There’s Nothing Conservative About Net Zero!
By Paul Homewood
Sam Ashworth-Hayes loses his head over a couple of days of hot weather!
The combination of ’40°C temperatures’ and ‘England’ feels about as natural a pairing as ‘English football’ and ‘winning’; God simply did not intend the two to go together as they did this week. And although it feels odd to have to point it out, there’s nothing conservative about believing climate change isn’t a problem. Turning England’s green and pleasant land into scorched savanna should not really be on the manifesto of the least important backbencher, let alone anyone with an aspiration to influence policy.
This message has yet to penetrate the cranial shielding of some MPs. Sir John Hayes told the Daily Telegraph we found ourselves in ‘a cowardly new world where we live in a country where we are frightened of the heat. It is not surprising that in snowflake Britain, the snowflakes are melting’. Sir Christopher Chope came out swinging on similar lines, observing that the government ‘seems to be creating a lot of unnecessary anxiety…we should adapt to our climate as we have done in the past’. And speaking for Ulster, the DUP’s Sammy Wilson criticised the ‘hysteria’ about ‘a couple of warm days’, arguing the public would prefer the government focused on avoiding adding to ‘expensive climate policies which are already costing them a fortune’.
Now, I will admit that 125,000 years ago hippopotamuses, lions, and elephants happily roamed the landscape which would eventually become London. But surely not even the most ardent advocate of a return to a bygone era would recommend reverting to a time before Homo Sapiens managed to make Britain inhabitable by killing off all the irritating megafauna.
Being relaxed about the runway at RAF Brize Norton melting, as it was reported to have done on Monday, is fundamentally unconservative. To love England is to love its weather, as frustrating, changeable, grey, and damp as it can be: if nothing else, it’s a vital habitat for the critically endangered medium-pace swing bowler, unable to survive in the harsh conditions of southern test pitches.
British meteorological patriotism demands summers that are suitable for cricket, loafing, and open air productions of Shakespeare, the sort of weather where you bring a coat ‘just in case’. Having lived in Australia, I can’t in good faith recommend it as a habitat suitable for mammals (lizards are, of course, fine).
Yet in refusing to face up to the changing climate, it’s difficult to shake a suspicion that some Tory MPs are acutely aware that the people who make or break them – the party members – are on average 57 years old. As the Tory MP Chris Skidmore has pointed out, ‘when you cast the question as net zero by 2050, probably 90 per cent of them will be dead’.
But while this ‘all for one, and all for me’ attitude may define the Tory party’s approach to issues as varied as housing, pensions, climate policy, and social care funding, that doesn’t mean they should extent this attitude to climate change. A smarter version of this argument came from Craig Mackinlay, who noted that even under the assumption rising heat is due to human activity ‘I can hardly see that spending £3 trillion or more can be good value or will do anything at all beyond being a costly ‘virtue-signal’. Better, I’d have thought, to spend on adaptation to a changing climate.’
Smarter, but still not correct. The UK is admittedly quite a small share of global emissions. We don’t have the capability to fix this problem unilaterally. Then again, most countries don’t: outside of the top three polluters (China, America, and India), not a single country makes it to a five per cent share. While the top three rack up 50 per cent of carbon emissions, that still leaves 50 per cent scattered across the rest of the world. If we want those countries to do their bit, we need to do ours. As any economist will tell you, sustaining cooperation in a repeated game means that you don’t ‘defect’; saying your emissions don’t matter while insisting other countries lower theirs might make your industry more competitive, but it also incentivises them to behave in the same way.
Much better to do our part, work with other countries, build interconnectors across Europe and to the Sahara, tile the landscape with wind turbines – Britain got rich in part because it realised early on wind and water could be used to do physical work – and go gung ho on small nuclear reactors and storage. Make energy cheap and abundant, and watch growth go gangbusters. The alternative resigned attitude towards climate change won’t do for a party that calls itself conservative.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/there-s-nothing-conservative-about-climate-change
Scorched savanna? Where does he get this rubbish from? It has certainly been a dry year so far, but we have had many other years in the past which have been much drier. The driest start to the year was actually way back in 1929, (followed incidentally by the wettest October to January on record):
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/datasets/Rainfall/date/England.txt
And two days of hot weather are not climate change, nor have they altered the landscape, as he ludicrously claims.
As for the “changeable, grey, and damp” weather that is a “vital habitat” for medium swing bowlers, I am pleased to say that normal service has been resumed:
And with the weather back to normal, I think we can safely discount any imminent invasion by hippopotamuses, lions, and elephants!
He claims that “ the resigned attitude towards climate change won’t do for a party that calls itself conservative”.
But it is certainly not “conservative” to impose massive climate taxes on the public, it is not “conservative” to ban the sale of petrol cars, it is not “conservative” to force houseowners to pay out £20,000 to buy heat pumps and insulation, and it is not “conservative” to impose draconian regulations and controls on how we live our personal lives.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The ‘media’ class are relatively unaffected so they write this dribble.
drivel?
Perhaps they dribble the drivel!
Pursuing the Green Agenda requires spending other people’s money on something you don’t understand, and feeling virtuous about it.
Climate change computer model forecasts clearly come from the Fergus
Sam Ashworth-Hayes got rightly heavily criticised in the comments. What an idiot.
Disappointing that The Spectator should commission such an idiot.
“Sam Ashworth-Hayes is the Director of Studies at the Henry Jackson Society. Prior to joining HJS, Sam co-founded a startup using satellite imagery to support the installation of urban green infrastructure, raised funding and built a team to develop prototype products and deliver the first commercial trials. He has also previously worked designing field and lab experiments in behavioural economics, and as a journalist and researcher.”
https://henryjacksonsociety.org/staff/sam-ashworth-hayes/
Clearly a totally unbiased, objective assessment, then, with no vested interests…
“He has also previously worked designing field and lab experiments in behavioural economics, and as a journalist and researcher.”
Being involved with ‘lab experiments’ implies being some sort of Scientist.
Though being called a ‘journalist and researcher’ does modify the meaning of ‘researcher’ and, ‘some sort of Scientist’. 🙂
“Sam co-founded a startup using satellite imagery” makes it all sound so sciency but really its just looking at pictures and colouring in. Sounds like the sort of thing high school geography students might do.
If the London plains were the habitat of lions and elephants 125000 years ago it was also home to ice and snow 20000 years ago – that what climate does, it changes – I know which I prefer!
Well we’ve got bore, beavers, and bison back.
It’s amazing how the fanatical re-wilders make all these fanciful claims about how they benefit the landscape and diversity. Yet in reality they do an enormous amount of damage and just make a flippin’ mess.
Rather like festival goers at Glastonbury!
Yep re-wild with critters to eat all the small trees and otters to eat all the ducklings and signets. How soon will they scream ‘climate change’ is reducing the swan population as the cute otters eat all their young.
..” Now I will admit that 125.000 years ago hippopotamuses , lions , and elephants happily roamed the landscape which would eventually become London . But surely not even the most ardent advocate of a return to a bygone era would recommend reverting to a time before Homo Sapiens managed to make Britain inhabitable by killing off all the irritating megafauna ”
Imagine the sort of mind that writes that nonsense ..The Eemian interglacial was 1-2 C warmer than the late Holocene modern warm period when atmospheric CO2 was 120 – 100 ppm lower than today [ I wonder why Ashworth Hayes elided that awkward detail in his sermon ?] and the British Isles let alone the Thames Valley were not rendered inhabitable by human extinguishment of megafaunal species many of whom perished when the Eemian Optimum returned Britain to glacial conditions . For much of the Pleistocene epoch following the Eemian, huge expanses of the British landscape were covered by ice sheets as late as 11700 years ago when atmospheric carbon dioxde levels were barely above the survival threshold for plant -life .Who would want to return to that bygone era ? Parts of the British Isles were depopulated and repopulated by human colonists a number of times and this had more to do with the advances and retreats of glacial conditions not the creatures roaming the land .Nevermind the Eemian Warm Period you silly ignorant little man Ashworth Hayes ……Summer temperatures in the British Isles – particularly the balmy parts of south – eastern England – amost certaionly reached and surpassed 40C during the Roman Minoan and Holocene Thermal Optimums……..We can ascertain this likelihood from the various proxy records such as Greenland temperature reconstructions and abandoned vineyard locations ….It is simple deductive logic…….
90% of people are incapable of rational thought and are happy to rely on the bilge pumped out by the Beeb and the Guardian. I suppose you can’t blame them , they haven’t got a degree in Physics as I have and they don’t understand any of these issues. The scientists pushing this nonsense are the ones to blame. People like Mann and Hansen who fiddle their data to ‘prove’ their hypothesis and get away with it because it suits the New World Order.agenda.
In 4 or 5 days since the 2 day ‘heatwave’ we’ve had cloudy and chilly, warm and sunny and now overcast and torrential rain. In other words a normal British ‘summer’!
Yep. 70 degrees and rainy. I hope ol’ Sammy is happy now.
Absent the two-day Summer we’ve just enjoyed, would Hayes, faced with the pretty-much below average temps we are now ‘enjoying’ be arguing that the climate is deteriorating? That we’re heading for a cooler planet, with ‘the critically endangered medium-pace swing bowler’ now in ascendance?
Does he actually know the difference between weather and climate?
And no evidence whatsoever that the 40 degrees has anything to do with climate change. Take away those two days and June and July look distinctly not changed.
I’m in London right now and it’s relatively cold – people have jumpers and jackets on.
Meanwhile, in the Post Office queue a woman behind me was on the phone saying to her friend, “they had a lovely holiday it was really nice and hot. They had a great time”
When do you hear someone say, “we went on holiday and it was brilliant: it was really cold”
Remote possibility: the climate emergency and related issues catastrophists are starting to loose traction. So ‘big up’ the heatwave causes and effects to regain the lost momentum.
Especially important for the BBC who have invested so much output for the credulous on the topic.
Easier than having to find out and report on the state of chaos and misery in Lebanon, Syria, Aden , Sudan, Burma (Myanmar, if you must) etc etc ……..
A few facts
Rain 6 months to JUNE 2022 213mm, 1962 210mm, 2005 198mm , 1976 126mm!
Rain 12 months to JUNE 2022 486mm, 1965 487mm, 1976 352mm!
Official ratified figures South Oxfordshire.
There’s nothing conservative about building policy around a freak event. We cede stupid to the other side.
Former senior NHS analyst ‘John Dee’ looks at temp records of like latitude airports Yeovilton and Heathrow. Most enlightening: https://jdee.substack.com/p/my-garden-part-4
Thanks for posting. As well as the data presentation, I love the “Spring thing #1” and “Spring thing #2”. My kind of humour.
Yes, John Dee’s excellent presentation was much like those of the wonderful (late) Bob Carter and the irrepressible Chris Monckton – both of whom got me into the sceptic camp so many years ago.
He’s been analysing climate data for some years, but only recently started this particular newsletter.
These scientific illiterates still don’t get it do they! They spew out the alarmist mantras without a thought of ever fact checking their claims. Until the co2 lie and the climate alarm lie are exposed, the horror story will continue to unfold. Why don’t GB news or the like feature a real climate expert to expose the scam. Joe Public needs a regular dose ( with boosters!) of climate truth. How can we achieve this?
Nigel Farage had a session with the egregious Bob Ward a few days ago, tied him in knots and got him to make a number of highly contentious claims, very entertaining!
I sent GBNews an irate email this morning after the nonsense on the breakfast show about heatwave, wildfires and drought. Utter tosh, I had to switch it off and I told them so, plus a few other hard facts about this crap.
I suggested they get Dr John Christy on to talk. The credible scientist and voice of reason. Well spoken and clear delivery.
Always remember James and Kathryn Murdoch cast some influence in NewsCorp outlets
The UK is admittedly quite a small share of global emissions. We don’t have the capability to fix this problem unilaterally.
But we can contribute to the pretence that humans are the climate problem, by throwing money at foolish energy policies that are undermining our economy and inflating the cost of living.
China produces our annual emissions in 13 days, I don’t think they are believers.
These horror stories grab attention and stoke fear . . . like trotting out ‘The Devil’ in Christian communities. Debating CO2 . . . in any way . . . accepts the ‘ruse’ as fact. Acceleration the ‘Validity’ of Environmentalist Mantra. 8 periods of Global Warming . . . 9 Periods of Global Cooling . . . ALL absent the leading indicator of CO2 . . . 5 of these periods of warming exceeded our current temperatures. 2 since Anthony and Cleopatra . . . All this in the last 10,000 years. this is not some distraction of going back to the ancient times of Dinosaurs. This, in Planetary, terms was yesterday afternoon.
All of this has happened because of ONE Climate Graph by Michael Mann . . . whipping the Middle Ages Warming Period and The Little Ice Age OFF the map of History. This was swallowed by the IPCC and promoted Globally as the “Tablets of Moses” brought down to enlighten the world . . . The 2001 IPCC document with Michael Mann as co-author has become ‘The New Holy Grail’ . . . We have been had . . . It has been ‘Conspiratorial’ in how it has been disseminated without open public debate . . .
PS . . . If CO2 is an issue . . . then it MUST become CLEAR . . . CO2 per square kilometer is the only way to compare . . . Honestly . . . Then the 7 European G-20 countries rank as 7 of the top 11 polluters on Planet Earth . . . ‘Gross Totals’ do not cut it any more !!
We can Compare ‘Apples to Apples’
How Big is Your Country? . . . How Much do You Pollute?
CO2 PER SQUARE KILOMETER
Rank Country Tonnes CO2 / KM2
1 The Netherlands 5,143
2 South Korea 5,119
3 Japan 3,196
4 Germany 2,202
5 United Kingdom 2,152
6 Italy 1,477
7 India 1,087
8 Switzerland 978
9 China 741
10 France 693
11 Spain 653
12 USA 600
13 Turkey 368
14 Mexico 241
15 Indonesia 212
16 Saudi Arabia 201
17 Russia 100
18 Canada 54
19 Australia 51
20 Brazil 46
Isn’t That Something . . . The Netherlands . . . The Worst Polluting Nation on Earth . . .?
This is what happens when we put a ‘Common Denominator’ into Numbers, Beyond totals
Putting Context into Raw Data, Seven of the Eleven Worst Polluters are European Countries. Canada, Australia and Brazil, are often singled-out by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as Laggards on the Environmental Front, while they produce one One-Hundredth of the pollution of The Netherlands and One-Eightieth of either Germany or England. Why have we NEVER been told?? . . . The European Union has 27 votes at the United Nations, they lead the charge Defining the Actions and Goals of The IPCC at the United Nations. Seven European countries are members of the G-20 who produce 80% of Global GDP. By extension, they are responsible for 80% of Global Pollution. Seven European Countries, Among the G-20 nations, have very High Population Density, among the Worst Records in Deforestation, Protecting Natural Habitat or CO2 Sequestration (removed by forests) and among the Highest CO2 Production Per Square Kilometer. 7 of the worst 11 . . . with Cap and Trade . . . We follow Their Lead . . .??
It is Scandalous, on the World Stage, that these 7 European Nations are held up as Shining Examples of how to clean up the Environment. All 7 countries would fit inside the USA or China almost 5 times yet they Pollute at Double the rate of either China or the USA – per sq. km . . . We just have never been told . . .
Don’t agree. Per head of population is the fairest way.
Per capita the UK is 59th in the world. 2016 figures.
CO2 per Capita . . . as a good Canadian this is an Egregious false notion !
Canada has enough forest to swallow the 7 G-20 European countries twice.
Our forests remove over 90% of the CO2 we produce, conservatively. Our ‘Protected Forests’ could swallow France . . .
CO2 Per Capita
Rank Country CO2/Capita
1 USA 17.3
2 Saudi Arabia 17.0
3 Australia 16.9
4 Canada 14.7
5 Russia 12.2
6 South Korea 11.9
7 The Netherlands 11.0
8 Japan 9.2
9 Germany 9.1
10 UK 7.9
11 Italy 6.9
12 Spain 5.8
13 France 5.6
14 China 5.2
15 Turkey 4.1
16 Mexico 3.8
17 Brazil 2.2
18 Indonesia 1.8
19 India 1.7
20 Switzerland 0.9
This is just a BAD way to protect excessive, densely populated polluters from the SHAME they truly deserve . . .
Hang on, Jim! ‘Polluters’? Because they emit CO2?
I advocate Smoke Stack scrubbers, Electrostatic Precipitators and Nitrous Oxide burners on EVERY smoke stack ! They remove up to 95% of the REAL pollution going up the smoke stacks of the world . . . Attached to the CO2. CO2 is but a gage by which to count and compare . . . CO2 never was and Never will be POLLUTION on Planet Earth . . .
Hypomanically and erratically all over the place again …..madness at every turn
There hasn’t been a Conservative party for years.
What you do have is a Parliamentary dictatorship.
You call rearranging the musical chairs a democratic election. The Parties bob up and down taking turns – and they controll their new prospective MPs, they have to be on message for a start. Great illusion, eh.
Democracy? Now, that is [un]funny. It certainly isn’t real.
“Britain got rich in part because it realised early on wind and water could be used to do physical work
Incorrect.
It was because Britain realised sooner than anyone else that coal offered via the use of steam engines a far faster, more reliable and efficient medium for doing useful work, including transport by both land and sea.
And of course our wealth came from the corresponding increase in productivity.
The Rishi Sunak 480,000 green jobs will come after sacrificing probably around 130,000 high value oil industry jobs in order to get less, and unreliable, energy supply.
That results in a monumental decrease in efficiency and productivity. Which is why the free market would never do it and it has to be inflicted on the country by stupid politicians.
Job creation is absolutely the wrong measure. See Luddites for more information.
Sounds like ‘broken window theory’.
If one tenth of the population is running round breaking windows and the other nine tenths is running round mending them then you have full employment.
Repeat after me: jobs are a cost.
“The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines” Author: William Stanley Jevons 1865
“The first great requisite of motive power is, that it shall be wholly at our command, to be exerted when and where and in what degree we desire. The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear.
Before the era of steam-engines; windmills were tried for draining mines; “but though they were powerful machines, they were very irregular, so that in a long tract of calm weather the mines were drowned, and all the workmen thrown idle. From this cause, the contingent expenses of these machines were very great; besides, they were only applicable in open and elevated situations.”
No possible concentration of windmills, again, would supply the force required in large factories or iron works. An ordinary windmill has the power of about thirty-four men, or at most, seven horses. Many ordinary factories would therefore require ten windmills to drive them; and the great Dowlais Ironworks, employing a total engine power of 7,308 horses, would require no less than 1,000 large windmills!
Coal contains light and heat bottled up in the earth, as Stephenson said, for tens of thousands of years, and now again brought forth and made to work for human purposes.”
The UK is admittedly quite a small share of global emissions.
Small? Less than 1%. We are 17th in the world on CO2 emissions and 59th in the world on per capita measures.
And if the UK had simply ceased all CO2 output in 2012 (ie economically vanished) then by 2050 the impact on global temperature according to the IPCC hot running models would be a reduction of 0.006 degC. Unmeasurable with any known or likely technology. And less than than the lapse rate difference between ground level and the top of a child’s head who is 90 cm tall.
Sam Ashworth-Hayes needs to get a little perspective, methinks.
Ashworth – Hayes had several sources of information available to him when sitting down to write his piece:
1. the images and the hysteria from the BBC , known to be agenda inspired and from an institution that long ago banished honest journalism as being contrary to the public interest.
2. His own personal experience , going around town seeing that for 1 person wilting and complaining of the sun and heat there were 100 enjoying it , especially children .
3. The official met records , such as given above which show that the “drought” and high temperatures are both short lived and historically not unusual.
He chose to go with 1. Thus avoiding having to engage his own brain, but no doubt accepting a handsome emolument. Such is modern journalism. Did he never stop to wonder why noone has seriously talked about hosepipe bans , usually the first indication that Govt is concerned about a national shortage of water.
The impression given is that a single maximum temperature, creating a “record” is the temperature applicable to the whole of the UK, “roasting in 40C plus temperatures.”
John Brignell had a posting on records: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/record.htm
“Why do records always increase? There is one obvious reason. By definition they cannot go down, so if they change it must be in an upward direction. One further possible reason for records to increase is that the quantity being observed is not stationary (e.g. the average value is actually increasing with time), but even if the process is stationary there is still a reason for records to increase. As we keep adding data, the size of the statistical sample is increasing.”
Anthony Watts has much on the vagaries of measurement, just a couple of links:
and more recently:
“The summer of 1938-1939 was probably the hottest ever in recorded history for the states of New South Wales and Victoria. It is difficult to know for sure because the Bureau has since changed how temperatures are measured at many locations and has not provided any indication of how current electronic probes are recording relative to the earlier mercury thermometers.
Further, since 2011, the Bureau is not averaging measurements from these probes so the hottest recorded daily temperature is now a one-second spot reading from an electronic devise with a sheath of unknown thickness. In the United States similar equipment is used and the readings are averaged over five (5) minutes and then the measurement recorded.”
The numberwatch link is very, very good….thanks for bringing it to our attention. Will definitely use that one in future.
Brignall used to be absolutely brilliant on all the junk science that is accepted and used to justify idiocy by governments. His book on epidemiology made me utterly immune to Covid hysteria as he had already taken apart the purported “science” years before.
The summer of 1895 – 1896 was probably hotter than 1938 – 39 across eastern Australia
A polite English conversation about weather has developed a lot.
The obvious thing to do for say the UK is to model the potential highest temperature there could be without climate change. If everything aligned in terms of directing hot air to the hottest part of the UK at the time that air was hottest and with the least loss of heat on the way, what would the temperature be? As this would be a rare event, there/s no reason to think it has happened yet, at least since we had reasonable instrumentation, so I wonder what that theoretical maximum is? I’m betting 40 degrees isn’t it but it may be close.
Don’t forget that the landscape that became London, complete with hippos, lions and elephants, was part of the archipelago somewhat nearer the Equator…
One accepts that a newspaper needs to publish varying opinions but the Spectator is taking the same approach to circulation as the DT started a couple of years ago. Publish all the stuff your readers find condescending and iunsulting, stuff which promotes political views dressed upo as evidence and ittitate the bhell out of us.
Do the editors get seduced by the lefties they meet in nthe Westminster circle or are they just stupid?
Clickbait.