Media Finally Wakes Up To Ruinous Climate Policies
By Paul Homewood
For a long time I have believed that there would be a pushback against climate policies, once the public began to see the real impact.
Successive governments have kicked the can down the road, but sooner or later one someone would have to pick it up, and that has now happened.
And the public reaction is already apparent, for instance:
A third of motorists are unable to afford even the cheapest electric car, experts warn.
The figure – equivalent to ten million households – highlights how many ordinary families will struggle to finance the switch from petrol and diesel cars being pushed by ministers.
Even middle-earning households will have difficulty paying for one of the cheapest leased electric vehicles – the £170-a-month Skoda Citigo.
The findings are a blow to Government plans to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Motor groups have described the £12billion plan as ‘incredibly ambitious’ when plug-ins account for just 0.3 per cent of vehicles.
High up-front costs and a lack of road chargers have been blamed for stagnating demand.
Entry-level electric vehicles are around £5,000 more expensive than equivalent fuel models.
Howard Cox, founder of the FairFuelUK pressure group, said the plans risk ‘demonising’ petrol and diesel drivers unable to afford the switch to electric.
He added: ‘Has the Government asked low income households, families and hard-pressed small businesses if they have signed up to their inequitable green revolution?’
Former Ofgem boss Dermot Nolan warns consumers will face higher energy bills over next decade to fund vital upgrades to the electricity grid
Millions of consumers could be stung with higher electricity bills to fund a massive power network overhaul before petrol cars are banned in 2030, Britain’s former top energy regulator has warned.
Dermot Nolan, who stepped down as head of Ofgem earlier this year, said that a £2.4bn Government funding package "isn’t going to cut it” as the grid is retooled to cope with surging demand from millions of drivers charging up their vehicles.
He said that bill-paying households are likely to be forced to fill the gap.
It came as Vauxhall’s boss suggested that subsidies could be needed to persuade consumers to switch to more expensive electric cars, and former Chancellor Nigel Lawson dismissed the Government’s proposals as an economic disaster.
Ministers have announced a £12bn raft of measures to make the UK a leader in green energy, from developing mini nuclear reactors to using hydrogen gas for heating homes.
The scheme includes a ban on petrol and diesel cars in 2030, followed by hybrids five years later, forcing the country to embrace more environmentally friendly electric alternatives. But Mr Nolan said the £2.4bn set aside for this part of the scheme is nowhere near enough.
He said: “To be blunt, there’s going to be a lot more than £2bn involved over the next 10 years – a lot, lot more."
Car bosses are also worried that consumers may resist pressure to switch to electric vehicles that are more expensive to buy than traditional cars.
Stephen Norman, Vauxhall managing director, called for “clear long-term fiscal incentives to provide customers certainty in their purchasing decisions and ensuring that low emission vehicles are affordable for all”.
Vauxhall’s Corsa E electric car costs £26,400, some £10,000 more than its cheapest petrol model.
The Prime Minister announced £12bn of funding for the wider greene energy scheme, but only £2.4bn of this is directed towards the automotive industry.
Ministers are providing £1.3bn to accelerate building a charging infrastructure, £582m for subsidies to make electric vehicles cheaper and almost £500m on developing and scaling up production batteries for vehicles.
The spending pledge led former Chancellor and noted climate change sceptic Lord Lawson to accuse Boris Johnson of being “economically illiterate.”
He said: “If the Government were trying to damage the economy they couldn’t be doing it better.
“A programme to erect statues of Boris in every town and village in the land would also ‘create jobs’ but that doesn’t make it a sensible thing to do.”
Millions of charging points will be needed by 2030 as Britons ditch petrol, and this will require huge upgrades to the power network as a whole so it can handle changing patterns of energy use.
This overhaul of the country’s energy infrastructure will result in bill increases that will force Brits to pay for electric car infrastructure while still using their petrol vehicles, Mr Nolan said.
The former watchdog, who now works at consultant Fingleton, said: “The question for Ofgem is how much are consumers prepared to pay? That is going to drive bill changes over time.
According to Claire Perry, the Government’s former Climate Czar, Dominic Cummings doesn’t “get” the green stuff, seeing it as an obsession of southern posh boys that is of little interest to key voters in the Red Wall seats. One of those posh boys is undoubtedly the Prime Minister, whose plan for a “Green Industrial Revolution” was launched this week.
While long on vision, the presentation was very short on detail, but there was plenty to make the humble taxpayer very nervous indeed. For example, item one on the agenda of Boris Johnson’s revolution will be to bring about a quadrupling of offshore windfarm capacity. To call this a major blunder would be to take British understatement to an extreme.
Westminster groupthink is a recipe for poor policies that will harm consumers and do little for the planet
This week, Boris Johnson promised a Green Industrial Revolution and an end to new petrol cars by 2030. He is not the first. In the Labour manifesto at the last election, on which his party went crashing to defeat, Jeremy Corbyn promised a “Green Industrial Revolution” and an end to new petrol cars by 2030.
In current mainstream politics, everyone is Green, with the Left setting the pace. The only competition is to be Greener than thou. Obviously, this is a better situation than if all parties agreed they couldn’t care less about the future of the planet, but not as much of an improvement as you might imagine. The problem when all parties agree is that they stop thinking. The public suffers.
Critics have already observed that the compulsory switch to electric cars will be an expensive purchase for the consumer and a physical problem for the millions of motorists who lack the space to install a convenient charging point where they live. It will also vastly increase the demand for electricity. In recent years, energy prices have not shot up, because shale has reduced the price of oil and gas. If those options are phased out, green energy becomes nakedly expensive, and consumers have no way out of it. Fuel poverty is one of the great political horrors that politicians seek to avoid. We now have policies which will impose it.
I inhabit an old, detached house in the country with elderly gas boilers. I am consulting our wise boiler expert, Jeremy, about what we should do to replace them.
Well, he says, we could buy air-source heat pumps, but they cost four or more times replacement boilers (between £10,000 and £20,000). They do not produce nearly such high temperatures as gas. The pieces of kit have to be located outside the dwelling. Air-source heat pumps demand so much more electricity that we might need a new feed of supply from the road. Jeremy adds that Britain is anyway in “an electricity-impoverished state”, so the supply might not even be there in ten years.
Or we could install ground-source heat pumps, but they have even lower temperature yield than air-source ones. To put the required underfloor heating in a house like ours would create “carnage”, or we could “grossly oversize” all the radiators.
There is also a looming doubt about what will actually happen when an entire country fairly quickly discards gas boilers. There is currently gas central heating in more than 22 million homes. Can we believe that a Government-inspired replacement technology will be available for all when we all need it – or will it be “world-beating”, like Test and Trace?
None of the above impugns the need to search for low-carbon energy. The problem is Government, urged on by pseudo-religious fanaticism. In the Middle Ages, it was common for rulers to summon up crusades to the Holy Land to prove their piety. Always these were bloody and time-consuming. (Richard the Lionheart spent more of his reign fighting them than ruling in England.) Frequently they were futile. But they could raise a king’s reputation. Climate change is the 21st-century equivalent, and so Boris wants, as reporters put it, to “burnish his Green credentials”. Given that two thirds of the world are not even trying to follow the rules towards Net Zero, his sacrifice of our money is futile.
This is governmental vanity. The Prime Minister wants a Green Industrial Revolution. Look at the real Industrial Revolution – the one which made Britain rich. It was not started by a politician in 1760 or thereabouts saying, “Let’s have an industrial revolution” and taxing everyone to make it happen. It started for almost the opposite reason – that inventive people were free to get on inventing, and Government kept its distance.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Paul, if a third, a half, two thirds of current drivers no longer own cars the aim of this will have been met. There is absolutely no way anyone/the country can afford the increase in electicity generation supply and grid upgrades. I don’t believe our green nutters are so stupid not to be able to do simple sums. They don’t want it to happen, they just want no privately owned cars. In their dreams they don’t want privately owned houses either, so they dream of about two thirds of the population declining ( fill in your own dots), and almost everyone living in small spaces with communal heating systems.
Attempting to rationally cost these initiatives is a waste of time, they are not designed to actually happen. But they are designed to be a part of the collapse of a ‘capitalist’ economy. I put the ‘capitalist’ in commas because we no longer have one, but its not quite collapsed yet.
Well said.
This is Pre COP26 virtue signalling.
Hopefully it can be kicked into the long grass afterwards.
The car manufacturers are going to have to assume the country means business. The more aggressive ones will be starting the retooling process in the near future and likely become so committed they can’t easily change back. The UK will get interesting on some dark, cold day in the near future.
Madness.
UK CO2 release is negligible as a proportion of global.
Another very good reason, amongst very many, for Boris to go to concentrate on objectives he can usefully aim for.
John Redwood may be the right replacement.
Who else is there?
Didn’t Boris get in on an “who else is there” ticket? Probably better to wait until nearer the train crash that jump from frying pan to fire just because there’s no one else.
Boris was elected ‘cos the alternative was Corbyn… But perhaps you were talking about the Conservative leadership, it just shows how pants our current crop of MPs are, drinking session in a brewery etc
@Michael It is true for both the Conservative and General elections, it wasn’t just Corbyn there were no other party leaders you could have faith in. Farage has a track record of ringing the doorbell and running away.
Up here in the north, most ordinary working class voters will tell you that Labour deserted them long before Corbyn. The rot set in with the Blair creature. They still have great confidence in Boris, despite what you might read in the left wing, remain backing media.
Of course, the only reason you lot in France elected that clown Macron was because he was not La Pen, and Fillon, who would have wiped the floor with him was corrupt. (Plus the fact, of course, that the buffoon Hollande had already destroyed the Socialists’ chances!)
Ben’s description of Farage is a good one. Farage is a disrupter. He scared the Conservative party enough to give them the balls to go for Brexit.
The real issue on Green policy, like covid, is there is no opposition other than the Conservative party back benchers. I’ve just sent my MP Desmond Swayne some thoughts, but he is on generally side with all this especially covid lockdown lunacy. But he is in a minority.
So if you want a sane energy policy designed to deliver cheap, affordable, reliable energy who do you vote for? At least I can vote for Desmond Swayne with a clear conscience but in other constituencies your choice is a Tory green idiot, a Labour green idiot or stark raving bonkers Liberal Democrat green idiot. Or possibly an off the chart certifiable Green party candidate.
Its hard to spot anyone in the current cabinet or either main political party who is not either a complete lightweight or generally considered unelectable as Prime Minister. IDS? Redwood? Rees-Mogg? All unelectable as PM. I had hopes for Daniel Hannan, but I don’t think he’ll stand as an MP.
“Farage has a track record of ringing the doorbell and running away.” – Ben Vorlich
So, my impression of him wasn’t as wrong as I had hoped it was?
Boris got elected because he was the only one who committed to a proper Brexit – had the Tories not done so the Brexit Party would have destroyed the Conservative vote at the next election. Then in the GE much of the vote was anti-Corbyn.
There is now not a single party that gets remotely close to my views however.
Madness.
UK CO2 release is negligible as a proportion of global.
Another very good reason, amongst very many, for Boris to go to concentrate on objectives he can usefully aim for.
John Redwood may be the right replacement.
Who else is there?
Politicians, the media and the establishment elite are suffering from severe cognitive dissonance on climate change. They have come to believe their own unscientific propaganda (just like Covid).
The study of a group who believed in flying saucers “When Prophesy Fails” documented by Leon Festinger illustrates the problem. When faced with disproving evidence, cultists usually react by doubling down on their misguided beliefs. An example in the case of climate change would be the obvious fact that the non-Western world is never going to join in “Net Zero”, rendering the entire endeavour pointless, yet Boris Johnson can’t wait for his COP26 push for the impossible. They will only give up when their case is utterly, unequivocally “disconfirmed”, to use the Festinger jargon.
Maybe a few years of power cuts after they have closed down all our coal and gas power stations will be sufficient to bring them to their senses.
“Motor groups have described the £12billion plan as ‘incredibly ambitious’ ”
Why can’t they be honest & say… moronically stupid.
Remember this from Yes Minister:
Sir Humphrey: If you want to be really sure that the Minister doesn’t accept it, you must say the decision is “courageous”.
Bernard: And that’s worse than “controversial”?
Sir Humphrey: Oh, yes! “Controversial” only means “this will lose you votes”. “Courageous” means “this will lose you the election”!
“Ministers have announced a £12bn raft of measures to make the UK a leader in green energy,”
Why the hell do Ministers always believe that we should be the leaders in green energy regardless of how stupid their green energy ideas are. And why are they so blinkered that they are unable to do the sums themselves to prove to them that that their ideas do not stand up to the simplest of scrutiny. Have ministers and the rest of the parliamentary bunch now given up on logic and sensible reasoning in order to protect their salaries and pensions since they know that they could not survive in the real world outside Parliament? What a dangerous world we now live in with these people who are supposed to be running our country in a highly competitive world; our future as a nation is bleak indeed. One can only hope that a Churchill or a Thatcher will emerge someday soon to point out to the thickies in Westminster that the nation has been going down hill for far too long, and must change direction urgently in order to survive.
Have they given up on logic and sensibility? Of course they have. They want to be ‘World beaters’ on the delivery of Village Idiots. I think they stand a good chance of achieving it but it’s a strong field.
There’s a strong chance that an American with the right stuff will shortly be available.
Who is that then?
Now THAT would be very amusing. LibLabCon wouldn’t know what hit them.
From where? Top Gun 2? Or perhaps they were a former astronaut?
I can’t think of any contenders at the moment.
Nicola doesn’t want to be left out.
All aboard for the NET Zero Target! It’s Scottish Government funding for a Scottish National Investment Bank, so the English will miss out on the profits! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Scotland launches its own BANK as Sturgeon hails SNP’s ‘most significant development’
The SNIB will use £2billion of Scottish Government funding over its first decade to invest in businesses and projects that help Scotland meet its 2045 net zero target, tackle place based inequality and foster innovation in the country’s businesses. Launching the bank on Monday, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described the project as “one of the most significant developments in the lifetime of this parliament”.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1363483/Scotland-bank-nicola-sturgeon-SNP-independence-Scottish-National-Investment-Bank
Will the Scottish Nationalist Party soil their hands with money from the South?
Good luck getting a positive ROI on green projects that ALWAYS require subsidies.
The wicked witch of the North. Crying over how hard the Aberdeen oil industry was hit after the oil price crash in 2015, whilst simultaneously telling us how Scotland will become 100% renewable.
Or hating Brexit and ignoring the Aberdeen fishing fleet.
I know politicians are hypocrites but some are beyond the pale. Sturgeon is a stuck record forever moaning about how all Scotland’s problems are caused by someone else.
My wife and I had a running joke over the summer at what even more restrictive Covid policy Sturgeon would implement just to show how the SNP were more in charge and bossy than Boris. Together with Wales, Covid has starkly illuminated the absurdity of all these national politicians trying to throw their weight and importance around and prove how tough they are.
The worst thing that could ever happen to the SNP would be to actually achieve Scottish independence because then they would be unable to complain anymore and would have to actually deliver.
I think it was Brian Souter, Stagecoach Director, a strong supporter of Scottish independence, who pointed out the absurdity of the SNP position of self governance and independence whilst simultaneously staying in the EU. Souter’s position seemed entirely consistent to me and one I could respect (even whilst disagreeing).
The other route to independence the SNP never seems to consider would be to include voters in the whole of the UK in a Scottish independence referendum. Can you imagine what would happen if Scotland voted to stay but the rest of the UK voted for Scotland to leave?
She really doesn’t believe her own BS. It will be stuffed with her cronies and they will squander every penny. The notion that a government can tackle inequality and choose winners has been debunked so many times its absurd.
Have you noted that the SNP never discuss the economics and fiscal position of an independent Scotland. Apart from the Growth Commission, nothing has come out of the SNP on what independent economic reality would look like. They hope to win on a loathing of Boris and then what when the reality dawns on the masses during the negotiations with rUK? Personally I recommend that the SNP elites then migrate to New Zealand.
The Alex Salmond SNP period economic case was based on “Scottish Oil” (ignoring the large proportion of “English Gas” of course).
Then the referendum was lost in 2014
Then the oil price crashed in 2015
Now Sturgeon talks about Scotland becoming “100% renewable”
So what’s going to prop up the Scottish economy and the cost of renewables after independence? Whisky exports, tartan licensing and suing McDonald’s for use of a Scottish surname without permission? Salmond’s economic case seemed to be entirely based on a successful oil industry (the Norway model). I recall he also previously compared Scotland to Iceland (that was before the 2008 financial crash!).
Currently Scotland does not have the means to black start its own Grid in the event of failure, never mind with 100% renewables. No doubt Sturgeon would be happy for some South of the border help then….
The Aberdeen fishing fleet would just have time to start enjoying their fishing grounds again post-Brexit before having it all snatched away as Sturgeon takes independent Scotland back into the EU….
What a plan!
@ThinkingScientist
You mentioned that Scotland does not currently have a black start capability. Internet searches show that there was a proposal to add a black start capability at Peterhead (31 diesels, 18 MW) , but I can’t find anything that suggests it was ever built . Did that get binned at planning or some other stage?
sonofametman:
I can’t remember where I read it, but it was recent and official. If the UK had to perform a black start of the Grid, Scotland would likely be without power for 5 days longer than the rest of the UK, Reason – only nuclear, hydro and wind. From which, I think, none can perform a black start.
The UN at 75: Now is the Time to “Build Back Better”
https://www.un.org/en/un-chronicle/un-75-now-time-%E2%80%9Cbuild-back-better
And, even more specific:
To build back better we must reinvent capitalism.
Not my words, but those of the World Economic Forum:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/to-build-back-better-we-must-reinvent-capitalism-heres-how
This Global Warming scam is just another tool to reach a sinister goal, just like Wuhan Flu. Both are disrupting SMEs, both are ignoring financial disciplines and encouraging Very Large Programmes that will fail. Both are World Wide.
Both need to be debunked: it is just one of the many battles to win to regain our Freedom.
Yes there is a virus, yes there is pollution, but not as they know it, or lead us to believe it! (Capt’n. 🙂 )
See some medical information from MedCram web page Dr Seheult a licenced teacher for medical staff preparing for exams. The Covid 19 lectues are free….. the literature he refers to is peer reviewed and most you cannot access in other ways.
Don’t be the kind of expert Thomas Sowell warns about. learned in your own discipline and therefore willing to interfere in the speciality of virology.
That should also apply to many of the SAGE group, such as the Behavioural Psychologists and modellers such as Neil Ferguson. He has no medical qualifications, any more than he had veterinary qualifications when modelling Foot and Mouth Disease.
“There is also a looming doubt about what will actually happen when an entire country fairly quickly discards gas boilers.”
Discarding old gas boilers will be simple compared to discarding all ICE vehicles when all the new costly planet-saving battery-powered PVs are on the roads. Where is the plan for that part of the green deal?
“There is also a looming doubt about what will actually happen when an entire country fairly quickly discards gas boilers.”
I suspect that Cadent (the UK gas network operator) will be rather p***ed off, especially as they recently announced a programme of pipe replacement in a local market town which is said to be “Fit for another 50 years”. I very much doubt if the new mains have been sized to convey 3 times as much gas as the existing one, which will be needed if we have Hydrogen forced on us instead of Methane…
“Where is the plan for that part of the green deal?” – Broadlands
To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi, when pushing Obama Care, “You have to implement the insanity to find out just how crazy it really is..”
Or, perhaps, more to the point in the case of all Leftist world “leaders” – The lack of a plan is the plan.
And the reality of Obamacare is much higher costs, worse care in some cases/places/areas. But a small percentage are now covered who were previously between jobs and so were not covered for a short period.
“And the reality of Obamacare is…” – Phoenix44
…mostly as you say. I do know one person who benefited from it, and one who supports it for ideological reasons. But for everyone I know who is for it, I know others who have been badly hurt by it. The latter appear to be the majority.
To quote Hoover Institution’s renowned economist, Dr. Thomas Sowell, “Reality is NOT optional.”
How do we go from a couple of newspaper articles to petitions signed by 5-10 million at least? It’s probably one of the few ways the wonks at Westminster might take notice. As it is, all I see is them crowing that there is no widespread protest. They think they are getting away with it.
As I said on a precious thread, Charles Moore uses the same form of weasel words to allow him to claim to still be a Greenie:
“None of the above impugns the need to search for low-carbon energy.”
What I would like to see – but I doubt I will – is how the government will regulate the price of Petrol/Diesel as EVs take off and the market for petrol and diesel fuel diminishes. There will be those who cannot afford electric cars so will be trying to get by with what they have. Will they be penalised? Will we see a new Venezuela popping up in Brighton as local black-market back-street refineries crop up?
I’m bubblewrapping a diesel Citroen Picasso for my senior grandchild. There’ll be plenty of fuel.
Just up my way is a hard pressed family that does it’s multiple business with four medium ICE saloon cars and a camper van. Buying EVs and rewiring the house for chargers will cost c. £180,000. Oh and what’s gonna tow their caravan on holiday? Have you sold your shares in camper van and caravan enterprises?
Obviously, people of the future don’t drive much or very far. Seems to be the plan anyway. You stay in your place until we’ve arranged the migrants to come and set up shop. Or you die from the cold. Either way.
There is enough lithium and cobalt for about 10 years, compared to enough oil for about 100 years. Anyone see the problem?
In 2006 and 2007 American Senator Al Gore wrote a book and produced a video prophesying a climatic catastrophe, predicting among other things that the arctic ocean would be free of ice by 2013,polar bears would become extinct,sea levels would rise by 20 feet and New York City would be inundated by a massive tidal wave.
From these fantasies a vast climate change industry was spawned and we now have a British Prime Minister desperately trying to clamber on this bandwagon seemingly blind to the fact that the public continually give the thumbs down signal to The Green Party at every election.
Despite all of Al Gores wild dreams turning out to be the nonsense that they obviously were we are now seeing Governments worldwide foolishly following the pied piper of climate change and happily risking major economic and social disaster in the process.
Around twenty years ago the people of our nation realised that the future of their Country as a sovereign nation was being placed in grave jeopardy by continued membership of a European Union intent on creating a completely autocratic United States of Europe and, led by an inspired leader, they defied the apathetic politicians and voted to leave.
What is needed now is for is for a similarly charismatic leader to show that the climate change Emperor is indeed wearing no clothes and force political leaders who at the behest of 17 year old schoolgirls are trying take us back to the stone age that they are once again out of touch with common sense,
That charismatic leader was Pres. Trump, vilified by all the smart ass*es but ithe only very major politician with a sense of reality about climate.
To replace him with a (senile) AGW enthusiast is catastrophic, even if he were of sound mind with which, of course, his climatic folly would conflict.
Maybe he is the best man for UK P.M?
After all, his mother was a Scottish Brit!
Thank you. Finally someone with their TDS under control enough to spell out what I was hinting at. Perhaps his residence in Scotland could also count towards his Brit credentials?
Sorry, but, please, “TDS” in full!
Trump Derangement Syndrome, very common abbreviation over here in Yankee land.
Trump Derangement Syndrome, very common abbreviation over here in Yankee land.
“I’m bubblewrapping a diesel Citroen Picasso for my senior grandchild. There’ll be plenty of fuel.”
When we can’t buy ICE cars any more, older cars will become, as they did in Cuba, extremely valuable. But not 2029-cars: late 90’s, cars before all these unfixable electronics came in.So I’m casting around for a couple of Citroen GSA’s which didn’t even have a water radiator and won’t freeze up when the climate really cools down (as it’s already started to do).
“When we can’t buy ICE cars any more, older cars will become, as they did in Cuba, extremely valuable”
But Cuba doesn’t appear to be concerned with the pollution these old cars inevitably make. You can bet that our dear leaders will simply make it impossible to (legally) use them on the roads here. My 30+ year old car gets through the annual MOT test because the emission limits are much more lenient than for newer cars – it doesn’t have any of the electronic gubbins or “Cats” – but that’s probably only because a very small number of such cars are regularly used.
If many more drivers attempt to resurrect (or keep running) “Old Bangers”, I have no doubt that they will be “Persuaded” to stop. One method already being used is “Low or Zero Emission” zones in urban areas – if these continue to expand, there won’t be many places die-hards like me will be able to go…
40+ yo cars are ULEZ exempt.
Won’t last I don’t expect.
I have a 51 year old car, and there are no emission specs for it. It can’t fail an MOT, since strangely it does not need an MOT, but of course it has to be road worthy. The Government trusts that someone who has such an old vehicle cares for it, and because it is valuable will ensure that it is road worthy. One of the few reasonable assumptions made by the Government.
In the main body of The Times, Saturday November 21st, pp.16-17, there is an article by Ben Macintyre, entitled “Let’s take a trip round the new green new world of Britain in 2050”. It is an absurd piece, scientifically ignorant and politically foolish, about the wonderful new world that awaits us, when we are powered by the wind (etc., etc.,…). I refer to it only because Macintyre gives the game away at the end, when he says: “When a car passes, we may once again try to peer inside to see which rich person might be driving it. A vapour trail in the sky may once more be a rarity, to be pointed out with awe”.
I think that means two things:
1) In 2050, as a result of green policies, only rich people will be able to afford cars, or be able to afford to fly.
2) There will not be many rich people.
That’s our future sorted, then. A tug of the forelock, I think…
Remember, “you won’t own anything and you’ll like it”. I’m thinking that means you’ll be dead broke, but you’ll like it because not liking it isn’t very pleasant.
“…you’ll like it…”
Or even this, from a TV skit circa 1960:
Communist orator: “Come the Revolution everyone will eat ice-cream!”
Small boy: “But I don’t like ice-cream!”
Communist orator: “Come the Revolution you’ll eat ice-cream whether you like it or not!”
“A programme to erect statues of Boris in every town and village in the land”
At least it would give us (XR excepted) something to tear down, and push into the nearest river!
“Have you sold your shares in camper van and caravan enterprises?”
No, but I’m trying to get some use out of my motorhome while there is still a chance. Obviously, that means no over night stays for now, but I’m traveling “Reasonable” distances within the “Local Area” to get to places where I can exercise – which, as far as I’m concerned, is a valid interpretation of “The Rules” at the moment…
O/T The Telegraph admit CO2 levels haven’t gone down at ALL during lockdown.
What I want to know is this; how does this unexpected real-world, real-time experiment NOT falsify the AGW theory?
In a sane world this should be game over for AGW catastrophists.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/environment/2020/11/23/levels-carbon-dioxide-record-highs-despite-lockdown/
Not sure CO2 would be expected to go down. The key point is that trashing the economy by 20% or more is peanuts compared to the impact required of green policies to meet “zero carbon”
The fact that there’s no change in the slope at all certainly makes it difficult to believe that mans CO2 emissions are directly correlated with CO2 concentration in the air over the Big Island.
The new mantra among the elite is “The Great Reset”. At least the narrative gets down to its’ intent: One world government/economy/society with fewer people, no private property, and limited freedoms. Our only hope for our descendants is that people today realize they are being played to accept Marxist ideology and they understand what that means.
Boris is spouting ‘Build Back Better’ like a robot.
a. “Well, it certainly looks like you need to rebuild.
b. You don’t understand. This IS the prototype of the replacement.
If you don’t understand a bit of maths, stats, physics, chemistry, and engineering, you are effectively uneducated. We are run by the uneducated, who advance policies that seem, to the educated, moronic.
Mind you, given the performance of The Science in the COVID debacle, …
Don’t get me started on the covid models. When the Chief Scientific Officer presented the 4 models on 31 October in support of lockdown any person checking the actual deaths knew two of the models (PHE/Cambridge & Imperial) were already busted and we were tracking below the other two (LSHTM & Warwick)
I have tracked the actual deaths since. The actual deaths crossed the lowest uncertainty bound of all the models by 12 November, less than two weeks after the presentation and completely unaffected by lockdown (deaths are a lagging indicator by up to 3 weeks).
Weekly average deaths appear to have peaked, at a level about 45% of April and only about 25% of the lowest model peak (Warwick). Compared to the PHE model we have peaked at about 10% and at about 20% of the Imperial model.
Of course, they are not predictions but SCENARIOS. Now, where have I heard those weasel words about computer models before……?
If they are not predictions, why should anyone pay any attention to them? And how can we test them? Oh, I know – compare to the actual outcomes. At which point it becomes obvious that none of the modelers or their models have any value at all. Who in there right mind could possibly think a second wave would be greater than a first wave by a factor of 4 when (a) many vulnerable people died already and (b) there are other precautions/preparedness/medical knowledge already in place, unlike the beginning of the year.
Do these “scientific experts” actually have any brains at all?
You don’t actually have to answer that last point. I think we know already.
Given the total disconnect between all-cause mortality in the over-85s and Covid deaths since 1 June – the former exactly the same as 2019, the latter running at 3, 000 ir so – at least 50% of current Covid deaths are not. There is a similar but not as large disconnect in the 65-84 group.
Just curious.
In the USA, roads are built and maintained with taxes at the pump on fuel. See this map:
https://taxfoundation.org/state-gas-tax-rates-2020/
Studies are underway (by state’s departments of transportation) to determine a fair and efficient way to replace the take now lost on EVs.
I would be interested in knowing how such things are done in the UK.
What we pay in fuel tax + vehicle tax is many more times than is spent on roads. That was the original idea years ago, but it has just turned into the usual tax cow!
Don’t forget the mining taxes the government will lose if less petrol/diesel are sold.
About time methinks. Barrie
Sent from my iPad
>
Tip: XR’s new scheme to take mortgages & refuse to pay the banks back.
Context : when you default on loans. they cut your credit card
then you can’t buy 11,000 mile luxury trips to Costa Rica
like Gail does
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10123037/extinction-rebellion-founder-central-america-luxury/
Take out a mortgage, don’t pay it back. What a clever plan!
Lose your house, the deposit you paid and then still be liable for all the outstanding money borrowed which you will have to repay whether you like it or not. I am sure that the judge will be particularly compelled by the XR viewpoint that you freely entered into a contract with the intention of breaking it.
How stupid are these people? Have they ever lived in the real world? Do they understand the concept of a secured loan?
They are completely and totally stupid because they rely entirely on their own notions for their understanding of the world. They are literally uneducated and lacking in all knowledge. They have no interest in anything other than their own opinions and cannot conceive of anybody understanding something better than them. They are simply the cleverest people in the world.
Sanity at last. I’ve pasted the Matt Ridley Sunday Telegraph (22/11/20) article below.
All we need is a political heavyweight to articulate this message and save us from the madness.
Matt Ridley Article
PM’s green agenda is wrong.
Ten reasons why the PM’s green agenda is just plain wrong.
Our fearless leader has descended from the mountain with a 10-commandment plan for a green industrial revolution. At a cost of £12 billion, he will have all Britons driving electric cars powered by North Sea
wind turbines and giving up their gas boilers to heat their homes with ground-source heat pumps. He will invent zero-emission planes and ships. This vast enterprise will create 250,000 jobs. I am a loyal
supporter of the Prime Minister, but this Ed Miliband policy makes no sense any way you look at it. Here are 10 reasons why.
First, if it’s jobs we are after then spending £48,000 per job is a lot. Cheaper, as Lord
Lawson put it, to create the same employment erecting a statue of Boris in every town. Anyway, it’s backwards: it’s not jobs in the generating of energy that count but jobs that use it. Providing cheap,
reliable energy enables the private sector to create jobs for free as far as the taxpayer is concerned.
Second, the PM misreads how innovation works, a topic on which I’ve just written a book. Innovation
will create marvellous, unexpected things in the next 10 years. But if you could summon up innovations
to order in any sector you want, such as electric planes and cheap ways of making hydrogen, just by
spending money, then the promises of my childhood would have come true: routine space travel,
personal jetpacks and flying cars. Instead, we flew in 747s for more than 50 years. Third, he is hugely
underestimating the cost. The wind industry claims that its cost is coming down. But the accounts of
wind energy companies show that both capital and operating expenditures of offshore wind farms
continue to rise. Wind firms sign contracts to deliver cheap electricity, but the penalties for walking
away from those contracts, demanding higher prices from a desperate grid in the future, are minimal
and their investors know it. Britain already has among the highest electricity prices for business in
Europe because of the £10 billion a year that electricity-bill payers spend on subsidising the rich
capitalists who own wind farms. Raising them further will kill a lot more than 250,000 jobs. Fourth, these
policies will not significantly reduce the nation’s emissions, let alone the world’s. It takes a lot more
emissions to make an electric car than a petrol one because of the battery. This is usually made in China.
If the battery lasts for 100,000 miles –which is optimistic –and the electricity with which it is recharged is
made partly with gas, then there is only a small saving in emissions over the lifetime of the car. Fifth, the
plan will make the electricity supply less reliable. Already this autumn there have been power-cut near
misses and there was a bad blackout in 2019. Costly diesel generators came to our rescue, but keeping
the grid stable is getting harder, and in both Australia and California, blackouts have become more
common because of reliance on renewables. Smart meters that drain your electric car’s battery to help
keep other people’s lights on may help. But if you think that will be popular, Boris, good luck, and wait
till the lights go out or the cost of heating your home goes through the roof. Sixth, Mr Johnson is
depending on impractical technologies. Ground-source heat pumps can work, though they deliver lowgrade heat and can’t cope on a freezing night. Air source heat pumps have not proved so far to be nearly
as efficient as promised. They need electricity, make a noise and take up outside space that is not there
in a terrace of houses. Seventh, hydrogen is not an energy source; it first has to be made, using energy,
then stored and transported. Making it from natural gas is expensive and generates emissions, but
making it with electricity is vastly more expensive. Its minuscule molecules can slip through almost any
kind of hole, so the natural gas pipe network is not suitable. Leaks will happen at hydrogen fuelling stations, as one did in Norway in June last year, resulting in a massive explosion. Eighth, this industrial
revolution is anything but green. To generate all our electricity from wind in the North Sea, taking into
account the increased demand for electricity for heat pumps, electric cars and hydrogen manufacture,
would require a wall of turbines 20 miles wide stretching from Thanet to John o’Groats. The effect on
migratory birds would be terrible. Ninth, nobody is following Britain’s example. China has announced
that its use of fossil fuels will not even peak till 2030. China has more coal-fired power now under
development than the entire coal power capacity of America. It will use coal to make the turbines and
cars and batteries we use, laughing all the way to the bank. The world still generates 93 per cent of its
energy from CO2-emitting combustion (coal, oil, gas and wood) and just 1.4 per cent from wind and
solar. Tenth, while climate change is a real issue and must be tackled, Extinction Rebellion is simply
wrong about the urgency. If it’s extinction they worry about, let’s tackle invasive alien species,
responsible for most extinctions. By contrast, there is no confirmed extinction of a species due to
climate change. Nor has global warming resulted in more or fiercer storms or droughts. The
extremists’claims otherwise simply ignore the scientific evidence. Emissions have so far increased crop
yields and made all ecosystems greener. Yes, we need to address the issue, but we would be better off
funding research to bring down the cost of carbon capture, nuclear power and fusion. Nuclear is the one
form of carbon-free energy that can generate reliable power from a tiny footprint of land. The reason
nuclear electricity costs so much today is because we have made innovation in nuclear design all but
impossible by devising a byzantine regulatory process of immense cost. Let’s reform that. Small,
modular molten-salt reactors are an innovation within reach, unlike electric planes. My fear is that we
will carry out Boris’s promised 10-point plan, cripple our economy, ruin our seascapes and landscapes,
and then half way through the 2030s along will come cheap, small, safe fusion reactors. The offshore
wind industry, by then so stuffed with subsidies they can afford to lobby politicians and journalists even
more than they do today, will suck their teeth and say: “No, no, no –ignore the fusion crowd. We’re on
the brink of solving the reliability issue, and don’t worry, the cost will come down eventually.
Promise!”Boris, this is not the way to the promised land, especially when the Government is borrowing
£300 billion because of Covid. High-cost electricity will prevent the United Kingdom making a success of
Brexit. It will bankrupt us in the short run, make us less competitive in the long run and not cut
emissions much anyway. Matt Ridley is the author of How Innovation Works (Harper Collins)
Link to screenshot of original article
Stew. It will appear on Matt’s Blog shortly. Subscribe and it drops into your inbox.
Hello Devon Camel,
I saw a You Tube video with Mr Ridley explaining most of this, but even he is a believer that we need to do something about CO2.
However this is an interesting development from the Watt’s up with That website :-
“TWTW will continue with Hayden’s paper next week, to include comments. The paper reinforces the research showing the relationship between CO2 and temperatures are logarithmic. Adding CO2 to the current atmosphere will cause little warming, and carbon dioxide capture and sequestering is an exercise of little value.”
Basically, research shows that CO2 is powerful as a green house gas at low concentrations but diminishes as concentration increases, logarithmically as stated and current levels are now saturated, i.e. there is no more heat to capture so cannot cause an increase in man made global warming.
Angstrom pointed out the saturation in a 1900 paper, but the IPCC ignores that 120-year old study. Their assertions are based on computer models programmed to support greenhouse as theory, which clearly don’t work.
Subsidies by the government never work they just push up the price for what is being subsidised, just look at the way the bicycle has rocketed in price because of subsidies. I could not buy a bicycle these days never mind an electric car.
And punish the third world
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/11/23/apocalyptic-environmentalism-and-climate-change/
With Donald Trump now moving out of the WH, the writing is on the wall anyway. If we were knocking on a green door to hell before, with president no brains joe and the team behind him wearing UN agenda 2030 green hair shirts. The US and more, under the Boris mental fugue ‘wrecking time’ the UK specifically walking the scamdemic paved path, through the gates into the land of green death – via industrial suicide. Here, do remember the government doesn’t create wealth, it only spends your money. Furthermore, the promise of ‘green jobs’ is a guarantee of economic calamity down into unilateral impoverishment and hell. Note China, India even our friends in Germany, do not propose nor have ambition to ‘carbon zero’ – ever.
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
Charles MacKay, writing in the 1840s.
But what if hardly any men ever do recover their senses? Or if they cannot refrain from instantly relapsing into collective madness, like Pavlov’s trained dogs, with a single trigger-word ‘from a Scientist’?
dave,
“But what if hardly any men ever do recover their senses? Or if they cannot refrain from instantly relapsing into collective madness”
like it or not, I do believe that, we are about to find out.
“…we are about to find out…”
This is Biden, answering [sic] a patty-cake question six days ago:
“I’m going to – we’re going to impose the – we’re going to enforce the – excuse me, employ the defense, reconstruct the act, to be able to go out there and dictate companies build and do, following things.”
Many people who do know a little about dementia comfort themselves by assuming that this sufferer from on-rushing Alzheimer’s will be quickly pushed aside by his handlers, using the 25th Amendment, or simply forced to put his scrawl on whatever is pushed under his nose. But I think this actually IS the decision maker, going forward. Such cases, are in common experience, stubborn, ill-tempered, and unpredictable.
One thing is certain. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea et. al are going to “test”
the USA very hard in the year coming – and there are other conflicts waiting to break out. All of Trump’s clever finesses will have been for nothing.
I think Trump should have had an MRI, and challenged Biden to do the same thing. Biden would have ducked it, of course; but at least a few people might have wondered, “Why?”
I remember the autopsy report on Lenin. It said that his cerebral arteries were so calcified that they “rang” when tapped. Plus ca change.
Its ok, Women are usually more sensible than men – they will recover their senses.
“Women are usually more sensible than men…”
Yes, but they are very easily frightened, and so they go ‘all a twitter,’ and lose that common sense. I have lost count of the number of occasions when ‘the men’ have been quietly, and musingly, discussing some matter, and only gradually realized that ‘the women’ are terrified by what they saying.
Careful Dave, you don’t want to be held on a charge for “Mansplaining”
I can’t afford and I can’t use it.
Yep, that will scupper demand for just about anything.
Nothing new here – move along please.