Smart meters are a trial run for an even greater heat pump disaster to come–Simon Heffer
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Simon Heffer has been rather quiet about Net Zero lately, so it’s good to see him join the fray:
We should be used by now to one crackpot environmentalist idea after another being imposed upon us, but they retain the power to create outrage. We learned last week that a tenth of smart meters in British homes, or around three million of them, are faulty. Technology is not, it seems, as wonderful as those who inflict it on us – in this case, politicians virtue-signalling to cranks oblivious to the economic realities that keep families, businesses and the country solvent – like to pretend.
And as with many green fantasies, there is incompetence. The Government is way behind its target of getting these malfunctioning meters into 80 per cent of homes by 2025, not least because of a shortage of installers. And those who do install are accused of prioritising quantity over quality, hence so many going haywire.
My objection to such things is not based on born-again luddism, but on repeated evidence of supposedly planet-saving ideas being profoundly economically destructive: and smart meters are only a small foretaste of the horror to come. On Friday, we reported that because of the Government’s unthinking obsession with banning all new oil boilers, people in rural households – those of us living nowhere near the gas grid – would, if forced instead to use heat pumps, suffer a 70 per cent rise in their energy bills.
At a time when many people are struggling to feed their families thanks to the huge rise in inflation, caused partly by the insane pumping of money into the economy during the pandemic and a too-slow rise in interest rates after it, the idea of the cost of keeping warm rocketing by more than two-thirds should, if you will forgive the expression, chill the blood.
But grinding poverty is, so far as ministers are concerned, a price worth paying for the cult of net zero. Few independent experts pretend that either solar power or wind power are remotely adequate for the needs of heating and powering a country of approaching 70 million people. We are facing this serious crisis because of the demented opposition to nuclear power that has taken root in the last 20 years – a bacillus that entered the Conservative Party’s bloodstream with the leadership of Dave Cameron – and a chronic determination to make promises about improving our environmental record that would undermine the economy of any advanced country that relies on the generation of electricity, the heating of buildings and water and, of course, on moving people and goods around from A to B.
Perhaps some time in the 2030s ministers will be deputed not only to tell us to brush our teeth in the dark – as the late Patrick Jenkin famously did in the 1973-74 energy crisis – but to put on an extra jumper or two, and to snuggle up with other humans or, failing that, domestic pets as hot water bottles. We could collect brushwood for camp fires to do our cooking and around which to huddle to keep warm, at least until the carbon-emissions fascists catch up with us.
The fetish of net zero, and the growing deference to environmental activist groups (who have now moved on from gluing themselves to roads and climbing up motorway gantries to protesting in the luxury of Glyndebourne, where they unleashed a presumably biodegradable confetti bomb during a Poulenc opera on Thursday), seems to have paralysed our rulers into inaction.
This has to stop, because otherwise there will be mounting public outrage and economic collapse as we give up even attempting to compete with, among others, the rampantly-polluting Chinese.
The Government plans to introduce 600,000 heat pumps a year – for the moment by consent – but has no plans of what to do in households where this is entirely impractical. As Sir Bill Wiggin, the MP for North Herefordshire, has pointed out, it’s not just detachment from the gas grid that requires many rural households to be heated by oil, but the fact that numerous properties in such areas are listed buildings. Without destroying part of their protected fabric, these often cannot accommodate these pumps.
And above all there is the expense: the average oil boiler costs £2,500, the average heat pump £13,000, according to the Energy and Utilities Alliance. In a depressing continuation of the Government’s desire to intervene and spend money recklessly, it offers grants of between £5,000 and £6,000 to those wishing to install such pumps – though the public are so uninterested in this pointless scheme that millions set aside for subsidies are being handed back to the Treasury. Will ministers offer, in perpetuity, grants to cushion the running costs too? What would that do to Britain’s already suffocating tax burden?
Rishi Sunak has in other respects shown himself willing to depart from the ill-considered policies of his predecessors, and as a matter of urgency he should think again about his environmental policy. The boiler ban after 2026 must go: it is an outrageous interference in domestic life, and when thousands of voters in the Tory heartland find they are forced to buy ruinously expensive heat pumps, they will revolt accordingly.
And, for similar reasons, Mr Sunak should delay indefinitely the ban from 2030 on selling new non-electric cars, whose economic and practical damage he cannot go on ignoring – whether because of the lack of enough electricity to run them, the slowness of charging them, the destruction caused by lithium mining or even the potential collapse of multi-storey car parks under the vast weight of electric cars. God knows, his party needs a re-launch and to cheer up people who think it inhabits a parallel universe. What better place to start than by ditching all this absurdity, and announcing a new nuclear programme?
The Tories are dead and buried at the next election with the way things stand at the moment.
They may have a glimmer of a chance if Rishi Sunak used his new premiership to change course on Net Zero with two specific promises:
1) Conventional oil and gas boilers will not be banned until there is an alternative available which is as cheap to instal and run, and which heats the home properly.
2) Petrol and diesel cars will not be banned either until EVs prices are competitive and every driver has full and easy access to rapid chargers in the same way they do to petrol stations.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Paul,
I am no Tory, but the only hope for killing net zero is for the Tories to wake up to reality. Labour, Greens, Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, SNP are all gung-ho for net zero. As things stand, the Tories stand no chance of winning the next general election. They cannot out-flank the other parties on net zero, so the election-winning strategy is to ditch net zero and to stand for something different, to differentiate themselves from the other parties regarding a policy on which they cannot win. Opposing net zero will win them more voters than supporting it can ever do. I continue to be amazed that most of them seem too stupid to realise that, and seem delighted, lemming-like, to take their party, as well as the country, over the net zero cliff.
They still have a majority and could dilute the Climate Change Act now. Drop the Net Zero and reduce the target, we probably have reached 50% (May changed 80% to 100% as her final vindictive act, I do not remember a vote on it). They could push all the dates back 10 or 20 years. I do not suppose that is likely, depends how bad the polls go for them.
It will be extremely difficult to effect the change of such a magnitude. There has been far too much undermining over recent decades of the ‘authorities’ in all our institutions: political, administrative and educational. A major component of this has been the Common Purpose leadership charity that was founded in 1989 to give confidence to individuals to pursue their own beliefs in a sharing environment. Sustainability has been their major buzzword, and actively deliver the objects of UN Charter 2030, Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Infiltration over the years and with weak management they have been gaining control of our society with confidence, and now implementing without popular mandate that Agenda. Look how there is such coordination over the radical changes currently being put forward, in indecent rapid time, such as 15-minute cities.
This is a source among many available: https://uk.linkedin.com/school/common-purpose/
Collaborating to tackle climate change effectively: how a Common Purpose programme in 2004 helped Tanya with her new role, using the talents of the creative sector to address out sustainability challenges.
https://lnkd.in/dkf8UiCs
#CommonPurpose #Leadership #LeadershipDevelopment #PersonalDevelopment #CreativeSector #ClimateChange #Sustainability #Collaboration
Whilst they are at it, or rather, could be at it if they weren’t so stupid and hubristic; they could promise to “conserve” something.
Something worthwhile. Lots to choose from. Even start with eliminating paedophile grooming “education” in Primary Schools. That might resonate with a few threatened parents.
Why, they could even claim to be The Conservative Party.
Oh! Wait…..
I don’t care how many of these pillocks are gung-ho for NZ, as far as I am aware, not one party included it in their election manifesto. That makes them beneath contempt. I doubt I shall ever vote again. Can’t say I shall ever notice the difference.
Harry rather than not vote at least read this party’s manifesto. You may not take the figurehead leader seriously but he does make a lot of sensible points.
https://www.reclaimparty.co.uk/manifesto
All it needs is for individual MPs across all parties who agree with the excellent piece by Simon Heffer, to have the balls to speak out on the floor of the House and encourage like-minded colleagues to do the same. I’m quite certain the majority of their constituents would support them. I don’t see any constituent wasting their vote on any member who speaks out against net Zero They may even provide the lead for ministers, who are almost afraid themselves to speak out against the cult, to respond positively against this madness which they themselves have created, perhaps leading to cuts in the huge amount of our taxes being thrown away in funding for climate change, net zero, global warming, wind power, solar power, electric vehicles etc., etc., and enable the government to spend the wasted £billions on more important projects.
I will never vote Tory again despite being small “c” conservative to my core. MP is N O’Brien – rewarded for outrageous attacks on experts during SARS COV2 scamdemic and for fact checking censorship up to 2021 then it all mysteriously stopped. I have sent him numerous articles about studies into MRNA vaccines. Pfizer’s own drug trial documents and a host of other related issues – he still restates the “safe and effective” mantra – he is also a NZ cheerleader. Agree with HP – never seen anything about NZ in any Tory manifesto in recent times but might be wrong.
Tories are toast unless certain parts of the UK lose their nerve. No current member of the HoC is electable AFAIAC – their fate unprintable. Just goes to show University education means diddley squat as far as politicians are concerned – in the main.
The decline in the standard of intelligence of MPs, the expenses scandals, willingness to jump on the bandwagon of the day, unwillingness or outright ability to think independently….I won’t go on, those who read this blog appear very well aware of the catastrophic rise of the career politician; its why I have discovered I have morphed into an anarchist.
The Conservative Party had a commitment to net zero in their 2019 manifesto.
Why put any hope in the Tories? They have only ever made this problem worse, as with so many other issues they got involved with over the years. They are basically in a state of ignorance alongside almost all the rest of the political class.
We must conclude they really don’t like us much and certainly don’t trust us.
I put no hope in the Tories, but I remain bemused as to why they are persisting with a policy which is bound to damage them electorally.
Why put any hope in the Tories?
Because I suspect they are the only mainstream party with a significant percentage of climate sceptics amongst their back benchers. Plus so many of the central planning requirements of Net Zero will be anathema to many back bench Tories. So they are the only party that could change and steer a course away from Net Zero.
Labour is almost certainly uniformly on board with the Net Zero agenda. With Ed Milliband on the climate madness ticket I see little chance of change their.
Your hopes will be dashed. The Conservative Party has been deceiving people who think like you for decades. In fact all they have done for the past 30 years is go further left, woke and further into debt.
Thinking Scientist.
Don’t forget Graham Stringer MP, so far as I know the only sensible MP in the Labia Party. And one of a very few MPs who is scientifically qualified.
He is also a Trustee (?) on the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
How he stomachs his colleagues and recent fearless “leaders”, I can’t imagine.
Also remember Sammy Wilson (DUP), a breath of sanity from Ulster.
Are there any other “Opposition” MPs who are not irredeemably stupid?
That’s because all so-called ‘mainstream’ politicians have long since been upwardly focused to ingratiate themselves with their rich globalist masters of Davos/WEF/UN. The people know the politicians make manifesto ‘promises’, then always renege on them, implementing other undemocratic policies instead. Politicians now believe they no longer need to even promise the plebs what they want. The voting system is rigidly locked into the ‘two cheeks of the same posterior’ game, allowing no genuine democratic will to be exercised. Subsequently vast swathes of the country are politically homeless.
As a recent survey showed, the environment/climate change is one of the lowest priorities of UK voters.
This is a very bad thing from ‘our’ point of view.
It means that most voters just ignore all the green policies, they assume the politicians know what they are doing, and it will all just fall into place; most people have no conception of the cost/inconvenience impact.
Even if a significant green policy choice is offered by the Conservatives and Labour, I doubt it will affect vote share much.
“…lowest priority…a very bad thing…”
‘Taking care of the environment,’ as a goal, was changed during the last fifty years, by subtle and coordinated propaganda, to ‘solving the environment, by saving the climate.’ Valid materials for a sober history of this particular extraordinary popular delusion and for deciding who should be blamed the most for driving it are not yet available – although there are ‘the usual suspects.’
What is obvious is that, by and large, the electorate (A) believes there is a moderate problem to be solved, (B) has tasked shallow-minded politicians to ‘do something,’ The politicians have united to ‘out-source’ the issue to activist authoritarians. At every step of this lazy path, group-think becomes stronger.
The electorate has not got a clue what is going on. Worse, the young people
becoming voters are either non-political or brainwashed dogmatists.
There is, however, a big difference between pushing smart-meters and encouraging heat-pumps. Everybody needs meters and has one already.
In 2016 [ I think ] a government climate committee concluded that electric heating would never work as it would require a 400% increase in generation capacity .
But inconvenient facts like that are soon hidden away in the insane rush to go net zero .
We, in a Physics undergraduate workshop, came to similar conclusions, in 1974. (Oh, how we laughed at the thought of it! How could people be so stupid?)
And we didn’t even consider we were in a committee.
Perhaps, that is where we went wrong!
How many MP’s have been bought by the Eco-Industry. Their ears must be stuffed with money as they do not seem to hear the people.
For a start the following actions required:
Abolish Gummers CCC and all Quango’s with any say on energy matters,
Legislation for Net Zero must be delayed till 2060, using technology viability issues, and let it wither away.
The EV diktat must be revoked to allow the auto industry to react and save thousands of jobs.
The Heat Pump and Boiler Diktat’s must be revoked.
Ban approval of all renewable energy projects.
I’d vote for that!
I thought for a minute it said “abolish Gummer”. Considering this Committee was established by Act of Parliament it ought to be simple, given the Conservative majority, to dispose of it with a one-clause amendment to the Climate Change Act.
Personally I would like to see the entire Act go but Rome wasn’t built in a day. One step at a time.
They will never delay as the longer they kick the can down the road the more obvious it will become that there is no problem to address. How many times have we heard that Arctic ice will be gone by blah, blah, but it wasn’t, and Manhatten should be underwater and the Maldives long gone by now. Five years ago, according to Greta, we had five years to save the planet, but it looks pretty much the same to me.
No chance Paul. Sunak is as wedded to the Year Zero fantasy as Alok ‘show me a coal power station and I’ll blow it up for you’ Sharma and Boris ‘Saudi Arabia of wind’ Johnson. And don’t get me started on Cameron and May. The entire leadership of the Tory party is as committed to ‘Zero’ as your most enthusiastic kamikaze pilot. And, when these clowns take the economy down, we’ll go down in flames with it.
Net zero is just a tool to deny the population freedom, wealth and a comfortable life. The conspiracy theory promoted by the WEF (world economic forum) headed by Klaus Schwab at the annual Davos meeting involves George Soros, Bill Gates, Al Gore even Starmer. We all know Net Zero in such a short time scale will destroy our economy.
It took me a long time to accept that the elite want to destroy us, but it explains all the madness that is currently going on in our world.
These people are highlighted as WEF Members Jacinda Ardern, Angela Merkel, Emmanual Macron, Cyril Ramposa, Justin Trudeau. All active in net zero, all woke, Covid lock downers. Ardern and Merkel have lost their leadership. In the UK we only have the UNI party, Labour, Conservative, Lib Dems all have the same aims. Our only hope is for Reform or Reclaim party to get some MPs into parliament, but with our first past the post system it is not very likely. Doomed!
Voilla the Grand Plan.
Click to access 21252030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf
This is the result of sending ignorant virtue signaling politicians and silly servants to International Fora gabfests organized by the Marxist corrupt UN
That’s 41 pages of wishful thinking to achieve a nicer world for everyone, particularly those at some sort of disadvantage, It mentions Africa as one of the most disadvantaged.
The one thing that would lift Africa up would be reliable, cheap electricity supply. It would have to be low technology using local sources of energy. Coal fired steam turbines generating medium voltage for local distribution, without the need for a high voltage grid. There is plenty of coal in Africa.
Well, that was lovely reading untill I dozed off.
Now, weres the EXIT?
Governments just love international Fora to burnish their egos, but, they do not read into the substance of what is on the table. The foot work is done by bureaucrats known as “distinguished delegates for COUNTRY ” I was in this gave for a while where mountains of paper were circulated and 20 years to make a decision. The Law of the Sea was under discussion for 50 years.
I don’t see a problem with having some high voltage grid in Africa. There is already quite a significant amount in Southern Africa. It has the advantage that the voltages are too high to make theft practical.
The corrupt WEF and the corrupt UN are joined at the hip in their objectives. The self styled elites of the WEF will end up like the Mensheviks did with Lenin.
Britain can still escape the OECD’s radical plan for permanent worldwide socialism.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/18/britain-can-still-escape-the-oecds-radical-plan-for-permane/
Former Norwegian Premier, Gro Harlem Brundtland gave her name to the Brundtland report which led to Agenda 21, now Agenda 2030. No coincidence that so many governmental policies have 2030 as a target date. She addressed the XIX Congress of the Socialist International, with the topic, “Social Democracy in a Changing World” 15 -17 September 1992
“At the Rio Conference on Environment and Development (1992) it was made clear that we are heading towards a crisis of uncontrollable dimensions unless we change course. Today we are faced with global challenges that can be addressed only through international cooperation.
Securing peace, sustainable development and democracy requires that nations, in their common interest, establish an effective system of global governance and security. In an increasingly interdependent world, we must find new ways to live – both within our own countries and on a global level – that are socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable.
What we need is a new social contract. Monetary stability will not suffice. And just as democracy originated in Europe some 2500 years ago, just as social democracy developed in Europe over the past 100 years, so must we again take the lead. We must curb population growth and reinforce the links between population, poverty-alleviation and the rights of women.
A new social contract must be based on our overriding principles – freedom, solidarity and justice. To pursue social justice, freedom and democracy will require that we pool our collective experiences and national sovereignties.
There is no alternative to obligatory coordination of financial and monetary policies.”
All sounds familiar…
Yep. It’s familiar. Talking about what ‘we’ want as if we have ever been asked. Those who tend to talk loudest about democracy are often the very ones to deny it for ‘we, the people’.
Net zero is a very stupid idea and anyone who believes in it should stop exhaling CO2, right now!
The problem there is that Net Zero is the Globalist’s plan to destroy Europe’s economy. Our political parties, of all stripes take orders from them.
NetZero is but a step in the UN’s World Order. As I see it the only savior will be the armed good old boys in the USA taking thing in hand in ridding the US of extreme leftist dogma
Yep. Only Britain and the US block the move to global government. And Britain is fading fast. We Rednecks aren’t going to be easy to change.
Climate change/Net Zero are not about the weather. They are about eroding Western civilization to where it can no longer resist One World.
The next major war will not be like the freedom-loving West against a Nazi Germany, but the war of free-thinking people against a NZC Hegemony.
This will all end in tears, I’m sure of it.
Want to debate the science?
I do.
No you don’t. Anyone who posts such drivel online as “The permafrost is melting, releasing tremendous amounts of CO2 and CH4. We cannot stop it. Will the future climate be conducive to human habitat? ”
is not here to discuss or debate. So what is your big revelation for September eh?
Look it up and prove me wrong.’t
Isn’t it settled? Debate the political and economic policies that you claim are somehow “science”.
Alarmists tend to fall apart when they try to do so. Can you try?
Stunning logic. You make an unsupported assertion and the onus is on me to disprove? Idiots like you fail to understand the onus is on YOU to prove – this is not a religion for us all to blindly believe.
So what is this event we will all discover in September that you chose not explain ?
‘We should be used by now to’
Heffer is a professional writer?
No editors at the Tele?
I think Heffer was once in charge of style and grammar at the Telegraph!
“We should be used – by now! – to…” might be acceptable as a deliberate breach of standard grammatical rules to express a degree of personal exasperation.
Many ‘broken rules’ can be explained by ‘something is to be understood.’
This is called non-standard rather than wrong. Heffer here is closer to wrong since the ‘by now’ belongs with the ‘We’ and he has moved it away with no clear purpose.
Women declaring themselves to be men and vice versa, the idiotic netzero pipe-dream with minorities permitted to bring life and business/the Country to its knees, the Lunatics truly are now running the asylum.
Yet it’s only the EU (and us) countries and the USA being brought to their knees. The people playing Biden, Sunak and VonDer Lyden have spent well: they don’t see failure as an option.
Some people still don’t understand. AGW is not about temperature, it’s about collapsing the Capitalist system and reducing population. It will take many useful idiots to accomplish this but there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of them. The Marxists are working their plan and so far it seems to be succeeding but the people are getting wise to their intentions as they are being asked to give up more and more of their lifestyle.
Useful idiots always forget – they are the first against the wall when it all goes t*ts up.
It is about survival. You will feel it in September this year.
Why? What will happen in September?
Heat. Even above the Arctic Circle it will exceed 100 degrees F
Wake me up when it does!
Hey, Sleepy, it did that several years ago. Did Fox not carry it?
Arctic Circle is already recording 118 F degree days (and summer is just heating up)
News
By Brandon Specktor
published June 24, 2021
On the same day last year, air temperatures in the area blazed past 100 degrees F for the first time in recorded history.
Now you are just being silly, the Arctic is not recording 118F.
The record still stands at 100.4F set in 2020. And the previous record at Verkhoyansk was 99.1F in 1988. So Iam not going to panic over a rise of 1F.
In reality temperatures in the 90s are commonplace in Siberia.
And the previous record for the Arctic of 100F was set in 1915 in Alaska.
I gave you the actual article. It was historical, not this year yet. Yes, it was 118 degrees above the arctic Circle. Look it up. Just type in “118 Arctic Circle” then come back and tel us what you found.
That was a ground temperature, measured by satellites. CLUE- We did not have satellites in the 1920s, so we could not measure such things until a few years ago.
The article also states that air temperatures there were about 86F
https://www.livescience.com/arctic-circle-siberia-hot-day-2021.html
Air and ground temps are two different things.
Meanwhile temperatures of 86F/30C are common in Siberia every year, eg at Verhojansk where the record was set.
https://climexp.knmi.nl/gdcntmax.cgi?id=someone@somewhere&WMO=RSM00024266&STATION=VERHOJANSK&extraargs=
Oh I see now, you are a deranged prophet of (or is it profit from) doom. I will contact you direct in October.
‘We did not have satellites in the 1920s’
Still don’t. Satellite temperature readings end at 60°N. There are NO satellite readings in the Arctic.
Nor the Antarctic.
I just started a list of possible futures, and abandoned it again. Too many moving parts – Labour policy, Tory policy, the timing and result of the next election, events dear boy. The events will surely contain an exposure to the sunlight of the stupidity of Net Zero. How damaging that will be for all of us, and how long it will take, remain matters beyond my conjecture. That the exposure will happen, however, I am in no doubt.
The tragedy of it is that the Conservative party should be the natural home of free markets, and of getting the government out of pratting around with the economy.
I remember when Boris was editor of the Spectator, it was one of the few remaining media rags to encourage intelligent scepticism about the whole climate hoax. I was, to say the least, disappointed when ‘the Saudi Arabia of wind’ was announced.
We’ll see. How bad does it have to get?
A “smart” meter is one on those euphemisms whose necessity is predicated on being the inability to manage supply so manage demand. When did it become the governments job to micromanage its citizens particularly when it’s due to government’s poor policy choices.
I ave a smart meter. It controls nothing. I do. It just has different times of use, and works both ways when my PV system generates.
You spell “have” not “ave”
Smart meters are able to disconnect power remotely. “Demand management” is already in play. Only a matter of time.
Sorry everyone, this is is a bit long. Like many here I write to my MP about the, at best, mistake that is net zero. Here is the government standard reply:
“Thank you for contacting me about climate change and net zero.
While I appreciate your scepticism on this issue, the overwhelming consensus of international climate change scientists is that climate change is happening and that it is exacerbated by human activity. The fact that uncertainty exists in climate science, as it does in other fields, does not negate the value of current evidence, and the strong correlation between global warming and rising greenhouse gas concentrations from human activity since 1900.
Indeed, the threat of global warming has never been more apparent, as highlighted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report on climate change. I welcome the publication of the IPCC’s report which makes for very sobering reading, laying clear the stark consequences climate change is having on our planet and what will happen if decisive action is not taken now.
The report warns that climate change is already affecting every single region across the globe and without urgent action warming, heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and loss of Arctic Sea ice, snow cover and permafrost, will all increase. In addition, the report highlights that immediate action is required to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050 to give a good chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C in the long-term and help to avoid the worst effects of climate change. I was encouraged that the progress achieved at COP26 and in the Glasgow Climate Pact will hopefully be looked back as the beginning of the end of climate change.
I am also assured that the independent Committee on Climate Change (CCC) found that meeting net zero by 2050 is feasible and consistent with avoiding most damaging climate change. The CCC’s latest estimates put the net cost of achieving net zero at less than 1 per cent of GDP through to 2050 when taking into account the benefits from the falling prices of low-carbon technologies, with scope for the economic effect to be net positive as resources shift from imported fossil fuels to UK investment. This downward revision, from 1-2 per cent previously estimated, is welcome.
The UK Government is already taking the issue of climate change incredibly seriously and we have decarbonised our economy faster than any country in the G20 over the last two decades. In addition, ambitious targets such as a 68 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, compared to 1990 levels, and a 78 per cent reduction in emissions by 2035, also compared to 1990 levels, have been enshrined in law. Furthermore, the Ten Point Plan will mobilise £12 billion of Government investment and support up to 250,000 green jobs, creating a green industrial revolution. The Net Zero Strategy builds on this and lays out how to decarbonise the UK economy.
The most recent cost estimates in the Net Zero Strategy present a net cost, excluding air quality and emission reduction benefits, equivalent to 1-2 per cent of GDP in 2050. This is easily justified when another report estimated the overall costs and risks of global warming to be equivalent to losing between 5 per cent and 20 per cent of global GDP each year. While the UK might be less exposed to physical risks of continued global warming than many other nations owing to its temperate climate and status as an advanced economy, there are potentially still significant indirect impacts. For example, damage to global supply chains affecting trade, reduced production in trading partner nations pushing up the cost of imported goods, or changes to migration from regions heavily affected by climate change.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.
Kind regards,”
Whoever wrote that needs to be named!
And the basic errors are easy to demonstrate. Taking the most optimistic forecast of costs of Net Zero and the most absurdly doom-mongering costs of climate change is a stupid way to decide policy. Simply do it the other way round – Net Zero could cost 5-6% of GDP and climate change 1-2% in the distant future. Thus it is idiotic to impose the costs. I suggest you simply point that out to your MP.
Harry,
I, too, have been writing to my M.P. and directed my point to The Department for Energy and Net Zero that heat pumps will increase or at best not decrease CO2 emission.
Part of the response was:-
The Electrification of Heat Project has shown that heat pumps are 280 per cent efficient on average over the course of a year, or more than three times as efficient as a gas boiler,
The signatory to the reply from them was Lord Callanan, who happens to have an electrical engineering degre, rare amongst politicians.
My response to this was ‘nonsense’ because as any GCSE student of physics knows you cannot have an efficiency of 100%, i..e more work done for the energy applied.
My point using that is that the heat pump industry claim the better ground source heat pumps give five units of heat for one of electricity. Therfore as they cannot be 100% efficient that requires the generation of at least five times that which is used by the heat pump. If an air source heat pump gives two. eight units of heat for one of electricity then it’s efficiency, using 5 units generated is very poor circa 56%, significantly less than a modern gas or oil, boiler.
Also given that as the extra demand on the grid will largely be generated by gas generation heat pumps will increase CO2 output, my original point in my first letter to them.
I wait to hear their response.
I have omitted a few further details for the purpose of limiting the length of this .
Why am I not surprised? Meaningless flannel, all of it, but the climate lobby has done a marvellous job in creating plausibility. What is there that a non-scientist could argue against. Even the argument about consensus is hard for any lay person to challenge.
All they ever needed was the right number of corruptible scientists in the right place at the right time and to paraphrase a Goon Show they forced their way into the universities by the novel idea of giving them money.
At least your MP appears to have a grasp of what their arguments are and isn’t simply an “I Speak Your Weight” machine. Which suggests in the right set of circumstances he might just possibly be susceptible to reason. Who knows?
Dear MP,
You really should read more widely both about climate change and about net zero. Some suggestions would include
Clintel’s critique of IPCC AR6 report
https://clintel.org/download-ipcc-book-report-2023/
False Alarm – Bjorn Lomborg
Apocalypse Never – Michael Shellenberger
Doubt and Certainty in Climate Science – Alan Longhurst
If you have some knowledge of science you might tackle the work of Wijngaarden and Happer on the absorption and emission of infrared radiation in the atmosphere that shows that the estimates of climate sensitivity of GHG concentrations used in climate modelling are excessive and wrong.
Next, you might review the purpose of the IPCC, as revealed by some of its officials. Christiana Figueres said “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” That is a political statement aimed at destroying our way of life. Ottmar Edenhofer is even clearer “But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.” If you subscribe to destroying our way of life what are you doing as a MP? You should join XR and glue yourself to symbols of culture, while living in a hovel with no electricity, gas, piped water or transport – which is ultimately the life you seek to inflict on us.
Then you should review the real state of commitments made by IPCC member countries since the Paris Agreement in 2015. They are disappointingly slim, particularly from the biggest emitters who might make a difference. The reality is that just the rate of increase of China’s emissions eclipses the UK’s total emissions. The IPCC’s claimed emissions goals are quite unattainable whatever we do, so we should prepare to invest in tacking the consequences of climate change as they happen rather that wasting money on making us so poor that we would be unable to afford to do so.
Next you should read about the feasibility problems for net zero programs. A good place to start is the work of Prof Simon Michaux of Turku University (in English)
Click to access 16_2021.pdf
Not only does he point out that the mining resource requirements are probably well beyond what can be done, but also that many of the key resources are largely controlled by China. Embarking on a net zero programme means becoming dependent on China, and therefore subservient to it. What chance of persuading China to reduce its emissions when they will say they are needed to service our forlorn net zero goals?
The work of Prof Mike Kelly (a former DCLG Chief Scientific Advisor who actually commissioned proper experiments) on the likely costs of insulating the UK’s buildings to net zero standards as being a £2 trillion item with shockingly bad economics should be on your list.
Next there is the cost of converting the economy to zero carbon electricity. Rather than looking at spurious figures based on unicorn assumptions for what that cost might be in 2050 after you have destroyed the economy, you should look at the cost of getting there and staying there. The capital costs are of the order of at least another £1 trillion, including lots of addtional transmission lines, recabling the streets, massive levels of overcapacity in wind and solar in a bid to minimise costly storage requirements, and still huge sums for storage that can’t be avoided, let alone programmes for boondoggles such as CCS and green hydrogen. The result is an energy system whose costs will make the bills that had to be subsidised last winter seem small.
The consequences of expensive energy will be economic collapse. GDP is likely to halve or worse. Perhaps the only silver lining will be that the UK will cease to be a place attractive to emigrants from elsewhere.
We will be poor.
We will be cold.
We will be hungry.
We will lose our cars.
We will lose our jobs.
We will lose our homes.
If that is your manifesto, we shall not vote for you.
Well said!!!!!
‘I am also assured that the independent Committee on Climate Change (CCC) found that meeting net zero by 2050 is feasible and consistent with avoiding most damaging climate change.’
Bold claims from an MP in a country that produces 0.04% of the world’s CO2 emissions. He is impotent. CCC is impotent. Net Zero produces nothing but poverty.
It really is preposterous that your MP request on claims of “consensus” and then on the fantasies if “falling prices” of unproven technologies to impose such far-reaching and potentially disastrous policies. The claims about Doom are simply unscientific. There are no serious studies that show losses of 5-20% of GDP – quoting one study is simply nonsensical. The consensus there 1-2% of GDP. This is the typical shrill Alarmism of fanatics.
“the overwhelming consensus of international climate change scientists is that climate change is happening and that it is exacerbated by human activity.”
One of the main papers behind the 97 percent claim is authored by John Cook, who runs the popular website SkepticalScience.com, a virtual encyclopedia of arguments trying to defend predictions of catastrophic climate change from all challenges.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2015/01/06/97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-100-wrong/?sh=15c1d8bf3f9f
This lie has been totally debunked, yet it remains the key mantra of the eco-loons:
If the UK must go totally green then at least we should do it in an orderly fashion, retaining fossil fuel back-up. But the Green zealots have made any investment in extraction or storage anathema. If my 90-year father should die of cold this winter because he can’t afford heating then will he simply be considered collateral damage in the Green Revolution? The Green Revolution that is chipping away at the UK’s relatively minuscule emissions whilst the behemoths of China and India (and the US and Russia and even, now, coal-loving Germany) carry on full steam (& full CO2) ahead? We handicap ourselves yet do not even remotely approach a net planetary emission reduction. Still, at least we can console ourselves with the thought that we are doing the Right Thing. I just hope that the warm glow of moral superiority is enough to insulate us from the cold this winter. Meanwhile I’ll tell my old Dad that he won’t be dying in vain. I’m sure that’ll be a great comfort to him.
Have just bought a new oil boiler, so hopfully they won’t force me to change it
Don’t buy a Heat Pump system. I have and wish I hadnt.
And if you have one, and want it serviced then good luck with that.
The industry to my mind is packed with charlatans who are hiding behind government protection.
Charlatans are to be expected, unfortunately, when a Government announces a plan to install 600,000 heat pumps a year from 2028 and offers £5000 vouchers to people to have one installed
I have always wondered what will happen when all the air source heat pumps have been installed in somewhere like London.
Will they all be using the same air warmth from which to extract the heat? Will that affect the ambient temperature?
How noisy will it be with all the heat pumps running?
How much will it cost to beef up the electricity supply system, let alone for when EVs are mandated?
Will the electricity grid be able to cope with the need to use immersion heaters periodically to heat water to 70 degrees to avoid the risk of Legionella?
In my earlier posts I forgot to mention another insidious governmental control creeping up that will help people it is called the Fed’s digital dollar, (see below) The BoE is also considering the same move. Just think the BoE controlling your money and Ofgem/provider controlling your power usage. If you do not agree to limit power usage, the bureaucrats can freeze your account, This was done in Canada by the WEF Trudeau when he had banks freeze accounts of the Trucker Demonstrators and their contributors which left many people unable to pay rent or feed families. Trudeau also went along with the WEF individual digital identification numbers, rather than the Nazi arm number tats. This ,of course, is a version of China’s system which also includes social ratings. Yes sir we are in for a rough ride if we do not keep politicians feet to the fire,
https://ca.video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-fc-2212&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-2212&hspart=fc¶m1=7¶m2=eJw1i9EKgzAMRX8ljwpSE1u7gZ%2BxpyE%2BdLXTYrWiDse%2BfilshJB7z70ZfN823e1OiFIq2Rbdwp4dskwRSqQqccsmXb%2BmQq2FVII08VZMBxcZW8PyZVjN8eNDMGUtELLTL308d1gOIBTYAAOtGnhrlYNZ1%2BBO95j8UdbyIqSGbBqPORQQ%2FORgcHaKOdhxi7MriZTANLCbp9n8%2F8X1wy%2BjayVFTV%2F9fT6k&p=The+fed+digital+dollar&type=fc_A30C76C6185_s58_g_e_d030123_n1000_c3#id=4&vid=26c0e027c0e88634646497d803e81e29&action=view
Solar panels here have been blocked by heritage overlays which govern the whole area, not just the specific residence.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/it-s-ridiculous-heritage-homeowner-ordered-to-remove-solar-panels-20220531-p5aq0t.html
Simon Heffer writes two proposals at the end of the article:
If either of his two proposals were actually achieved the necessity to ban would not arise.
There are more people die of cold in this country than ever die of heat and these stupid policies will only increase that number.
Hi Paul,
My EDF smart meter has not worked for over a year as it now cannot connect with the mobile phone system.
EDF could not care less and just charge exactly what they did before the meter died (it still reads OK but won’t connect) .
I have tried everything to get it fixed — people come, shake their heads and say it should be replaced but nothing happens. I should have a “mesh equivalent” transmitter.
They will not acknowledge my meter readings!
Best,
Mike ________________________________