Isle of Wight To Save Planet
By Paul Homewood
h/t Patsy Lacey
Isle of Wight Council set out plans to save the planet!!
The good residents of the Isle of Wight can sleep soundly in their beds, thanks to the selfless efforts of their councillors and bureaucrats, who clearly have nothing better to do than write soppy climate strategy plans.
As the council only produces 1% of the island’s emissions, they actually expect the public to make all the sacrifices, including forking out for heat pumps and insulation, and buying EVs. (All of which is being forced on them by government anyway!)
What therefore is the point of this report, some might ask, other than green virtue signalling?
The council, naturally enough, attempts to scare its citizens with threats of nice warm summers, but knowing this won’t work resorts to the sea level scam:
According to the links, this is sourced from an outfit called GreenMatch, who appear to make money from sales of renewable energy systems. In turn GreenMatch have based the map on the fraudulent Climate Central sea level rise tool, which assumes a sea level rise of 7.1m by 2100.
However, there is one cat which the Council has inadvertently let out of the bag:
This refers to research by the Tyndall Centre, published by Friends of the Earth in 2019:
https://policy.friendsoftheearth.uk/insight/more-electric-cars
It is not clear how the Isle of Wight Gauleiters propose to enforce this draconian target.
Finally, it is worth looking at the section on planting trees:
If 2,534,700 new trees were planted, to offset all the island’s emissions, it would mean planting 5068 hectares, effectively doubling the current 13% covered by trees. One would not have thought that to be totally impossible.
Would it not make a lot more sense and be considerably cheaper to do this, rather than eliminating emissions directly?
However, the Council have made an almighty cock up in their calculations. I have checked their workings, and you would need to plant that number of trees EVERY YEAR, not in total. This is the relevant section from the study they link to:
http://www.carbonify.com/carbon-calculator.htm
Let’s run through the calculations for offsetting 15% of emissions, which the Council reckon needs 380,000 trees:
15% of emissions = 76KtCO2
5 trees absorb 1 tonne CO2 over a lifetime of 40 years = 25kg pa
76Kt Divided by 25kg = 3,040,000 trees
3,040,000 trees = 30,400 hectares
Given that the island already has 5073 hectares of woodland, the total would amount to 35473 hectares.
The Isle of Wight’s area is 38,000 hectares.
Houston, we have a problem!!!
Of course, offsetting in this way actually achieves very little in practice, because it is only a temporary solution. Once the trees are fully grown (40 years in these assumptions), the carbon dioxide returns into the atmosphere one way or another, and the whole cycle starts again.
But maybe somebody living there might point out to the council their monumental balls up!
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Many councils seem to be coming out with similar grand ideas. My own council, Ryedale District Council, are also ‘talking the talk’ but I would like them to walk the walk.
First of all it would be good for them to show real leadership, all staff & councillors should immediately stop using any vehicles that are made of fossil fuel derived products or are powered by fossil fuels. Oh dear, That will cut out EVs too, trains, buses & cycles. That just leaves walking to work to be carbon neutral.
If council offices use gas to heat, as in the case of my own RDC, then it would be a good idea for them to turn off their gas supply too. A woolly jumper should suffice instead. RDC is a small office building but spends over £14,000pa on gas. That would save some council tax perhaps?
The car park at the council offices could be sold off & planning permission given to build affordable housing for locals.
Problem solved, their goal partly achieved! Once they are happy with their lot then perhaps some residents might follow their lead.
Tongue firmly in cheek.
Our council has a free car park for its workers and councillors while everyone else nearby has to pay. It’s always do as I say and not as I do with people in the public sector.
40 years? A tree has only just started at 40 yrs
Well commercial pine plantations start getting cropped for lumber at 40yrs (trunk bases are at least 24″) plus thinnings for paperpulp, fencing, etc from 20yrs. If the trees are used for building timber then they may hold the CO2 for 100s of years before rotting or burning. So cover the IOW with beautiful seried ranks of straight uniform pines. Naturally to save naughty CO2 emissions these can only be felled and sliced with hand saws not powered saws.
One small additional point. How to make the steel for the saws……..?
Someone should tell (remind?) them of the Robin Hood experience in Nottingham.
Stole from the poor to give to the rich you mean?
Well, the Illiberal Undemocrats teamed up with the Greens in the last election in order to maximise a Remain stance. That didn’t work as a Tory won the seat. But I assume that – at Local Government level the LD & Green representation will be much stronger.
However, the good people of the IOW can always vote them out if they wish – perhaps this coming May.
And if not, they know who to blame, don’t they!
All councils that have declared a “climate emergency” should be asked to produce a cost benefit analysis showing how much it will cost the taxpayers and how much it will reduce the global temperature.
Why should they, Phillip? They’ve got permission from HMG to make these futile gestures and nobody cares anyway because they can’t see a direct connection to hardship they may suffer due to such policies. These are the same councils who berate national government for the increase in food bank use and fuel poverty. I’ve asked mine several times why they don’t ask council tax payers whether they’d prefer helping the poor or virtue signaling. No response. They’re not accountable to us on this topic.
As an aside, I live close to a primary school and the school run traffic turning up normally makes the cul-de-sac look like a Top Gear car park, including some very upmarket motors. Now the school’s just open for essential workers, cars arriving for drop off/pick up are very much not executive models.
Another Green group misunderstanding what NET-Zero means.
“Net zero refers to cutting greenhouse gas emissions as far as possible and balancing any further releases by removing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere.”
As already pointed out, trees (like biofuel ethanol vegetation) are temporary and do not remove CO2 permanently. Only the industrial capture and geological burial of CO2 can do that. A technology unable to accomplish that in any meaningful amounts.
It’ll be fun when the Isle of White ferries get electrified.
Recharge times will be longer than the journey times, so bang goes their trip-frequencies and daily carrying-capacities.
Most on the mainland won’t give a hoot; but islanders will whinge like crazy.
It will then be essential to be a member of a Yacht Club. Will they ban the power boats?
If you are truly wealthy, try the Royal Yacht Squadron, where the requirement used to be a boat of over ten tons displacement (perhaps big enough to ferry the Roller?)
The Royal London Yacht Club is famed for organising Cowes Week.
What’s the problem?
As the sea level rises. the Isle of Wight will become smaller, so cutting the distances that cars will be able to travel, thus reducing their carbon foot/wheel print. No problemo!
It might be a bit callous but the fantasy sea level rise doesn’t seem to make that much difference.
GE It will do one day as it has MANY MANY times during Earth’s history. It gans up and it gans down, up down up down. That is just the sea, then comes tectonics and isostasy.
Without any empirical data based proof to the contrary, the default position must remain that the welcome warming of the past 350 years, the fourth such warming in recent human history is either completely or as close to completely as is possible to measure, due to a complex NATURAL variation in a combination of inputs two of the main effects being Sun activity and orbital eccentricity of the Earth.
Apparently God is on their side, or so some of his representatives on earth seem to believe since all UK Anglicans are going net zero by 2030. Could get chilly in church. They haven’t a clue what they’re talking about of course but it sounds good. I’ve been an Anglican all my life but not sure I can live with this.
Wot, no more candles?
& in this woke society they need to pull all the ecclesiastical buildings down, because they were built on the back of slave labour ( local & colonial).
In the same vein disband the navy because of the press-gangs … I could go on !!
I wonder how many Green Party councillors they have? We have some in the Forest of Dean as part of the ruling coalition and also have a “crazy” plan too!
You don’t need Greens, Alec. I live in a One Party (Labour) State Council area with just few LibDems, who are even crazier.
I read somewhere of a council advertising for a ‘Climate Change Executive’. £47,000 a year.
Cushy little number, should put the Council Tax up a bit.
I’ve decided that it is quite fruitless to argue the toss with people like this – not that they will listen or take notice. The climate is a Trojan horse for their wilder dreams (our nightmares) so I have decided to adopt Mark Twain’s advice: “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
“bureaucrats, who clearly have nothing better to do than write soppy climate strategy plans” would seem to apply to all levels of government, from Boris and his Missus, down ?
I have noticed that whenever these sorts of announcements appear in the local press someone steps forward and says what a good idea all this is, no time to waste, climate emergency etc then there is a bit of reinforcing of these comments by others and it seems to me to be engineered in order to show support and discourage negative comments. I will not mention any names here but by Googling the name of one of the main commentators I found someone with the same name arrested in Lambeth at an Extinction Rebellion protest – maybe just a coincidence or perhaps part of a strategy?
Could someone work out the the number of zeroes after the decimal point there would be in the % of world CO2 emissions saved by IOW doing this. (0.?????………1)
Ahh, good point Tym. But the PTB think people are so gullible that they will believe that a benign sun will shine on the Wight while sea levels will only effect the Solent.
But then, there are people who believe the BBC and (anti-)social media have saved the world from a despotic POTUS. Oh dear. It may be over…but the cure may be worse…
Why not stop the IoW ferries and start cutting more emissions now? This should keep them happy.
Every new Council vehicle will have emitted 10 to 40 tons of CO2 in its manufacture. Keeping old ones running will save this immediately. 10 tons of CO2 is 4167 gallons of petrol or diesel (2.4kg CO2/gal). With diesel at say 50mpg that’s over 200,000 miles to be driven before breaking even, and if the fuel saving is 10mpg… i.e. 20% you have to drive 1million miles before you’ve emitted that 10 tons of CO2… only after 1m miles in a new diesel vehicle do you start reducing any CO2 emissions, by which time it will have been scrapped!
“Zero carbon” is greenwash from the Diane Abbott school of maths… the numbers simply don’t stack up.
The climate “emergency”, embraced with enthusiasm by all those worthless bureaucrats and jobsworths infesting local government giving them a new sense of purpose!
Why solve real problems? Clear your desk! You can now build a sustainable climate career, embracing the religion, to pontificate and indulge the collective asininity “fighting” invented problems starting with a blank canvass and a blank cheque. The more crazy the idea the better because there are no nutty ideas when trying to save the planet!
The first critical task is to big up your job with a meaningless but grandiose title with climate in it and then set about hiring more staff….The climate crisis means there has to be a recruitment drive for new council employees with specialist skills, not for people performing essential public works, oh no there is no budget or interest in that.
Critical to the success of the way we fight this climate emergency is in our hiring process and that dictates that we must follow rules of rigidly enforced diversity and inclusion invented only yesterday and of course ratified by the local politburo, ensuring diversity in everything except for opinion excluding over represented groups by application of cleverly worded diversity metrics. This means probably in the case of The I O W than no one living on the island is eligible to apply so a recruitment drive needs to be initiated focusing on countries where underprivilege and a profound lack of education is the norm.
A new sense of purpose will be felt throughout once tired and dreary council offices doubly so when they realize that there are unlimited funds to indulge one’s wildest fantasies and no checks and balances because how can there be when they are just making it up as they go along……
uncannily accurate, unfortunatelyt.
pardonmeforbreathing
Absolutely correct. These are the people who go into local government because they cannot earn a living in the outside competitive world and make a profit from their labours. No, they find it much easier living off the taxes that the rest of society create through hard work and logical and sensible thinking. They feel they have the freedom to spend, with little control, and any sensible means of saving rate payers money is given scant consideration, unless they are forced to do so through budget circumstances. They would much prefer to enjoy a good salary, excellent employment such as sick days’ entitlement! and holiday conditions and a job for life if they keep their noses clean and just occasionally come up with a new idea, no matter how silly.
Unlike town councillors of the past who took care of our money, It seems that councillors in towns and cities these days no longer have the balls to challenge and eliminate stupidity from their executives.
Wrt carbon capture, are we talking about the atmosphere? Or process? If atmosphere, big job, all China and India
This ‘Merican has a question.
‘The good residents of the Isle of Wight’
What are they called? Wights?
Why are they called? Wights? cos they are never Wong !!!
A wight (Old English: wiht) is a creature or living sentient being. In its original usage, the word wight described a living human being.
Has also come to be used within fantasy to describe certain undead.
An unthinking Zombie …sums up the greens.
I was born and brought in Hampshire and, in my youth, people from the good island were considered to be inbred morons – plus ca change 70 years later!!!!
The Island is ideal.384 sq km surrounded by water, one of the sunniest parts of the country and plenty of wind blowing up the Solent and English Channel. Wind, solar and tidal generation would supply the 141,000 population. Each household given an electric car. The trailers would be unloaded off the ferries and distributed round the Island in electric vans.
If this roll-out proved a success it could be introduced country wide.
I’m thinking, what would John McEnroe say?
Sorry, this is nothing compared to what we will suffer in East Anglia. https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/business/climate-central-interactive-coastaldem-map-show-impact-of-coastal-flooding-1500592
Thank you Isle of Wight
The planet thanks you