Where Were You Before, Mr Warner?
By Paul Homewood
h/t Doug Brodie
Welcome to the party, Mr Warner!
Some of us have been warning you about this years ago, when you were praising Net Zero:
There is so much wrong with climate change policy as it stands that it is hard to know where to start.
Yet bans and deadlines are as good a place as any, for the way things are going we’ll end up with the worst of both worlds – significantly higher costs but with much of the intended industrial upside of the transition going not to the local economy but to overseas producers.
I’m not going to get into the rights and wrongs of the presiding cross-party commitment to net zero by 2050. Suffice it to say that the cost argument often advanced to support it has always somewhat missed the point.
The relatively modest investment costs of meeting the target – generally judged by economic modelling to be around 0.5pc of GDP a year in today’s money – are nothing, it is said, against the potentially catastrophic costs of doing nothing at all. Money well spent, in other words.
Unfortunately, the comparison only holds good in a perfect world where everyone strives for the same thing, which is very definitely not where we are.
At just 1pc of global emissions, it matters not a jot what privations Britain imposes on itself unless others do the same. If they don’t, then we’d still be faced with the costs of doing nothing.
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Could this be the same Jeremy Warner who announced the end of petrol cars in 2017?
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Or the Jeremy Warner who urged us to go green just a year ago?
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/03/11/truth-britains-net-zero-target-wholly-unrealistic/
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SURELY NOT!!!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Luke 15: 10
But he is not repenting at all – just chasing the money. More like https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Joshua+6%3A17-25&version=ESV
BYD just unloaded 3000 EVs in Germany. Sales war is on.
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-02-china-byd-auto-shipment-car.html
It’s the inevitable result of the stupid net zero policy.
As most self respecting scientists know, man-made carbon dioxide has virtually no effect on the climate. It is a good gas essential to animals and plant life. Provided dirty emissions are cleaned up, we should be using our substantial store of fossil fuels while we develop a mix of alternatives including nuclear power to generate energy. There is no climate crisis, it has always changed and we have always adapted to it. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were many times higher during the last mini ice age. There was no industrial revolution then to be the cause . Man-made carbon dioxide is insignificant compared with water vapour or clouds which comprise a vast majority of green-house gases. We have no control over the climate. The sun and our distance from it have by far the most effect. Most importantly, Net Zero (carbon dioxide) Policy will do nothing to change it. Countries like China, Russia and India are sensibly ignoring this and using their fossil fuels. They will be astonished at how the west is letting the power elites, mainstream media and government implement this Policy and Agenda 21 to needlessly impoverish us as well as causing great hardship and suffering.
Excellent summation, how has the world been gripped by Green Psychosis, its beyond me.
Slàinte 🥃
Simple. Too many people in responsible positions are low on intelligence and enquiry.
Very well stated. Only yesterday there was a report that Chinese scientists have long known about the Net Zero scam and have persuaded their political leadership to ignore implementation of its driven measures – oh and only play the politics of intention to conform at some future date. As I understand it those scientists do believe we are entering decades of cooling, and for that reason the Chinese helter-skelter of building new power stations using all resources available, and predominantly coal fired as being simple and easy to deliver outputs.
The current cold wave that is sweeping China and western Russia, creating many new record low temperatures is but an indication they are on the right track. Our barking western democratic leaderships in the thrall of Net Zero will get their come-uppance when such conditions become a regular feature of their nations, with failure of crops and extensive blackouts leading to many deaths due to cold.
Politicians might hope there will be benefits but to refer to “the intended industrial upside of the transition” suggests it has ever been confidently expected. Of course not! Politicians wanted the esteem of their fellows at international meetings, they wanted to please their left wing friends and they sought reflected glory from flaggelating the population with the costs and damage of Net Zero.
The cost of getting to Net Zero is not “relatively modest” as Jeremy Warner claims. Net Zero is an engineering and logistical impossibility and as such the costs of trying to achieve it (and inevitably failing) would be astronomic, as well as being pointless as he finally admits.
And as ever, the Treasury eschews dynamic modelling so in fact the fantasy 0.5% of GDP will be higher because GDP will fall.
Why are people surprised? It has been the stated plan all along to destroy Capitalism and the West. Germany had negative GDP growth last year, when’s the last time that happened?
We’ve seen what the cost of doing something involves. What is the cost of doing nothing? A good deal less might have been the outcome.
Never mind, the cost of doing nothing is nothing. Poor writing. I guess he means the cost of having to deal with the supposed consequence of doing nothing.
So the half witted ideas that you promoted that are now impoverishing the nation. Greening the planet and making countries self sufficient in agriculture, re India, is not a good idea? Oh when did you have this conversion?
A leopard can change its spots but it’s still a leopard.
What are these “potentially catastrophic costs” of which he speaks?
Most of the catastrophic costs are the result of trying to pretend that somehow or other abandoning (relatively) cheap electricity and space heating from gas and relatively inexpensive petrol for motoring.
….. makes any sort of commercial or social sense. (Sorry about that break in transmission!)
The idea that stopping make one thing and instead making another can make us wealthy is simply absurd. Unless the new thing has greater value to us or is produced more productively, it changes nothing. But it makes us poorer if we leave investment “stranded” as part of the change. If we start making stuff we value less and/or is less productively made, we are also made poorer. This why industry strategies fail. What matters is the value to consumers of what is made and how much resource goes into the manufacture. Green products are less highly valued and use more resources. We are poorer no natter.
“There is so much wrong with climate change policy as it stands that it is hard to know where to start.“
Well, if I may be so bold, Jeremy, may suggest you start from the point that there is no (man-made) climate change for which you – or us – need a policy. Always, always, work from the point of view: who is benefiting from this totally made-up crisis/emergency/end of the world?
I wonder where he came up with the cost of 0.5% of GDP annually. No-one with any grasp of engineering or energy markets would believe. Even the CCC has acknowledged that its original estimate of 1% of GDP was simply a fantasy. Serious engineering estimates and even think tanks connected to the EU put the cost at 10 times that level – over 5% of GDP
These fantasy numbers rest on two assumptions: (a) somehow all of the costs are going to fall rapidly to 10% of current levels – this is the idea that everything is a smartphone not boring stuff like pylons, cables, generators, etc; (b) all of the costs are once off investments financed by zero interest borrowing with no need ever to replace the capital. That isn’t the real world – most of the assets have useful lives of 20-25 years which means that you get to 2050 and embark on a new replacement cycle.
There is a fundamental problem about anything technical in most Western countries. Journalists like Warner know practically nothing and simply repeat the last thing they were told by PR folk. Politicians are even worse. It is absurd to have modern technological societies run by a class who have no knowledge or experience of modern science and technology. At least Mrs T had a degree in chemistry from a serious department at a time when that was exceedingly rare for a woman. Indeed, she was an x-ray crystallographer whose thesis was supervised by a Nobel prize winner. When will we see anything like that again.
As I keep saying, the cost is well over 100% of GDP … because there is no viable way to capture CO2, so Net Zero means the total absence of all fossil fuel use. And without fossil fuel use the economy totally collapses and we end up with mass starvation. Basically the economy becomes worthless, it is so valueless it is hard to assess its value with modern economic measures. It is simpler to say the entire modern economy disappears. That’s not one year’s GDP, that is all the GDP of every year forever.
You think that those proposing the “solutions” don’t include those with experience in science? You think all those climate scientists are actually historians? Maybe all those working on EVs aren’t engineers but are dance graduates? The discipline you study or work in has no bearing on whether you are an idiot that believes nonsense. It’s not as if plenty of engineers and scientists aren’t socialists, ignoring actual Economics.
My point was somewhat different. Most people don’t look beyond their immediate concerns. The key issue is who sets the big targets. Why net zero rather than a 60%, 70%, 80% or 90% reduction in CO2. That is where everything becomes a know-nothing religion. Even the simplest economics tells you that net zero will cost way more than 90% or even more than 80%, yet the thought given to relative costs and other uses of resources was/is minimal.
There are two plausible explanations: either (a) mass dishonesty with an unstated assumption that actually the policies will be slowed or stopped if/when it becomes obvious they are too expensive – ie NetZero but … , and/or (b) technology will solve all problems. I think that it is a bit of both, but (b) worries me more simply because there is a history of wasting vast amount of money in the erroneous belief that something will turn up and a refusal to admit mistakes.
I get regular news flashes in my phone’s Google app. Lately there have been several on the future of battery EVs from major manufacturers . From this I read that Mercedes have given up on battery EVs , BMW and Honda are expecting the future to be hydrogen fuel celled EVs. Toyota also interested in hydrogen , but with a hydrogen combustion engine. So the future is hydrogen? Well another message then comes in to say that Shell , who had several hydrogen fuelling stations in Californis (where there are hydrogen fuelled cars or trucks apparently ) has now abandoned plans to roll out an extensive chain of hydrogen outlets.
As a layperson not involved in the auto industry it seems a rather chaotic state and one perhaps, and reluctantly, must have some sympathy for ministers trying to guess the future given the massive sums involved and the future employment of hundreds of thousands in manufacturing and services.
You’re being googled (brainwashed leading to delusion)
Guessing the future is impossible. And there’s no need to guess the future. Just let markets do their thing. You want lower emissions? Use a carbon tax. Markets will find the best solution.
Phoenix,
no, no, no, carbon taxes are simply another burden on the average person for no gain.
We know, for instance, that only nuclear can reduce and eliminate CO2 for generation, putting a carbon tax on generation types that must run (With our current grid system) only increases cost overall. It is not and cannot reduce what is essential use.
Working out what is likely to happen in the future is not “impossible”. It is difficult, but not “impossible”.
For example, every other time there has been a major “information revolution” from that of writing, to printing, to mass media newspaper, TV and radio, there has been a social and political revolution, with the old established elites being challenged by new social orders.
And, often that results in extreme forms of thinking … the delusion about witchcraft after printing (helped by a book by Kind James). The delusions of Germany, Russia, Pol Pot, Mau, which killed millions … using mass media propaganda to brainwash their peoples into the most appalling action.
So, anyone who didn’t imagine the internet was going to lead to some problems, was flying in the face of history.
The big difference, is that we do have all that history to learn from, and we can predict that the internet could lead to delusional thinking with mass deaths.
Cue Nut Zero … the attempt to end farming and to starve millions of peoples …. does that remind you of anyone? Like the fascism of Germany, the famines of Stalin and Mau, the delusions of pol pot?
The problem is not that the future can’t be predicted, it is that it can be predicted, but far too many people ignore the blindingly obvious lessons from history.
Shell is actually closing the hydrogen filling stations.
Has he Found God? Found a new wife?
I suggest there will be a gradual increase in nuclear, but otherwise no energy transition in Mr. Warner’s lifetime if he lives to 100.
” know where to start ” . . . Try with CO2 is not a problem.
People like Jeremy Warner are the problem.
You have to make your mind up, which side are you on . .
Where have you been for the last 20 years BBC?
[url=https://ibb.co/1Lv5Xpg][img]https://i.ibb.co/80KpxRC/ohyeah.jpg[/img]
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68381160
20 years “late to the party” – but then, we know why
https://i.ibb.co/1Lv5Xpg/ohyeah.jpg
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68381160
Jeremy Warner : “There is so much wrong with climate change policy as it stands that it is hard to know where to start.”
The starting point is that CAGW does not exist, as shown by Happer & Wijngaarden whose calculations on the real atmosphere, including water vapour, unlike the IPCC models, show a negligible increase in GHG when atmospheric CO2 is doubled. Solving the equation of transfer, originally developed by astrophysicists to calculate the radiation loss from a star such as the sun, their results, the ultimate test of any scientific work or theory, match the observed data so impressively well they can even show, correctly, that atmospheric CO2 actually cools rather than warms above Antarctica. Mr. Warner, please go to the CO2 Coalition website or YouTube ‘CO2, The Gas of Life, William Happer’ for the details :
”… against the potentially catastrophic costs of doing nothing at all. Money well spent, in other words.“
These catastrophic costs are the emissions of models designed to support the policies, and like climate modelling are nit reality. They cannot be falsified of course because it’s all in the future.
They fiction based on an unprovable claim, and bear no relationship to reality.
They also overlook the cost of doing something, just like the cost of doing something to thwart a respiratory virus was overlooked.
JW is just a hack making a living. He’d say anything to get his copy in the paper.