People (Ordinary, that is) need to change their diet and flying habits to help planet, chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance warns
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
We have really had a succession of dweebs as Chief Scientific Advisors, going back to the ridiculous David King in Tony Blair’s day.
Patrick Vallance continues that proud tradition:
People will need to eat less meat and change their flying habits in order to tackle the climate crisis, the UK’s chief scientific adviser has warned.
Speaking ahead of the COP26 climate talks, Sir Patrick Vallance said behaviour changes will be required as well as new green technology to help the planet.
He joined senior scientific advisers from around the world to issue a statement ahead of the global summit, calling on leaders to take urgent action to limit warming to 1.5C.
In other words, it’s all your fault!
But calls like these, common amongst our betters such as Joanna Lumley last week, are no more than posturing because they will have virtually no effect on emissions.
Take eating meat, for instance. Methane emissions from agriculture only make up 5% of UK total emissions of greenhouse gases. Eating a bit less meat will barely make a dent in this, particularly given that most of this methane comes from dairy cows.
Furthermore whatever we replace meat with will also have a carbon footprint, especially if it is imported, as many vegan foods are.
Then there’s flying. International aviation accounts for about 6% of UK emissions, and a large part of this will be for long range flights, which will continue regardless for business and freight purposes.
Most ordinary people, I would guess, only travel abroad once a year at most. Indeed this is confirmed by Home Office figures, which show there were 58 million arrivals in 2019 by UK nationals. This is about half of the total.
So what Vallance is really saying is we must stop flying completely.
And again the effect on emissions will be minimal, as tens of millions will still be flying into the country. If British carriers go bankrupt as a result of fewer British holidayers, foreign airlines will simply take up the slack.
We have of course seen the devastating impact on the airline industry of COVID. If Vallance gets his way, last year will look like a picnic. Is that what he really wants to see?
It sounds like the Nudge Unit at work here. Make people think they are responsible for global warming, so that they become more malleable in future when the bill arrives through their letter box.
Instead of playing these silly little games, should not the Chief Scientific Advisor be warning the government about the impracticability of its climate agenda, and the very real risk posed by it to the country’s energy system?
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“In other words, it’s all your fault!”
I don’t eat meat, and there’s NO way I’m likely to go flying again (at least commercially) – not with the all the security requirements and “Covid Secure” bollocks.
Vallance can go take a running jump…
Valance is clearly a “climate scientist” to promote such garbage.
Note that methane is swamped by water vapour, the only important “greenhouse gas”, and so has a negligible effect on the climate (just as carbon dioxide has a negligible effect).
You beat me to it!
Methane may be more potent than CO2 in lab experiments using clean, dry air but, afaik, those tests have never been run using “real” air with up to 4% water vapour.
If the UK population was gas molecules, there would be 130 methanes (2 ppm) competing for the same radiation as 1.3 – 2.6 million water vapours (2 – 4%).
The odds are against methane trapping anything!
The Hollies wrote a great song about The Air That I Breathe. Perhaps it should go like this now:
Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe
– but you want to tax it,
All I need is the air that I breathe
– but you want to tax it!
When I was a kid we joked that Chancellors would son be taxing the air we breathe: Now, I’m no longer joking.
As Phillip says , CO2 has a negligible effect .
And the amount of CO2 that the UK produces is just 0.000012% of the atmosphere .
But it is the only one that can be taxed , which is why all of the politicians & media keep telling their lies to try to fool the public .
Do we kill-off all the cows and sheep, or let them wander around as in India, i.e. a larger older population of beasts that eventually die?
It will be interesting to see how the USA reacts to this veggie-line: their diet seemed to be mainly (very good quality) meat and chips, when I lived there. I gather that the COP delegates are to be fed veggie food …… I guess that a lot of this will be scrapped and McDonalds in Glasgow will have a bumper month.
Problem is, if we (i.e. they) kill of the beef market, where does our milk come from? Where do we get our leather from, or do we use oil/gas based plastics instead? The whole green-blob are really naive!
In Madrid Burger King did very well out of the COP delegates🥩🥓
Perhaps the Glasgow MacDonalds ought to have separate entrances that COP26 delegates must use, leading to an outside space where only cold vegetable options are available.
At a minimum if we are going to make those kind of changes, we have to stop eating in restaurants. Eating in the typical restaurant is about as energy consumptive a way of eating that I can imagine.
Even if you posit that meeting face to face in Glasgow is the most productive way for greenies to accomplish their goals, there is absolutely no need to have anything more than a military barracks type accommodation complete with single choice meals served three times a day in a cafeteria. I mean if you are talking about the necessity for everyone to change their eating habits because of perceived crisis, well……….
Sarc on/ We can’t deny the green blob their jamboree now, can we? /sarc off
I fancy he is after a peerage- on the backs of the poor as usual.
The whole climate / meat ‘problem’ is another agenda 2030, WEF, fake science, fake news, woke, globalist atrocity : watch this:
Great to see this C4 “journalist” being educated last week by the heroic Marc Morano on the Great Reset and its consequential aim of imposing climate lockdowns on the hoi polloi. Clearly she doesn’t have a clue… hilarious!
He couldn’t say anything else could he, as he is a member of HM government.
Undoubtedly he will get an award. However the I do not envy the position he is in, as if his opinion does not fit in with government policy then he will be moved on.
But I have no idea what green technology he is on about because all seem to be falling.
If he simply follows govt policy, he’s no ‘scientist’!
To see much of an effect methane has on temperatures, take another look at the recent paper at http://www.ijaos.org/article/298/10.11648.j.ijaos.20210502.12 .
Thanks. We seem to getting a number of peer reviewed scientific papers using accepted physics and HITRANS concluding that CO2 is a minor player. As someone in Paul’s comments said before, the only thing we’re really arguing about is the ECS. And this paper just extended the range down to 0.5 (the upper seems to be 1.2 ish, which means, even using the upper value, that we 100 yrs before we hit 1.5C! The change in land use gives us UHI effects while the burning of said stored energy is sufficient to account for the increase in surface temp. Excellent comments here on this site, many thanks
People will need to…change their flying habits in order to tackle the climate crisis, the UK’s chief scientific adviser has warned.
Speaking ahead of the COP26 climate talks…
Which most delegates will have flown to 🙄
I trust he will be riding a bicycle to Glasgow and any other meetings and eating grass on the way.
Sir Patrick???? What the heck? If that game is to be played, I can add a few of my own: I descend from Sir Roger Bigod (Surety Baron for Magna Carta) through the FitzRandolphs (Bigod daughter Mary married a FitzRandolph who built Middleham Castle); through Hugh Bigod (son of Roger and also a Surety Baron on June 15, 1215). Roger’s wife was Maud Marshal, daughter of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke. The marriage of Lady Margaret Stafford to Sir Ralph de Neville plugs me into Hugh’s line. I was at Runnymede for the 800th, June 15, 2015. The picture I use was taken at the unveiling of the statue of QEII on June 14 which our National Society Dames and Barons of Magna Charta was invited to attend. There were 107 of us who made the trip.
Edward FitzRandolph came to Massachusetts in 1630 aboard one of the 11 ships of the Winthrop Fleet. His great, great, great grandson, Robert FitzRandolph, is one of my DAR Revolutionary War Patriots (I know you see it differently). The name left w/ my great, great grandmother who married a Stewart and her daughter a Gibson. It came down from Normandy to that point in my family. I am a member of the Society of Magna Charta, Winthrop Society, The Plantagenet Society and Colonial Order of the Crown all through this line.
It is meaningless, except for the fact that I treasure descending from those who stood up to kings, be it John or George III. They put their very lives on the line for the life I have had and have today. I take it very seriously and do my best to stand up for truth in science and elsewhere and to authoritarian clowns wherever they may be found.
And MY title? It is “Doctor”, as I have a PhD in plant ecosystems (a branch of taxonomy) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Unlike, “Sir Patrick”, I did not inherit my 3 degrees, nor did my late father and 2 brothers who also had/have their PhD’s. Trust me, no one handed me that degree, nor my MA from that school, nor my BA from WVU.
This is my complete rant for the near future, but I am so tired of hearing “Sir This” and “Sir That” as though it gives them credibility. Nuts to that notion.
Here is a nice one from today’s Mail. If the tax on domestic flights causes an increase in flights, which is surely a likely outcome even if the intention is to cut the costs of the airlines, then we are going to see an increase in electricity costs. Eh? How can that be?
Well, welcome to the crazy world of carbon emissions indulgences. Since flights are part of the emissions trading scheme of global warming tax, more emission will require more ETS indulgences be bought by the airlines. But since there are only a set number of these available each year then as any person with economic nous knows – econutters, politicians and Sunak obviously excluded – increased demand means an increase in price. And the electricity industry will have to pay more for their indulgences and will pass the cost on to consumers yet again. So save a quid on your flight and pay 10 quid more for your electricity! Not unlike the thrupence saving on your pint of beer in the future but a cost increase of 25-30p a pint before we get anywhere near there.
Our Future: Colder, Darker, Poorer.
I wonder if t-shirts with NetZero – Colder, Darker, Poorer would be a good seller?
I’d buy one, Gerry!
I too would be proud to wear one !!
Re: Methane
Commercial natural gas stripped of NGL and sold for heating purposes usually contains 85 to 90 percent methane, with the remainder mainly nitrogen and ethane. It usually has a calorific, or heating, value of approximately 38 megajoules (MJ; million joules) per cubic meter or about 1,050 British thermal units (BTUs) per cubic foot of gas.
PS: Mining Natural Gas releases 5 times more Methane than coal or oil.
Quick . . . Let’s convert to natural Gas . . .
The nonsense that a slightly lower tax on flights somehow offsets the very large increase in the price of flights seems to have passed most commentators and all the Green MPs by. Flying is much more expensive now for various reasons, not least fuel and asset utilisation. The change in tax does not in any way compensate for that.
I suspect that reduced indulgences on long haul flights will help offset the short haul.
Yes, pls have an entrepreneur make these available in Glasgow.
OT, why was the C4 questioner of Marc Morano exude more glee at the prospect of being cold, dark and poorer, than Marc at the prospect that Manchin will cut GND language from the idiotic bill being shoved thru!?
The planet does not need my help. It was here billions of years before my short span and will be here billions of years after I’m gone. It has gone through hundreds of make-overs in that time, my current influence isn’t even a pin-prick.
These people are obsessively self-centred and obsessively unaware of the context of “our planet”. What we do or don;t do would never be noticed by a geologist or geographer looking back on the planet’s history in 1 million years time.
Vallance seems to be conforming to a point made by Dr North that when what appear to be well qualified and experienced people are appointed into top public sector roles, their brains seem to wiped and they act like morons.
Isn’t Vallance just a medic?
Cows are vegetarians so I imagine Sir Patrick will have to act like one and start emitting “global warming” gases from both ends?
The Y2K fiasco was astonishing, every machine code junkie new it was boll*cks but the leading lights of the scientific community warned it was a threat to our civilisation.
The Italians did nothing and had no problems, but the UK spent £100bn on a problem that could not be found.
But… but… but…. my life was in mortal danger as my microwave and cooker didn’t know what year it was!
Oh; hang on; I didn’t notice.
The USA company I worked for (after they took us over) spent $24 million on a new computer database that wouldn’t be affected by Y2K. It replaced our existing, far, far easier to use database that was going to collapse. When I left in 2003 (booted thank God) the old system was still working (but you weren’t allowed to use it.
But there was a Y2K disaster in Australia, a few hundred parking meters failed to function. Rapidly fixed, so only a few hours.
The biggest Y2K problems weren’t really the IT problems.
There were millions of small businesses and other organisations, like schools, that didn’t have the expertise necessary. For example, some didn’t have anyone responsible on the board with access to money to finance the testing or allocate the hours to do it. Checking all components in a network isn’t a job for someone who can just use a spreadsheet.
For any non-minute IT system, the testing wasn’t to get everything working correctly! The aim was to get the updated software to run EXACTLY the same as before. That was considered to be a big enough task in itself. If a new bug, a non-Y2K bug, was found, it needed to be given to a different project and done AFTER Y2K had been done, so the different versions could be kept separate. Also Y2K application testing could not be done until a Y2K compliant operating system (and every other subsystem) was installed, which could have taken months! In one instance, a contract for an upgraded base product, with added modules, was signed and only the added modules were made Y2K compliant. The project then spent eight months with the lawyers, with not much time left! The financial year end period could rarely cope with Y2K testing. And some hardware was so old that the operating system was not supported, so it could take a year or more to choose another system and then do the work to transfer all the data across and amend working practices.
However, most companies where IT was important, like banks, insurance, supermarkets with their stock control and tills, were aware of all this and that time was of the essence.
Lifts and pumps were the main worry. The first step was to go around and record the model number of each one and contact the manufacturer to see if there was a fix! Many had a ‘date for next service’ with the century missing: failed sewage pumps and the elderly stranded high up in buildings was bad news, left alone the suffering and, if the phones didn’t work to report the problem and the fire engines didn’t work to get there, it would have been a threat to life. 🙂
It was the first time many organisations had any idea what IT they had, so it was a bit of a spring clean for the Industry.
‘calling on leaders to take urgent action to limit warming to 1.5C’
Since we are already at 1.2C, how urgent can it be?
IOW, this is about 0.3C, not 1.5 as advertised.
Gate to CoP26 should require each entrant to touch two identical objects, one at 7.2°C, and the other at 7.5°C. If they can’t identify which is warmer and which is cooler, they should be denied entry.
Why mess around with all this “fly less”, “eat less meat”, “drive less” etc that our wonderful betters keep prescribing for us. Wouldn’t it be much easier to simply reduce the UK’s population by 50% and that’s half of our green house gas emissions gone, instantly? In fact get rid of the entire population and eliminate all greenhouse gases and just think how virtuous we can be.
I don’t understand what climate concerned Vegans are going to wear for shoes. Leather is out. Plastic is out. What else is there? Oiled cotton?
Note how the ecomentalists have stayed very quiet about the gigantic volume of single-use plastic used in the pandemic response, e.g. disposable PPE. We can’t have our plastic shopping bags and straws as they’ll destroy the planet, but the huge mass of PPE is not a problem?! Geez!!
Even clogs have leather uppers!
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/vallance-and-whitty-kings-of-bad-science/
“When not on the TV screen, Vallance chairs Sage, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, a group of ‘experts’, many of whom have questionable impartiality, having longstanding funding dependencies on ‘Big Pharma’ and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Vallance’s government salary is a mere £185,000, but that, together with the money he made at GSK, has led him to be described as ‘the wealthiest civil servant in the history of Whitehall’.”
Patrick Vallance, a British physician, scientist, and clinical pharmacologist, the UK’s Chief Scientific Adviser: People will need to eat less meat …
This is yet another “The Science is Settled” story, when it definitely isn’t settled.
Again, this information isn’t medical advice, it’s evidence that the ‘less meat, less dairy’, the Mediterranean ‘plant based diet’ is not the only valid view, to say the least.
“The human body needs good saturated fats” — Dr. Ken Berry (2:41)
Dr. Paul Mason – ‘Saturated fat is not dangerous’ (28:34)
and a New York Times bestselling investigative science journalist who has played a pivotal role in challenging the conventional wisdom on dietary fat (and knows about the Science being Settled 🙂 ) :
Nina Teicholz – ‘The Real Food Politics’ (37:38)
” to help the planet” I am sick and tired of reading that or “to save the planet”. Since when was “the planet” in danger of anything? The arrogance of these people pontificating without ever qualifying what they say is simply a scandal beyond all proportions.
I have been reminded that the previous large group that had to save the planet were the eugenicists.
The two groups have a certain David Attenborough in common.
It’s not arrogance. It’s decadence. They rail against that which keeps them alive.
At the beginning of the WuFlu pandemic, Sir Patrick Vallance had Big Pharma shares worth £600,000.
Much like the average British pleb.
It wasn’t a problem that he was shamelessly promoting Big Pharma and frantically waving shrouds, together with Whitty, Handycock and Professor Pantsdown Ferguson, because there was no conflict of interest.
I wonder what his shareholding is worth today?
god, why do we have to have such a silly silly man as Chief Scientific Advisor? What has gone wrong up there? Hasn’t he done the sums? Looked at China!? Worried about that sawtooth Moana Loa graph?
Given that far more housing stock in these isles is terraces, not tenements, it’s worth considering that a similarly sized terraced home will have roughly twice as much exterior walls than these tenements, and therefore the costs will double. £84,000 to insulate a £30,000 house in ‘Boro. I doubt it!