Defra, Not Climate Change, is Turning England Into a Tinderbox

 How bad is the situation? Satellite analysis shows that six times more land was burnt in the UK over the last decade than in the previous one (151,954 hectares in 2016-2025 against 24,805 in 2006-2015). Do not be fooled by those who say this catastrophe is simply down to climate change. Sure, hot days drive moisture out of plants. But globally wildfires are down by a quarter because humanity has become better at creating firebreaks.

Defra hasn’t. Its response to climate change has been to sharply increase vegetation. Over the last 20 years its cuts in upland cattle and sheep grazing led to a 25% increase in highly flammable grass.

Another genius move has been stopping preventative burns of heather. Why do I care about this? Because during damp winter months these burns safely prune the dead material which is then replaced by younger plants. It is the dead heather which is combustible. And thanks to Defra we now have 74% more of it.

The winter burns used to create firebreaks. Now we have huge expanses of continuous, ageing vegetation....<<<Read More>>>...

Cherry-Picking Met Office Drops Declining Wind Speed Chapter From Its Latest Annual Climate Report

 Lower UK wind speeds and less powerful storms have always been a bit of a disappointment to activists whipping up a climate crisis frenzy to back the Net Zero fantasy. Going back over 50 years, the data is clear on a declining trend. Of course, despite its lamentable inability to step up to the Net Zero plate, wind is one of the UK’s “essential climate variables”, to quote the Met Office’s own words. Since it first started publishing its annual state of the UK climate report, the climatic performance of wind and storms have had their own dedicated chapter. Alas, no more. The 2025 report, published last month, has abolished the chapter – wind it seems is now little more than a footnote. Should do better, some might comment....<<<Read More>>>....

Is the Met Office a Serious Scientific Organisation Any Longer?

In their State of the UK Climate Report 2025, recently published, the Met Office made the astonishing suggestion that Storm Eowyn, which hit Britain in January 2025, was worse than the Great Storm of 1987. They even produced this chart to “prove” it:

This is gaslighting of the highest order and an insult to all those who lost their lives in 1987.

Apparently, they say, the severity of the 1987 storm was down to the fact that trees were still in leaf. It was not really as bad as you thought!

So why does their chart imply Eowyn was worse?

Simple. Eowyn’s storm track took it across the mountains and clifftops of Northern Ireland and southern Scotland. Naturally, winds will be stronger on high hills and exposed coastal headlands than they are down at ground level.

Wind gusts during Eowyn hit 100 mph on the top of a 900ft hill at Drumalbin, high up in the wild, windswept Lanarkshire Hills. Next highest was 96 mph at Brizlee Wood, an 800ft hill in Northumberland, so high and exposed that it has an RAF golf ball on top....<<<Read More>>>...

Met Office Heatwave Records Are Based on Junk Stations

 The Met Office is claiming that this year is the first time temperatures of 35°C and higher have been recorded on six days. But the claims are a reflection of poorly sited weather stations, not climate change.

For the last year or so, the Daily Sceptic has been warning about the increasing reliance of the Met Office on junk weather stations, which are so poorly sited that they can overestimate real temperatures by as much as five degrees. At the latest count, 88% of the Met Office’s 400 sites fall into this category....<<<Read More>>>.... 

What happened to climate change?

Ten years ago, as the world's governments met in Paris and agreed to eventually force policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions on their respective populations, combating climate change was seen as a major political issue.

Then, when Trump and other populist right-wingers began finding political success, climate arguably became the primary issue that helped unify the establishment centrists, moderate left-liberals, and far-left progressives who made up the broad anti-Trump, anti-populist coalition.

Fanatical climate alarmism became a way to demonstrate one's anti-Trump credibility and a way for Trump's opponents in media, academia, and politics to portray the president as not just out of touch but as a significant threat to the survival of the human species.

The moral panic accelerated considerably during Trump's first term. A 2018 UN study reported that, unless there was a serious reduction in global emissions by 2030, the world would surpass the UN's 2015 goal of limiting warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The media and politicians then stretched the findings of the study as much as they could get away with in order to convince everyday people that humanity would literally go extinct in a generation or two and nearly everyone below the age of sixty would die grisly, climate-related deaths unless we allowed the government the power to control nearly every aspect of our lives....<<<Read More>>>...

Simple FOI Requests for Data Said to Back Non-existent Temperature Stations Refused on “Vexatious” Grounds by UK Met Office

 The UK Met Office recently declared an average daily maximum temperature of 22.3°C for June 2025 at Lowestoft: Monkton Avenue. 

But there is no weather station at Lowestoft and hasn’t been since 2010. 

Over the last 15 years, the temperature measurements published in the Met Office’s Historic Station Database have been invented, or rather estimated according to the State meteorologist with figures from “well-correlated related neighbouring stations”. This explanation might be more plausible if the Met Office could actually name the stations, presumably a simple task with the vital scientific input data readily to hand. Alas, it seems not.

 A number of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests for the identity of these well-correlated stations near Lowestoft and other non-existent stations have been denied by the Met Office quoting “vexatious” grounds. 

It has concluded that the “public interest factors in favour of not responding to the requests outweighed the public interest factors in favour of responding to the requests”....<<<Read More>>>...

Met Office Caught Deliberately Choosing an Unrealistic Scenario to Predict Climate Doomsday

 Revved up by the orgy of climate alarmism opportunities supplied by the recent heatwave, the Met Office has taken to making apocalyptic forecasts for the year 2070. In the Telegraph, Matt Ridley takes the national forecaster to task for basing these doomy predictions on modelling even the IPCC rejects. Here’s an excerpt.

The Met Office exists to forecast the weather. But increasingly it seems bored by the day job so it likes to lecture us about climate change. And here it seems to have been embarrassingly duped by activists. Go on its climate pages and you find a forecast for the year 2070, that summers will be between one and six degrees warmer and “up to” 60% drier, depending on the region. A lot of wriggle room in those caveats, note.

Then it admits: “We base these changes on the RCP8.5 high emissions scenario.” Aha! Unbelievably, shockingly, this national forecasting body has chosen as its base case for the future of weather a debunked, highly implausible set of assumptions about the world economy that was never intended to be used this way.

RCP8.5 is one of five projected futures for the world economy this century, dreamt up by economists. Here is what it assumes. First, the world becomes addicted to coal, burning 10 times – yes, 10 times! – as much coal in 2100 as we did in 2000 and even using coal to make fuel for aircraft and cars. Yes: that is really what it says. It projects that fully half of all the world’s energy will be supplied by coal in 2100.

Second, it assumes that the world population will have swelled to 12 billion people by 2100, way more than any demographer thinks is likely. Third, it assumes that innovation will somehow dry up so there’s hardly any new technology to make our lives more fuel-efficient – and we won’t even try to cut emissions. In short, this scenario is barking mad.

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Carbon Brief, an activist website, has to say: “The creators of RCP8.5 had not intended it to represent the most likely ‘business as usual’ outcome. … Its subsequent use as such represents something of a breakdown in communication between energy systems modellers and the climate modelling community.”...<<<Read More>>>...

Faked data? Met Office’s data gaps raise questions over climate crisis claims

 The U.K. Met Office, a cornerstone of global climate science, faces mounting scrutiny after failing to identify the sources of temperature data linked to 103 non-existent weather stations. Investigations by independent researchers and frustrated Freedom of Information requests have exposed gaps in the agency’s methodologies, casting doubt on its climate data reliability. The findings, emerging against a backdrop of urgent global climate policies, raise critical questions about the validity of temperature records used to justify the U.K.’s Net Zero agenda and international climate models. 

In May 2025, citizen investigator Ray Sanders revealed that the Met Office cannot name specific weather stations providing temperature data for 103 so-called “zombie sites”—locations that ceased operation decades ago or never existed. After submitting FOI requests, Sanders discovered the agency admitted it lacks records detailing the “well-correlated neighboring stations” supposedly used to estimate data for these non-functional sites.

Sanders highlighted two cases: Scole, a Norfolk station operational only from 1971-1980, which now lists temperature averages spanning 1959-2020—including a full decade before its establishment. The Met Office defended this by citing “regression analysis” to maintain long-term climate averages but refused to name the stations that supplied data for Scole’s 1990–2020 records, stating such information is “not held.” A similar issue arose with Manby, a Lincolnshire site closed in 1974, yet still listed with 60 years of temperature data.

“If the data isn’t real and relies on unverified estimates from unknown sources, it’s no better than fiction,” Sanders said. “Any scientist would tell you this breaches fundamental standards. Without verifiable sources, Credibility vanishes."...<<<Read More>>>...