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Europe to close down ageing nuclear power plants by 2030
Read moreNuclear power capacity able to supply roughly 60 million homes is scheduled to close this decade as utilities struggle to replace northwest Europe’s ageing reactors, raising the risk of higher carbon emissions as fossil fuels plug the gap. Nuclear power provides around a quarter of the European Union’s electricity generation, with 15 of the 27 nations […]
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Andrew Montford: An ill wind for hard-up electricity users
Read moreLast Wednesday the wind died, and Britain’s fleet of thousands of wind turbines mostly stopped turning. The engineers at National Grid had seen the problem coming: temperatures and wind speeds had been low all week, and were forecast to fall further. Their response was to issue a ‘margin notice’ – a warning to generators that […]
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8 January 2021: Europe just skirted blackout disaster
Read moreOn 8 January 2021, the European electricity grid only just missed a large-scale collapse. Around 13:04 p.m. there was a sharp drop in frequency that could have paralysed Europe. The cause was apparently a power failure in Romania. According to the Austrian blackout expert Herbert Saurugg, it was the second most serious major incident in […]
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Global disasters: A remarkable story of science and policy success
Read moreBelieve it or not, disaster trends are moving in a positive direction The Earth is a dangerous and violent place. Volcanoes, tropical cyclones, earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, tsunamis, drought … the list of perils is long and scary. But one of the most remarkable scientific and policy successes of the past century has been our collective […]
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How the race for renewables is burning Europe’s forests
Read moreEuropeans are paying €billions for increasing carbon emissions in the atmosphere Sustainability goes to the heart of the European renewable energy debate. The drive to replace coal, one of the world’s biggest sources of carbon emissions, with cleaner sources of power, is a top priority in the fight against climate change globally. A switch to […]
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Supreme Court ruling could doom climate lawsuits
Read moreAttorneys for Big Oil and the city of Baltimore will square off next week in a Supreme Court battle that could change the trajectory of more than a dozen closely watched U.S. climate change lawsuits. The nation’s highest bench will hear arguments Tuesday in BP PLC v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, a case that […]
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2020, climate statistics and all that
Read moreThere has been no significant warming trend for 5 years. Every year in the middle of January various organisations, The UK Met Office, NASA, NOAA, etc. release their estimates of the annual average global temperature of our planet. This year the conclusion is that 2020 is statistically identical to 2016. Some have placed it the […]
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The GWPF 2021 Temperature Prediction Competition
Read morePlace your bets! With the 2020 results now out, we move on to the 2021 competition, your chance to win a bottle of whisky and your choice of a book from the GWPF range. What’s not to like? It’s all change this year though, with the Met Office moving on from HadCRUT4 to HadCRUT5, their […]
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GWPF global temperature competition: We have a winner
Read moreThe Met Office’s temperature data for 2020 are out. Each year we ask GWPF readers to submit their predictions for our annual temperature prediction competition, a chance for climate and weather geeks to pit their wits against the Met Office. For 2020, the boffins at the Met Office were predicting a little bit of warming, […]
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Green activists target President Macron as the climate cult is devouring its children
Read moreFrench President Emanuel Macron accused of climate betrayal as France misses its Paris agreement targets. PARIS — A French court started examining on Thursday what environmental and other organizations are billing as “the case of the century,” accusing the country’s authorities of failing to act against climate change. It stems from a legal complaint filed […]