18 Months To Save The Planet, Says Potty Matt McGrath!
By Paul Homewood
Matt McGrath is getting even more paranoid!
Do you remember the good old days when we had "12 years to save the planet"?
Now it seems, there’s a growing consensus that the next 18 months will be critical in dealing with the global heating crisis, among other environmental challenges.
Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5C this century, emissions of carbon dioxide would have to be cut by 45% by 2030.
But today, observers recognise that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year.
The idea that 2020 is a firm deadline was eloquently addressed by one of the world’s top climate scientists, speaking back in 2017.
"The climate math is brutally clear: While the world can’t be healed within the next few years, it may be fatally wounded by negligence until 2020," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founder and now director emeritus of the Potsdam Climate Institute.
The sense that the end of next year is the last chance saloon for climate change is becoming clearer all the time.
"I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival," said Prince Charles, speaking at a reception for Commonwealth foreign ministers recently.
The Prince was looking ahead to a series of critical UN meetings that are due to take place between now and the end of 2020.
Ever since a global climate agreement was signed in Paris in December 2015, negotiators have been consumed with arguing about the rulebook for the pact.
But under the terms of the deal, countries have also promised to improve their carbon-cutting plans by the end of next year.
One of the understated headlines in last year’s IPCC report was that global emissions of carbon dioxide must peak by 2020 to keep the planet below 1.5C.
Current plans are nowhere near strong enough to keep temperatures below the so-called safe limit. Right now, we are heading towards 3C of heating by 2100 not 1.5.
As countries usually scope out their plans over five and 10 year timeframes, if the 45% carbon cut target by 2030 is to be met, then the plans really need to be on the table by the end of 2020.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48964736
This is all very confusing, because when the Paris Agreement was signed back in 2015 the BBC told us that the world had been saved:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35084374
As more discerning observers, such as this column, inconveniently pointed out at the time, Paris did no such thing. It simply kicked the can down the road, and, as it officially acknowledged, would lead to emissions actually increasing and not falling.
Matt McGrath evidently has a mental block here, since he still steadfastly refuses to make this clear to his readers.
But what about the central issue here – that emissions of carbon dioxide must be cut by 45% by 2030?
Whatever Matt McGrath’s climate groupies have to say on the matter, there is zero chance of this happening by 2030, or for that matter by 2050.
Currently fossil fuels account for 85% of total global energy consumption, which itself has been rising in leaps and bounds:
BP Energy Review
If wind and solar generation increases at the same rate as the last decade, its share of total energy consumption will still only be 6% in 2030, even in the unlikely event that the latter does not carry on increasing:
Moreover there is very little appetite outside China for nuclear power, and new hydro schemes are also of limited value.
Half of the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide now occur in Asia, meaning that anything the west does is pretty much irrelevant.
Curiously, McGrath makes no mention at all of China, India or the rest of Asia in his propaganda piece, though he does find space to say:
Last December the US, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Russia blocked the IPCC special report on 1.5C from UN talks.
We might have know it was the wicked Trump, Putin and Arabs’ fault!
It is time Matt McGrath stopped paying attention to silly little Swedish schoolgirls, came outside his BBC bubble and found out what is going on in the real world.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
We also note that the BBC rhetoric has been notched up another click.
Our 2019 summer is now routinely described as a ‘heat wave’.
Evidently the BBC would rather we suffered a summer of rain.
Do we have to endure another 18 months of McGrath and Harrabin? Surely the planet will be saved when they retire.
We will have to endure this Green Blob Marketing charade for decades to come, as each new meeting is trumpeted as the Last Chance To Save The Planet, just marvel at how the selfless warriors for The Planet do battle with the Forces Of Darkness, blah blah.
Many paychecks rely on this drivel, especially in the Environmental dept of the BBC, which is allowed to report its warped view on changing the global economic order as if it were talking about butterflies.
Or, to put it another way, if they can’t persuade the world to commit economic suicide within 18 months, they’ll never do so after global climate cycles start taking temps down.
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.
There’s going to be a heck of a lot of red faces when all this nonsense is settled. But then of course they’ll all claim they meant something different.
What McGrath really means is that there is only about 18 months left to save the climate change scam. Since the UN IPCC upped the ante last year with their ridiculous call for an impossible 45% cut in global emissions by 2030 it will only take a couple of years of non-draconian action before it is obvious to all that the establishment does not take their own climate scare seriously.
You can almost start to smell their fear as they rush to get laws made before everyone is wondering why it is so cold, why food is more expensive etc…
All I read/ hear is Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee……
The argument is all over the place. Why do we only have 18 months to agree to do something a long time after that? There is no 18 month “science” tipping point, just a load of “observers” pushing their own agendas. There may well be a consensus of activists who would like drastic action now, but there’s always a consensus of nutters wanting something now – that’s stIll not science.
The IPCC is very clear – there’s no climate emergency and no need to push very large cuts immediately. For one thing, if we do, the costs will hugely outweigh the benefits. Once again the BBC is not pushing the “settled science” but the political agendas of an extreme group. They try and write it as if it is science but it is not.
Absolutely spot on!
The political arm of the UN IPCC lost the plot when they put out their scare-mongering “1.5º Special Report” last October calling for net zero global emissions by 2050 and a 45% global cut by 2030. By this last desperate throw of the dice they have consigned themselves to political irrelevance as their targets are utterly unachievable both technically and politically.
All those trees being burned at Drax power station are not going to be replaced by fully grown new ones in 18 years, never mind 18 months. So what is the point, as they churn out a lot more CO2 than the coal they replaced?
Of course its all nonsense since CO2 does not change the climate and mankind cant and hasnt changed the global climate.
Why dont they also campaign to hold back the tide and stop volcanos erupting? If they want to pursue one fantasy why not a host more?
Total idiocy in our age of unreason.
Perfectly put! The deduction must be that some people are making a living out of Climate Change.
THE fundamental science behind CAGW of CO2 being a well-mixed gas in the atmosphere was contradicted when NASA launched their OCO2 satellite in 2014.
https://www.nasa.gov/jpl/oco2/nasas-spaceborne-carbon-counter-maps-new-details
Compare the above to forested areas around the globe;
https://www.globalforestwatch.org/map?map=eyJjZW50ZXIiOnsibGF0IjoyNywibG5nIjoxMn0sImJlYXJpbmciOjAsInBpdGNoIjowLCJ6b29tIjoyfQ%3D%3D
OH look, forests and phytoplankton suck in CO2 and therefore CO2 is not a well-mixed trace gas. The theory is wrong.
Also, for the last 21 years the correlation between CO2 and temperature in the UK is negative, where temperature trends have been flat, and CO2 has risen by 11.2%. Global Warming theory is wrong.
The morons that run the Brighton Argus declared that the highest minimum temperature was smashed last night in Brighton – they think the minimum temperature is the temperature at midnight!
Thankfully someone has put them right in the comments, the actual minimum wasn’t anywhere near the record apparently (not to say that it won’t fall in the next day or so).
I would have corrected it but I got banned with no explanation for posting actual facts/science to counter their naked support of the Brighton XR group and the kid climate strikes. I was obviously being too effective.
This is what MSM has become these days, incompetent climate change advocacy with no tolerance of dissent.
Does it have BBC funding? They have started “supporting” local newspapers.
It looks like you could well be close to the mark. This is an affront to press impartiality and a deception on the public believing that they are viewing different sources for balance.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38843461
What will all these alarmists do in 18 months time when nothing has been done and it is then too late to save the planet? With luck they will collectively commit suicide and leave us normal folk to get on with our lives in peace.
But I hope that they won’t expect to be cremated, that would be a real no-no!
Times runs the story but less emphatically
\\ The French government’s bold plan to pave 1,000km of highways with photovoltaic panels over five years seems unlikely to go ahead following the failure of a trial “solar road” in Normandy.
The panels deteriorated quickly and failed to generate the amount of electricity hoped for
A statement by the Orne council said the money made from the sale of the electricity was expected to be €10,500 a year, but in 2017 it received €4,550, in 2018, €3,100, and for the first quarter of €1,450. //
http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/news/frances-solar-road-dream-may-be-over-after-test-fa/
The idea of photovoltaic panels on a road was/is one of the silly ideas of the past 200 years. If it made any sense at all, the panels should have been on a roof over the road.
Research regarding road construction goes on and on, and the surface still comes apart. Heat and cold in Normandy (expansion and contraction) should provide enough wear that 5 years ought to be enough for this to fail — without ever having a car or truck shade the panel.
Who knew? Anyone with a brain.
Times : Cornell University 26 storey passivhaus
Headline : super-efficient flats don’t need heating or aircon
– walls 14 inches thick
end text :’mixed reviews : ONE said his bills were kept to most $30/month
others said theirs cost $100/month to heat’
Perhaps they should try a medieval castle.
Emily new nuclear plans leaked
Under the regulated-asset-based model (RAB), companies building new nuclear plants would be paid during the construction phase, cutting down their development risk and allowing them to secure cheaper financing for the projects.
Thames super sewer was built this way.
RAB = I think you add a levy to today’s bills to pay for the infrastructure of the future.
That has been standard practice in the defense industry for “custom” kit for ages, you get “stage payments” for meeting milestones. Probably overall a good idea, but sometimes the bean counters (sorry Paul) get their way and the project gets hijacked to become a stage-payment-generator, and when most of the money has been obtained you are nowhere near having a finished product.
Almost certainly not enough. 40GW at 85% availability is about 300TWh per year. But if you need to use it as backup to renewables then the utilisation drops, and you will need much more capacity. You have to cater for zero renewables against winter peak demand, and with unabated gas disallowed that means you will probably need around twice as much, with the second 40GW providing flexible backup at low utilisation and therefore high cost.
climanrecon – spot on. cf HS2
Let us for one mad moment take Matt McGrath seriously and say we in the UK take a decision to cut our CO2 emissions to zero from 1st January next year, 2020. Would this make ANY difference. Our emissions (according to the BP Annual Energy Review) were 391 million tonnes in 2018, but in the same year global emissions INCREASED by 650 million tonnes. So what we have is the fact that even if we close the UK and turn all the lights out on New Year’s Day 2020 but 7th August 2020 global emissions would already have increased to completely void any saving from the UK closing down….. Madness.
The reality is that our CO2 emissions are barely 1% of world emissions and falling – on some estimates we may now be emitting the lowest amount of CO2 since the 1880s. Even the EU as a whole only emits 10% of global CO2 emissions. The future lies in the hands of China (28% of world emissions in 2018) and Asia Pacific as a whole (49% of global emissions in 2018, including China).
We already know that the much vaunted Paris Agreement (sic) will achieve nothing. My understanding is that China’s emissions will double by 2030 and India’s will treble. There is no chance whatsoever of achieving the goals that Matt McGrath sets out, so there is no purpose whatsoever in pursuing them.
Let us imagine that Matt McGrath is correct. Imagine that on New Year’s Day 2020, next year, we close down the UK, turn off the lights and there are no emissions of CO2 from the UK. What would the impact be? Well, let’s look at the figures. The UK emitted 391 million tonnes of CO2 in 2018 (according to the BP Energy Review), so that would be the saving for the world. But also in 2018 global emissions INCREASED by 650 million tonnes. So what is the clear fact of the matter is that if UKplc closed down on New Year’s Day next year by the 7th August global emissions would have increased to the extent that our closure would not have made ANY difference.
The reality is that our emissions are now less than 1% of the global total and the EU about 10%. If Matt is correct we are now in the hands of China and India. China produced 28% of global emissions in 2018 and Asia Pacific as a whole 49%.
Even with the Paris ‘Agreement’ (sic) my understanding is that China plans to double CO2 emissions by 2030 and India plans to treble them …. There is zero chance of Matt’s plan being implemented. And, in that case, there is zero justification for going down that route.
Extinction Rebellion and their BBC co-conspirators have it utterly wrong.
Solar panel roads has to be one of the stupidest ideas of all time. If solar panels were a practical way of generating electricity, then mounting them on the top of buildings would make sense. Why on earth would anyone think that it was a good idea to make roads out of them and drive on them?
Putting them on lakes got BBC Inside Science very breathless a few years ago, never mind the ecology when there is a planet to save, thankfully its gone quiet on that front.
Spoke too soon, zealotry knows no bounds:
https://marineenergy.biz/2019/04/26/floating-solar-system-installed-in-lancashire/
They ignored the fact that solar panels need to face the Sun or at least be at the most suitable angle for the latitude they are in. Face up on a road is not that angle.
Permission to panic Captain Mainwaring – we’re doomed I tell ye – doomed. This quote is from a different BBC comedy show but not so funny.
Reblogged this on WeatherAction News and commented:
I believe we now only have “20 seconds to comply”