From conservativewoman

By Paul Homewood

YOU probably saw stories last week claiming that Thursday July 6 was the hottest day on Earth in the history of human civilisation. Climate scientists said that the global average temperature was precisely 17.23 deg C. Yes, not 17.22 or 17.24C.

Some went as far as to claim that it was the hottest day for 125,000 years.

Naturally the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt attempted to trick the public into thinking that because we had some sunny weather last month, the whole world must be burning up. 

The idea that we can measure the world’s temperature to a hundredth of a degree is of course ridiculous. Indeed the very concept of a global temperature is unscientific, because there is no such thing.

The calculations behind this claim are, you won’t be surprised to learn, based on computer modelling. The models go back only to 1979, when satellite data became available. This was a time when there had just been three decades of global cooling and a massive expansion of Arctic sea ice. It is little wonder that temperatures have increased since.

Prior to the satellite era, much of the world had little or no reliable temperature data, so we have no idea at all what temperatures were then, particularly in the early 20^th century and before.

It is summer, so inevitably some places are hot. But the map of temperature anomalies behind the claim tells a totally different story to the one peddled by the BBC. Across the world as a whole, there is the usual mix of above and below temperatures:

https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/

The only exception is around Antarctica, where, as Climate Reanalyzer explain, weather patterns in the southern hemisphere have brought warmer air than usual. Because polar regions are so dry, a small change in heat produces a large swing in temperature, whereas it requires much more energy change to produce the same size swing in temperatures in the mid-latitudes. This is because water has a much higher heat capacity than air. Think, for instance, of the Sahara Desert, and how temperatures fall away dramatically at night because the dry air holds so little heat there.

Although average global temperatures may have increased because of the warm air brought to the Antarctic, the overall heat content of the Earth’s atmosphere has not changed at all.

As for the claim that it is now warmer than any time in the history of human civilisation, this is self-evidently bogus. There is an abundance of evidence that the world’s climate was much warmer than now for most of the last 10,000 or so years since the last Ice Age ended.

Studies of treelines, tree rings, ice cores, glaciers, ocean sediments, stalactites and many other proxies all point to the same thing – a Holocene optimum, which lasted up to maybe 5,000 years ago. This was followed by the Minoan, Roman and Medieval Warm periods, and the Little Ice Age, which was probably the coldest era since the Ice Age and which ended during the 19thC.

This evidence comes from all around the world. Even, for instance, in New Zealand:

https://niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/clivar/pastclimate

Is there any other branch of science where so-called scientists can simply make up fairy tales and pass them off to a corrupt media as fact?

BP and another waste of energy

SINCE 1952, BP has published its Annual Statistical Review of World Energy. In BP’s words, this is ‘a constant source of objective, comprehensive – and, most importantly – trusted data to help industry, governments and commentators make sense of developments in global energy markets’.

This year’s edition has just been released, and it has a new custodian, the Energy Institute, which BP says is ‘the chartered professional membership body for people who work in energy’. 

It is slightly concerning, therefore, that the Energy Institute is not quite the professional body that BP makes out, but a lobby group for Net Zero. According to its website, its objective is ‘creating a better energy future for our members and society by accelerating a just global energy transition to net zero’. Its president is Juliet Davenport, founder of Good Energy, a renewable energy company; senior positions are occupied by other lobbyists for renewables. Whether the review is quite as objective, comprehensive and trusted going forward remains to be seen!

Nevertheless this year’s edition provides the same categories of data as previous ones. The story can be summed up in a handful of charts.

First, emissions of carbon dioxide continue to rise, a seemingly relentless trend, arrested only during the lockdowns of 2020. Last year saw yet another record high. Emissions now stand 5 per cent higher than in 2015, when the world’s politicians supposedly agreed to save the planet in Paris.

Whilst emissions in OECD countries have fallen by 1,287million tonnes since 2011, they have increased by 3,790million tonnes in the rest of the world. The UK’s total emissions are tiny in comparison.

Despite repeated claims of whopping increases in renewable capacity, fossil fuels continue to dominate, still increasing year-on-year. Meanwhile wind and solar account for only a tiny 5 per cent of the world’s energy:

And as our final chart illustrates, the small reduction in fossil fuel consumption in OECD countries has been offset by a six times larger increase in the rest of the world. Again we see that the increase in wind and solar energy has been tiny in comparison.

It has been evident all along that the world’s poorer countries were not prepared to sacrifice their public’s standards of living on the altar of climate change. This means the provision of abundant, reliable and cheap energy that only fossil fuels can supply.

The full review can be downloaded here.