Harrabins Ten Commandments (Well, Five Anyway!)
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Harrabin brings us news of some of the delights the climate dictatorship have in store for us!
A 10-point plan aimed at putting the UK on track for a zero emissions economy is due to be unveiled by the prime minister in the coming weeks.
Boris Johnson’s previous speeches on climate change have given the impression the problem can largely be solved by technology – a flash of nuclear, a gust of hydrogen, a blast of offshore wind, a dollop of carbon capture and storage.
But a government spokesperson told BBC News we’ll all need to "work together and play our part".
And experts warn the issue’s phenomenally complicated – presenting challenges never seen before.
Tackling climate change, they say, will need action right across society and the economy – with a host of new incentives, laws, rules, bans, appliance standards, taxes and institutional innovations.
Let’s examine a few of the issues…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54832236
He then goes on to list:
Weird electricity
What he means by this is that electricity is being generated from many small sources now, in contrast to the recent past when the grid was dominated by a handful of large power plants.
To which I would ask – so what?
Harrabin has in mind some super duper system, through which buyers and sellers can be matched together, which apparently will save everybody money. For instance, EV owners will be able to charge up at cheap night time rates and resell power at peak.
He forgets though that someone actually has to pick up the bill at the end of the day, unless he has discovered a magic money-go –round!
None of this deals with the fundamental problem of how an intermittent renewable based system can supply power when it is needed.
Rules for a zero-carbon future
Things like product standards, zero carbon homes and banning petrol and diesel cars.
All of which will cost the public dear.
Financing a Net Zero future
Harrabin’s green chums don’t like the idea that the UK Export Credit Agency underwrites fossil fuel projects abroad, even though this supports British jobs and manufacturing firms, bringing in valuable export revenue. Maybe Harrabin would like to explain this to all of the workers who lose their jobs as a result.
They also want British banks and funds to divest fossil fuel assets, and call for Treasury intervention. In other words, your pension fund will no longer be able to invest where it wants, but will have to obey govt guidelines instead.
All of this is in any event virtue signalling, because other countries like China and Japan will simply step into the gap.
Roads, rails and homes
It starts coming closer to home now. Instead of urgently needed infrastructure projects, Harrabin’s green chums want to spend the money on home insulation instead, despite all the evidence suggesting that this would be a gross waste of money.
So, finally, to us.
Just a reminder that Joe Public will end up losing out.
We will need to do away with gas boilers, spend a fortune insulating our homes, eat less meat and dairy, use our cars a lot less and fly less.
Harrabin asks:
But how far will the prime minister’s 10-point plan spell out that people – as well as technologies – will have to change if we want to stop damaging the climate?
I suspect the answer they get will involve two fingers!
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I am still puzzled as to how eating less meat and dairy helps to solve a climate emergency. If we don’t eat meat we have to eat vegetation and that is what sequesters CO2, makes biofuel ethanol. What am I missing?
Nobody knows, apparently they’ll try to grow crops in the Welsh mountains instead of sheep, best of luck…
“What am I missing?” The new Green jobs – Greens herders, split into spinach and broccoli herders, and lettuce herders. A few hundred extra public servants to maintain standards etc.
I am not sure where mushrooms fit into this scheme although there will be plenty, even an excess, of the favourite food for them.
It doesn’t but anything the lunatics don’t like will get tacked on to it.
We in UK at least have NO NEED to “tackle climate change” by any means at all, given our negligible greenhouse gas output as a proportion of the planet’s total.
There is no evidence, let alone proof, that climate changes because of rises in CO2 output, nor that falls in atmospheric pCO2 influence climate, locally or globally.
The motivation of the “Great and the Good” re climate is obscure but not realistic, even despite the terrible drawbacks of decarbonisation, an absolutely futile objective which carries enormous costs and dangers with no payback or any benefit, except to its corrupt promoters.
The Climate Change Acts (2008,9) must be repealed.
Perfectly put! Why is it so difficult for those attempting to force us into miserable penury to understand what is painfully obvious>
Ignorance, stupidity, politicians’ fear of U turns, corruption and any combination of these entirely discreditable and reprehensible explanations.
The scheme falls at step one: it depends on “cheap off peak” over night electricity. If there is a large switch to EVs then there will be heavy night tome demand and the cheap rate will be ended. It might even have a premium!!
The rest is just the usual political cupboard Marxist “Arts-and-Crafts” central control anti-industry twaddle.
Especially, as far as I know, solar won’t be available at night, and therefore so will generating capacity.
Should be:
and will therefore lower the generating capacity.
I remember harrabin traveled to some small island in the Med. with a few miles of roads, were this using car batteries to feed into the islands electrical system.
Deep cycling of the EV batteries may result in shorter battery life with great expense to the owner and he does not explain what happens in the morning when someone wants to go to work.
About time Beeb employed people with a science background instead of the arts and crafts lot they presently use
One thing is certain. The people (voters and taxpayers) won’t have any say in their future. They will be told what they can and cannot do. I’m sure that people will be asked to snitch on their neighbours who don’t follow all the rules. Welcome to 1984.
This will become even more true with a new liberal and green administration in Washington very anxious to rejoin the crowd over in Paris. Spend the money for no realistic purpose that Trump saved us from spending.
Why should we ‘spend a fortune insulating our homes’ when we’re all going to be sweltering — according to the climate fortune tellers — and rushing to buy air con to survive the mega heatwaves hurtling our way each summer?
ahaaaaaaaah! Yes, that herd of elephants, just one of the man herds of elephants squeezed into the AGW, CC room is hiding in plain sight!
Good question. Our schizophrenic eco-nerds doubtless have an answer.They seem to have an answer to most things even if they don’t make a lot of sense.
One question; how will heat pumps work? Yes, I know they extract heat from the ground in winter but won’t that cool the ground, making them far less efficient?
And where are these coils in the ground going to be placed? In the vast spaces in your backyard? Or under the road in front of your house? Might be a few demarkation disputes in that.
Graeme,
I think there is a fair bit of smoke and mirrors with regard to heat pumps.
The heat is obtained by compressing a refrigerant gas. The ground heat merely acts as a sink for the evaportaor so as the refrigeration process can work. Essentially condensing temperature is used as the heating source.
I’m no refrigertaion expert, I’m only familiar with basics but I cannot understand why they claim that heat pumps are so efficient? I know that the refrigeration systems we have in our brewery are expensive to run.
We are told that we must not install any more gas boilers after whenever decreed. Gas (and oil) boilers are pretty efficient these days. Consider that the power plants that generate electricty are at most 60% efficient, when run at optimum, often they are not, and then add the losses of transmission and distribution, I would be surprised if we get much more than 40 to 50 % from the fuel used to make the power.
Gas and oil boilers are in the high 80’s to low 90 % efficient and produce a higher temperature water used for heating and domestic washing thus have a higher delta which is better for heat transfer.
I would love to see an explanation of how heat pumps give up to five times as much heat as the input energy, seeing as they are fed with a relatively low effciency source of energy? Anyone?
I also believe that heat pumps and electric vehicles will collectively increase grid load and thus CO2 emissions as de carbonisation of the grid cannot match the extra demand which is always met by fossil fuel generation.
Yes Minister explained it years ago.
If carbon dioxide were really so dangerous we would have to stop India and China from progressing and a lot of other countries (like Japan and Germany too) would have to stop working immediately. Horrorbin does not seem to see that the UKs reductions are totally trivial in terms of the mass of CO2 in the atmosphere, but cost / benefit is not needed when one is saving the world (in ones head anyway).
The major issue is the conspiracy to silence all opposition to and questioning of climate policy and science in the UK: for this heads ought to roll!
Yes Jack the green onslaught from the bbc and all sides of Parliament is depressing. Suggest a challenge would come if we could persuade Farage’s new Reform party to adopt some of Trumps Climate Change policies.
What worries me is that the British public will just accept all the impositions proposed hook line and sinker; as evidenced by their astonishing level of compliance with Covid regulations.
Quite so…. I’m quite sure that the policy-makers have been watching this with great interest. We’re turning into a bunch of sheeples!
David, herd mentality rules. It is always but a brave few who stand up and challenge the paradigm. Just look at how they are vilified and paraded in public, as a warning to the rest of us to stay stum!
In fairness, most people just want to get on with their lives but of that number a sizeable proportion are abject cowards, the kind of people who would sell their own grandmother to be turned into fertilizer if they thought it would save their worthless behinds.
One worrying part of “modern” education certainly in the UK and US is the engendering of a lack of respect for age and or seniority a principle which has underpinned every structured human society from the Sumerians until the present day.
Societies which broke that rule descended quickly into hell.
I am not, generally, a believer in conspiracy theories, but there is no doubt in my mind that governments will use the covid experience to bolster their belief they can take a similar approach to climate change. What is depressing in the UK is to find further confirmation that we no longer have a Conservative party – the Conservative party is now a global-elite dominated ‘socialist’ party. There is no choice now amongst our major parties. The other depressing thing is to realise that fewer and fewer people seem to value freedom, individual responsibility or the freedom to disagree. Like many I grew up instinctively valuing freedom of thought, freedom of speech etc. Current generations absolutely do not share that view – they believe that some viewpoints, the ‘socialist green’ view is right and everything else is wrong and why should you be allowed to criticise or disagree. The proportions of people happy with to lose our freedoms in response to covid is alarming – many seem to support even greater curtailment of our liberty. Governments have seen this and I can definitely see them arguing that similar restrictions on liberty now need to become permanent to ‘protect’ us from climate change.
You may want to consider what a (now out of work) actor’s views on this are.
https://www.reclaimparty.co.uk/
I could not agree more. Very worrying. At my age I don’t have too many years left, but I fear my children and grand children are going to experience living in conditions similar to the old East Germany.
We are currently involved in a nationwide trial in controlling the masses through the use of false statistics based on “the mighty science” to scare the population into compliance with government ‘s will. It seems to be going rather well, with large parts of the country cowering in their houses afraid to go out, and only this morning a government minister talking about the green initiatives to be introduced now that they have a new ally in the US. My tongue is not entirely in my cheek.
Harrabin the challenged says:
“What he means by this is that electricity is being generated from many small sources now, in contrast to the recent past when the grid was dominated by a handful of large power plants.”
I may have lived through – and regretted he days of the CEGB but I do feel that electricity supply is a utility that cannot be marketed to the the oligarchs. It also needs to be more substantial than what Harrabin seems to think of as a cottage industry. The man is delusional – or paid for – IMHO.
Harry,
electricity was originally generated by many small sources but it became obvious that linking all those sources was sensible and gave greater reliability. Why revert to a system proved to be less desirable?
To be unveiled in the coming weeks eh. can’t wait – “Yes Prime Minister” all over again with new comedians.
Thou shalt not DEET
Thou shalt not teat (no dairy produce)
Thou shalt not meet (transport banned)
Thou shalt not peat
Thou shalt not heat
Thou shalt not eat
Thou shalt not bleat
To end this spite
I want the right
To banish blight
To have light
Be warm at night
To take a flight
To see a sight
To enjoy a bite
To fly a kite
Very good, very amusing, thanks for the effort.
Experts warn that the issue is phenomenally complicated.
Translation: we don’t know what we are doing but let’s do it anyway.
Or maybe rocket scientists at NASA can help.
Once again we apparently have “experts” on something that has never been done before.
Well put.
Thank you.
“…with a host of new incentives, laws, rules, bans, appliance standards, taxes.”
So much more state control over what we do and far less of what we want, need and like to do. Higher taxes, less income, higher costs, less freedom. And all once again because a model says so.
I can only hope this is political suicide.
A small postscript to the part on Weird Electricity – being produced and distributed by many small sources: There’s nothing new under the sun.
I remember well, as a small boy just after the war: our old (new then) mains operated valve radio needed a separate grid battery to supply DC to the valve’s grids and a little old man would call once a week with a recharged replacement; then there was the chandler who would supply candles for the times when mains power failed – or we reverted to the old gas lighting (until town gas disappeared) ; and we also had the hardware store which could provide paraffin by the gallon for other (weird) lighting and heating needs. Finally, to complete our green credentials (we didn’t know this at the time) we used the horse manure dropped by the milk cart’s horse to nourish the rhubarb and the veg in our kitchen garden.
Who says life changes???
A ‘green’ future is all about returning to our past. Only the elite think they will be exempt from this but so many things happen through economies of scale that will disappear so they will have a shock coming if they think their lives won’t change too.
Harry
You forgot the calcium carbide for the acetylene lamp on your bicycle. How well I remember the smell (from phosphine produced by the cacium phosphide impurity ). happy, innocent days .
When Johnson makes his announcement, you can be certain of a number of things:
1 When he opens his mouth a load of rubbish and claptrap will come out.
2 There will be no costings, impact assessment, or cost benefit analysis.
3 There will be no MSM challenge. The MSM have proved themselves to be utterly useless at challenging the Government over Covid. There may be a few columnists to challenge the Government but the MSM as whole will just roll over.
4 Our MP’s will once again prove themselves to be utterly useless again in cost and impact assessment challenges.
5 When the Government comes to implementing their proposals they will make a total mess of it and costs will fly over any budgets set. Look at the money already wasted for the so called walking and cycling revolution, which has done nothing more than increase congestion and pollution. When has the Government ever implemented a major project successfully or within budget? Just look at Crossrail.
And then, of course, where is the money going to come from? Johnson has successfully virtually ruined this Country through his Covid policies. The Country now has a colossal debt hanging over it, the unemployment figures will be sky high for years and many businesses, even big ones will be in dia straights. Our taxes will go sky high to pay for the Covid damage, to just keep our basic services running. So how can the Government, let alone the man in the street pay for the ridiculous green costs when they are struggling just to live?
And all this is to try and look clever on the worldstage at reducing our 1% contribution to the World’ CO2. What an oaf this man Johnson is.