• “Israel accuses ‘patronising’ Miliband of damaging relationship” – Israel has said that Ed Miliband’s “patronising” criticism of its West Bank plans has damaged Britain’s relationship with the country, reports the Telegraph.

• “Greens ridiculed over Unesco heritage bid for bread roll” – Scotland’s Green Party has been widely mocked after pushing for Unesco…

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For more than a decade, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published annual reports detailing excess winter mortality in England & Wales. In other words, how many more people had died in winter on average, compared to the rest of the year.

More explicitly:

Or at least they did until 2022, when their final report was published, which told us that excess winter deaths in 2021/22 had amounted to 13,400.

After that, the publications ceased, ostensibly with no explanation whatsoever. It took a Freedom of Information request to elicit the reason:

Thank you for your request.

Previously published annual data on excess winter mortality from 1950 to 2022 are available in our Winter mortality in England and Wales Statistical bulletins, using the excess winter deaths (EWD) and excess winter mortality index (EWMI) measures. However, this release was discontinued following the consultation that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) ran with the Department for Health and Social Care (including the Office for Health Improvements and Disparities), NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA), UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and NHS England. This was because of limitations with the methodology used to produce these measures.

The UKHSA published a Cold mortality monitoring report, England: winter 2024 to 2025 annual report on 18th February 2026 at 9:30am. This report provides the first national estimates of mortality associated with low temperatures during cold weather episodes in England over the winter season. These results are intended to inform public health preparedness and support action to reduce health impacts during periods of cold weather in England.

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• “Polls show no one cares about climate change” – US voters have decisively tuned out the climate change agenda, with recent polling showing it ranks at the bottom of public concerns, reports Breitbart.

• “Rail officials to investigate role of heatwave in train derailment” – Rail officials are set to examine what part the summer heatwave played in last week’s East Sussex train derailment, according to the Telegraph.

• “Households brace for surging energy bills this winter” – Household energy bills are on course to soar to their highest level in three years, wiping out any savings from Andy Burnham’s VAT cut on electricity, says the Telegraph.

• “Tories pledge to scrap ban on diesel lorries” – The Conservatives are promising to reverse Government plans that would ban sales of new HGVs weighing up to 26 tonnes from 2035 unless they meet Net Zero requirements, reports the Telegraph.

• “EU green tax to hit British farmers” – Farmers face a doubling of fertiliser prices when an EU Net Zero border tax is introduced in January, according to the Telegraph.

• “The FT says war and climate change spiked shipping costs: war, yes; weather, yes; climate change, no!” – In ClimateRealism, Linnea Lueken argues that the Financial Times is misleading readers by attributing spiking shipping costs to climate change when the data point firmly to war and weather as the real culprits.

• “The climate policy trap: why every failure leads to more policy” – In Clintel, Evert Doornhof notes that rising energy costs, grid congestion and industrial decline are met not with careful reconsideration, but with yet more climate policy, driven by institutional self-interest.

• “Woke Canadian town officially recognises trees as beings with rights” – A small town in Quebec has become the first public entity in North America to sign onto the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights, which argues that a tree is “a sentient living being”, reports the Mail. Does that apply to nut trees?

From the Climate Skeptic today:

“The climate debate was never about saving the planet vs doing nothing – it was always about statism vs the free market” – Opposing EV mandates, ULEZ and Net Zero isn’t climate denialism – it’s taking a stand against state overreach, says the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Ted Newson.

In a recent monologue on climate change, LBC radio host James O’Brien hit out at politicians opposing Net Zero, framing them as in denial of objective reality. To many on that side of the debate, a simple opposition to EV mandates, dietary changes, ULEZ, accelerated deindustrialisation or any other harmful policies associated with Net Zero is a rallying cry of climate denial. They tell us how many jobs the Government is creating and how good for everyone the Climate Change Committee’s advice will be.

Anyone suffering high energy costs and industry layoffs can see that promises of Net Zero bringing prosperity are plainly untrue.

While niche Left-wing blogs might accuse us all of climate vandalism, the reality is far removed from this. I am not a climate denier, nor have I ever been one. Millions of Net Zero sceptics aren’t either; many realise that what was once an aspirational target has now hardened into a stifling reality. Some of us didn’t grasp it in 2019, when the Climate Change Act amendment was passed, but the blatant statism that goes along with a statutory target of Net Zero by 2050 is now hard to deny.

Opposing a policy instrument has traditionally cultivated debate between sides, not name-calling. If I were to oppose a certain crime-fighting measure, such as mass surveillance, would that make me pro-crime?

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• “Wind farm boss caught with child porn after trying to wipe hard drives” – Alexander Hensher, 48, the director of a renewables firm, was exposed after attempting to have his hard drives wiped at a computer shop in Bournemouth while under active police investigation, says the Mail.

• “What hope is there for farming when the man in charge faints?” – Farming Minister Stephen Morgan’s funny turn at a meat-processing plant has done little to convince Britain’s beleaguered farmers that Labour understands them, writes William Sitwell in the Telegraph.

• “Labour plans multi-billion-pound gas subsidies to keep lights on” – Taxpayers face a double burden of funding both renewables and fossil fuel backup as Labour’s plans for multi-billion-pound gas subsidies are exposed, says the Telegraph.

• “Labour’s Net Zero dogma is costing cash-strapped families £540 a year” – A major analysis finds that pursuing Net Zero will cost the country £320 billion by 2050, with families bearing a £540-a-year burden that would vanish if Ed Miliband’s plans were scrapped, reports the Mail.

• “No, Climate Central, warmer summer proves urban heat islands, not climate change” – In ClimateRealism, Anthony Watts argues that Climate Central’s claim that human-caused climate change is driving warmer summer nights in U.S. cities is “highly misleading if not outright false”, pointing instead to urban heat island effects that the analysis ignores.

• “Wind and solar’s dirty secret: mountains of waste with nowhere to go” – Ageing turbine blades and solar panels are piling up in landfills, with costly recycling challenges exposing a growing environmental crisis at the heart of the green energy transition, writes Thomas Richard in Climate Change Dispatch.

• “NY Dem wants to keep energy bills high to push green energy hoax” – Democrat Cait Conley, running to unseat New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, has offered no real solutions to soaring energy costs while backing policies that keep bills high, says Thomas Richard in Climate Change Dispatch.

• “Thom Yorke, Romy and Brian Eno among 200 musicians urging PM to reject new North Sea drilling” – Over 200 musicians, including Robert Smith, Olly Alexander and Paris Paloma, have signed a letter insisting that exploitation of the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields defies climate reality, notes the Guardian.

• “First the fires, now prepare for floods as torrential rain forecast” – Forecasters warn that flash flooding is likely as thundery downpours sweep south across a parched Britain, with ground too hard to absorb the water, says the Mail.

From the Climate Skeptic today:

“The Times They Are a-Blobbin’” – No, Hugo Rifkind. Climate contrarians have not gone quiet because of the hot summer, writes Ben Pile. Few contrarians dispute the climate is changing. The argument is about the cause of that change and how best to mitigate the risks – which Rifkind would know if he bothered to listen to the other side.

The problem of the climate debate (such as it is) is that climate change is a theory of everything. It’s only at its surface, rather than at its core, about the role of CO₂ in the atmosphere. When one tries to nail down some climate matter with some counterpart, the conversation explodes into countless tangents. That might mean that frustratingly little progress is possible in debate, but what is revealed by such an encompassing yet incoherent ideology, advanced by slippery chancers and zealots alike, is a great deal more information about what’s going on in society – especially at its top – than what is going on in the sky. Climate change isn’t really about the climate. And climate journalism is neither.

In the Times last week, the paper’s columnist Hugo Rifkind claims to have been writing about climate change for 20 years. He claims, furthermore, that whereas he has, for the same duration, been routinely assailed by climate sceptics (like “weird bluebottles we now get coming in from our garden whenever we cook fish”) those sceptics are now absent. Charming. “Where are all those climate sceptics now?”, he asks, suggesting that the 35-degree temperatures might have finally debunked their hypotheses and sent them packing. One of the things that climate change as a messy theory of everything forces us to confront is the quality of journalism in 21st-century Britain.

One answer to Rifkind, then, might be the changing nature of the relationship between the newspaper and its audience. I used to buy the Times. It was indeed my first digital subscription. And it was essential reading for someone who kept a watch on energy and environmental politics. But I remember very clearly the reason I cancelled it. It was in the wake of the Fukushima accident in 2011. I had read yet another article which attempted to put the disaster into the same terms as Chernobyl and “Five {sic} Mile Island”. Why was I paying for this absolute bilge, I wondered, when I could get the same low-quality nonsense from the Guardian? The only value in the newspaper was to know what people were talking about. So perhaps Rifkind is less bothered by climate sceptics because fewer of them bother to read his work.

The Times and the Guardian boast substantial digital subscriptions. So the point about the declining influence of the newspaper can’t be supported with metrics such as circulation alone – though that is significant in the case of the Independent and the New Statesman, as I’ve discussed recently. Both publications decided early on to champion climate change, whereas their real existential crises lay closer to home. The Independent was forced to give up its print edition a decade ago, and the New Statesman requires the generosity of a multimillionaire benefactor and tens of millions of pounds in bailouts to keep it afloat. This rule applies generally: the deeper an institution’s crisis, the more it clings to climate change as a story.

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• “Emergency alert was inappropriate, says chairman of fire chiefs” – National security officials raised concerns that the wildfire emergency alert would backfire by encouraging the public to disable the alert feature on their phones, reveals the Telegraph.

• “All the times emergency alerts have gone wrong – how to turn them off” – In the Mail, Shivali Best notes that recent years have seen several incidents in which emergency alert systems have misfired, and explains how to disable them on your phone.

• “Burnham is set to make a ‘life or death’ decision on the North Sea oil” – Andy Burnham’s looming decision on new North Sea drilling could spell “life or death” for the industry, reports the Mail.

• “Andy Burnham expected to delay North Sea oil decision over ‘optics’” – Andy Burnham is expected to push a decision on two North Sea oil and gas projects into the autumn because of concerns about the “optics” of approving new drilling during a summer of heatwaves and wildfires, reveals the Times.

• “‘Hardcore’ Right-wingers are fuelling Net Zero backlash” – An ally of Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh has claimed that hardcore Right-wingers are deliberately stoking a backlash against Net Zero, reports the Telegraph.

• “Scrap Net Zero and enjoy the weather” – Reform UK’s Deputy Leader has called for Net Zero to be abandoned, describing the drive towards it as an “arrogant” attempt to halt climate change, says the Times.

• “Climate alarmists go silent: turns out fossil fuels are Earth’s ‘Miracle-Gro’” – New research shows that nitrogen deposition from burning hydrocarbons has expanded plant growth and driven the greening of large parts of the planet, directly contradicting the climate alarmist narrative on fossil fuels, according to Vijay Jayaraj at CO2 Coalition.

• “British Gas threatened disabled pensioner with court over incorrect £2,000 bill” – British Gas threatened to take a 69 year-old disabled pensioner to court over an incorrect £2,000 gas bill that took her the best part of a year to resolve, reports the Telegraph.

• “Clean-up binned ‘after the council said the bags won’t be collected’” – A huge litter clean-up had to be scrapped after bureaucrats at Newport City Council’s waste department said the rubbish would have been put in the wrong type of bin bags, according to the Mail.

From the Climate Skeptic today:

“Welcome to the third world! Emergency blackout rules expose the true cost of Britain’s renewables gamble” – New rules let grid bosses impose rolling three-hour blackouts on millions of homes with just eight hours’ notice – and no political approval needed. Is this what ‘energy security’ looks like? asks Paul Homewood.

Two news items this week are a stark warning that our electricity grid will soon be little better than third world countries.

On Monday, the Telegraph reported:

Emergency power cuts could be imposed on millions of households at short notice to avoid nationwide blackouts, under new rules introduced by grid bosses.

Measures that came into effect this week give the National Energy System Operator (NESO) the authority to tackle electricity shortages with rolling power cuts around the country.

Each area would have its power switched off for three hours at a time. NESO would have to give just eight hours’ notice to use the so-called demand control rotation protocol.

The new measures, first reported by the Guardian, are designed to bridge a gap between NESO’s current emergency powers and rolling-blackout plans that require government approval.

Currently, the UK’s electricity supply emergency code, a national plan of energy rationing, can only be triggered by ministers and requires emergency legislation.

It is intended for prolonged national crises lasting more than 24 hours.

NESO, meanwhile, has the ability to disconnect up to 20% of power at five minutes’ notice in the face of imminent system collapse, such as the nationwide shutdown seen in Spain in 2025.

Under the updated rules, NESO can activate rolling local blackouts without political approval.

Make no mistake – this is not just administrative box-ticking. NESO is effectively admitting that blackouts are now a real possibility and will soon become a regular occurrence.

And little wonder. The insane, ever-increasing reliance on intermittent and uncontrollable wind and solar power is a grid operator’s worst nightmare.

In winter months, solar power is inconsequential, while a long, windless period – the dunkelflaute – will leave us hopelessly short of electricity supply. In summer months, we have the worst of both worlds: more solar power at midday than we can possibly use, but none at all when the sun goes down and the air conditioning comes on.

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• “‘Appalling’ wildfire rages near people’s homes in Wales” – South Wales Fire and Rescue has declared a major incident after receiving 736 calls – more than double its average – as 200 soldiers are deployed to assist firefighters battling the blaze, says Robert Folker in the Mail.

• “Former Tory MPs left waiting for approval after Net Zero and ECHR quiz” – Dame Penny Mordaunt is among a cohort of former Conservative MPs facing weeks-long delays to learn whether they’ve been added to the candidates’ list after being quizzed on Net Zero and the ECHR, notes the Times.

• “How UK’s searing summers will change the way we farm (and eat)” – Prolonged heatwaves are causing crops to ripen too quickly and stunt growth, while parched soils struggle to absorb water, raising serious questions about the future of British food production, reports the Times.

• “Rural Green councillors debate pigeon contraception and arm rests” – Newly elected Green councillors are spending their time on pigeon contraception and river rights while ignoring the issues that actually matter to residents, says the Times.

• “Sixth heatwave set to grip Britain next month” – Britain faces a sixth heatwave as autumn approaches, with the Met Office warning of a “late-season hot spell” that could extend the record-breaking summer still further, reports the Telegraph.

From the Climate Skeptic today:

“Do the Tories Really Need Tim Stanley?” – Ditching Net Zero and leaving the ECHR should be non-negotiables for the Tories. So why should the party contort itself to win over one Cambridge-educated Telegraph columnist? asks Paul Homewood.

Writing for the Daily Sceptic this week, Nick Rendell questioned whether the Tories should attempt to accommodate people such as the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley.

It was Stanley, you may recall, who launched an impassioned, if fanciful, defence of Net Zero in the Telegraph’s pages a couple of weeks ago.

Nick Rendell wrote:

Trying to sell ice-creams and political parties has more in common than you might think. Magnum Classic, Almond, White, Mint. Singles and minis. You can get Magnums in multiple flavours and sizes.

If you’re a retailer, the Magnum Ice Cream Company can fill your fridge with their range. Everyone coming into the shop to buy an ice-cream has a choice, but it’s limited to the Magnum range.

The Right needs to emulate this approach. Currently we appear to be offering just the political equivalent of the Magnum Classic: out of the ECHR, out of Net Zero, out of the EU and illegal migrants out of here!

In my social circle we have EU ‘rejoiners’. Others who are first and second generation migrants. Mixed-race friends who instinctively fear overly heavy migration control. There are public sector employees, gays and members of a variety of minority groups. However, they all tend to share a common concern over taxation, growing state authoritarianism and the fear that their children are getting a less good inheritance than they enjoyed. Economically they tend to be either small or large ‘c’ conservatives – let’s not push them away in the pursuit of philosophical purity.

While most of us might settle for the Magnum Classic, we’re not a majority. To win back power we also need those looking for the political equivalent of the Almond, White or Mint flavour on the Right of British politics.

We achieve this by broadening the scope of the debate on the Right, not shutting it down.

He concludes:

Let Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Tim Stanley promote Net Zero. Let Gavin Barwell advocate for rejoining the EU. Let Boris Johnson defend his Boriswave. Heavens, I’d even accept everyone having to build a third toilet block if it means the trans debate can be framed as essentially a libertarian issue.

We need to turn the tables on the Left. If radical LGBTQ+ extremists can break bread with Islamists, surely we on the Right can find a way to tolerate Tim Stanley?

Debate is all well and good, and political parties perforce need to be broad churches if they are serious about winning elections.

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• “The week in energy – August 15th 2026” – On his Substack, Richard Lyon says this was the week the state found three new places to pass on the cost of its energy policy – and not one of them involves a cut.

• “Britain races against the world to unlock energy’s holy grail” – The UK’s quest to make nuclear fusion a reality is approaching the scale of the Manhattan Project as Britain competes with rivals across the globe, reveals Andrew Orlowski in the Telegraph.

• “Monks fight ‘money-grabbing’ wind turbine plans” – The head of a Scottish island monastery has launched a fierce attack on plans to build a wind farm off its coast, with turbines as tall as skyscrapers, says the Telegraph.

• “Water companies to charge more during droughts” – Water companies will be permitted to charge consumers higher prices during droughts under Government-backed plans, reports the Telegraph.

• “The loneliness epidemic is not caused by climate change, PBS News” – In Climate Realism, Linnea Lueken argues that claims by the Conversation and PBS linking the loneliness epidemic to climate change are without foundation.

• “Reform pledges to end hosepipe bans” – Reform UK has vowed to end summer hosepipe bans by building more reservoirs and scrapping water reduction targets, reports the Telegraph.

From the Climate Skeptic today:

“The Greens Kicking Back Against the Anti-Green Backlash” – Sir Christopher Hohn is still banging the climate alarm drum, but Ben Pile argues the Green Blob is losing the argument – and doubling down won’t save it.

As the Westminster consensus on climate change continues to disintegrate, the Green Blob’s heavy, clumsy hand can be seen in the increased frequency and intensity of messaging in response to its existential crisis. In previous articles here, I noted the Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s struggles with the reality, and how the one-tim…

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• “BP turns to Venezuela as it rejects Burnham’s Britain” – BP has secured a licence to drill for gas off the coast of Venezuela just a fortnight after announcing plans to quit the North Sea, says the Telegraph.

• “Britain races against the world to unlock energy’s holy grail” – The UK’s quest to make nuclear fusion a reality is approaching the scale of the Manhattan Project, writes Andrew Orlowski in the Telegraph.

• “Street burned down by record heat: charred remains of six houses” – Fire chiefs are investigating whether A-level students lighting barbecues to celebrate their results started a wildfire that destroyed six homes on a millionaires’ row, according to the Mail.

• “Government issues temporary ban on disposable BBQs over wildfire risks” – Officials have declared disposable barbecues a “significant risk to the public”, reports the Mail.

• “Labour faces backlash after ‘needless’ emergency wildfire alert” – The Government is facing backlash for sending out a “needless” emergency wildfire alert to millions of people’s phones in England and Wales, says the Mail.

• “One hot summer won’t silence us climate change sceptics” – In the Spectator, James Delingpole argues that climate evangelists rely on emotional rather than intellectual arguments precisely because the science does not support their alarmist conclusions.

• “Burnham to slash electric car targets” – Andy Burnham is set to cut quotas for electric vehicle sales as drivers continue to favour petrol and diesel, says the Telegraph.

• “Porsche could axe its first electric car before 2030 as demand slows” – Porsche is reportedly planning to cull its first series-production electric car, the Taycan, by the end of the decade, reports the Mail.

• “Who can fathom the eternal optimism of EV enthusiasts?” – Issues & Insights examines the puzzling persistence of optimism among EV enthusiasts, even as automakers continue to absorb heavy losses.

• “Indonesia and India are jointly planning a hydrocarbon-powered future” – Two of Asia’s most populous and fast-growing nations are deepening ties around fossil fuel energy, charting a course that cuts sharply against the green agenda, notes Vijay Jayaraj at CO₂ Coalition.

• “Misinformation” – In Climate Scepticism, John Ridgway takes aim at the Government Office for Science’s slippery definition of ‘misinformation’, arguing it lets climate scepticism be branded misinformation even when it’s factually correct.

From the Climate Skeptic today:

“The Climate Skeptic podcast | Episode 57” – On the show this week, Ellie Hodges sits down with the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor Chris Morrison to ask why decades of declining wind-speed data have disappeared from the Met Office’s latest climate report and what it means for public trust in Britain’s climate institutions.

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• “19% of electric car owners have been stranded by a flat battery” – A survey finds that nearly one in five electric car owners has been left stranded by a flat battery, pointing to deep reservations even among those who have already made the switch, notes the Times.

• “The National Grid is becoming ever more fragile” – The grid operator Neso believes it can safely run at lower inertia levels by relying on fast frequency response from batteries, but critics warn the National Grid is growing dangerously fragile, reveals the Telegraph.

• “Britain forced to pay £6.2 million for power during solar eclipse” – Grid operators were forced to pay £6.2 million for emergency electricity to keep UK lights on as renewable output collapsed during the solar eclipse, reports the Telegraph.

• “Drought-resistant crops set to be banned under Labour’s EU deal” – Andy Burnham has been warned that drought-resistant crops face being banned in Britain under Labour’s EU reset deal, says the Telegraph.

• “Lammy eco-project ordered to pay £400k after collapsing” – An eco-project backed by David Lammy has been ordered to pay more than half a million dollars to an elderly woman after she sued it for unpaid debts following its collapse, reveals the Telegraph.

From the Climate Skeptic today:

“Mainstream Media Shock as Coral on the Great Barrier Reef Records Five Years of Record Growth” – The Great Barrier Reef has just recorded five years of near-record coral cover. AIMS data shows hard coral stable or rising across all zones. You won’t read that in the Guardian, says Chris Morrison.

• “Britain’s drought could spark an outbreak of infectious diseases” – Scientists have warned that Britain’s worsening drought could trigger outbreaks of infectious diseases, according to the Mail.

• “Andy Burnham calls Cobra meeting as Britain faces 38°C heat” – Andy Burnham is set to impose a ban on disposable barbecues amid the risk of further wildfires as Britain braces for one of its hottest days on record, reports the Mail.

• “Eclipse triggers plea for extra gas to support power grid” – Britain’s grid operator called for extra gas-fired power generation as the solar eclipse put pressure on electricity supplies, reports the Telegraph.

• “Another new study links modern and past global warming to natural changes in cloud cover, not CO₂” – A new study argues that natural changes in cloud cover, rather than CO₂, are responsible for both modern and historical global warming, according to Kenneth Richard at No Tricks Zone.

• “Ex-RAF pilot Andy Green smashes land speed record in hydrogen vehicle” – Andy Green, the first and only person to break the sound barrier on land, reached 406mph in a JCB Hydromax at the Bonneville Salt Flats, reports the Times.

From the Climate Skeptic today:

“Mainstream media shock as coral on the Great Barrier Reef Records five years of record growth” – The Great Barrier Reef has just recorded five years of near-record coral cover. AIMS data shows hard coral stable or rising across all zones. You won’t read that in the Guardian, says Chris Morrison.

It might be wondered why climate catastrophising clots bother with coral and in particular the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). For years as GBR coral cover hit new record highs, it let them down all the time. A bout of temporary natural ‘bleaching’ in 2024 gave a little Armageddon hope with the Guardian reporting last year that GBR coral may reach a “tipping point” where it cannot recover fast enough between “major catastrophic events”. But it’s back to disappointment this year with the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) observing in its latest 2025–26 report that hard coral cover remained stable or increased across much of the GBR, “demonstrating the capacity of many reefs to withstand and recover from disturbances when stress is limited and conditions are favourable”.

It’s called Nature. Who knew that corals that have been around for hundreds of millions of years can survive slight changes in water temperature, surface storms and attack from other creatures in the sea. Apparently not King Klot himself, George Monbiot of the Guardian, who told us in June 1999 that: “The imminent total destruction of the world’s coral reefs is not a scare story but a fact”.

The dramatic bleaching that has always affected coral is a classic ‘look out of the window’ trope. These days it seems to be the only argument left for Net Zero promoting fanatics to explain natural events, weather and complex atmospheric science. It is of course anti-scientific junk, easily debunked, and reliant for its effect on emotional, gullible and politically motivated messengers. It is the poster explanation for the ‘post-truth’ world of settled climate science. Who cares about understanding detailed science about underwater coral, when children and adults need scaring about upcoming ecological collapse. Carry on munching meat and flying to Fuengirola and the polar bears, bees, penguins, moths, coral get it (all other soon-to-be-extinct species are available if required).

It doesn’t help when the scientists clamber on board the Net Zero gravy train. Last year, Dr Mike Emslie, who leads long-term reef monitoring at AIMS, told the Guardian that: “It has been a pretty sobering year of surveys with the biggest impacts I have seen in the 30-plus years I have been doing this… This volatility is very likely a sign of an unstable system”. Who knows what depths of despair the estimable Emslie would have plunged if he was not commenting on 2024–25 figures that showed coral was at its fourth highest level since detailed observations began in the 1980s.

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• “Super El Niño could wreak havoc on your health, report reveals” – A new report warns that the ongoing Super El Niño event poses significant risks to human health, notes the Mail.

• “Britain faces ‘worst food security crisis in decades’” – With three-quarters of England in drought and farmers’ harvests under severe threat, Britain is confronting a food security emergency not seen in a generation, reports the Telegraph.

• “Drought forces Britain to pay more for power” – Drought and heatwaves have driven Britain to spend £439 million importing power from Europe, revealing the staggering hidden cost of an increasingly parched grid, says the Telegraph.

• “No, the drought cannot be taken as a foretaste of summers to come” – On his Substack, Ross Clark pushes back against the claim that the current drought is a reliable harbinger of future British summers.

• “Greece orders nationwide investigation of wind farms after devastating wildfire” – A major wildfire has prompted Greece to launch a nationwide investigation into wind farm safety, raising urgent questions about green energy infrastructure, according to Greek Reporter.

From the Climate Skeptic today:

“Is Supporting North Sea Oil and Gas an ‘Extremist’ Position? The New Statesman Thinks So” – Ben Pile writes about the New Statesman’s Oli Dugmore recent claim that supporting new oil and gas licenses is an ‘extremist position’.

“I think supporting new oil and gas licences in the North Sea is an extremist position”, explained the New Statesman‘s “Executive Editor (Digital)” Oli Dugmore in a provocative social media clip. And here we are indeed provoked. Typically, we should ignore such tantrums. But the claim and its supporting argument are irresistibly illuminating of a section of the British Left, whose worldview is best explained as a developmental disorder. Founded by socialist intellectuals Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and its pages filled by such lights as George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes and Christopher Hitchens, the progressive intellectual’s weekly now both eschews thought and rouses the lowest possible denominator to its causes. But perhaps its current staff have confused their own organ’s decline with the degeneration of the atmosphere.

Dugmore’s account of his position is, you will not be surprised to discover, not grounded in a deep understanding of the subject. It is, in its entirety, something that resembles an Extinction Rebellion media training crib sheet. It begins as follows:

The International Energy Agency has been really clear that new oil and gas extraction and consumption is not compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. 1.5 degrees is the limit we agreed at the Paris climate accords, and the reason for that is because past 1.5 degrees, what happens? It’s the acidification of our oceans, so that’s the collapse of marine ecosystems, the fish that we eat and rely on to support our human population. It’s the widespread bleaching of coral reefs. It’s increasingly severe droughts and wildfires and the knock-on consequences of our food systems.

The problem with taking on people who are armed only with such a litany of factoids is that it is like being required to decode someone else’s fever dream in order merely to legitimise having your own position. Each item in Dugmore’s stream of not-quite-consciousness is a claim he has no understanding of, yet which would require an article as long as this one – or longer – to take apart; it adheres in the green ideology-addled mind through emotional attachment, not reason.

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• “Cost of turning off wind farms exceeds £1 billion so far this year” – The UK has already surpassed £1 billion in constraint payments to switch off wind farms this year alone, putting the country on course for a new annual record, says the Times.

• “Octopus Energy: don’t use electricity during solar eclipse” – Octopus Energy is urging customers to avoid running washing machines, dishwashers and other plug-in devices between 6pm and 8pm on Wednesday as the solar eclipse reduces generating capacity, reports the Telegraph.

• “One Nation Toryism has degenerated from Disraeli to Net Zero” – The One Nation Conservative tradition that Benjamin Disraeli founded has been reduced to a centrist ideology he would never have recognised, says Lee David Evans in the Telegraph.

• “Why has it been so hot this summer?” – On his Not a Lot of People Know That blog, Paul Homewood examines claims of record heatwaves and argues that Central England Temperature data tells a far more measured story than the Met Office’s dodgy weather stations suggest.

• “Wild salmon under threat from soaring river temperatures” – Heatwaves are turning Britain’s waterways into a “kill zone” for cold-water fish, with wild salmon facing an existential threat as river temperatures soar, according to the Telegraph.

• “Europe’s worst drought and heatwave ever” – Climate change alarmism is diverting resources away from where they are truly needed and driving politicians toward bad decisions rather than rational responses to extreme weather, argues Mike Jonas in Watts Up With That?

• “Terrifying study reveals what will happen if Earth’s glaciers melt” – Scientists have apparently calculated the volume of water locked in the world’s glaciers and the catastrophic consequences for sea levels if it were all released into the oceans, according to the Mail.

From the Climate Skeptic today:

“Cherry-picking Met Office drops declining wind speed chapter from its latest annual climate report” – The Met Office has quietly axed its dedicated wind and storms chapter from its annual climate report – just as decades of data show UK wind speeds are falling. Funny that, says the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

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