May To Commit To Net Zero Plan
By Paul Homewood
As expected, the utterly discredited Theresa May has decided to take the rest of the country down with her when she goes:
Greenhouse gas emissions in the UK will be cut to almost zero by 2050, under the terms of a new government plan to tackle climate change.
Prime Minister Theresa May said reducing pollution would also benefit public health and cut NHS costs.
Britain is the first major nation to propose this target – and it has been widely praised by green groups.
But some say the phase-out is too late to protect the climate, and others fear that the task is impossible.
The UK already has a 2050 target – to reduce emissions by 80%. That was agreed by MPs under the Climate Change Act in 2008, but will now be amended to the new, much tougher, goal.
The actual terminology used by the government is "net zero" greenhouse gases by 2050.
That means emissions from homes, transport, farming and industry will have to be avoided completely or – in the most difficult examples – offset by planting trees or sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere.
The government’s advisory Committee on Climate Change recommended the "net zero" target in May.
Its report said if other countries followed the UK, there was a 50-50 chance of staying below the recommended 1.5C temperature rise by 2100.
A 1.5C rise is considered the threshold for dangerous climate change.
Chancellor Philip Hammond has warned of a potential cost of £1 trillion by 2050.
The cash will have to come from somewhere, he said – maybe from schools, hospitals and the police.
Following the Committee on Climate Change’s recommendations last month, scientists, campaigners and health professionals have been urging Mrs May to bring in a net zero target before she stands down.
The government will lay a "statutory instrument" in the Commons on Wednesday – a tactic that allows it to be fast-tracked through both houses of Parliament if other parties agree – which on this issue they generally do.
Like any government decision it could be overturned by future governments.
But the majority of Tory leadership candidates are backing it – and revoking the Act would need a majority Commons vote at a time when the public appear very concerned about the climate.
Mrs May has taken the unusual step of announcing that a group of young people will advise the government on priorities for environmental action. They will start their review in July.
This is seen as a nod towards young voters, many of whom have recently taken to the streets protesting that their environment was being destroyed.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48596775
It is nothing short of scandalous that decisions like this will be rushed through Parliament without any proper debate, and without being fully costed.
The BEIS have already indicated that the costs could be £70bn a year, £20bn more than the CCC estimated.
It is also unacceptable that this law will be passed without any public consultation whatsoever. In particular, the media have been complicit in this cover up. The public will be horrified when they are presented with the practical realities of decarbonisation.
This is clearly one area where Parliament has no mandate for action. No party included such a policy in its manifesto, and given their almost unanimous adoption of it the public will get no say in future elections.
As for the idea of appointing a group of young people to advise government, I can only assume May has totally lost her marbles!
Meanwhile back in the real world, global emissions rose again last year by 2%, according to the new BP Energy Review.
While the whole of Parliament must stand accused here, the dreadful May must take her share of the blame. In an attempt to establish a legacy after three years of her disastrous premiership, she is instead signing the most expensive suicide note in history.
History will not look kindly on her.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
According to Hammond, the money “may have to come from policing, health and education”; where else can it come from???
The emperors have decided that the cloth is fine as they place their digits in the dyke to save the world. OMG, we need both batman and superman urgently.
Try dividing £1T by 30, which is the number of years to 2050, and look at the result. There will be no police force, no education and probably no NHS. This woman is unbelievable in her stupidity.
It would add thirty billion a year to a budget of seven hundred fifty billion. Stupid, pointless, will cause significant, unnecessary pain but not a catastrophe.
It is the draconian measures that will be necessary to make it happen that are the real cost. That will be the catastrophe for a previously free society.
Except Ron, there are always cyclical downturns and recessions. Theresa May probably doesn’t know that and probably doesn’t even try to think like an economist. Yet she is First Lord of the Treasury, it is a prime part of her job description, no pun intended..
She should realise that combining that sort of extra expenditure could make a mere downturn into a recession and make a recession into the sort of crash that we saw 2007-2009. In addition, the UK has an undue influence for our actual size on the world economy. Whether in or out of the EU, but especially if we end up trapped there, we could crash the Eurozone & EU economies and then tip the world into recession.
When the 2007-2009 crash came we instantly, near enough, saw 2m+ lose their jobs. Next time, with a much enlarged UK population & larger workforce, we could see 4m+ lose their jobs overnight. That explodes the Benefits bill that HMG is still trying to reduce from 10 years ago. The knock-on effects ripple out through all sorts of different areas. Higher taxes will be required on top of higher taxes raised to pay for this folly.
You are right about the draconian measures: the teenagers out agitating & demonstrating for all this to happen just do not realise what is going to happen to their future job and leisure prospects. No travel internationally or internally. No festivals and concerts. No great sporting events on their doorstep.
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.
Perhaps she intends appointing a 15 year old Swedish girl as her Minister for the Environment!
It’s a bit late in the day now, .. the child could have been a Cabinet Minister & groomed as a future PM. No worse than the tripe we’re being fed this now.
Lousiest PM in history(!) and Lord knows we’ve really had some stinkers, eg. major cameron, brown, blair et al. Now this crazy old bat hopes to sink our nation under her ‘may’s own legacy’,- a viciously expensive but POINTLESS foul-up for decades! Long before then, the whole insane ‘global warmin’ nonsense should have faded into the back of every comedians’ joke book! The multi £billions will have been WASTED as the planet just carries on, perfectly OK!!
And what is interesting is that the only criticism of her scorched earth policy that I’ve seen in the MSM today is that her policy doesn’t go far or fast enough! Lomberg’s recent DT piece was very much the exception not the rule and he’s actually a ‘lukewarmer’ not a real sceptic. The lunatics have most definitely taken over the asylum. If her plans ever materialise, the only ‘Extreme Rebellion’ we will witness won’t be by middle class snowflakes super-gluing themselves to railings but by the great unwashed rising up and violently overthrowing their masters who will have plunged them in to misery and penury. And what is all the more execrable is that, whatever action they take, the political elite won’t make a single iota’s worth of difference to the climate. I think Mother Nature’s lost more than one rib laughing at their insanity.
This morning, R4; the calm announcer informs me that the policy of national suicide – I mean net zero carbon by 2050 – had been decided upon. Then:
“The plan has been criticised by…”
A moment, a flash of hope – unwarranted and stifled before he even spoke the next words. I knew what was coming.
“…green groups who say it does not go far enough…”
This is how it feels to be living in a parallel universe where everyone is suffering a collective delusion.
Scientists talk about “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”, what goes on between the ears of May must class as the second of these!
Colin, I think you are completely wrong.
A scientist of the future will discover that in that space in May’s head was the first ever terrestrial black hole.
Unfortunately, this will only be discovered after the black hole in there has absorbed vast amounts of taxpayer money, mostly from the lower and middle earners who will experience – bless ’em – most of the resulting poverty.
Mr Up2snuff, I have to agree that your theory is at least as credible as my own ^.^
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”
Donald Rumsfeld, United States Secretary of Defense for George W. Bush
Zigactly!
May has no idea about all the things she does not know
And as usual, Cardinal Horrorbin laps it all up without any analysis or criticism. He is supposed to be an environment analyst, but he doesn’t know how to do any analysis. All he knows is how to do propaganda.
The whiff of madness grows stronger daily. Once upon a time it was witches which fed the blood lust, now it is false science supported by greed.
“Its report said if other countries followed the UK, there was a 50-50 chance of staying below the recommended 1.5C temperature rise by 2100.
A 1.5C rise is considered the threshold for dangerous climate change.”
Berkeley Earth …. land temperatures since 1750:
“Over land, we have already blown through the 1.5C threshold if measured since 1890. Temperatures around 1820 were more than 2C cooler. There has been a great deal natural variability in temperatures prior to 1975 when human caused global warming kicked in any meaningful way.”
Whilst I have yet to see any evidence to show human caused global warming kicked in in 1975, there has been little warming since 1995 and the last 30 years of the CET show negligible change, but her point is that we are already at the mystical 1.5 deg C over “pre-industrial” and the sky hasn’t fallen in, (well maybe yesterday).
Emissions and CO2 (Mauna Loa) don’t directly correlate either. From 1990-2007, global anthropogenic “GHG” emissions actually rose by over 40 per cent, whilst atmospheric CO2 increased by just 8%. There was a spike in annual CO2 ppm in 1998 and 2016, both co-inciding with El Nino events.
Curry finishes: “IMO, even with erroneous attribution of extreme weather/climate events and projections using climate models that are running too hot and not fit for purpose of projecting 21st century climate change, the IPCC still has not made a strong case for this massive investment to prevent 1.5C warming.”
……which has already happened!
The original IPCC target (~ 2010) was 2C change by 2050. Reality has shown that the climate is not warming as fast as that. So the target was reset in Paris 2015 to ” 2C by 2100 ” – a reduced rate of warming of more than 50% – thus resetting the goal posts to a more likely end point. But it was important to keep up the pressure. This new rate of warming gives 1.5C at 2050. Now we face a “climate emergency” if we do not meet this new figure.
What should be good news namely that the climate is not warming so quickly, giving more time to implement appropriate measures, has been completely turned on its head – it is “worse than we thought” and we must now urgently meeet a new target of 1.5C by 2050, reduced from 2C.
So if a 15 yr old foreigner can get the ear of our Government, ( so easily?) , then WHY CAN’T the knowledgeable “Deniers” get a word in too? What is WRONG with Society…..
As I noted earlier this morning, it seems that “if other countries followed the UK, there was a 50-50 chance of staying below the recommended 1.5C temperature rise by 2100” – i.e. no chance at all. See this interesting article: China And India Will Watch The West Destroy Itself – https://www.eurasiareview.com/05062019-china-and-india-will-watch-the-west-destroy-itself-oped/
But don’t worry: “Mrs May has taken the unusual step of announcing that a group of young people will advise the government on priorities for environmental action“. Phew – that’s OK then.
Maybe the young people would think a bit more if they realised whose jobs were going to be sacrificed and whose standard of living was going to fall massively if this madness goes ahead?
I can only assume that she is certifiably insane ans should have at least a Minder….Oh hang on isn’t it Deben’s post!
May’s determination to utterly destroy the UK knows no bounds. All the leadership candidates except Esther McVey seem determined to follow in her wake. If even arch Remainer Hammond can spot a flaw in this policy you might have thought that some others would also do so.
Perhaps someone needs to find a ten year old boy who can produce a criticism of the intention to return our lives to the Stone Age that politicians might fawn over.
The inexorable rise of the Mauna Loa CO2 data (strangely it seldom gets mentioned) is ideal for rubbishing this policy, especially as 2050 approaches, invite supporters of this policy to comment on its impact on the atmosphere.
But every cloud has a silver lining, could the Green Blob get a bit worried about employment prospects for “campaigners”, now that the campaign has succeeded? There is big money to be made in the new technologies, such as an Uber for horse-drawn carriages.
I’ve never really understood why Mauna Loa is considered the bell-weather measurement. Who decided that this was the best place on the planet to determine the global CO2 level? Isn’t that rather like me wanting my back garden to represent global temp?
Mauna Loa is one of many, and they keep checking each other. It is a good idea to read about this one and the others, to understand what is done, and how accurate they are.
Mauna Loa gets reported by the MSM, that’ all.
Time for a Refresher on NASA satellite CO2 monitor
AFAIK it went against the narrative thst hotspots are around western industrial areas
Thanks, John.
Global GHG emissions rose 63 per cent from 1990 to 2017. In 2017, non-OECD emissions coincidentally, were 63 per cent of global emissions. No major authority on global energy supply, demand and emissions trends projects 2040 emissions to be lower than global emissions are today. The IPCC’s path to 1.5 degrees C. would require that global emissions be about 17 billions tonnes annually by 2030 and “net zero” by 2050. The entire OECD could disappear and produce zero emissions and neither of those goals would be reached. Inflicting immense and costly economic damage on the U.K. (or any other OECD country) to try to meet the goals in mindless virtue signalling.
My estimate of the effect of the UK going to net zero by 2050 is that the global atmospheric stock of CO2 will hit the same value it would have done – but it will do it 70 days later. That is the effect of progressively erasing the UK linearly between now and 2050. If we were wiped out of existence tomorrow, the world would get where it is going 140 days later.
Except that some of the UK emissions will be displaced to other countries rather than eliminated.
>96% of CO2 emissions are NATURAL. Man’s contribution is <4%.
"Global GHG emissions rose 63 per cent from 1990 to 2017."
A ridiculous assertion. Man is a bit player in all this. The UK's contribution is 0.08%. Not even measurable.
IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT THE UK DOES !!!
I shall actually defend Theresa May on the grounds that history will actually judge her well compared to what we will be suffering in the coming months, especially if the lying oaf gets to be PM. If her legacy of net zero is such a bad idea then parliament will reject it won’t they? But then this collection of morons have already voted that there is a climate emergency….
May has turned out to be the sucker that got to pull the trigger, but it was inevitable, given the motivations of politicians, and the capture of so much of the “state” by the Green Slime, so I don’t blame her specifically.
The one good thing as she has proven at least twice just because a date enshrined in law doesn’t mean it can’t be changed or forgotten about altogether
In order to be carbon neutral by 2050, we are going to have to plant one hell of a lot of trees. Over 85% of our total energy mix currently comes from gas, coal and oil at present. Making commitments like this is what happens when parliament is a scientist/engineer free zone.
Who is going to save us from this insanity??????? Nt one leading politcal figure is riding to the rescue.
The reason simply is that they daren’t! But Peter Lilley did a report. See https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2016/12/CCACost-Dec16.pdf.
It’s insane. Treason Maybot is insane. Parliament is insane. The ‘respected’ scientists – including Joanna Haigh from Imperial College London, Myles Allen from Oxford University, Sir Brian Hoskins, who chairs the Grantham Institute on Climate Change, and Professor Dame Julia Slingo (former Chief Scientist at the Met Office) – who wrote to Treason May urging her to do this are all insane. Facts and rational arguments are no longer going to dissuade these people from plunging us headlong into a UK ‘climate crisis’ of our own making even as the British weather carries on regardless. I can’t see the exit door from the lunatic asylum – it’s obscured by smoke and mirrors.
Jaime.. You’ve made an important point. All politicians rely on others to make science policy. Theresa May is not alone as she reads the “Bible according to Alarmists”. It is the gospel…settled science? What is so remarkable is that these members of the scientific “clergy” don’t seem to understand that reaching zero carbon emissions does nothing but leave the atmosphere with what is already there, plus whatever will be emitted as they try to keep carbon in the ground. At the same time they urge more capture and burial of CO2 from the atmosphere…billions of tons of it. That’s not possible in the amounts they say are needed. Even if they were to succeed nothing will happen to save us from all that catastrophic extreme weather their models predict. Remarkable scientific myopia coupled with stupidity?
Broadlands, it’s not ‘stupidity’, it’s Cupidity. They’re in it for the money and fame. What they’ll get is poverty (like the rest of us) and infamy.
There have to be some honest scientists out there somewhere…
I looked up ‘cupidity’ in the dictionary.
They had Hillary Clinton’s picture.
I know Dame Julia Slingo and she is not insane. That’s the scary thing. She’s actually brilliant. But Bishops and Archbishops tend to be brilliant too, and they believe in god — something similarly unfalsifiable.
I’ve seen the misty eyed wistfulness when she talked about finding “the anthropogenic signal”, very much a True Believer.
“I can’t see the exit door..”.
Look for the one marked, “Just About Anywhere Else.”
Chancellor Philip Hammond has warned of a potential cost of £1 trillion by 2050.
Double that at least if you want battery back-up.
If this isn’t all talk and no trousers, we are about to hit a permanent recession. It surprises me that our leaders are ok with this.
Meanwhile Eduoard Phillippe has just promised the French people:
Renegotiating electricity pricing with the EU Commission? Getting rid of complex subsidy frameworks? Not paying more for electricity while not polluting? Whatever could he mean? Still, if he thanks that’s doable, perhaps he should be on the Brexit negotiating team for the UK.
Calm down please. Look at Australia. Just wait for the first complete breakdown of the Grid and black-outs and I am absolutely certain that there will be a complete turn around of attitudes. After a couple of break downs, the public will demand a return to reliable energy production. There is no way that this path towards self destruction will be run to the bitter end.
Once the electors realise where the elected representatives are leading us they will be replaced at the first opportunity with ‘deniers’.
The evidence of the climate fraud is there to be hauled out once the time is right for it to happen.
I am a ‘happy denier’ and expect the whole fraud to explode within a couple of years. Just need all the coal powered plants to close and then a miscalculation on dispatch-able energy. What about a shut down of several nuclear powered stations due to repairs at the same time as cold weather and no sun like the winter of 1995/6? Things can happen. It is a matter of time.
At this point the punter does not suffer any real harm from ‘climate change’. They don’t understand their £200 excess on their energy bills up front. The move towards electric driven vehicles has barely started and will stall at some point. The more such vehicles the earlier the first big time power cut. There is a built in stop in the whole decarbonisation process- power cuts.
You’re right: we have the possibility of Grid breakdown in Australia, Mrs May’s agreement to a review within five years of whether other countries are taking “similarly ambitious action” (they won’t be) and don’t forget the Green Party surge in Germany indicating the possibility of a doubling down on the already disastrous Energiewende policy. Any of these might cause a future UK administration to come to its senses.
The answer is 42 ……..
It does include a “change our mind about it” clause. After 5 years if other countries haven’t sufficiently followed suit. Let us recall that the all-new-houses-to-be-zero-carbon-from-2016 legislation was repealed when it became clear that the consequence would be very few new houses. Doubtless this can also be just repealed too if it becomes embarrassing.
You’d almost think parliament actually really voting to spend £3tn of our money without any proper discussion. But I don’t think they are. This is more about the message than the reality.
The comments here suggest the greenies have won. Where is the evidence, not model output, that proves carbon dioxide is the sole factor in temperature change? This is such a fundamental point but it seems to be taken for granted that an increase in carbon dioxide concentration will categorically result in an increase in temperature, with the argument being about how dangerous that is. Surely, if we’re going to commit £1trillion, with all the consequences, somebody ought to be asking for more proof.
It’s time for a rebellion!!! Our governing idiots are committing us to financial oblivion. The general public needs to know just what it will cost them but getting the message out in this time of censorship by the back door is a problem.
Where a leader that speaks up against #FakeGreen tele-evangelists charlatans ?
David TC Davis, Rod Liddle ?
Neither BBC 5Live nor JVine got much Social Media likes for their campaigning today
CCBGB
Britain has no leaders.
THAT is the problem.
Guido’s commentators don’t seem very keen on the plan: https://order-order.com/2019/06/12/may-ramming-trillion-pound-climate-change-plan-no-proper-costings/#disqus_thread
The UK Parliament has always liked to think it can control the weather, the first example was in 1662. Nothing new then. But perhaps the extinction rebellion people and the schoolchildren climate stikers, could concentrate their protests on things politicians can do something about like Brexit.
Samuel Pepys 21st jan 1661
It is strange what weather we have had all this winter; no cold at all; but the ways are dusty, and the flyes fly up and down, and the rose-bushes are full of leaves, such a time of the year as was never known in this world before here.
House Of Lords 11th jan 1662
The Fast to be observed in Westm. Abbey, and the Bp. of St. David’s to preach.
¶Whereas His Majesty hath been pleased, by Proclamation, upon the Unseasonableness of the Weather, to command a general and public Fast, to be religiously and solemnly kept, within the Cities of London and Westm. and Places adjacent: It is ORDERED, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, in Parliament assembled.
Samuel Pepys 15 jan 1662
fast day ordered by the Parliament, to pray for more seasonable weather; it having hitherto been summer weather, that it is, both as to warmth and every other thing, just as if it were the middle of May or June, which do threaten a plague (as all men think) to follow, for so it was almost the last winter; and the whole year after hath been a very sickly time to this day
At least praying and fasting was cheap. And absolutely without doubt every bit as effective as will be bombing the economy back to the stone age.
This is nothing to do with science. Any reputable physicist with basic knowledge of radiation physics knows that doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere cannot increase energy ( incorrectly attributed to ‘temperature’) by more than 0.34K. Any reputable climatologist knows that average global temperatures are meaningless, but if such numbers have to be quoted, they know that we have already passed an increase of 1.5C since 1800 with no ill effects as the increase is almost completely about increases in winter and nightime lows ( an outbreak of mildness).
This is an unholy alliance of socialist wealth redistributors and billionaire elitists looking for disruptive opportunities. They are using the ‘religiosity’ of innocent youths and western calvanistic tendancies to help drive political decisions.
It will require a ‘catastrophic event’ to stop this, to change mindsets. Loss of life through many ‘winters of discontent’ due to power shortages may have to happen before enough people are shocked into seeing what they have sleep-walked into.
Well said, JimW.
Thanks for this interesting comment. I used part of your science to urge my MP not to support such a lunatic policy.
The difference between the 0.34K you quote and a climate sensitivity estimate is the feedback effects that inevitably come along with it – especially the effect of the increased water vapour.
Briefly looking at the pantomime at PMQ’s today confirms that virtually the whole cast present there are a complete failure of pathological lying no nothings and an utter disgrace to the country.
While I’m here, if there is ever another Scottish referendum, the English should get a vote too, as to whether we actually want them to be in the UK.
I for one I’m sick to death of that seeing & hearing that little cranky beating continually on about it and her comme comrades in Parliament
Roll on the Brexit Party.
Woah there now! I quite agree with most you say…. dunno why no one seems to agree with my comments along the road, However, NOT ALL SCOTS like that Kranky Gits EITHER,so don’t throw the baby out wih the bathwater. I am a Brexiteer too and don’t see the logic of independence from the uk AND subserviance to the EU. Of course you know what its REALLY all about, don’t you?
As I’ve implied earlier:- Where are our wee bairnies who know better than the eurokidz about REAL SCIENCE and stay in school on Fridays? How & When do they get the chance to blow in the ear of the Politoco & MSM nitwits. ( Och maybe they don’t like the look of the Earwachs! )
6H2O + 6CO2 → C6H12O6 + 6O2 This is the formula for photosynthesis. Water and Carbon Dioxide plus sunlight give us Sugar and Oxygen. The sugar is what everything on this planet lives on, the Oxygen comes in useful for some of us a well. Carbon Dioxide is the elixir of life for this planet. The more there is the greener the planet will be. I cannot understand why CO2 is now a pollutant and must be eliminated. Just because it MIGHT cause a small increase in temperature. Its just CRAZY.
It might get worse: according to the FT (paywalled) Labour is considering a 2030 net-zero target. Here’s why: https://labourlist.org/2019/05/why-labour-should-aim-for-zero-carbon-by-2030-in-a-green-new-deal/
2050 sounds like they don’t really care.
They should go for 2023.
Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad.
BBC R4 “Inside Science” has just covered this issue, all they did was allow an activist-scientist to spin all the usual fake soundbites (praising Extinction Rebellion and St. Greta), and totally failing to ask the proper science question:
What impact will there be on the climate of the UK going from a 0.8% reduction (the previous target) to a 1% reduction of global CO2 emissions?
Where did you get “a 0.8% reduction?”
Their total contribution is just 0.08%.
UK emissions are around 1% of the global total, previous target was to reduce that by 80%, negligible effect, even more negligible and costly is to remove the remaining 20%, or 0.2% of the global total.
Pay attention. Natural sources comprise over 96% of emissions. UK is irrelevant.
To Keith earlier:I divided one UK trillion by 30(years) and got 33,000Bn per year.
Surely we must question the sanity of our MPs-seriously!
All this will seem so academic in the next few years as food prices shoot-up on the back of this cooling planet’s effect on growing seasons.
Currently it is likely that 1/3 of the US corn crop is not going to be planted this year, China has a shortfall in pork as swine fever ruins it production and fruit farms in many regions are have a very poor last 2 years with many crop failures due to poor weather.
From Ice Age farmer https://youtu.be/-nlkUWt7adA