A solar park in Deeside, Wales. The UK broke records for solar energy generation this week. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Energy specialists say abandoning net zero and increasing oil and gas drilling would cause more instability for Britons
Abandoning net zero and drilling for more oil and gas in the North Sea would be a massive setback for the UK and would not help the economy, leading experts have said in response to claims by the former prime minister Tony Blair.
“This is a bizarre intervention to make during the worst May heatwave on record and when the Iran crisis is providing yet more evidence of the enormous costs of oil and gas,” said Ed Matthew, the UK programme director at the E3G thinktank. “Clean energy is cheaper energy – it protects our bills from prices skyrocketing, its running costs are virtually zero, and it doesn’t cause climate change which threatens economic collapse … The government should ignore Blair’s ideological nonsense and focus on what works.”
In an essay published on Wednesday, Blair argued that the UK should exploit its remaining oil and gas reserves and abandon its long-set target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Blair, who has links to petrostates and whose institute takes money from technology companies that want a large build-out of AI data centres, has made these arguments for fossil fuels and against net zero many times in the past two years.
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Calls to maximise production from the UK’s rapidly dwindling North Sea reserves have also been made by the Conservative and Reform parties.
The head of the International Energy Agency, and one of the world’s most respected energy economists, Fatih Birol, said last month that opening new fields would have little impact, and more drilling by the UK would not bring down the price of oil and gas for British consumers.
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Last week, the UK’s Climate Change Committee warned that the impacts of global heating of 2C by 2050 were likely to wipe billions from the UK’s economy, in the form of damage from heatwaves, droughts, floods and storms, but that acting to reach net zero would bring economic benefits.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
El Niño typically brings drier conditions to Central America, northern South America, the Caribbean, Australia, Indonesia and parts of south Asia. Photograph: Kevin Herbian/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
UN agency predicts phenomenon that supercharges weather extremes has 80% chance of forming before September
The world must prepare for the imminent return of El Niño and the supercharged weather extremes it brings, the UN has warned.
The powerful natural weather pattern, which raises global temperatures and worsens some rainfall, has an 80% chance of forming before September and a 90% chance before November, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday.
It found most models projected the return of the cyclical phenomenon in the ocean and atmosphere to be “at least moderate” in strength, and possibly strong.
Scientists have previously warned that it could be the strongest this century. However, the WMO stopped short of backing such projections and said forecasters were still in a window of uncertainty.
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsGreenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Tourists and locals paddleboard at the sunrise on the Mediterranean Sea in Barcelona, Spain July 2, 2025. REUTERS/Nacho Doce Purchase Licensing Rights
June 2 (Reuters) – Spain registered record sea temperatures for the month of May along much of its coastline, the country’s port authority said on Tuesday, as the UN forecast a moderate or possibly strong El Nino, which could drive up global temperatures in coming months.
Twelve out of 15 deep-water buoys recorded their highest-ever temperatures for the month of May, as well as six out of 14 buoys along the coast, according to the Spanish port authority.
Human-caused climate change was behind the phenomenon, said Ruben del Campo, spokesperson for Spanish weather agency AEMET.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
The south-east of England experienced mains water supply issues last week due to high demand in the hot weather
The UK could see a warmer-than-average summer with the potential for more heatwaves, according to latest forecasts.
The Met Office released its three-month summer outlook on 1 June – the first day of meteorological summer – citing higher-than-normal chances of hotter weather during the month.
And for the whole summer – which runs through to the end of August – the outlook suggests “an increased chance of heatwaves and heat-related impacts”.
It comes after a late spring heatwave saw temperature records shattered across the UK.
A new all-time May record of 35.1C was set in Kew Gardens, London, replacing the previous record of 32.8C from 1944.
Yellow and amber heat health alerts were also issued for the first time this year.
Now, long-range forecasts from the Met Office and MeteoGroup – the latter being providers of BBC Weather data – suggest the summer ahead will bring the risk of additional heatwaves.
A “few notable high temperature spikes” are also possible according to MeteoGroup.
They also go on to say that “above-average temperatures” are expected for each of the months of June, July and August, and “significant bursts” of heat are expected in the UK, and across Europe.
But, according to the Met Office, the higher than average temperatures forecast comes as having a hotter summer is now twice as likely than the reference averaging period of 1991-2020, consistent with our warming climate.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Researchers prepare to deploy a glider instrument into the ocean. (Photo by Rebecca Travis/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
“Blinding the public to climate change won’t make it go away. It will only accelerate its profound consequences.”
In what a number of scientists suggested was the Trump administration’s latest effort to stop tracking the changing climate in hopes of convincing the public that the climate emergency isn’t happening, the National Science Foundation announced Monday that it was dismantling a crucial deep-ocean monitoring system that for years has helped researchers understand the impacts of the crisis on the world’s oceans.
The NSF said it plans to send ships this month to remove more than 900 instruments, part of a project called the Ocean Observatories Initiative. The project collects data on temperatures, currents, and the ocean’s absorption of carbon dioxide off the coasts of Oregon, Alaska, Washington, and North Carolina, as well as in the Irminger Sea between Iceland and Greenland.
A spokesperson for NSF told The New York Times that the dismantling of the initiative will help the NSF in “prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies as well as a deliberate approach to smart life cycle management within its portfolio of research infrastructure.”
The reasoning given for the shuttering of the project, said Tara Blume, a journalist at Oklahoma City NBC affiliate KFOR, was “a master class in obfuscation and doublespeak.”
Genevieve Guenther of the group End Climate Silence shared her own interpretation of why the $368 million ocean observation system is being discontinued, despite the fact that it had been set to collect data for 25 years.
“We need to track ocean currents to assess how close we are to climate tipping points that will essentially destroy the world as we know it,” said Guenther. “The GOP doesn’t want us to be able to do that. That’s why they’re dismantling ocean monitoring.”
"By dismantling such a system, we push the United States back yet again into a rear seat in global scientific leadership." https://t.co/TSKsORuTX9
Scientists have used data gathered by moorings, robotic vehicles, and other instruments that transmit the information to research laboratories, to study changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (AMOC), a current system that moves warm water northward and cools the Arctic and Northern Atlantic regions while absorbing carbon dioxide deep into the ocean and keeping it out of the atmosphere.
Data gathered at the observation station in the Irminger Sea has been key to understanding AMOC, which scientists fear is gradually weakening due to planetary heating and could ultimately collapse, likely causing major global weather changes.
“This is absolutely crazy,” said David Doniger, a senior strategist and attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate and energy department. “Wouldn’t you want to know if the ocean currents are changing? Wouldn’t you want to know ocean temperatures? These things affect everything from fishing to hurricanes.”
Following the announcement that the stations will be dismantled in the coming weeks, said Blume, “science gasps for breath.”
President Donald Trump has attempted several times to shut down or drastically reduce the budget of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, which costs $48 million annually to run. Congress has restored the program’s funding.
The dismantling of the program comes months after the Environmental Protection Agencyrepealed the “endangerment finding,” which for years had underpinned the department’s environmental regulations; after the administration closed down the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which had gathered data on hurricanes and extreme weather to help improve forecasts; and after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration released a statement on record-breaking temperatures in 2024 and 2025—without any mention of the climate crisis or climate change.
“Blinding the public to climate change won’t make it go away. It will only accelerate its profound consequences,” said clinical researcher Iris Gorfinkel.
According to the Trump administration, said historian Nick Kapur, “apparently climate change doesn’t exist if you prevent scientists from measuring it.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
