’s fundamentally dishonest of Milliband to say that the return for public services such as schools will be immediate. The subsidy of roof solar panels on schools is paid for by taxation. So you could equally say that there is an immediate return to schools by giving them more taxpayer monies. The proper question should be “when will ther be a return on investment to the taxpayer”.
He deliberately ignores the high cost to the taxpayer. If there was a quick return (or a return at all) then there would be no need for subsidies, the schemes would be self funding and people would be installing them at their own cost.
That was the question to ask – when he said renewables are the cheapest form of generation, the follow up question should have been ‘so we can stop all the subsidies then yes?’…
surprised this interview was allowed / allowed to go out – is it so 2TK can move Millibrain on?
surprised this interview was allowed / allowed to go out – is it so 2TK can move Millibrain on?
My thoughts exactly. Despite the omissions from A Rajan this is bordering on a P45 interview, quite hard hitting.
Agreed – everything happens for a reason…
Allowed to go out? Yes the UK is increasingly authoritarian but we don’t yet have the BBC pulling live interviews because they are not unfolding in a way that the government of the day would like.
Some simplistic maths. Assuming the 200 billion will be spent over the next 5 years that’s 40 billion a year. Let’s say 70 million people in the country, that will cost nearly £600p.a. for every person. So 300 quid off every (shared) tax bill some time in the future isn’t a great investment.
Do you mean ‘300 quid off every (shared) energy bill? Not tax bill…
Whenever politicians or most journalists use the word “invest” or “investment” you know they don’t know what they are talking about or else they are trying to disguise profligate spending with a word that sounds meritorious (no, really, they do that sort of thing).
Brown started it.
‘borrow / print and spend what we don’t have’ doesn’t sound nearly as positive does it…
For the Labour Party “investment” is always a euphemism for destruction so whenever a Labour politician mentions “investment” the correct response is…oh phook!
You can’t reason with a Marxist Narcissist
https://youtu.be/2be5raB1bMM?si=S2lZ87zpwmoODDP2
If the aim of the Net Zero scheme was to reduce energy prices it would be called the Energy Price Reduction Scheme or something. It’s obviously not going to reduce energy prices, but then (a) Miliband will have retired by then, and (b) whoever replaces him will say ‘that was an aspiration, one of the secondary targets of our scheme, but X has since happened and we haven’t been able to deliver…etc’ (this assumes there hasn’t been a violent revolution in the meantime). They will be able to point out that the scheme was never primarily about reducing energy bills.
The scheme is also not primarily about providing ‘green jobs’, or ‘reducing global temperatures’ – if these were the targets, again they would not be met.
Indeed. You clearly know how devious and mendacious politicians are.
I don’t think Miliband has a weak grasp on reality… he has a very strong grasp on his own political ‘reality’. Most politicians prefer to talk about what they wish was true but usually recognise when such talk is too distant from ordinary reality.
Unfortunately his reality is not our more practical reality. Which is why arguing that Net Zero is a cult has some relevance. Net Zeroism as it were.
I would be surprised if they could name one sustainable |(ie long term) green job that is not balanced by the loss of a job in the current economy.
Net zero job creation at work.
Let me just make this point. I’ve come back from China recently, you know, they realise that this is the growth opportunity of the 21st century. I’ve come back from India. They also realise this
China and India recognise a growth opportunity for themselves! They will happily supply us, until the cows come home. Miliband is a complete f***wit, of the highest order.
If Ed gets his way, cows coming home will become a distant memory to tell our grandchildren about.
He went to China on a private jet and bought a load of solar panels with our money, end of story. The rest of his bluster is just him covering his tracks and obfuscating
The most obvious contradiction is this: If the renewable industry is supposed to represent a move towards a “renewable” source of energy that, for the most part, passively harvests energy from the sun and the wind, then the creation of 650,000 jobs to service the industry makes it far from passive!
Each new job created requires a salary, an additional cost to the industry that will be reflected by either rising energy bills or rising taxes as the government continues leverage through subsidies.
So the more jobs created, the higher our energy bills and/or taxes will be.
But the less jobs created, the less the current jobs lost from the energy sector will be replaced by alternative “green” employment. So the transition to renewables can only represent a lose-lose scenario.
When you put it like that it clearly shows what a load of bollox it all is
All these new Green jobs to produce the same amount – or less – of electricity – that looks a like a massive drop in productivity
“Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”
Richard Feynman, Report of 1987 Challenger Disaster Presidential Commission
“The world of wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries is limited by physics. Those limits are hard, and they are non-negotiable.”
Richard Lyon, The Physics of Net Zero
KOMMISSAR MILIBAND MUST FALL.
A common tactic of the Blob is to say that the price of electricity is determined by the price of gas, this usually goes unchallenged by interviewers. It is factually correct, but highly misleading.
It is the wholesale price that is determined by the price of gas, and is currently around 4 pence per kWh.
We pay the retail price, which is currently around 27 pence per kWh.
You could almost say that the price of gas is irrelevant, as a lot of the money we pay goes to renewable subsidies, capacity payments for when the wind dies, building transmissions lines to umpteen wind/solar farms, installation of smart meters, and paying for those who can’t/won’t pay their bills. We must also pay a lot for the ridiculous Micky Mouse competition between the so-called suppliers, who simply send us our bills.
Thank you, the mad rant about fossil fuel producers controlling our electricity prices is the most disturbing aspect of the interview, especially because Milliband actually appears to believe what he is saying. If Rajan had done his homework he could have challenged this and should have done.
Miibrain keeps saying “the truth is…” then lies through his teeth.
We’ll Never Have an Energy Transition
https://www.city-journal.org/article/energy-transition-green-new-deal
“History shows the Green New Deal vision is not inevitable—it’s impossible…
…The Trump administration is shining a welcome light on the inflationary, unproductive, and even socially destructive magnitude of spending in pursuit of the unachievable that has been marbled into legislation and federal programs.
History will likely record the elimination of government largesse in pursuit of an impossible energy transition as a kind of transition itself.”
If gas prices are the cause of high energy prices and if we have a substantial and growing proportion of so called cheap electricity from renewables, why is the electricity cost per kwh on my bill 4 times the cost of gas per kwh?
If the price of gas is global, why is it so much cheaper in the USA? Maybe they have a different type of gas? Or could it be some other reason….
Wonder if Ed is on the payroll of the CCP, he is from a Marxist family, he is a Marxist, and the only ones earning from Ed’s Religion seem to be the Chinese.
Ed Miliband and his brother David are the Marxist progency of their father sent by the Soviets to assist in the destruction of the west. Little did they know that the west had its own fifth columnists working away to dilute their impact. But they could still be judged to be doing a good job.
Net Zero economy grew three times faster than the economy as a whole last year. Of course it did – all funded by taxpayer subsidies. Much like the non jobs in local councils during the last Labour Parliament, these jobs are not necessary and without subsidies would not exist. Is he lumping the high cost of buying backup for wind and solar into the cost of fossil fuels because that’s a fake figure and does not reflect what the cost would be if we relied on coal and gas fired power stations as our main source of energy, provided no market skewing climate tax were placed on them.
It’s borrowed money he is talking about, creating a debt for taxpayer’s to fund. Has he factored that into the cost equation, I very much doubt it.
I wish AR had challenged EM over his repeated mantra of ‘drive to clean energy power’ when no such thing exists when it is dull, cloudy and windless.
EM clearly doesn’t doesn’t grasp the fact that his ‘clean power mission’ will shift our reliance on fossil fuels ‘controlled by petrostates and dictators’ onto something even more unreliable – the British weather.
The man is a deluded fool. Yes, we can become less dependent on volatile oil and gas prices if we can produce our own fuels. Such as North Sea oil and gas, let alone fracked gas and even oil from our own dependencies aka the Falklands. But he has terminated exploration of the oilfields. Is he working for China,perhaps, or is he just crazy?
Miliband speaks about investment and jobs and value and returns and all those other good capitalist concepts, and he manages to corrupt the meaning of every single word
It’s as if George Orwell had been to Business School – ‘profit is loss’
If the nasty dictatorial foreign suppliers bother him, why doesn’t he just reopen our own oil fields, dig some of our coal, frack some of our own gas?
Energy is not really his agenda, is it…
When we were young, we used to pass mental asylums and point at them. Then they closed them and the inmates are now running the country. Lord help us!!!
Please someone stop this madman!
No matter what happens it is always the fault of fossil fuels and our dependency on them. These are the same fossil fuels that have given us the prosperity we now have. Better health and longer lifespan, freedom from back breaking labour and from death from preventable diseases. But those fuels are now to be taken away by idiots like Miliband who do the UN’s dirty work for them. They will look you in the eye and lie straight to your face. If wind and sun are so fantastic why then are China and India bringing their 3 billion citizens out of poverty by using coal and gas? Because they are by far the cheapest way to produce electricity and give you it 24 hours a day, every day.
Every single extra penny spent (“invested”) by the govenrment is debt.
It shows how incredibly stupid Miliband’s plans are that even the BBC are questioning them.
Fair play to that interviewer though.
“I’ve come back from China recently, you know, they realise that this is the growth opportunity of the 21st century. I’ve come back from India”
Could he have communicated across the internet and saved all those CO2 emissions?
Of course our Net Zero policies will create growth – in China and India! Most of us could have told him that and saved him the bother of any communication at all!
People can be made to “believe” anything. Repeat something enough times and people transform some knowledge they hear to a belief. Once someone believes something they no longer need to think about it and will defend it to the end. Political movements like the climate change scam become cult like demanding faith in their followers even though there is no evidence there is a climate crisis. Miliband is a follower who has been created by 50 years of climate propaganda. He was created, programmed and put in a position of power by the leaders of the climate scam at the WEF, NGOs and UN. Miliband is on a crusade. You will never change his mind through reason and logic. This crusade will not end until the money fueling it dries up.
I expect many DS readers will have read Delingpole’s article in the Spectator this week? What it reveals is that the whole corrupt, rotten to the core renewable energy, net zero agenda is nothing more than a giant Ponzi scheme designed to fleece the taxpayer of any wealth he or she thought they possessed. The man behind this scam is the academic Michael Mann whose atmospheric CO2 research in the ’80s gave rise to the hockey stick delussion that the industrial revolution, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, has caused global temperatures to rise dramatically.
If anyone with a scintilla of belief in this nonsense still thinks CO2 is the cause of dramatic climate change after reading this article they should have their head examined as indeed Ed Miliband should.
As Delingpole explains Mann is a rather unpleasant piece of work who likes to litigate against anyone challenging his research. The fact that idiots like Miliband and his ilk are so delusional and incapable of understanding, let alone capable of questioning, the science is truly frightening.
I’m surprised the DS hasn’t posted James’s article and written a piece on it. Maybe Will Jones will at some point?
https://archive.is/VcAfv
Exactly right – anyone willing to litigate against anyone challenging their scientific conclusions, is NOT a scientist. The whole premise of the scientific method is nothing is ever settled, it’s just proven through experimentation, backed by reproducible data / results. No lawyers needed, UNLESS, you’ve done something you shouldn’t have., for a different reason, and don’t want it discovered…