Normal science is a thing of the past

'Normal weather' is a thing of the past, Met Office meteorologist says

• Ian Lisk, chief meteorologist at the Met Office, has warned business leaders at the AirportsUK annual conference that “normal weather” is now a thing of the past.
• Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe in the UK, with human-induced climate change heavily driving record temperatures.

The post headline could also read -

Normal science is a thing of the distant past or

Normal veracity is a thing of the distant past.

Both science and veracity in the public arena have become so corrupted in certain important contexts that 'normal' has come to signify 'corrupt' in those contexts. It has become 'normal' to propagate preposterous misinformation.

But we already know that. 

Rabble Babble

Angela Rayner fund used by councils for 'anti-right propaganda' to stop Nigel Farage becoming PM

Angela Rayner’s £15million community recovery fund financed "anti-Right-wing propaganda" via training materials designed to counter support for Reform UK and the Conservatives, according to fresh documents...

According to the documents, the programme included guidance on countering anti-immigration arguments, opposing protests and preventing working-class communities from moving towards right-wing politics.

An online booking form for a training session warned of an “impending disaster of a Reform UK government”.

Other materials described Nigel Farage as an “authoritarian populist" and encouraged activists to challenge narratives linking migration to pressure on public services and housing.

It's a tad trivial this, and all very crude, playing transparent language games such as “impending disaster of a Reform UK government” and  “authoritarian populist". 

Oh well, the chance of worthwhile political reform seems vanishingly slender anyway. If Reform UK is seen as a genuine threat to the Establishment, which it probably isn't, then there would be no limits to the measures taken to forestall that.

Meanwhile, if we are playing language games, then Andrew Burnham does come across as comfortable with becoming an authoritarian populist himself, although given his limitations and the rabble behind him, he may find the populist aspect more troublesome than expected. 

Maybe Burnhams impending disaster beckons already -  


Ex-Burnham adviser says PM is already on the 'downslope' and brands social care plan 'unfundable'

A former adviser to Andy Burnham has warned that the Prime Minister is already on the ‘downslope’ less than three months after taking office.

In a brutal intervention, Andy Haldane said his one-time ally’s ‘high-water mark’ has passed and predicted economic and political trouble as families face a ‘cost-of-living squeeze’ this winter.

And he described Mr Burnham’s plans for a new national care service for people in later life as well-intentioned ‘but probably unfundable’ given the country’s ‘precarious’ fiscal position.

Taking Us for Fools

A Climate Depot piece by Roger Pielke on a familiar problem, the success of climate propaganda. Familiar but worth reading because of Pielke's stress on what he calls the use of symbols, authority, and institutions of expertise to build the propaganda.


Taking Us for Fools: How a turnkey method attributes any trend to climate change

By ROGER PIELKE JR.

Excerpt: One of the most brazen — and successful — propaganda campaigns sits out in plain sight. I am referring to the concerted effort by climate advocates to create a belief that “climate change” causes bad weather and disasters, and that we can prevent those bad things from happening with climate policies.

At the center of the propaganda campaign are scientists who perform political alchemy by turning the symbols, authority, and institutions of expertise into public and policy maker (mis)understandings of climate science. These scientists all well know that “climate policy” — however construed — cannot reduce the number or intensity of extreme weather events in any meaningful or detectable way in my lifetime, or even my future grandkids’ lifetimes.

I am using the term propaganda here as a technical term, which Harold Lasswell defined almost a century ago as, “the management of collective attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbols.”

The UK is a climate-science superpower

UK to join new EU ocean science scheme amid El Nino concerns

Environment Secretary Angela Eagle will today announce Britain is joining the scheme, Sky News can reveal, sharing much more data from bodies like the Met Office with counterparts in the EU and Canada than previously.

Her department said the initiative would help inform future flood defences and coastal planning, helping to protect the country from extreme weather like storms and flooding.

She told Sky News the UK is a "climate-science superpower" and said joining the alliance would "allow us to work with our allies to better protect our oceans and shield communities from the impacts of climate change".


Merely another reason to regard UK government-sponsored science as a bleak, diseased wasteland of political posturing, dishonesty, lost opportunities, squandered resources, and endemic corruption.

Merely another reason to pull out an Arnold Bennett quote about conspicuous ritualistic waste by the leisured class, because that's what it is. Nobody expects this game to have any value apart from handing out unearned status and remuneration to those who play it. 

In that sense the UK certainly is a climate-science superpower, a major player in a dirty game.

The great principle of conspicuous ritualistic waste had been illustrated in a manner to satisfy the most exacting standard of the leisured class; and incidentally a subject of talk was provided.

Arnold Bennett - The Roll-Call (1916)

UN Twaddle Exhibition

I couldn't see anything to enthuse about in this brief Evening Standard report of Andy Starmer's UN speech, but here are some bits and pieces I've picked out to suggest he's no improvement on Sir Keir Burnham.

Five key points from Andy Burnham's first major international speech

Russian disinformation

He used the speech to announce a new National Centre for Information Defence to fight Russian disinformation.

AI

Mr Burnham said the UK would work towards agreeing a set of global principles and standards to ensure transparency, access to AI models, and that development happens safely.

New national security deal with the US

The Prime Minister said the meeting was “excellent”, while Mr Trump said that Mr Burnham was a “man he could do business with”.

‘Decade-long plan’

Mr Burnham confirmed that his government will unveil a new decade-long plan for the country later this year.

The plan will focus on getting more people into work, especially young people, as well as easing the cost-of-living crisis for most people,

The Prime Minister did not announce any specific measures during the speech.

Middle East

Mr Burnham concluded his speech by saying: “You can count on us to stand up for those long standing British values of fairness and justice.

Distorted

Make voting compulsory to prevent ‘distorted’ results, Kinnock urges Burnham

The former Labour leader and mentor to the Prime Minister said the move would help strengthen ‘democracy and citizenship’ in the UK.

It may be obvious, but as nothing democratically enlightened ever oozed out of Neil Kinnock, let us see what this is all about... 

Ah yes...


Alongside the parliamentary efforts, academics from the US, Australia, South America, the UK and Europe are poised to send a letter to No 10 urging the Prime Minister to act.

The letter says: “Inequalities in turnout mean those who do vote do not reflect the wider population, but are richer, older, whiter, and more economically secure than the UK public at large.

“This has warped British politics, and risks a crisis of democratic legitimacy.”

How to convert climate into an aesthetic emotion

Trump’s EPA rolls back limits on climate pollution from power plants

Throughout Barack Obama's and Joe Biden's presidencies, the Democratic administrations took steps to address the climate crisis by imposing pollution limits on, among other things, coal-fired power plants.

Donald Trump's administration continues to take dramatic steps in the opposite direction.

In the latest development, the Republican's Environmental Protection Agency confirmed Monday that it is scrapping rules that limit climate pollution from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas. As The Associated Press noted, the move, according to Trump's EPA, would "remove more than $300 billion in costs for the industry."

In a wider sense and as we already know, behind this standard piece of climate propaganda is the destruction of private lives, the same creeping trend Cyril Connolly observed in 1944. Now of course the trend is global and even more insidious, but still based on a weird, communistic fraternity. 

Fraternity is the State’s bribe to the individual; It is the one virtue which can bring courage to members of a materialist society. All state propaganda exalts comradeship, for it is this gregarious heard-sense and herd-smell which keeps people from thinking and so reconciles them to the destruction of their private lives. A problem for government writers, or for the war artists in their war cemetery's: how to convert Fraternity into an aesthetic emotion?

Palinurus (Cyril Connolly) – The Unquiet Grave (1944)

Similarly, the protest at Trump's EPA restriction has nothing whatever to do with the climate and everything to do with converting the global climate into an aesthetic emotion. The global aspect is important, the real climate isn't. 

Follow the donations

Charles Talbot has a topical Critic piece on the political duplicity behind agitation over donations to Reform UK. Not news to anyone paying attention, but the whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of how heavily the political dice are loaded.

Also a reminder that the Uniparty effectively buys voters with their own taxes, but we already know that too.  

Follow the donations

The left’s outrage over Reform’s donors ignores where much more political money goes

Controversy surrounding Reform donations over the last few months, a story which has rolled intermittently but inexorably on, may finally have been upstaged in the media spotlight by two record-breaking donations of £36m each from crypto billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne. Both men have desire to help Nigel Farage achieve victory at the next general election...

Leave aside for a moment the generous donations to the Labour Party from unions, or the £4m they received from hedge fund Quadrature days after the election was called in July 2024. Or the fact that this amount is about on par with the amount of money used to contest the Michigan senate race. The criticisms miss a fundamental point. Political donations are not confined to the millions received by political parties fighting it out in the electoral arena. Far greater sums are pushed annually through the myriad charities which fight for political causes. These dwarf the annual income of political parties — and are deployed to advance no less ideological causes.

Cooking With Numbers - Recipe £380

Shimeon Lee has a useful TPA piece on what is called "The Poverty Premium" by the charity Fair by Design and the University of Bristol. 

A closer look at “The Poverty Premium”

A curious piece appeared in the New Statesman last month, claiming that low income households pay hundreds of pounds more for the same essentials as everyone else. The article rests on a longstanding series called “The Poverty Premium” by charity Fair by Design and the University of Bristol, which aims to quantify additional costs faced by lower income households. Their latest estimate puts this figure at £380 a year. The author’s solution? More welfare spending and market interventions in the name of “economic fairness”.

But is any of this true? This edition of a closer look examines how that number has been constructed, finding that much of the premium is either not really an extra cost or has surprisingly little to do with poverty.

For anyone paying attention, the conclusion holds no surprises whatever, but the whole piece is well worth reading as it raises the familiar question of concocted numbers used to push a political agenda. 

It's almost fascinating to see numbers being herded like sheep towards the Fabian pen. Straightforward lying would be more honest.

Conclusion

Unsurprisingly, the report calls for more welfare and subsidies, alongside micromanaging supermarket prices and even expanding 20 mph zones. These poorly designed policies are bad enough, but what is worse is that they are based on evidence that not just fails to stand up to scrutiny but points in the complete opposite direction from reality.

Mayor deeply concerned about twaddle overshoot

Mayor of London 'deeply concerned' by Heathrow expansion plans

Allowing a third runway to be built at Heathrow would “overshoot” the UK’s legally binding climate targets, according to a report...

In a statement, Lord Khan said: “I am deeply concerned about the potential adverse impacts of Heathrow expansion on air quality, noise pollution, our environment and the transport networks in the capital and beyond.

“While aviation plays an important role in our economy and helps to keep us connected as a global city, any growth must not come at the expense of Londoners’ health or our environment.”

We expect politicians to emit twaddle, we're used to that, but to emit it all the time must be some kind of record. Although the thought that Khan might be champion twaddler does lead to a few names who could compete. 

Jeremy Corbyn for example, he'd offer some stiff competition, as would Ed Miliband, Ed Davey and Harriet Harman. Zack Polanski is cantering up on the inside too.

  

A Matter of Emphasis

Growing proportion of deaths associated with hottest days, figures suggest

There were an estimated 4,652 heat-related deaths in England and Wales in 2022, the highest figure for any year from 1988 to 2025.

A growing proportion of deaths in England and Wales are associated with days that have the hottest temperatures, new analysis suggests.

While cold weather has historically led to higher levels of mortality than conditions of extreme heat, the gap between the two is likely to have narrowed in recent years.


More numbers and two graphs follow before we come across this -


The ONS figures are modelled estimates of mortality associated with the coldest 2.5% and hottest 2.5% of days each year, not actual counts of deaths directly caused by extreme weather.


After more numbers and another graph we come across the politics with some broad hints about future funding -


Climate transition minister Katie White said: “These shocking figures represent thousands of families who have lost someone they love.

“We’re not waiting for climate change to arrive, we’re living in the middle of it, and this summer’s record-breaking heat has brought that home.

“That’s why we’re taking some of the biggest action in a generation, preparing hospitals for extreme heat, rolling out air-to-air heat pumps to cool as well as heat homes, and accelerating clean homegrown power to tackle the root causes of climate change.

“But we won’t stop there, bringing together our best minds, backing bold new ideas and pushing forward solutions that protect the people and places we love.”

The cost of living and reasons to be sceptical

Shimeon Lee has a topical TPA piece on defects in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s “cost of living tracker.”


A closer look at "JRF's cost of living tracker"

Active users of X may have seen a viral clip last week of LBC host Nick Ferrari pushing back on the claim that 7 million households supposedly cannot afford a 50p toothbrush. The figure comes from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s “cost of living tracker” which claims that 7.4 million low income families are going without essentials in 2026.

This has been uncritically repeated by outlets like the BBC who featured a 77 year old woman claiming she cannot even afford to turn on her oven - more dramatic than anything actually measured in the JRF survey. The same woman has appeared in many similar articles before, making outlandish claims like only having seven hot meals a year. Stories and reports like these are used to build the case for ever more government spending, with the JRF calling for the universal credit standard allowance to rise by as much as 68 per cent, for example.

Yet there is reason to be sceptical. In the BBC article, the same woman who cannot afford to use her oven reported spending £50 a week on petrol - enough to drive 300 miles. Exactly why a pensioner is driving the equivalent of London to Newcastle every week is unclear, especially considering she couldn’t afford a car in 2024.


No surprises but the whole piece is well worth reading.


Ultimately, the problem with measuring hardship in this way is that going without some things does not necessarily mean lacking the money for it. People make different choices about how to allocate their resources. In the same 2023 JRF survey, 15 per cent of those who were “going without essentials” also said they did not intend to reduce socialising due to cost, with 15 per cent also economically inactive. More welfare should not be the default answer, and when extraordinary claims and common sense contradict, common sense should prevail.

Shameless cherry-picking

Nigel Farage is now even less popular than Starmer just before his resignation

Nigel Farage’s popularity among the public has plummeted to its lowest level in the past ten years, a new YouGov survey has found, placing him below Keir Starmer just before the PM resigned.

The pollster found just 22% have a favourable view of the Reform UK leader, while 68% are unfavourable – including 56% who say they are very unfavourable.

That 46% gap between his negative and positive rating is bigger than the 45% recorded by Starmer before he announced he was stepping down.


A chap does not have to support Farage in order to notice that this is shameless cherry-picking. The story is correct if you choose a YouGov poll and ignore polls from Deltapoll, Opinium, More in Common, Survation, Freshwater Strategy and Ipsos.

The variation in results is very large too, that would be worth mentioning, but of course data uncertainties are not what the story is about.

Easily checked too.

A barefoot protest would be more convincing

Approval of new drilling in North Sea ‘would break Labour’s manifesto’

Protesters, who were dressed as firefighters in front of a banner reading ‘world on fire’, gathered in London.

 

Source

Could be wrong, but from what I see those people are wearing shoes mostly made from oil-derived products such as polyurethane, nylon and EVA.

A barefoot protest would be more convincing. Not much more convincing in summer though.

The Price of 5 A Day

In early July, Shimeon Lee had a useful TPA piece on a Zack Polanski claim about food prices in 2050. 

To the surprise of nobody but Green voters, the claim turns out to be worthless. Worth reading but yet again it does raise an example of the perennial issue - why is rational voting such a forlorn hope? 


A closer look at "The Price of 5 A Day?

Green Party leader Zack Polanski recently made the alarming claim that the price of fresh fruits and vegetables is set to rise 170 per cent by 2050, making them “unaffordable” for many households. This figure comes from a report by the Autonomy Institute, a progressive research organisation, and has already been used to support calls for more climate spending, a higher minimum wage, increased welfare and unprecedented interventions like price caps.

But what is actually behind the 170 per cent figure, and does it really show that fruits and vegetables are about to move beyond the reach of ordinary families? Unsurprisingly, the claim does not stand up to scrutiny. This edition of a closer look examines how this figure has been calculated and what’s wrong with it.

Mass sleep deprivation event

Heatwave leaves the UK in grip of a ‘mass sleep deprivation event’

As Britain endures its third heatwave of the summer, up to two thirds of people say they are struggling to sleep during sweltering ‘tropical’ nights.

The latest spell of hot weather could bring highs of up to 35C (95F) by the end of the week and today's temperatures are set to climb above 30C (86F) in southern England.

Amber heat health alerts apply between tomorrow morning and Saturday evening covering all of southern England, East Anglia and the Midlands.

Now a poll by environmental group Greenpeace suggests the country is not only struggling to cope by day but also suffering ‘mass sleep deprivation’ from extremely warm nights.


Ah - it's Greenpeace, enthusiastic promoters of mass reason deprivation events.

How very Lib Dem

Liz Jarvis MP slams Tories and Reform over climate vote

Rising temperatures have sparked fresh debate over climate policy and action.

Eastleigh MP Liz Jarvis criticised Reform and Conservative MPs for voting against the Carbon Budget Order, a parliamentary measure aimed at addressing climate change.

She said: "Time and time again, Reform and Tory politicians have failed to put the planet first.

"With temperatures soaring here in Eastleigh, it is farcical that those two parties are continuing to ignore the brutal impact of climate change."

How very Lib Dem, the careless emission of fading middle-class formulae and casual evasion of sceptical effort. Scott Fitzgerald described it so well over a century ago and the problem is still with us. It is a problem too, probably bigger than it was in Fitzgerald's day.

She would talk the language she had talked for many years — her line — made up of the current expressions, bits of journalese and college slang strung together into an intrinsic whole, careless, faintly provocative, delicately sentimental.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

Ed Miliband has announced.

Government commits to 87% cut in UK’s climate emissions by 2040

The Government has signed up to a legal target to cut the UK’s planet-heating emissions by 87% by 2040, Ed Miliband has announced.

The commitment will see heat pumps, electric cars and renewables rolled out across the country in a move the Government says will bring down bills and “upgrade lifestyles”.

The reduction in greenhouse gases on 1990 levels – on the way to cutting climate pollution to zero overall by 2050, known as “net zero” – is in line with official advice from the independent Climate Change Committee (CCC) on deliverable and cost-effective cuts.

But the Government’s commitment to the “seventh carbon budget” emissions target for the period 2038-2042 comes amid increasing political division over climate action, with Reform UK and the Tories promising to ditch net zero policies and back oil and gas drilling.


It's made up numbers time again, but it would be interesting to know what "climate pollution" is supposed to be. Presumably it is not the pollution of science and rational debate by political twaddle, because on the face of it there is a firm intention to increase that kind of pollution.

As even Ed Miliband knows, nobody will remember this twaddle by 2040 anyway. By then we will have lots of different twaddle to contend with and probably some real problems which turn out to be rather more serious than Ed's fantasies.

Bad weather in Kenya is our fault, nasty tea is too

Warning climate change could threaten Britain’s beloved cup of tea

The familiar comfort of a British cuppa is under threat, with campaigners warning that climate change could soon deliver a more bitter flavour to the nation’s beloved brew.

A new report from aid agency Christian Aid reveals that rising global temperatures and increasingly extreme weather patterns are set to fundamentally alter the taste of tea.

Key tea-producing regions, including Kenya, India, and Sri Lanka, are experiencing conditions that could lead to harsher, less consistent flavours.


Without wishing to suggest that Christian Aid has merely climbed on a bandwagon here, it does have a "climate adaptation and resilience lead". 


Claire Nasike Akello, climate adaptation and resilience lead at Christian Aid, said: “For generations, consumers have taken for granted that a cup of tea will taste the same, day in, day out."

Hope is contagious and science is our serf

Hope is contagious and science is king: 10 big lessons on ending the fossil fuel era

Liberation lifts the spirits

The single most important thing to come from the first Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference, in Santa Marta, has been a change of mood. Whereas the UN’s annual climate summits, or Cops, can often feel stuck and frustrating, with countries circling the same topics without resolution, nearly every delegate in Colombia felt liberated.

“The mood here in Santa Marta is euphoric,” said Tzeporah Berman, the founder and chair of the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty initiative. “After years stuck in endless debates about whether to phase out fossil fuels, finally we are focusing on the how. We are no longer fighting for recognition of the problem, but creating solutions. It’s like watching a dam break – all that pent-up experience, knowledge and passion suddenly flowing into concrete ways to phase out dirty fuels. The hope is contagious.”

Science has to come first

In a world of climate denial and misinformation, Santa Marta was a shining example of science-led decision making. Hundreds of experts, academics and scientists inspired and informed the launch of three major initiatives on the energy transition.

The emotional language is fascinating. 

Liberation lifts the spirits

mood

frustrating 

every delegate in Colombia felt liberated 

euphoric 

fighting for recognition 

like watching a dam break
all that pent-up experience, knowledge and passion 

The hope is contagious. 

a shining example

Hundreds of experts, academics and scientists inspired and informed the launch

This has no connection with the scientific method, technical feasibility or economics, it is wholly political and wholly emotional. Remarkably evil too, in its barely covert ambition to dominate everyone and everything all over the world.

As ever, follow the money.