Climate change deal: ‘Zero carbon’ laws promised by government
By Paul Homewood
It looks like we’re going to opt for a quick death, rather than a slow, lingering one.
Comrade Harrabin reports (with the obligatory misleading photo):
Climate laws will be tightened to cut carbon emissions effectively to zero, the government has said.
Under current law, emissions must be cut by 80% by 2050 – but ministers have said this does not go far enough.
Following the climate deal in Paris, it is clear the UK must not increase CO2 at all because the warming threat is so severe, they added.
No details of the law change have been given – and critics said the UK was failing to meet even current targets.
The global climate agreement, which was finalised at a summit in Paris in December, commits to keeping global temperatures "well below" 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial times and limit the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity.
‘Important questions’
Speaking in the Commons, energy minister Andrea Leadsom said government believed it was necessary "to take the step of enshrining the Paris commitment to net zero emissions in UK law".
"The question is not whether but how we do it. And there are an important set of questions to be answered before we do," she said.
"This is an example once again of the House demonstration on a cross-party basis a determination to tackle climate change."
The statement was welcomed by the cross-party group of MPs which pressed for the climate law to be tightened.
Ex-Labour leader and former Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband told BBC News: "This will send a signal to other countries this is the right thing to do.
"We very much welcome what they (ministers) have done – now we’ve got to make sure the government deliver on it."
Policy changes
However, many in the energy sector will be baffled by what they see as a schizophrenic attitude to climate change from the government.
While pledging their allegiance to very demanding CO2 cuts, ministers have made a slew of policy changes that are predicted to increase emissions.
Ministers expected that by 2030 the UK would be mainly powered by nuclear, offshore wind and gas with carbon capture technology – which takes the emissions from a chimney and buries them in rocks.
But the government has failed to secure any new nuclear stations, scrapped a competition for carbon capture and threatened cuts in the offshore wind budget unless costs radically fall.
It has also turned its back on the cheapest forms of renewable energy – onshore wind and large scale solar energy and increased the tax on small low-emissions cars so the owner of a Prius pays as much vehicle excise duty as a Porsche.
The decision was followed by an increase in the purchase of the most polluting cars.
The government climate law announcement follows the tabling of an amendment to the Energy Bill by Mr Miliband and a cross-party group of MPs from six parties: Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Green, Plaid Cymru and SDLP.
Where Harrabin gets some of this drivel from beats me.
For instance:
“critics said the UK was failing to meet even current targets”
Is he not aware that the EU’s target of a 40% cut in GHG emissions from 1990 levels, which they plan to achieve by 2030, will be met in the UK next year?
Or that we are now committed by law to make much more far reaching cuts of 52% by 2023-27?
But the real story is what lay behind Andrea Leadsom’s statement, which Hansard reveals:
New clause 11, tabled by the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), would set a new climate change target for the UK. Specifically, it would require the Government to set a year by which net emissions will be zero or less, and to ensure that that target was met for that year and subsequent ones. The year would have to be set within 12 months of the Bill coming into force and following advice from the Committee on Climate Change.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmhansrd/cm160314/debtext/160314-0003.htm
Not content with stitching us up with the hugely expensive Climate Change Act in the first place, the walking idiot, Ed Miliband, now wants to finish the job. Rumour has it that Miliband has been in cahoots again with Bryony Worthington, who twisted him round her little finger in the first place and basically wrote the Climate Change Act herself.
Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, fossil fuels are currently producing 65% of our electricity:
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
In terms of total energy consumption, coal, oil and gas account for 84%, whilst wind/solar/hydro supply a paltry 2%.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/total-energy-section-1-energy-trends
And even this piffling amount comes at a huge cost, something Harrabin never seems to tell us:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/the-rising-cost-of-the-climate-change-act/
Beam me up, Scotty!
FOOTNOTE
Dellers confirms at Breitbart that Bryony Worthington was involved. This is from Miliband’s speech, according to Hansard:
I also thank my Front Bench team and Baroness Worthington in the other place for her support and advice.
The new clause would insert the commitment to zero emissions in the Paris climate change agreement into our domestic law, with the Committee on Climate Change advising on when it should be achieved. It is the right thing to do and the science is clear: the world needs to get to zero emissions early in the second half of this century, and it is worth reminding the House of the debate’s context.
We know from recent scientific analysis that 2015 was the hottest year on record. The record for global temperatures has been broken in each of the past five months, with February’s record broken in shocking fashion. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are now higher—this is hard to get your head around—than they have been for at least a million years. That is what the scientists tell us and it highlights the necessary urgency, which is shared by Members on both sides of the House.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
This utter stupidity is getting depressing.
If the UK were to examine its own temperature anomaly and let the rest of the world get on with their own figures (that we cannot influence anyway), it would appear that we can guarantee that we will not exceed 2 deg K above 1900-2000 values.
Our miniscule contribution to the world’s total CO2 is not worth committing industrial Hari-kari and guaranteeing a generation energy-poverty over. Unfortunately, the believers are so busy saving us from their vision of Armageddon that they will not stop to think.
MPs that vote for this should have their constituencies targeted for all new wind farms, and for removal of all trees for burning at Drax and similar facilities, and local carbon taxes on petrol stations reflected in higher prices. Also, no more natural gas supplies. I wonder how many would get reelected.
Why punish the constituents? In most cases MP’s only have the “authority” of a small minority anyway. I’m one of the few who regularly visit my MP, and sound off about this sort of lunacy, yet I know full well that I’m wasting my time. At a meeting last week I started off by suggesting that things might be different if MP’s & local government officials should be made personally and financially responsible for the consequences of their actions. I don’t that idea had ever crossed her mind…
And when everything crashes and burns, they will look around in amazement and ask, “how did this happen….who’s to blame for this????”
They seem to want everything to be electric without generating any extra electricity. Does not compute.
Bonkers is too polite; it’s actually recklessness in public office.
Isn’t there anyone who can take this man aside and explain to him the CO2 does NOT cause global warming, hence climate change??
I guess not. A radical politician will continue to push his political agenda regardless of the facts.
It is rather too clear a fact that all this free energy from sun and wind is horribly expensive.,
But that does not mean that the problem which they are supposed to cure doesn’t exist.
Oldbrew has a point,
but Bryony Worthington, if I’m not mistaken, has a far better one. I believe she is one of the few people who back a modern solution to a problem that has been accelerating since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Anyway, CO2 and methane and more than a few other gases have the property that in quite small amounts they can interfere with the process whereby our planet gets rid of the vast quantity of energy that the sun’s radiation bestows upon it. That is an actual fact of thermodynamics, chemistry and physics, and is not the sort of thing that political bias can affect.
Now the actual political nonsense of which the people with the temerity to call themselves ‘green’ are guilty, is the nostalgic, romantic belief that the Sun is our Friend. Well,it is, but…..
We are already using far more of it than most wind and solar worshippers imagine. It distils our water, it feeds the plants that we eat, and the plants that some of our food eats, and even the small animals that some of our food, such as poultry or salmon, eat.
Back to Bryony Worthington. She was convinced by Kirk Sorensen that molten salt breeder reactors are the tool for getting rid of coal burning. Sorensen’s idea is to produce fissile uranium from thorium, which is perhaps three times as plentiful as uranium, but totally non-fissile.
But the same principle has been applied to a design described at http://transatomicpower.com.
It is a reactor which abolishes the argument that the problem of radioactive residues that are still half as radioactive in 24,000 years is insoluble. This reactor can consume it.
Compare the equally impossible task of returning a stripped coal field at the side of a mountain, to its pristine original state, after the “overburden” has been blasted into the valley.
I make our carbon based fuel reliance rather higher. The Interned connector is fed by the coal fired Maasvlakte power stations, while “Other” is basically the wood pellets burned at Drax. Now that Wylfa is shut, the power to pump up Dinorwig overnight will have come mainly from fossil fuelled plants in the NW of England in the present low wind conditions.
The plan is of course insane. Let’s hope there are more MPs prepared to say so than last time.
There we are – Milliband can kill this country from his own political grave. Was there ever a more stupid MP (Gummer excluded of course) ?
“… takes the emissions from a chimney and buries them in rocks …”
The rock is in their heads.
It is amazing how easy it is to make something that is complex and costly sound so simple.
This is a bit like the Tooth Fairy.
LOL
This man along with others of his ilk will be the down fall of this nation. Politics is currently infested with middle class graduates that have no life experience outside of the concrete jungle that they evolved in to placate the whining class at pleasant dinner parties. I wouldn’t trust any of these energy intelligentsia to change a plug on a kettle let alone be responsible for planning energy policy. It’s time that some of the energy companies took a stance and said…. no more, because we will go out of business and you will cripple the country.
The useful idiots at 38 degrees are in on the act:
“Wow, that was unexpected. The government’s just promised to make zero carbon emissions part of UK law. It’s exactly the kind of big, bold action 38 Degrees members have wanted on climate change. It could be a game-changer.
But right now it’s just a promise. And there are plenty of ways it could get derailed – the government backtracking, opposition in parliament or bureaucracy slowing it down. What’s going to cut through all this and hold the government to their promise is pressure from their own colleagues – our MPs.
Our MPs will be weighing up this news right now. So let’s get in their inboxes and get them to back the government’s new position. Together we can keep a tally of what MPs say and hold them to it later down the line – so they can keep the government on track.
Please will you email your MP now and ask what they’ll do to make sure the government sticks to their promise?
For a while, it felt like there was no good news on climate change. But the tide’s turning. Recently we’ve seen the world agreeing on real commitments in Paris, the biggest energy lobby in the UK backing renewables, and now the government promising zero carbon emissions.
There’s still a long way to go but together we’re making sure things keep moving in the right direction. The government’s going to have to make some big choices if they want to put zero emissions into law – and right now there’s no real plan on the table. So we need to come together to make sure they get the backing of MPs.
Can you email your MP now and ask them to hold the government to their promise?”
I’ve said this earlier… “They” want “us” to all go back to a “safe” 350 ppm CO2? Ok, but that’s back to 1987. The problem is that CO2 has risen 50 ppm and the number of “carbon feet” has risen by two billion. How can seven to ten billion act like five billion…without serous impacts to social and economic conditions…regardless of who pays? Mission Impossible!
I rather doubt that the present level of CO2 will go down that fast even with a total abandonment of fossil carbon burning. As for the global oceanic accumulation of heat, what reduction of carbon emission will do is to lower the rate of acceleration of its increase.
I really & truly can’t get my head around what these people are doing & saying.
Are they really that stupid and naive that they believe the utter rubbish they sprout?
Have we been invaded by Aliens that have brainwashed them?
Do they work for some foreign power that is trying to destroy Britain?
Are they working for the UN and trying to enforce Agenda 21?
Is it just about the “money”?
I just don’t get it.
I’d say the Pod Person hypothesis looks more and more reasonable.
Have fun over the next few winters, guys. !!
Once this El Nino fully dissipated and the following La Nina and sleepy Sun start to grip, I reckon you will see a pretty radical change of idea from these anti-CO2 twerps !!
Hopefully you will find a politician with some sort of grasp of REALITY who will totally erase all this stupidity and turn your lighting and heating back on.
Will the last person to leave the country please turn off the lights… Oh sorry, they will have gone out already.
Hope beyond hope .. an out vote in the referendum will see a complete change at the top of the Tory party leading to the beginning of the end of the the climate-tisim cult
Failing that a military takover
The military won’t fancy going back to horses and chariots.
uhhh … the British Army already has more horses than tanks?
like the Royal Navy has more admirals than “floating assets”
Catastrophic Climate Change is a far more definite threat to far more people than even Islamic terrorism.
But the reason the unbelievers remain in disbelief, if I’m not mistaken, includes the fact that with the exception of nuclear, which Baroness Bryony advocates the alleged cures for it cannot succeed.
I wonder what they think they will do about the plants? I thought they keep bleating about the “5 a day” etc. That is going to be difficult with no plant food available !!! These people really do need obliterating !
If you read between the lines, what will be zero is the ‘net’ emissions. Translation: emissions will be whatever, but government will claim to have ‘in practice’ reduced them to zero through the purchase of (unverifiable) carbon offsets.
Excellent point on the matter of verification.
I can categorically state from someone who watches weather and climate outdoors every day, where I live in the North 2015 was one of the coldest summers for 30-40 years and everyone across the area will tell you so. Fact. The intellectually bankrupt can say what they like about interpreting the science but it does not make it the truth. NGC.
YOU ARE ***ALL*** GUILTY OF CLIMATE CRIMES
– so the government will
emplace finestax you more and use those monies to buy climate indulgences from the chums of the people who invented the “crime” ….oh, hello Bryony
I know that the BBC have had complaints before about this photo. Indeed, I’ve complained to them about it (and have again this morning). Here’s 300 usages of it in various publications, haven’t got time to page thru’ to see how many times the BBC have abused it.
https://www.tineye.com/search/336ed93494fa27d62693449e0094b3b699e58f4a/?page=3&sort=score&order=desc
Baroness Worthington actually knows more about zero emissions technology that it seems most of the politicians who ever are found in Brussels do. Last time I looked, she was an advocate of nuclear Molten Salt breeder Reactor, MSR technology.
I wonder if she knows of http://transatomicpower.com and Leslie Dewan’s Waste Annihilating MSR. It would convert half a ton a year of its 65 tons of fuel, into demand-responsive power of up to 520 MW, into power and short-lived fission products. The fuel itself is to be 1,8% enriched uranium, which matches what so-called “spent” nuclear fuel for present day reactors is if you just remove the 4% that is their fission products.
Another recent entrant is Ontario’s http://terrestrialenergy.com
Unless Europe abandons its wind turbine cum solar energy delusion, there is no possibility of even 100% zero carbon electrical energy by 2050.