David Craig, on October 6th, 2022Thursday/Friday blog
When giving a speech at the UN in 2018, President Trump warned that Germany was becoming too dependent on Russia for fuel. The German delegation all laughed. They’re not laughing now.
When he was president, Trump repeatedly warned about the need to strengthen control on the US’s southern border. He was lambasted by the Democrats and mainstream media. But since Joe Biden took office, over three million (and possibly over four million) illegal migrants have poured over America’s southern border. The Democrats and mainstream media have been suspiciously silent about this catastrophic loss of control of their country’s southern border which Trump warned about.
When he was president, Trump commissioned a series of reports from scientists explaining in simple terms what was happening with the Earth’s climate:
One of these reports summarised the climate situation as follows:
The word “emergency” means a crisis that threatens immediate harm unless urgent action is taken. “Climate change” refers to long slow variations in key features of our weather, such as 30-year averages of temperature and precipitation. It is only measurable over decades and centuries. Some of the changes can be beneficial and some can be harmful depending on how we adapt. Regardless of whether climate change is natural or human-caused, the words “emergency” and “crisis” do not apply.’
- Global warming over the past 200 years has been slow and manageable while global living standards have risen dramatically.
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that the economic impacts of global warming over the next century will continue to be small relative to other changes.
- Most projections of carbon dioxide emissions are now known to be too high, and there is evidence climate models have predicted too much warming.
- Data on extreme weather trends don’t support common claims of a climate crisis
The report concludes:
The global COVID-19 pandemic has showed what a global crisis looks like. By contrast, while climate change is an issue to which we should pay attention and continue to monitor, the evidence shows it is not an “emergency”. Policies that would block global development and economic growth in response to inaccurate rhetoric about climate change would do far more harm than good and should be firmly resisted.
Since becoming president, a climate-catastrophist Joe Biden has warned us: ‘Climate change is the number one issue facing humanity. And it’s the number one issue for me. Unchecked it’s actually going to bake this planet’. (21 March 2021). And in a speech to graduating students at Boston College, Biden’s similarly climate-catastrophist, jet-setting climate envoy John Kerry warned of the ‘crippling consequences’ of climate change and that: ‘ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists tell us this is urgent’.
It will be interesting to see whether Trump was right about this too.
Category: 
With the UN recently doubling down on its attribution of every single weather-caused disaster, such as the latest in Pakistan’s regular sequence of floods, to ‘Climate Change’, I thought I’d do another bit of research.
Especially since our new leaders still seem bent on continuing the headlong, lemming-like rush to Johnson’s ‘Net Zero’ in order to cut the 1% of carbon emissions that the UK contributes to the entire world’s output of the same, because Greta might get angry at them again.
Pre-Industrial Revolution UK seems a good place to start, when the nation (indeed the whole civilised world) was still almost entirely agricultural, there were no cars, trucks, railways, or aircraft, and ships were all wind-powered. Carbon-fuelled UK industrial activity was a tiny fraction of what it became later in the century.
A genuine ‘Net Zero’ in fact – probably closer to Greta’s ideal than we will ever be able to achieve despite the vast expense of trying.
So what was the reality of that particular ‘Net Zero’ snapshot?
July 1808 – (caution is obviously required with all the quoted values due to the differing instruments, exposure, accuracy of recording) – Notably warm month. Studies since that date have shown that individual day maxima were well above 25degC (possibly to 28degC) in the West of England; up to (almost certainly over) 32degC in London & possibly as high as 34degC in Kingston upon Hull. . It was undoubtedly a very hot spell though, as deaths (people & animals) from heat exhaustion were recorded, particularly from the agricultural areas in the east and north of England. One report at the time (from farm records in the eastern Fens), says that the temperature in the shade near London was 96F; the same reference notes that this spell is the “hottest day ever known in Eng’d … the Hot Sunday in 1790 was only 83 Deg”. Damaging hailstorms affected counties in SW England afternoon / evening of the 15th (presumably as the hot spell above was breaking down), primarily affecting Dorset, Somerset & Gloucestershire. From reports at the time, the diameter of much of the hail was of the order 11 cm, with much damage being recorded – including injury & death to people in the open.
1812 – Spring & Summer 1812 were notably cold. The anomaly for both seasons on the whole-series (CET) mean was around -1.5C. In addition to the extended cold, rainfall was often excessive. The months of February & March 1812 experienced EWP anomalies of 177% & 150% respectively, which with the cold ground, would have had a severe effect on the germination of crops sown, or about to be sown. The backwardness of the crops, plus the extended wet/cold weather (with probably a lack of sunshine, though there are no contemporary records for this), meant that the harvest that year was also delayed, as well as being of a low yield. From records in Yorkshire, the harvest began around 20th September, and was not finished until the second week of November (Wintringham Parish Register).
Students of history may recall that this was the year when Bonaparte’s Grande Armée was destroyed by the exceptionally cold weather while retreating from Moscow.
1818 – The summer was claimed to be the longest, driest & warmest in living memory. Overall, the anomaly for the three summer months (June July August) was +1.3C, with June (16.4degC/+2.1C) & July (18.2degC/+2.3C) notably warm. However, August was slightly cooler than average, with an anomaly of -0.3C. It was certainly a dry season. At Greenwich, only 40mm of rain was recorded over these three months, with August particularly dry: the value measured at the time (in inches) was 0.1″ . This remarkable summer was followed by a wet autumn.
1825 – July 1825 was exceptionally dry, with rainfall of just 8.2 mm. This is the driest July in the England & Wales Precipitation series (up to 2014 update), and the 10th driest month in that series.
With the extended drought it is not surprising that this month also experienced a hot spell; we only have records for the London & Home Counties area, but in central London (Somerset House) there was a sequence of days from the 12th to 20th (9 days) with the maximum temperature at 80degF with the highest value on the 19th at 89degF.. At Datchet (then Buckinghamshire, now Berkshire, near Windsor), on four days (15th, 17th, 18th & 19th) the temperature in a ‘shaded’ area of a garden was recorded between 90 and 96degF.
A project that has just digitally transcribed 130 years’ worth of handwritten Victorian and later rainfall observations made at rainfall gauges from across the UK and Ireland has revealed that the driest year on record was 1855 – which probably didn’t get much media publicity at the time as the UK was fully engaged with the consequences of its disastrous invasion of Russia’s Crimean peninsular.
This, then, is the ‘Climate’ reality of an actual ‘Net Zero’ in the early 1800’s. So do we think that attempting, at unimaginable cost, to return to a similar level of carbon emissions is worth the pain of destroying the UK’s industry, agriculture, transport, and way of life? In order to ‘achieve’ the same kind and degree of weather that, er, we already have?
‘Extreme’ weather is just that – it’s extreme, but by no means exceptional, and has occurred regularly throughout recorded history. The current fashion for blaming every single weather-induced event and disaster on ‘Climate Change’ is both specious and dangerous.
Here’s some good news:
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/10/06/sensational-new-data-show-decade-long-cooling-across-europe-asia-and-africa/
Now, how do we get the idiot politicians to understand?
Thank you so much Jeffrey, for that painstakingly research, document in real time, information on climate variations in the UK for over 220 years. I have long instinctively known this anecdotally, from a wide assortment of contemporaneous literature, but it is incontrovertible when supported by documented evidence. How many of the net zero, anti-oil, stop-fracking etc.etc. idiots who glue themselves to roads, thus preventing vehicular access to work, school and shops for thousands, as well as risking the lives of those unfortunates requiring ambulance transport to hospital A & E departments, have bothered – would ever bother – to undertake research such as yours. None, I venture to assume! It seems increasingly evident to me that the entire “free” world is wilfully hurtling towards the cliff edge. Our education system is being degraded, freedom of speech is being silenced, anyone disagreeing with the current woke ideology risks losing their job or even being prosecuted. Meanwhile China’s rulers must be rubbing their hands with glee, flogging the West solar panels plus the gizmos required to modify the variable DC generated to usable AC, electric cars which require enormous batteries constructed from minerals mined in slave conditions by African children (what do the BLM lot have to say about THAT?) and all the other electronic gadgetry without which today’s young cannot sustain their often rather trivial lives. “Extreme” weather events have occurred throughout time and with each event we humans have either died or survived. The difference now is that modern communications enable the immediate dissemination of information, thus providing a constant flow of fuel for those obsessed by the “anthropogenic climate catastrophe” ideology.
Thanks for the link to the reports prepared for Trump but all he really did was continue to kick the can down the road. Why didn’t he ask Michael Man, Charles, Greta and Attenborough for their views? It needs somebody to bring experts and non-experts together and for them to agree on the relevant science and empirical evidence. Is there any chance of that happening on any disputed issue?
Last night the failed actor and would be politician, Laurence Fox, was talking about the UK energy crisis, but all he wanted to do was to increase the use of fossil fuel until renewables could be made cheaper and more reliable, and this is because he believes CO2 is the problem and we must aim for net zero. GB News is another can kicker, they never resolve anything and that is probably because the people they want to get on the programme are refusing to be interviewed.
Laurence Fox is not a ‘failed actor’. He was a very successful and popular actor until the fact that he had, shock horror, ‘Right-Wing’ political views became known to the arts world. This fact was obviously completely unacceptable to the inhabitants of Luvvie-land, and he was promptly cancelled.
Yes, Laurence Fox dared to say in public that he didn’t think we were a racist society and for that innocuous comment he was comprehensively cancelled.
As for can kicking, softly, softly catchee monkey! I have come the conclusion that you will never persuade the zealots to just back off this net zero lunacy. They are so wedded to the idea of climate Armageddon they will never give up on believing net zero will solve the (non-existent) problem, the best we can do is persuade them to slow down the idiotic pursuit and allow the use of fossil fuels until such time as there are viable and affordable alternatives to replace them. Meanwhile as more time passes they will be forced to admit that none of the dire predictions have actually come to pass and maybe, just maybe, they were wrong.