BY THE end of the century, cities such as London, Hull and Cardiff will be under the sea, says the latest research. Now where have we heard that before?
It is of course exactly the same scam they wheel out every year to scare the public witless in the hope of persuading them to give up fossil fuels and return to the Dark Ages for their sins.
The Daily Mail have fallen for this latest crock of nonsense, hook line and sinker. They report: ‘The idea of entire cities being plunged underwater might sound like the plot of the latest science-fiction blockbuster. But it could become a reality in just 75 years, according to a terrifying study.
‘Researchers from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, have predicted that global sea levels could rise by a staggering 6.2ft (1.9metres) by 2100 if carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions continue to increase [meaning that] towns and cities around the world could be plunged underwater – including Hull, London and Cardiff. ‘
The article is full of images of cities under water, including the 305ft Statue of Liberty with only her torch above the surface. It also features maps highlighting the areas of the country which would be flooded, courtesy of the Green Blob-funded climate lobbyists Climate Central.
This new research basically takes the already absurd UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts of sea level rise and doubles them. Meanwhile back in the real world, sea levels around Britain have been rising at the same steady rate of around 2mm a year since the late 19th century, long before supposed ‘man-made global warming’ began. And the rate is not even accelerating, as often falsely claimed.
The chart below for The Battery, New York, shows the massive disconnect between actual sea level rise and the various official projections.
https://www.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global.html
Of course we’ve had silly scare stories like this one for years now. As long ago as 1957, physicist Dr Joseph Kaplan was warning that the oceans would rise by 40ft in the ‘next 50 or 60 years’. In 1983, the US Environmental Protection Agency reported that sea level could rise as much as 11ft by the end of the 21st century. In 1989, the director of the UN Environment Program claimed that entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels by 2000, while in 1995 the IPCC’s scientists said that most of the beaches of the US east coast would have disappeared within 25 years.
One of the leading climate scientists of recent decades, James Hansen, then head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was very specific in 1988. He claimed that New York’s West Side Highway would be under water within 40 years. Needless to say, the highway is still there and full of traffic.
As for the Maldives, the perennial poster child for sea level scares, not only are the isles not under the waves now, but they have carried on building airports and holiday complexes as if they were going out of fashion.
The simple fact is that sea levels around the world have been rising at the same barely measurable rate since the Little Ice Age ended in the mid-19th century. There is fully documented evidence that glaciers from the Alps to Alaska and from South America to New Zealand began retreating at this time, and often at much faster rates than now.
There is also plentiful evidence of rapid glacier growth during the Little Ice Age, historically documented at the time in Switzerland, for instance, and the discovery of trees uncovered by melting glaciers in Alaska and Patagonia which have been carbon-dated back to the Middle Ages. The gradual rise in sea levels we see now is part of a much longer cycle of events.
London did not disappear beneath the waves in the Middle Ages, and it won’t this time either.
It’s only money!
ED Miliband has handed another £2billion of your money in subsidies to the Drax power station in North Yorkshire so that they can carry on burning virgin forests for another four years.
In any normal world, this would be the very definition of insanity. The current contract for three of the four units at Drax expires in 2027, having already netted them an estimated £8billion in subsidies. Miliband is so desperate for the reliable dispatchable electricity they produce that he has agreed a four-year extension at even higher prices. This is despite the undoubted environmental damage they cause by burning wood pellets.
The new agreed price is £158/MWh at today’s prices, and this will go up with inflation every year. Currently, depending on market prices, Drax typically earns about £140/MWh. Given that the wholesale market price for electricity has been around £70/MWh for most of the last year, the cost of subsidising Drax will be around £2billion, all paid for on electricity bills. The higher price will also apply to the fourth unit, which has a separate contract that runs to 2031 at a price of £138/MWh.
Miliband has tried to justify this latest piece of profligacy by quoting an ‘independent’ analysis by business management consultant Baringa, which claimed that the deal could save consumers £3.1billion. This analysis was far from independent, though, having been commissioned by Drax themselves for the purpose of lobbying the government. In reality, gas power stations are supplying electricity at half the price offered to Drax, so Baringa’s claims do not hold water.
Burning wood pellets in power stations is even more polluting than coal, as they are less energy dense. (I am talking here of real pollutants, not CO2). The practice is also responsible for widespread environmental devastation in North America, where Drax sources most of its wood. Environmentalists there have been alarmed for several years at the impact on virgin forests, where whole swathes of woodland are being cut down for pellet mills. Drax maintains it uses only offcuts and waste wood, but this is disputed by locals who testify to seeing lorries full of whole tree trunks trucked into pellet plants owned by Drax. The BBC’s Panorama reported on this last year – see here.
The logic of using biomass is that when the forests regrow, the carbon emitted from burning will be reabsorbed by replacement forest. But this new growth will take decades, by which time yet more trees will have been cut down and burnt. Moreover evidence from America suggests that these forests will never grow back again, certainly not for a long time. They have taken centuries to get to the stage they are now, and there is no interest in replanting them.
The whole thing is, of course, a con. The EU says that emissions from biomass don’t count in countries’ CO2 budgets, so it offers an alternative to gas, the emissions from which do count towards Net Zero. Neither the EU or UK care that more carbon dioxide is actually being pumped into the air when Drax is switched on, not less.
You might say it is a pact with the devil!
