Church of England orders parish to rip out brand new gas boilers - "The Church of England has ordered a parish to rip out new gas boilers because they are not “sustainable”. Christ Church Chineham, in Basingstoke, Hants, spent £18,200 last year replacing two failing gas boilers, with the new ones expected to last for at least two decades. But the parish will now be forced to remove the system and pay for an eco-friendly replacement after a church court ruled it had not “adequately explored more sustainable options” before installing them. Christ Church Chineham is the latest church to fall victim to the Church of England’s target of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2030. New rules require churches to obtain a faculty – ecclesiastical planning permission – and prove there is no viable green alternative before new oil or gas boilers can be installed. The church chose to install gas boilers after commissioning a report from a mechanical engineer, who was a member of its congregation, which found heat pumps would require “extensive and intrusive works” and be much more expensive than gas... “The facts of this case clearly show, what we all know, that a heat pump solution costs more to install than a boiler, and the UK Government publicly acknowledges that a heat pump costs more to run than a gas boiler, but evidently the Church of England is so flush with cash it can make these decisions. “That heat pump is probably going to use electricity generated by gas-burning power stations or from chopping down trees for wood chips at Drax, but the appearance of going green matters more than the actuality. “Those gas boilers, being ripped out, could be using green gases such as biomethane, benefiting rural economies, to achieve net zero status but they are being sacrificed on the altar of worshipping heat pumps.”"
Why New Zealand’s disastrous pay-per-mile rollout should worry Labour - "Pay-per-mile for electric cars is a rare concept in countries around the world, but two island nations have led the way. Iceland’s road pricing scheme has been hailed a semi-success, but in New Zealand, the policy has become a deterrent in the switch to electric. The contrasting results will “flash warning signs” for the UK as it prepares to join the small list of countries to go down the pay-per-mile route... A capitulation of EV sales would be a nightmare for Sir Keir Starmer’s Government, and it is one it will desperately be hoping to avoid. But evidence from New Zealand shows it is a possibility... Registrations nosedived from a December 2023 peak of 19pc of new car sales to a lowly 2pc the following April when kilometre charges were brought in. While sales have recovered slightly to 4pc, they remain a long way from their previous highs... The New Zealand government, led by a coalition government, does not harbour the same desires of an EV revolution as ours, yet Labour is following the Kiwis down the same road pricing path."
The global scramble for cheap energy exposes Britain's folly - "It would of course be unacceptable to invade a country and simply take its resources, as we have seen Russia do in Ukraine and many fear China will do in Taiwan. But the fact is that the US does not need Venezuela’s oil, at least for fuel. Fracking has turned America into the world’s largest oil producer and exporter. Venezuela’s oil industry, meanwhile, has been wrecked by 20 years of corrupt socialism, and President Trump has been clear that he wants American companies to be involved in rebuilding it. Properly and fairly exploited, the nation’s huge reserves could provide the basis for prosperity for Venezuelans and US investors. Venezuelans presently facing crippling poverty might well consider that the nearby superpower which had brought about the change was a good business partner and ally. Better, probably, than a faraway one such as China which had been planning to do business with Maduro. That is a matter of global significance. The US understands that influence over access to natural resources, both to supply your own industry and to deny them to rivals, is crucial to economic success. China, still the world’s largest oil importer, will be watching events in Venezuela with understandable concern. Trump has acted to strengthen America’s role in energy markets and so advance its geopolitical interests. By contrast the British Government seemingly does everything in its power to worsen our energy position. We have punished the once-lucrative North Sea with windfall taxes and by refusing any new exploration licenses. Norway is still developing fields that we have chosen to ignore. Our energy costs have soared out of control as a result of deliberate policy choices, leading to industrial prices twice those of France and four times those of the US, crippling our manufacturers. We have bet everything on wind power that increasingly looks too expensive and intermittent to sustain a modern developed nation. Worse still, wind depends on Chinese equipment. We have failed to build the more reliable nuclear alternative that would have been a far better source of zero carbon power. The results of all those decisions are now becoming painfully clear as Britain loses economic ground. The energy we need is horribly expensive and undependable. Households are squeezed and crippling energy bills mean that it is becoming ever harder to run a business of any kind, let alone a manufacturing one. It is impossible to imagine any recent British Prime Minister taking the kind of ruthless action President Trump has just authorised. Lawyerly Sir Keir Starmer would almost certainly prioritise the UK’s net zero treaty commitments, futile though they are given our tiny national carbon emissions. The failure of the British political class on energy costs is a shocking act of national sabotage that is only emphasised by the readiness of superpowers to act ruthlessly in the opposite direction. If there is one lesson to be learnt from events in Venezuela over the weekend it is surely this: energy security is also national security. It is time the British Government starts to take it far more seriously."
Eco-warriors put people off going green, warns environment professor - "Eco-warriors scare people from going green, a leading environmental professor has warned. Prof Christian Dunn, the associate pro-vice chancellor of Bangor University in Wales, said that “preaching and fear-mongering” by the green lobby made sensible people recoil from their message. Writing for The Telegraph, the award-winning scientist and broadcaster warned that “too much fraught arm-waving” had “helped to create” public disengagement. He said: “For years, we have led with catastrophe. We have told people that saving the planet means giving things up: cheaper food, warm homes, family holidays abroad, cars, choice. “We have moralised, shamed, fined, taxed and scolded. And then we have acted surprised when large sections of the public decided they wanted no part of it.” The pushback against puritanical environmental policies and messaging has been dubbed “greenlash”, and according to Prof Dunn, the public was fed up with environmentalists making them feel guilty for living their lives or wanting to enjoy themselves... “Public disengagement with climate and environmental issues is usually blamed on denial, populism or social media misinformation. However, a harder truth is that those of us who work on environmental issues have helped to create the problem ourselves.” Prof Dunn argued that everything Just Stop Oil did was “off-putting” and had the opposite effect from what was intended. A poll by YouGov in 2023 asking whether people had a favourable opinion of Just Stop Oil found that 68 per cent of people did not. When the campaign group blocked motorways, 52 per cent said their sympathies lay with the motorists rather than the protesters. Three-quarters of people also agreed with lengthy jail sentences for protesters who defaced priceless works of art or caused criminal property damage. In 2011, a Georgetown University study published in the Journal of Marketing showed that barracking messages about green issues tend to stop compliance and advised gentler forms of persuasion. The Sustainability Directory, an online platform helping businesses be more green, warned last year against “eco-shaming”, saying that it could feel like a “personal attack, leading to feelings of defensiveness or resentment rather than motivation”. Its website says: “When people feel attacked or judged, they are more likely to become defensive and resistant to change...
'This is where environmentalism has gone wrong. Too often, it has sounded like an ideological purity test rather than a practical project to make life better. It has become politicised, polarised and brittle – and people are turning away.'"
Miliband hits landlords with £10bn net zero upgrade tax - "The Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary has announced new energy efficiency rules for rental properties, despite being warned that tenants will end up paying the price. Under the new rules, landlords will have to spend up to £10,000 on upgrades, including insulation, double glazing and heat pumps to meet the requirements. Officials have admitted the plans risk driving up rents as owners recoup the costs from tenants, or sell up and shrink the available pool of homes. And government analysis shows the impacts are set to fall hardest in the Red Wall and rural areas, where Labour are battling Reform and the Tories... Ministers have insisted the reforms will save renters hundreds of pounds on their energy bills and spare people from living in cold, damp homes... “Because rental prices are included in the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), this could translate into a short-term inflationary effect.” Officials also cited internal government research, which found “a quarter of landlords would contemplate leaving the market” in light of the policy."
Dale Vince: ‘Heat pumps have been mis-sold’ - "Dale Vince, a leading Labour donor, said that heat pumps don’t “save you money” as he criticised the “mis-selling” of the devices. Heat pumps, which are promoted as a green alternative to traditional gas boilers, form a key part of Ed Miliband’s £15bn energy plan, which was announced last week. It aims to install solar panels, heat pumps, double glazing and insulation in five million low-income households, at a £5bn cost to the taxpayer. Landlords also face a bill of up to £10,000 by 2030 under energy efficiency plans designed to push through upgrades. But speaking to BBC Politics Live on Tuesday, Mr Vince, the founder of energy firm Ecotricity, said: “I have been using heat pumps for about 20 years, so I know what they can do and what they can’t do. “I do object to the fairly general narrative that they can save you money, because that is a very rare circumstance. You do need a well-insulated home just to break even.” Mr Vince, who has in the past funded activist groups including Just Stop Oil, said that to be cost-effective, a heat pump needs to have a coefficient of performance of at least four. Coefficiency performance is the measurement of how much heat is produced per unit of electricity used. He claimed that for heat pumps in the UK, the average was just 2.8, which meant homeowners tended to see their bills increase by 30pc."
Energy industry ‘faces collapse over Miliband’s delusional net zero plan’ - "Britain’s energy industry faces collapse thanks to Labour’s “chaotic and needless” rundown of the oil and gas sector, one of its biggest union backers has warned. Louise Gilmour, Scotland secretary of the GMB union, says “delusional” net zero policies championed by Ed Miliband are causing “arguably the most destructive industrial calamity in our nation’s history”.Ms Gilmour directly attacks Mr Miliband over the “dismal” effects of his policies, which are killing British jobs and creating jobs in China for the ever growing number of wind farms the Government insists on building. She has backed a new report that says Britain will permanently lose its energy independence unless there is a major shift in Government policy. It puts Labour on a collision course with its third-biggest union backer, which donates £1m a year to the party. The GMB has previously warned that Mr Miliband’s rush to net zero is costing jobs, but this is the most scathing attack to date on the Government by the union, which has 560,000 members. The report by the Jobs Foundation, titled Cliff Edge, says 200 jobs per week are being lost because of Labour’s ban on North Sea exploration and taxes that are swallowing up companies’ entire profits. In some cases, oil and gas firms are paying 120 per cent tax on their profits because of the Government’s energy profits levy (EPL). It says investors are considering putting their money into Nigeria’s energy sector instead of Britain’s, saying the African country is a “more stable regime”. Ms Gilmour writes in a foreword to the report: “Our governments [in Westminster and Holyrood] seem stricken, almost delusional, in the face of onrushing disaster, insisting we must ignore today’s reality and believe in tomorrow’s dreams.” She says Britain will need oil and gas for decades as it builds up its renewable energy capacity. But instead of drilling for new sources of North Sea oil and gas, Britain is relying on imports from Norway, which found a huge new oil field last year because it has not banned exploration. Countries like Norway, Ms Gilmour says, “are not self-harming at such a pace and scale” as the UK... The oil and gas industry employs around 115,000 people in the UK, with another 90,000 jobs in hotels, restaurants, retail and other sectors relying on the money that the oil industry brings in. According to the Jobs Foundation’s report, as few as 57,000 people will be employed in the oil and gas sector by the early 2030s, meaning 200 jobs being lost every week. It would be catastrophic for a city like Aberdeen, the hub of offshore oil and gas production, as well as being a disaster for the wider economy. Ms Gilmour suggests the effects on jobs and communities of Labour’s net zero policies will be worse than the effects of the closure of coal mines in the 1980s."
Shane Goldmacher on X - "NEW: For the first time in years, Dems are sounding the alarm about $$ problems. Inside a FL strategy session with top WH, Trump aides last week as RNC preps for new spending rules from Supreme Court. Me and @teddyschleifer on the money factor in 2026."
Chris on X - "Legitimately terrible news for Democrats. Future Forward *by itself* raised $182 million in 2019-2020 and again in the 2021-2022 midterm election cycle. $384 million total over 4 years. Then it blew the walls off of fundraising in 2023-2024, raising and spending $560 million only to lose all 7 swing states. The money arguably did get Harris 74 million votes and saved some races down-ballot. Now Future Forward has raised almost nothing. Under $10 million last year."
Latinx Adjacent Doctor PhD on X - "Biden spent as much cash on “wind and solar” in BBB bill as it would have cost to build 100 1.5GW nuclear reactors (40% of US power demand) None of that money went to actual wind or solar, but it did wind up back in Dem party coffers. That’s not any option anymore clearly"
AG on X - "This is absurd. Several left-wing activists helped author the official judicial reference manual which judges use to help guide them on decision related to science topics to try to skew decisions in favor of plaintiffs suing over climate change."
AG on X - "It appears that the Federal Judicial Center has removed the chapter on climate science from the judicial manual after it was exposed that various activists helped write it."
Steve Milloy on X - "Climate Snowjob: Central Park had 15 inches of snow at 8am this morning. Recall these "End of Snow" headlines the NYTimes shoveled at us in 2014 and 2024. What's over is the climate hoax."
Chris Martz on X - "No serious scientist, myself included, questions that at least some of the increase in temperature since the 1850s has been anthropogenic. The actual questions most skeptics ask are:
1⃣ How much of the warming has been man-made? No scientist can tell you without having to cite models that are tuned to get a certain result.
2⃣ Given the quality of life continues to improve, why are we continuing to spend billions of dollars a year on what is, objectively speaking, a non-problem?"
Climate spending costs more than climate spending does - "Across the world, public finances are stretched dangerously thin. Per person growth continues dropping while costs are climbing for pensions, education, health care, and defence. These urgent priorities could easily require an additional three to six per cent of GDP. Yet green campaigners are loudly calling for governments to spend up to 25 per cent of our GDP choking growth in the name of climate change. If climate Armageddon were imminent, they would have a point. The truth is far more prosaic. Two major scientific estimates of the total global cost of climate change have been published recently. These are not individual studies, which can vary (with the costliest studies getting copious press coverage). Instead, they are meta-studies based on the entirety of the peer-reviewed literature. One is authored by one of the most cited climate economists, Richard Tol; the other is by the only climate economist to have won the Nobel prize, William Nordhaus. The studies suggest that a temperature increase of 3°C by the end of the century — which is slightly pessimistic, based on current trends — will have a global cost equivalent to between 1.9 and 3.1 per cent of global GDP. To put this into context, the United Nations estimates that by the end of the century, the average person will be 450 per cent as rich as he or she is today. But because of climate change, he or she will feel “only” 435-440 per cent as rich as today. Why is this so different from the impression we have been given in the media? Alarmist campaigners and credulous journalists fail to account for the simple fact that people are remarkably adaptable and tackle most climate problems at low cost... people are more resilient when they’re richer and can access better technology. Extremist climate campaigners and far-left politicians reveal their true colours when they push for “de-growth” to cut emissions. Making people worse off and reversing gains against extreme poverty would be a tragic mistake, making it harder to address all our other problems. Moreover, it is laughable to think the West’s strategic adversaries, such as Vladimir Putin, will embrace a similar approach. More responsible politicians “only” want to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But this approach still means slowing growth in the name of climate change, by forcing businesses and individuals to use less-efficient green energy instead of fossil fuels. The total costs would be enormous — US$15-US$37 trillion every year for the rest of the century, equivalent to 15-37 per cent of global GDP today. Given that wealthier Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries will foot most of this bill, the price tag will be the equivalent to each person in the rich world paying over US$10,000 every year. Not only will this be politically impossible, but the benefit will be a far smaller one per cent of GDP across the century. The real cost of inefficient climate policy is that it distracts resources and attention from other priorities. Europe offers an object lesson. Twenty-five years ago, the European Union proclaimed that with massive investments in R&D throughout the economy, it would become “the most competitive and the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world.” It failed abjectly: innovation spending hardly budged and the EU is now far behind the United States, South Korea and even China. Instead the EU switched focus and in its myopic climate obsession opted for a “sustainable” economy over a sound one. The EU’s decision to increase its 2030 emission reduction targets was pure virtue-signalling. The cost is likely to top several trillion Euros, yet the entire effort will merely reduce temperatures by the end of the century by a trivial 0.004°C. Not focusing on innovation has stunted Europe. The Euro area has seen anemic annual growth over the past decade of just over one per cent per person. For the two trillion euros it has spent on symbolic climate policy, the EU could have lived up to its own innovation spending targets over the last two decades. Investment in innovation could have made the EU and the world much richer in the long run, generating 500 times more benefits than its symbolic climate policy benefits. Crucially, it would have allowed the EU more leeway to tackle other key challenges like pensions, education, health care and defence. The rest of the world needs to pay heed to Europe’s example and stop wasting money on bad climate policies."
Climate investment is only growth opportunity of 21st century, says leading economist - "Investment in climate action is the economic growth story of the 21st century, while growth fuelled by fossil fuels is futile because the damage it causes ends in self-destruction, the economist Nicholas Stern has said."
Climate change hystericists are dumb enough to think that everyone else will be fooled by their obvious lies. But facts are no match for religious belief
Clearly, greedy companies are more evil than stupid, since they are not piling into "investment in climate action" since that's the "only growth opportunity", but rather waste money destroying the planet
Europeans’ ‘psychological bias’ to climate change risks slowing down progress, warns study - "“Even when people recognise the real risks posed by climate change, many seem to perceive these risks as primarily affecting others,” says Magnus Bergquist, a senior lecturer in Psychology at the University of Gothenburg. “This is a psychological bias that, in the worst case, can slow down climate adaptation and mitigation efforts.”"
If you're not hysterical, there's something wrong with you
Terence Corcoran: The 'existential' climate crisis is fading away - "While Dunn blames the decline of climate policy on eco-warriors and climate activists — including himself — the fear-mongering distortion of climate science actually reaches to the top of the political hierarchy. One of the world’s leading catastrophists is United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. “We are on a highway to climate hell, with our foot still on the accelerator,” he once said in a speech. In another, he warned that we are “like the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs; we’re having an outsized impact. In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not only in danger. We are the danger.” Another high-ranking member of the environmentalism-gone-wrong movement has been Prime Minister Mark Carney. In his 2021 book Value(s): Building a Better World for All, Carney warned that climate change is creating a “vicious cycle in which rising sea levels and more extreme weather are damaging property, forcing migration (and) impairing assets.” Later he praised Greta Thunberg and her sensational activist rhetoric: “We are in the beginning of mass extinction.”... Another push toward the global weakening of the climate issue is Trump’s decision to pull out of the Convention on Climate Change and the IPCC. Other nations condemned the move as a major mistake that will inflict pain on the U.S. economy. Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief and executive secretary of the UN convention, described the move as a “colossal own goal” that “can only harm the U.S. economy, jobs and living standards, as wildfires, floods, mega-storms and droughts get rapidly worse.” That’s the kind of language Dunn warns does not advance the climate cause, although climate moderate Roger Pielke Jr. agrees that pulling out of UN climate agencies leaves the U.S. with zero influence over the inner workings of global climate policy and science. Pielke argues logically that the U.S. engagement in multilateral organizations is a source of “soft power that has proven meaningful to advance U.S. interests — obviously in economics and defence, but also in 2026 in science as well.” If the U.S. is not formally participating in the UN processes, chances increase that the IPCC and UN agencies will become fully captured by activists who will “weaponize” them against U.S. interests, something Pielke says is already happening . An example is the continuing production of dubious studies claiming extreme weather events are on the increase, thereby feeding the Big Green Scare... An even greater impact of polarized climate politics is the degree to which governments and industries are forced to backtrack on policies all too willingly imposed under pressure from green activists spreading panic. Carbon taxes, electric vehicle regulations, ill-timed investment incentives, and corporate financial schemes such as the net-zero banking alliance imposed to satisfy catastrophists are being abandoned. The great climate climbdown — by pension funds , science, banks and governments — is an acknowledgement that climate change exists, but it is not existential."
Not letting climate change hysteria destroy your country apparently inflicts pain on the economy
Taxpayers foot £4.5m bill for EV ad blitz - with Dragons' Den star Sara Davies paid to promote electric cars - "HARD-PRESSED taxpayers are footing a £4.5million government ad blitz encouraging people to buy costly electric cars... The ad blitz comes as electric car demand struggles to keep pace with government targets. More than 90,000 new cars were registered last month – the strongest February since 2004. But the share of fully electric vehicles slipped to 24.2 per cent, down from 25.3 per cent a year earlier. Manufacturers warn the figures show demand is still well below the government’s target for EVs to make up a third of sales. Shadow Transport Secretary Richard Holden blasted the spending, telling The Sun: “Labour are wasting millions of pounds trying to convince drivers to buy electric cars they don’t want – including handing taxpayers’ cash to a multi-millionaire influencer! “If EVs truly sold themselves, Labour would not need a £4.5 million advertising campaign to push them – or over £1 billion in taxpayer subsidies to try and bribe people with their own money to buy them."
