Ditch cars to meet climate change targets, say MPs
By Paul Homewood
Don’t say I did not warn you!
People will have to get out of their cars if the UK is to meet its climate change targets, MPs say.
The Science and Technology Select Committee says technology alone cannot solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions from transport.
It says the government cannot achieve sufficient emissions cuts by swapping existing vehicles for cleaner versions.
The government said it would consider the committee’s findings.
In its report, the committee said: “In the long-term, widespread personal vehicle ownership does not appear to be compatible with significant decarbonisation.”
It echoes a report from an Oxford-based group of academics who warned that even electric cars produce pollution through their tyres and brakes.
The AA said the committee had underestimated the power of new technology to solve pollution in cars.
But the MPs are demanding improvements in public transport, walking and cycling, which benefit health as well as the climate.
They also criticise the government’s recent policies on the costs of transport.
They point out that most of the increase in average new car emissions in 2017 was caused by consumers choosing more polluting models because financial incentives to buy cleaner cars are insufficient.
A government strategy should aim to reduce the overall number of vehicles required, the report says.
This would be achieved by:
- Promoting and improving public transport
- Reducing the cost of public transport relative to driving
- Encouraging vehicle usership in place of ownership (car sharing, car hire and taxis)
- And boosting walking and cycling.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
f**k off … really i’ve had enough now. How do we show voters what the muppets they vote for say…?
Absolutely. Who are the moronic MPs on this idiot committee? lets campaign to get them all deselected and voted out – regardless of party.
Membership – Science and Technology Committee
Norman Lamb was elected as Chair of the Science and Technology Committee on Wednesday 12 July 2017.
The remaining members of the Committee were formally appointed on Monday 11 September 2017.
Member Party
Norman Lamb (Chair. Liberal Democrat
Vicky Ford Conservative
Bill Grant Conservative
Mr Sam Gyimah Conservative
Darren Jones Labour
Liz Kendall Labour
Stephen Metcalfe Conservative
Carol Monaghan Scottish National Party
Damien Moore Conservative
Graham Stringer Labour
Martin Whitfield Labour
Norman Lamb ought to know better. He represents a rural Norfolk constituency where there are few buses and the last train left decades ago.
So should Graham Stringer. He’s one of the few that was against the Green Crap.
In the CCC technical report they give the number of cars as about a third of the present number. If they think that they can reduce particulates by using club cars and self driving taxis, they need to work out that the pollution from tyres and brakes depends on the journey distance and this will be greater if the car has to rum between homes. Parked cars do not pollute and the owner does the same mileage no matter how many cars they have.
According to gov.co.uk, in 2018 the adult population was 52 million, and the number of registered cars was 38 million. So 14 million of us won’t have to worry about it either way.
Except your parents/other half/neighbour/hospital car service/…. wont have one either.
I posted this on the Hydrogen blog but it is even more apt here.
“Increasingly people don’t believe in God and therefore don’t adhere to a religion. Since the basic object of organised religion is to exert power over the people, the “elite” need a new religion to reinstate that power and that everybody can subscribe to. The new religion is called the Climate Change Emergency. It has all the hallmarks of a religion; scaring people in to believing they are doomed if they don’t change their ways, offering them salvation, as the one true religion, if they agree to change their ways and giving them an organisation that will take over the thinking process to come up with ways to said salvation. The last piece of the puzzle is to brand non-believers as evil idiots who are trying to subvert that salvation, such wickedness. What a neat power grab.”
That is excellent
Agreed!
A religion called the Climate Change Emergency….or, for short, Climate of Emergency…..or maybe, why not, the C of E!!
The assertion that Organised Religion is only to exert power over the people is quite old now. It seems to predate Marx. who lived 1818 1883.
His views are based on an inadequate view of the development of society. He expected the State to wither away after a Revolutionary period. after all . However Marxist States have not withered away because their ideology is based on State control and leads to bureaucracy.
I personally feel that it is ideology not religion that seeks control and bureaucrats seem to rely on ideology and conformity
Only when bureaucrats take over religious institutions, as they are inclined to do, is power exerted over the people.
If you are meaning the Roman Catholic Church exerting power look at the rise of Medieval universities mostly controlled by Clerks in Holy Orders. The bureaucracy took over then, I admit. But it was not their religious belief which encouraged them.. just their admiration for the Roman Empire as they saw it.
Ooh la di dahs the grandly titled ‘Science and Technology Select Committee’ send down their edict “no cars for you proles!”
Are these said MPs ditching their own cars?
NO?
Do as you are told, and MPs can do as they please.
One rule book for our masters and another one for the little people –
“swallow it the green Kool Aid, grovel and be grateful!
Democracy – is it?
Is it not time to remind them, who are their real bosses are and through the ballot boxes.
MPs need their cars as it is not safe for them to use public travel – can’t think why on earth that would be……
Be interesting to see what happens if people are instructed to ditch their cars by the powers that be, whoever the powers that be are?
People will never be asked / told to ditch their cars. Instead they will just be taxed (directly and indirectly) into submission. The same for heating their homes, running baths, drying clothes. For a section of the ruling and media classes, climate alarmism is a displacement of their loathing of the hoi polloi, who they believe have had it too good for too long, and need to be bought to heel. This allows them to act out on their fear (and often latent racism – see third-world ‘eco’ policies) while maintaining the sheen of a pseudo social conscience.
Car ownership and maintenance will resemble Cuba. The prospect of some very unfortunate unintended consequences beckons. Bigly.
“In the long-term, widespread personal vehicle ownership does not appear to be compatible with
significant decarbonisationnational suicide.”There. Fixed it for them.
yonason, in the long term internal combustion cars will become more carbon efficient, aero engines will become more carbon efficient … but trains? Not really.
Most cars spend most of their time standing still in garages, on drive-ways and at the roadsides or in car parking spaces. Very, very, few people drive just for fun.
Think of the jobs linked directly and indirectly to the motor car. Then there is the extra numbers of workers who are available for work to produce the GDP only thanks to the time efficiencies of the motor-car. Then there is the wider cost to society: how much voluntary activity (running a youth club, sports, community activities) depends on the instant accessibility of a car to travel four or more miles there and back, perhaps when there is no public transport option?
The MPs have not really thought it through to the end.
@Up2snuff
Absolutely!
I’m just saying, if you want to destroy your country, mandate stupid things.
There is no real problem, especially for UK, whence come negligible greenhouse gases, 1.13% of the global total, CO2, so ditch CCC and decarbonisation.
Put the money to useful purposes.
There is no problem at all. CO2 is not a so-called “greenhouse gas”, even if there was a greenhouse. The Earth needs more CO2 in the air to help food crops and greening, reforestation in general, along with less use of fresh water for crops. It seems these dumb MP’s can find no better job. Seems obvious ? Fire them all at the next election.
If CO2 emisions were reduced to the point that we were at 350 ppm, would that be equivalent to the loss of the Amason rain forest?
I would select a lot sooner, but the politicians and ‘public’ servants aren’t listening.
What a great idea. Where I live in Hertfordshire we are on a small branch line. Because of the over build in our town, the town next door and the surrounding villages, you can barely get on the rush hour trains with people joining at the next stations having to stand all the way into London. There is now a plan to build 1500 homes on the edge of the town so how these people are to travel waits to be seen.
Look, these people have just.been shaken to the core by the discovery that their beloved EU is less than universally revered. Of course they are doubling down on demonstrating their virtue.
When, inevitably, climate alarmism is found to be even less revered than the EU the meltdown will be epic!
And it will be discovered. The cost of green policies has just reached the point where the costs cannot be hidden. Power cuts in S.Australia, London and New York with more.to follow. German manufacturing in decline, in large part because of expensive unreliable energy combined with the green rush to totally reengineer transport power sources. As the cost of subsidies keeps rising. Once the cost.becomes undeniable people will become very interested in seeing proof that it is necessary. Proof that doesn’t exist.
Further if actual temperature differs more and more from the predictions we will soon arrive at a point where the discrepancy is unhideable.
On JoNova I drew a parallel with the South Sea Bubble. A moneymaking scam with little foundation in realty, no proof of any gain, yet enthusiasm nay hysteria, whipped up by false claims in the media, led to a huge stock market boom, which was undone by minor (intended to help the scam) legislation.
So too, a minor matter may lead to the public losing faith in the scam, followed by rapid collapse in belief.
The result in 1720 was an economic collapse and retribution for all of the Directors (and those office bearers unavailable following a hasty trip abroad) and most of the Ministers who had ‘benefitted’.
The South Sea Bubble by John Carswell is a good starting point.
Quote: “Reducing the cost of public transport relative to driving.”
I think it means: Increasing the cost of driving relative to public transport.
That should do it! Or is that too honest?
And we’re going to go back to horses sh*tting in the streets of London until it’s considered a health hazard will we?
Never fear folks. Worst comes to the worst there is an army of engineers, mechanics and designers out there who truly love motor vehicles for the freedom they have given us.
I’m one of them and I can produce a cheap, robust two seater sports car from the blueprints of the ones my old man built and raced in the 50’s & 60’s utilising almost any make or model of small internal combustion engine.
Thanks to the spaceframe chassis, they can easily be adapted to four or more passengers.
And judging by the number of underaged, non licenced, non insured, helmetless motorcyclists on the road today, the police won’t bother doing anything about us when they ban cars.
What a stupid crock of crap this BBC report is. Are we all expected to believe humankind will vote to regress a society, having spent millions of years progressing it?
The BBC needs to be put down, like the ageing, rabid dog it has become.
A two seater “sports car” is not a practical vehicle for family and general household use. Better to look to the humble Citroen 2cv. Designed and built to mobilise the French farmers, such was the demand upon production that only people working in essential services were at top of the waiting list, and in production for over forty years.
Prior to that, many folk found the powered two wheeler an essential mode of transport – before helmets, insurance and licences were thought of. Today the volume and speed of traffic has grown exponentially, and the complexities of vehicle manufacture due to advanced technologies to meet efficiency, emission demands, and so called ‘safety’ elements (the best being that which should be taught) almost prevent home maintenance.
I live in a rural area, one and a half miles from a bus route, which does not see a bus until after 9am. The nearest rail connection is 10 miles distant, and serves places I do not need or want to travel to. The BBC report is exactly what we have become to expect from the BBC and government alike – utter rubbish.
Derek, you are right in part although one reason the 2CV is no more is that it could not be made to keep up with modern emissions regulations.
However, there must be scope for an EV version, very light, very basic (wind your own windows up and down, “air conditioning – what’s that?”) seating four or five with a removable bench (like the 2CV) that is made available for £4,000-£5,000 new. Limited top speed and maybe limited range.
A Peoples Car for the twenty-first century. If those MPs on the S&TSC were truly worth their salaries, they would be putting out the proposal, with a prize attached and a factory site attached, for designs from UK racing car engineers.
As a first step, an EV copy of a 1930s Morgan Trike could be the way to go. How about a couple of 12v batteries with an electric drill/screwdriver motor driving the rear wheel? That idea is hereby copyrighted, btw. by me. 🙂
HotScot, 750 Motor Club member, was he?
It is almost comical to visualize the future these climate clowns desire. Fields filled with solar panels, in between fields of new trees, next to fields growing plants for biofuel ethanol. All competing with agriculture for humans to eat (none for bovines!). And finally, hectares of land for the disposal of all of the autos and other carbon vehicles…Land where they can sit and rust. This scenario should be included in a movie about the 6th mass extinction…if there is any energy left? Solar panels are already being their own disposal problem, as are outmoded wind turbines. Bring on the clowns!
You couldn’t have cows, could you? Think of the methane. Not to mention they’re bad for you to eat. So no cows, unless you’re Hindi, and even then, no eating. No pigs or sheep, either. You’re oppressing the sheep to shear them and swine are simply offensive to “others”. Goats might be ok, but we’re probably back to methane, so no goats either.
You first!
Next comes cull the population to meet climate change targets. This is, after all, a step that will have that effect in some degree. They have been totally taken over by Extinction Rebellion.
I used to think that Graham Stringer was one of the few sensible MPs on matters energy nad climate. Perhaps it’s time to revise that opinion.
Nigel Farage is the only party leader who rejects this crap.
I do not accept the right of my government to tell me if I can drive, where I can drive, when I can drive or what I can drive, stuff the lot of them!
So, you ignore one-way street signs? Pedestrianised zones? Don’t have a licence to drive any vehicle, let alone an HGV, PSV or track-layer? Bridle ways? Footpaths?
Mr Gallon
If I say that the government has the rights you used as examples (ie legitimate instructions) but they use that power to prevent me from doing something entirely legitimate (driving a petrol engined car for example) then they are abusing the power I give them and no longer deserve that power.
There missing the point we have to give up travelling full stop there’s no way public transport could cope with even a 10% modal shift from car usage. None of the current investment in rail is adding real capacity its just trying to play catch up with the fact that rail usage has already risen due to risible driving conditions in any conurbation over 50k inhabitants
And Boris is going to give us a reduction in fuel tax as a bribe to vote for him in the November election. He may be a stupid liar but even he can see being nice to drivers is a vote winner as opposed to banning their cars.
This report is written by city dwelling MPs for city dwellers. Where I live there is no public transport within miles. The nearest railway station is 15miles away..There is nobody nearby with whom to car share and the nearest taxi service is 10 miles away. I do walk and cycle, but I cannot carry the weekly shopping up hill for 10miles to get it home.
Hence I will never give up my car because of the demands of the most stupid set of politicians we have ever had to put up with.
Let’s see now, where did the whole issue of Climate Change start? Well this may tell you;
Club of Rome – 1994
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill …. All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.
Source: pages 104-105 “The first Global Revolution”, Alexander King, founder of the Club of Rome and Secretary Bertrand Schneider
Now let’s see, the ‘Club of Rome’ was “Founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy, the Club of Rome consists of current and former heads of state, UN bureaucrats, high-level politicians and government officials, diplomats, scientists, economists, and business leaders from around the globe”! (Source: Wikipedia) What a surprise, the very same people who are now telling us that we have to ditch our cars to save the planet! I smell a rat. So did this guy;
“Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us. One day I started checking the facts and data, first I started with a sense of doubt but then I became enraged when I discovered that much of what the IPCC and media were telling us was sheer nonsense and was not even supported by any scientific facts and measurements. To this day I feel shame that as a scientist I made presentations of their science without first checking it.”
Klaus Eckert Puls; German Meteorologist, Scientist.
Now we have even the founder of Greenpeace, Dr. Patrick Moore, explaining how all the climate alarmists are spreading lies and deceit. Who’d have thought it eh?
“Let’s see now, where did the whole issue of Climate Change start?”
Globally, it appears to go back to the 1960s when global cooling/climate change was the urgent problem. When that didn’t pan out, it didn’t take long for some of the same “experts” to find a new urgent problem. And, when this one finally disappears, there will be yet another…ozone depletion again…or still with us? We are already into a Sixth mass extinction?
Humanity loves to find big problems.
I’ve lived the commuter life in London where the car was not an option and public transport was the only way to get to work. Now I’ve moved to rural Devon those supercilious condescending, blinkered, metropolis dwelling fools are effectively telling me I must stop earning a living, visiting family, buying food, helping others, volunteering or anything that involves going more than a couple of miles on foot. Notice its always the private car driver that’s targeted; no mention of taxis, farm vehicles, HGVs, vans etc. But the rural vote doesn’t matter.
“…the rural vote…”
During the economic collapse of the first attempt at a European superstate (Western Roman Empire), it was the parasitic elite of the cities who went first into the dustbin of history. And before that happened, they were ruined by taxation. Keep the faith.
BTW:
Tip : Ambrose Evans P i https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/08/26/british-start-up-beats-world-holy-grail-cheap-energy-storage/
Paywalled but use a free account
He calls is a cryobattery
It uses leccy to cool down gas which it uses to turn a turbine when it’s temperature rises.
He makes mistakes in the article and gets called out in the comments
ah AEP, I still enjoy his analyses pertaining to; EU/finance/economic insight but on everything green – I just totally ignore him and it.
AEP doesn’t believe a word of it, but has to pretend to get his invite to Davos
It does not store heat. It stores expensively manufactured cold. To extract energy from the whole arrangement, by running a turbine, you let the ambient air – ever so slowly – rewarm the liquid nitrogen or whatever, so it becomes a gas again and pushes on the blades.
Pathetic idea.
The process is not particularly efficient.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenic_energy_storage
Doubtless the 5MW/15MWh pilot plant has competed its testing programme and can verify real life performance. Of course, to supply the waste heat, the power station has to be operational, which is an interesting constraint. The plan for 50MW/500MWh modules is really only a competitor to pumped storage – and then it’s still much more expensive, with little prospect of any significant cost reduction because it relies on combining well known existing technologies. While I was refreshing my memory on LAES, I looked at a Blowout Week at Euan Mearns’ site which reported the pilot plant project. There was another report that pointed out that the UK had already suffered a wind lull of 9 days, which was expected to last anything up to a further 2 1/2 weeks. The problem is not just building 25 days’ storage – at least 15TWh or 30,000 modules even at low summer demand levels – but how it will economically earn its keep. You can be sure that longer term storage will suffer from boil off reducing round trip efficiency (or rather, requiring constant cooling to maintain the liquid temperature).
Kathryn Porter has an excellent write-up from before the test plant was commissioned here:
Much of the sophistication turns out to be to supply ancillary services in competition with grid batteries. Maybe that would be helpful, and could reduce the risk of low inertia on the grid (but look at the figures for the cost of flywheel storage). But it is never going to solve the problems of renewables intermittency.
Whatever process is used to store energy the energy has to be generated in the first instance. It seems to me that a wind farm with a PF of 30% (generous!) can really only use up to half of its output for charging a storage medium, otherwise, there is no point in having a generator. So, say the WF uses one third of its nominal 30% for charging, reducing its available PF to 20%. The efficiency of the charging/recovery system is 50% (say) so the one third of the diverted power is recovered as one sixth of the original PF.
It seems to me that the the PF for the wind farm is now reduced from 30% to 25%. But then, I have a very simple mind, and you can only use generated power once – you either use it, or store and then use it. You can’t do both.
Logically, one may also ditch the MPs and then all of the problems disappear.
Apparently personal vehicle ownership is still going to be permitted, just not “widespread” personal vehicle ownership. Important people like MPs will still have their cars, it’s the peasants who are going to have to queue up for hours waiting for solar powered buses.
“Important People” is the giveaway. MPs deem themselves important, and others, not so important. That is the definition of Snobbery, Elitism, Fascism, and Socialism. In Capitalism, one is at least known to be a thief from the outset and “caveat emptor”. The others, not so much.
At the moment i can drive to work in 10-15 minutes. There’s no public transport direct to where my wife and i work.
If i had to use public transport – it’s a 2 mile walk from my house to the bus stop on the correct route for a 30-40 minute ride into Aberdeen. Then i’d have to choose between a bus or a train out to Dyce taking 30 minutes on the bus and about 15 on the train then another 1 mile walk to the office. So 15 minutes becomes around 2 hours on a good day on a nice snowy winters day i’m sure my commute would be an absolute joy.
Also because of where we live out of town down a dangerous B-road i pick the kids up from school (the wife drops them off on her way in to work) but i’m sure they’ll become expendable if my car is deemed surplus to requirements by someone living in a city and who has access to either public transport or a company car with a driver!
The sooner we get a political party willing to fight these ‘consensus followers’ the better for all of us.
Has everybody got their tar, feathers, rope and pitchforks?
Remember that this is a BBC article written by Roger Harrabin. So the chance of it being accurate and balanced is virtually zero.
No, they did not say “ditch cars”. The quote about long-term car ownership was in the report, but it’s more nuanced than Harrabin’s article and he’s taken that one soundbite out of context.
Climate scientist Steve Forden has had enough of Harrabin. He’s finally catching up with what people like you have been saying for years:
Who needs cars?
Private Eye Number Crunching
£70 billion to £85 billion current estimate cost of getting people from London to Manchester and Leeds slightly faster by 2033 according to chair of HS2
They no that directly banning cars will not work but they can make them less affordable and acceptable.
Fist there is the price of the car that are kept artificially high. Then petrol is heavily taxed. Then there is the road Tax. Then there is car insurance with both compulsory excess and voluntary excess. Then there is the MOT test. Then there is car maintenance replacement of tyres etc. Then there are parking charges. Then there are fines like doing 33mph in a 30mph road that has no speed sign. Then there are road tolls (just removed 7 bridge toll). Then there are area charges like the congestion charge in London.
All of these charges can be increased.
Then there is less employment or reduced wages.
Then there is brain washing you and your kids that you are committing a sin by driving a car and thus inevitably causing a climate catastrophe.
By hook or by crook
the road to green hell is paved with idiot intentions.
One minor note was about pollution, ie road, brake & tyre dust.
A Swedish study showed that this can be drastically reduced by Road Sweeping, ie simple logic.
I am sure we all remember those big, noisy trucks that used to come around and wash, brush and hoover the roads.
When was the last time you saw one?
This is something that can be done by the Government via local councils, but of course it costs money.
Those areas described as Pollution black spots should be washed daily or even more often by LPG powered Sweepers, instead they have a congestion charge.
There is no actual commitment to improve the situation, just schemes to milk us of cash.
Maybe cars can be designed with an integrated vacuum cleaner which will capture dust particles from brakes and tyres. Probably the only CCS that will work!
Norman Lamb, Chair of the Science and Technology Committee (as per Barbara Elsmore’s comment above), has just announced his intention of standing down at the next election:
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/politics/norman-lamb-north-norfolk-not-standing-1-6235903
Sir Norman, who lives in Norwich, is Lib Dem MP for North Norfolk. From Norwich he could get as far as Sheringham by train, or continue to the outskirts of Holt via the enthusiast run North Norfolk Railway. Otherwise he’s at the mercy of limited bus services, run by several different companies, to see his constituents.
So while he could easily get back and forth from London by public transport, I’ll bet he uses a car to visit his flock…
UK climate must not get pleasant. Any warming must be nipped in bud.
Quite a number of MPs do PPE at Oxford. Would not be surprised if some are on this Committee & responsible for the report.
I bet they snoozed their way through the Economics classes for their degree and concentrated most on the Politics, with Philosophy coming next. Then, when in office, they are probably bombarded with outlines and spreadsheets from macro-economists. (That is what led, in major part, to the 2007-2009 crash.)
The House of Commons needs to get down to the micro and sub-micro level, and do this nationwide, before doing anything.
Pi55 Poor Ejukayshum?
Do they know that private and public transport only contribute circa 25% of total emissions so they’ll need to stop everything and go back to pre-industrial revolution horse and cart – which had its own emissions problem plus farm animals accounted for nearly half of all crops farmed. I guess that’ll please them
Without cars, how are all the schoolchildren going to get to school to participate in climate strikes!
In my neighbourhood so much traffic is created by schools, that in school holidays traffic congestion just disappears.
60 years ago I went to school on my bicycle, but the young uns now tell me I am the problem.