climate change

Three astonishing things are happening simultaneously. One is the government’s utterly baffling failure to communicate with us on this existential issue. Where are the public information videos? Where are the televised emergency briefings on climate breakdown, like the emergency briefings on Covid-19?

Up the propaganda, Comrades!

This is the reasonable demand of the National Emergency Briefing campaign, whose film is now being shown in more than 1,000 cinemas and other venues in the UK: a remarkable achievement. Why are scientists, activists and journalists – faint voices in the storm – being left to explain this defining issue and the societal transformation we need? The great majority accept a call for action only when it comes from government. When it tells us “this is our national purpose and we want you to be part of it”, people tend to heed the call.

Quite literally too.

Should be a Two Minute Hate every day.

And drill that North Sea, Baby!

Overall, the reputation of the Middle East as a secure supplier of energy had been damaged, he said, predicting that countries would pay a premium for supplies from secure sources and for renewable energy.

Birol predicted that governments around the world would review their energy strategies in the next few years and “look for new options” for fuel imports. He added that countries would also turn to other energy sources, including renewables, nuclear – and, to a lesser extent, coal – and that domestically, energy production “that makes economic sense will get a push”.

But, while this makes sense we still have Mad Ed to deal with….

The climate crisis should be declared a global public health emergency by the World Health Organization, or millions more people will die unnecessarily, leading international experts have said.

The independent pan-European commission on climate and health, which was convened by the WHO, concluded the climate crisis was such a worldwide threat to health that the WHO should declare it “a public health emergency of international concern” (Pheic).

The international spread of vector-borne disease, such as dengue and chikungunya,

Declare the climate emergency and thus stop creating wetlands. Kill all the beavers and keep pumping out the Soerset Levels. ‘S Climate change, see? A global emergency. Can’t be going around creating ague ridden swamps now, can we?

The world is threatened by a “suicidal” model of capitalism that is leading to war, fascism and the potential extinction of humanity, Colombia’s president has said, as he convened 57 governments to address the climate crisis.

Gustavo Petro blamed fossil fuel interests for taking ever more desperate measures to prevent a transition to green energy. “There is inertia in the power and the economy of this archaic form of energy – fossil fuels – that lead to death. Undoubtedly, that form of capital can commit suicide, taking with it humanity and [other] life,” he said. “The question that needs to be asked is whether capitalism can truly adapt to a non-fossil energy model.”

If capitalism cannot adapt to non-fossil fuels then – and therefore! – we must institute socialism! Huzzah, Comrades!

A perfectly tossery argument, obviously.

As countries got down to detailed discussions of timetables for action, and boosting low-carbon technologies, one key message emerged from developing countries and finance experts: that addressing debt must be a central plank of any global platform of climate action.

Oh, also, we’ve pissed away all the money so give us some more, capitalist whitey bastards.

Climate change is just the latest excuse, eh?

He’s a very naughty boy:

The oil crisis triggered by the Iran war has changed the fossil fuel industry for ever, turning countries away from fossil fuels to secure energy supplies, the world’s leading energy economist said.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), also said that, despite pressure, the UK should forgo much of its potential North Sea expansion.

Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, Birol said a key effect of the US-Israel war on Iran was that countries would lose trust in fossil fuels and demand for them would reduce.

Or more accurately he’s an international bureaucrat with a very definite agenda.

As an example:

Birol said: “It is up to the government, but these fields would not change much for the UK’s energy security, nor would they change the price of oil and gas. They would not make any significant difference to this crisis.”

He also cautioned against granting exploration licences for further new fields on commercial grounds.

“They won’t provide any significant quantities of oil and gas for many years to come,” Birol said. “They will not lower the bills, the UK will remain a significant importer and price taker on international markets. I am not even talking about the climate change effects – just from a business point of view, making a major investment in exploration might not make business sense.”

Who will carry the expense? The oil copmpanies. Who will make a profit is oil is found? The Treasury. That’s a one way bet. He’s weighting the argument in favour of a particular, ideological, outcome.

The Guardian reported last week that the so-called “legacy generators” will be offered the opportunity to sign up to the new contracts, which are similar to deals struck by low-carbon projects since 2017, or face higher windfall taxes on their profits.

Securing the bulk of the UK’s electricity from fixed-price contracts should mean electricity costs will fall and bill payers would be less exposed to sudden market price shocks.

The saving will be only of that extra paid to those on the older contracts when gas prices are very high. And we must assume that they’re going to be offered a sweetner on their regular prices, right?

This could well mean a fall in the wholesale price of electricity. But the new CfD costs aren’t there, they’re in the other part of the ‘leccie bill.

And yes, of course, that £10 million is on electricity bills.

This particular windfarm is shut about 65% of the time it could be operating. But no, it gets better:

Only a planner could lead to this outcome, right? There’s no way a market would allow this sort of fuck up. Largely on the ground that anyone who did it would already be bust if they’d ever been able to scrape the money together in the first place.

Currently, the overall price is set by the most expensive source of power, which is usually gas power plants. This has led to a surge in electricity market prices across Europe, but particularly in countries such as the UK that rely on gas.

The plans to increase the generator levy – which applies to nuclear, biomass and renewable energy projects built before 2017 – will be used to raise Treasury funds to help shield consumer energy bills in the short-term while the government consults on long-term plans to reform the wholesale market.

The government is also expected to consult on plans to shift older, low-carbon projects subsidised by the government’s renewables obligation scheme on to the newer set-price contracts, which provide electricity at a guaranteed price.

So, the older stuff gets RoCs. If the ‘leccie price goes over the RoC guarantee then the generators get to keep the extra. The newer stuff is on CfDs, when ‘leccie goes over that price then generators hand back the excess.

If we move all the RoCs to CfDs – and you can bet there will have to be compensation payments – then the ‘leccie price is that permanently high CfD price. Sure, some of it might be from general taxation, some hidden in the system costs bit, but it’s still there and still to be paid.

It’s going to make much less difference then many seem to think.

Not even if they tried to tell me my own age.

On the other hand:

The owner of the Drax power plant in North Yorkshire received record subsidies of almost £1bn for burning trees to generate electricity in 2025, a climate thinktank has calculated.

The company was paid £999m last year for generating about 4.5% of Great Britain’s electricity from its biomass plant, costing each household £13 a year, according to analysts at Ember.

As has been pointed out the actual emissions here are higher than if they just burned the coal the plant is built on top of. And, obviously, cheaper. But this is what you get when you allow lanyards to try to plan things.

So, hang the lanyards.

The great British blackout was once a threat that hung over the country during the depths of winter, when generators struggled to meet demand or storms destroyed power lines.

But today, as the net zero revolution rolls on, the greatest threat to grid stability could land on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

According to the National Energy System Operator (Neso), the body responsible for keeping the lights on, the UK power grid is at increasing risk of being overwhelmed by surges in solar power.

Underpinning this threat is the fact that too many solar panels have been connected to the grid without any way of monitoring them or controlling their output.

This centralised planning, so, so good, innit?

Planning by politics, we are so blessed.

The solution to this is massive spending upon the grid. OK, so spend massively on the grid or spend massively on curtailment but either makes renewables really, really, cheap, dunnit?

There is a very short logical step from that to Headline Newds. And so we have the launch episode, The Sun is Daddy, in which Prescott slowly removes her clothes while explaining that solar energy could meet our global energy demands with less land than is being used by the fossil fuel industry. Or, in her words: “Daddy is a giver.”

The usual calculation is that we could power the UK by solar using only – “only” being the size of all current houses and gardens – 3% of the land area. I’m really very sure that we don’t use 3% for fossil fuels.

Unless, of course, they’re lying like banshees and claiming that land used to absorb CO2 emissions is used only and exclusively to absorb CO2. Which is total bollocks, as all who have bothered to read the footnotes to carbon footprint reports know.

Which really only leaves us with one interesting question if they’re going to be lying like banshees. This Prescott bird. Nice tits then?

They’ve still a very colonial mindset, no?

Opening new oil and gas fields in the North Sea would “send a shock wave around the world”, imperilling international climate targets, undermining the UK’s climate leadership and encouraging developing countries to exploit their own fossil fuel reserves, experts have warned.

Credulous Darkies – lovely people, of course, but children, really – can’t actually think through things for themselves, make decisions. They’ll just copy whatever White Bwana does, d’ye see?

Opening new oil and gas fields in the North Sea would “send a shock wave around the world”, imperilling international climate targets, undermining the UK’s climate leadership and encouraging developing countries to exploit their own fossil fuel reserves, experts have warned.

Apparently we are such beacons of light and hope to hte more benighted parts of the planet that we should still be running them. Look, everyone, just do as we do.

The UK government is under stiff pressure from the oil industry, the Conservatives, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, some trade unions and parts of the Treasury to give the green light to new oil and gas fields, despite clear evidence that doing so would not cut prices and would have almost no effect on imports.

Two of the biggest fields remaining in the North Sea, which is more than 90% depleted and where the last pockets are increasingly costly and energy-intensive to extract, are within the licensing system. But the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields, if exploited, would displace only 1% and 2% respectively of the UK’s gas imports, research has shown.

It’s difficult to grasp the logic here, eh? They’re trivial, don;t mean much, there’s not much there. OK, I guess – but why, if they’re trivial, are you getting so pissy about it?

Ed Miliband faces cheating accusations over plans to exclude emissions generated in foreign gas-fired power stations from UK totals.
He has pledged to make the grid 95pc gas-free by 2030 – but 15pc of UK power comes from neighbours such as Belgium, the Netherlands and France, which have coal and gas-fired power stations.
Mr Miliband has ruled that all such imported power is be classed as zero-carbon – making it look as green as wind or solar – because the emissions occur outside UK borders.

You’re cheating Eddie, you’re cheating.

New research published in the journal Transnational Environmental Law offers the first systematic analysis of how major fossil fuel companies defend themselves when taken to court over their role in causing global warming. Drawing on case documents from landmark lawsuits, the research identifies three distinct strategies companies are using.

The first and broadest argument is that climate change is a collective problem caused by society’s demand for energy, not by the companies that supply it. Chevron and Shell, in separate cases on different continents, cited the same passage from the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report – that greenhouse gas emissions are driven by “population size, economic activity, lifestyle, energy use” – to argue that responsibility lies with modern industrial society as a whole.

Those who emit bear the responsibility for the emissions. Works as an argument, no?

In the RWE case, lawyers challenged a peer-reviewed Nature Geoscience study attributing flood risk at a Peruvian glacial lake to human-caused warming – not by denying climate change but by arguing that the glacier model contained underlying uncertainties, and that CO2 molecules were “indistinguishable from each other”, making it legally impossible to trace a specific emission to a specific harm.

That works too. You’re suing over a specific harm you gotta be able to show the folk you’re suing are responsible for that specific harm.

A third strategy involves questioning the credibility of those producing the science. In the RWE case, the company’s lawyers submitted printouts of tweets by the leading climate scientist Friederike Otto – noting she had described climate lawsuits as “interesting” – to argue she was too partial to serve as a court-appointed expert. When the claimant submitted an independent attribution study by Oxford and Washington researchers, the lawyers attacked the lead author’s social media posts and professional associations, arguing that links between scientists constituted evidence of a coordinated network.

Some undoubtedly are vile grifters. So, say that.

But it’s that first one that’s strongest to me. Emissions are the responsibility of emitters. You knoiw, users of fossil fuels.

The record-breaking heatwave scorching the US west this week would have been “virtually impossible” if not for the climate crisis, a team of scientists has determined.

Millions of Americans from the Pacific coast to the Rockies baked under unseasonably warm and even dangerous temperatures this week, with temperatures up to 30F (17C) above average for the time of year.

The climate crisis, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, has made this kind of heatwave four times more likely to occur over the last decade, according to a new rapid analysis released Friday.

“These temperatures are completely off the scale for March,” said analysis co-author Ben Clarke, who is an extreme weather and climate change researcher at Imperial College London, in a statement.

We’re All Gonna Die!

In a world without global warming, the current heatwave would have also been milder, with temperatures about 1.4F (0.8C) cooler, says the analysis by World Weather Attribution, an international consortium of climate researchers.

Oh. So the Big Scary Monster makes a difference of under a degree? A warm March could/would have happened anyway, we’re arguing about that last 0.8 oC? Umm, yeah, well, OK……and?

Even though gas accounts for about a quarter of electricity in Britain, it sets the electricity price most of the time. This means that cheaper renewables, nuclear and hydro power are given inflated prices — set at that of the higher gas price.

I have a feeling that’s not actually true. Or, rather, the second part isn’t, not very often.

The renewables guys are all on CfDs, no?

The scheme offers a fixed “Strike Price” to generators over a typically 15 year long contract period. This provides financial certainty, unlike the wholesale electricity market which can fluctuate significantly. With the contract for difference, if the market price for electricity drops below the Strike Price, LCCC pays the generator the shortfall, however if the market price rises, the generator must pay back the difference. The costs, or benefits, of the scheme are passed onto consumers via their electricity bills.

The renewables guys are getting the same price whatever. WEell, except for those not covered by a CfD which I would imagine is a very small subset. Who pays them changes, yes, but not the amount. So, where are those excess profits from a surging gas price?

If anyone really does understand this system then get in touch. A little reportette might not be a bad idea if I’m right here. Of course, wholly possible I’m wrong and knowing that would be nice too.

One proponent of this idea is Prof Michael Grubb at University College London. In a March 2026 post on LinkedIn he says:

“The impact of surging gas prices on electricity will again highlight the oddities of our current electricity market – which make sense to many economists, but to hardly anyone else.”

Call me picky but isn’t it a good idea that an idea is regarded as sensible by the specialists in the field? That an intricate bit of economics makes sense to economists? Like, say, we might think that gearbox experts tell us whether a gearbox is built the right way?

Only five MPs voted against passing the Climate Change Act in 2008. Before the last election, over Tory 130 MPs belonged to the Conservative Environment Network, or over half of all Conservative backbenchers. The star of the Centre for Policy Studies’ 2022 Margaret Thatcher Conference on Growth was Octopus Energy Group CEO Greg Jackson, who told nodding heads in the audience that “it’s absolutely unarguably cheaper to make electricity from renewables than from fossil fuels”.
That wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now, but conformity to the green ideology was enforced with an iron fist. Incredibly, Liz Truss gave the job of “reviewing” her climate policy to Chris Skidmore, the greenest of the green Tories, who duly delivered what the blob wanted: “Mission Zero”. With the honourable exception of the late Nigel Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the Tory intellectual apparatus in SW1 has kept a pretty low profile on the biggest issue of the day.