It is clear from the public debate that the citizenry has no idea of the scale of the task to achieve a net zero emissions economy in 30 years, writes Professor Michael Kelly in a recent report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Opinion polls indicate that few are willing, let alone able, to pay more than very modest sums, he states, and nothing like the £100,000 plus per household identified by his report.
But the costs do not end there. The former Prince Philip Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge went on to note that if Europe and North America are to pay for the rest of the world’s Net Zero activities, the cost for each U.K. household could rise to £450,000, and £13 trillion for the whole U.K. Unsurprisingly, Professor Kelly feels this is a “fantasy in practical terms”.
These costs are rarely mentioned. The Paris Climate Agreement seeks to mobilise $100 billion a year from developed countries to fund green projects across the globe. Few countries in the developing world specify their demands for hard cash in public, but when they do, the amounts sought are eye watering. The small Caribbean island of Grenada, with a population of 112,000 people, recently informed the United Nations that it would like $1 billion up to 2030.
Grenada is just one of many countries seeking to profit from the largesse on offer at countless international climate meetings. But in Kelly’s view, the project is being attempted without any kind of roadmap. “The project is therefore more likely than not to veer in the direction of the historical Tower of Babel,” he suggests.
Professor Kelly’s figures will shock those who rely on the advice of the Government’s own Climate Change Committee (CCC). In its 2020 Sixth Carbon Budget it reduced the cost of Net Zero from 1-2% of UK GDP to under 1%. By 2030, the annual cost will be £32 billion a year, compared with £10 billion in 2020. The CCC said the “low costs for the transformation” were due to new clean technologies being more efficient. An annual cost of £32 billion a year equates to just over £1,000 per household, orders of magnitude below Kelly’s estimates. The CCC says people can play their part by eating less meat, curbing flying, driving less and installing low carbon heating.
So back in the real world, let us look at this last suggestion. The CCC claims that it will cost £10,000 to insulate a home and install a heat pump system. Kelly is more realistic. Detailing his own practical experience as Chief Scientific Advisor to the then Department for Communities and Local Government in 2009, he recalled a £17 million retrofit of 100 social houses. Knowing the actual costs involved, Kelly scales up to a figure of £4 trillion to insulate and install heat pumps in 26 million U.K. homes. Allowing for economies of scale, but also including another 5.5 million non-domestic properties, he arrives at a total refit bill of £3 trillion. Installing a heat pump and insulating a house is likely to cost £65,000, nowhere near the ludicrously low figure promoted to the general public by the CCC.
The CCC is right, however, about Net Zero knocking flying on the head. At present the amount of battery storage needed to contain the energy for a jumbo jet crossing the Atlantic weighs six times the maximum cargo that a jet can carry. Even assuming 50 more years of battery improvement at the rate of recent years, a jet would only be able to fly without any cargo.
Under Net Zero, Kelly estimates that the electricity grid would need to be 2.7 times bigger in 2050 than today. This involves adding capacity at eight times the rate it has been added over the last 30 years, including all renewables. In addition there will be a need to rewire homes, streets and local substations to carry the extra current. Kelly estimates a cost of £700 billion for this work. Add in the cost of upgrading power lines and it is estimated that the cost for the National Grid of reaching Net Zero by 2050 is £900 billion or nearly £1 trillion.
The cost of the new electricity generating capacity is said to be £500 billion, making a total of over £4 trillion, if the costs of agriculture and rail, sea and air transport are ignored. The headline figure is reduced to £3 trillion by allowing for further economies of scale, and this is equivalent to over £100,000 for every household in the U.K.
But money is only part of the picture. To complete the Net Zero project will also require huge increases in skilled workers. Kelly estimates a doubling of electrical engineers and a workforce of around 500,000 people to retrofit houses. In addition, vast quantities of materials will be needed for wind turbines, solar panels and electric car batteries. Kelly notes that the extraction of oil and gas only has a small impact on the earth’s surface, compared with the opencast mining of the minerals used in wind turbines and solar farms. Meanwhile, if the U.K. converted to electric cars overnight, it would require 207,000 tonnes of cobalt – almost double the annual global production. Kelly notes that “unregulated and child labour is implicated in much mining of cobalt”.
In summary, Professor Kelly writes:
With extra costs comfortably in excess of £3 trillion, a dedicated and skilled workforce, 70% that of the NHS, and key strategic materials demanded at many times the supply rates that prevail today, and all for no measurable attributable change in the global climate, the mitigation of climate change via a net-zero-emissions U.K. economy in 2050 is an extremely difficult ask. Without a command economy, the target will certainly not be met.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor
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It’s worth noting that in Summer 2020, there was a BSI publication on this topic ( bsi-guide-for-personal-safety-equipment-0520 – still available here: https://www.bsigroup.com/globalassets/localfiles/en-gb/product-certification/personal-safety/bsi-guide-for-personal-safety-equipment-0520.pdf ).
It emphasised the use of the term “face covering”, not “masks”, on pain of being out of line with trading standards if the wrong term was used. In fact, many products on sale had tiny labels in small font (that most punter wouldn’t read) to avoid being dealt with by Trading Standards. UK Government sites also used the same term, for similar reasons. It was a con, and an opportunity to sell junk, made in the far east etc.
Real term: face anus wraps.
Sometimes named: diapers for irremediably stupid and ugly.
Both Found in: the retard book of ‘the science’
You know masks do nothing positive.
I know masks do nothing positive.
But who are we?!
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’
And here is what GAVI have to say in response to the latest Cochrane review on masks. Well of course they won’t take the conclusion lying down and gawd are they desperate to discredit the findings;
”Face masks and respirators work in two ways: they protect the wearer from becoming infected and they prevent an infected wearer from spreading their germs to other people.
Most RCTs in this Cochrane Review looked only at the former scenario, not the latter. In other words, the researchers had asked people to wear masks and then tested to see if those people became infected.
A previous systematic review found face masks worn by sick people during an influenza epidemic reduced the risk of them transmitting the infection to family members or other carers. Preventing an infection in one person also prevents onward transmission to others within a closed setting, which means such RCTs should use a special method called “cluster randomisation” to account for this.
Data from a RCT of N95 respirator use by health workers showed even their unmasked colleagues were protected. Yet some of the trials included in the review did not use cluster randomisation.”
Edit: It wasn’t GAVI, they just published this from another site. This is the original article from The Conversation, and I spy one of the authors is our friend Prof Trish/Trev. You can see the authors’ conflicts of interest to the right of the article. ‘Nuff said;
https://theconversation.com/yes-masks-reduce-the-risk-of-spreading-covid-despite-a-review-saying-they-dont-198992
You just had to bring that old thread up Mogs. It still makes me snigger when I see the post’s featured image – and the comments of course. 🤣
Just checking you’re in the building Trev. 😁
The Conversation…
Yet another organisation compromised by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Conversation also bans people who challenge the status quo…on vaccination policy for instance. I was banned from making comments on The Conversation in April 2016. So much for ‘the conversation’…
See: The Conversation – a marketing arm for the university and research sector.
The pro-maskers are really grasping at straws now, lol. Source control can be even more self-evidently debunked by those famous videos demonstrating smoke leaking through the masks and around the edges.
Reminded me that around the height of the panic, I saw someone wearing one, with a shopping bag in one hand and a live cigarette in the other! I didn’t stop to watch how they smoked, though.
The basic lie here is that Face masks work in two ways. They don’t. They’re a physcial barrier between inside and outside areas and this physical barrier is supposed to prevent certain things from crossing from one area to the oher. If the barrier is effective at stopping these things from crossing from one area to the other, it’ll be equally effective for inside -> outside and outside -> inside. If it’s not effective for one, it can’t be effective for the other, either. It’s just that there’s an objective metric for testing effectiveness for the outside -> inside direction (wearer becoming infected) and there isn’t one for the other as the intended effect is a non-event: Person remains uninfected. One would need to observe the person forever, ie until death, in order to be sure that infection will never have occurred.
That’s a special case of asserting that a negative must be proven which is impossible as it would require omniscience, cf
https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/phil_of_religion_text/CHAPTER_5_ARGUMENTS_EXPERIENCE/Burden-of-Proof.htm
NB: It’s really important to understand that Corona’s witnesses always rely on claims which can’t be proven to justify their policies. Which means they’re basically Bauernfänger (literally farmer catchers, swindlers relying on the relative ignorance of farmers about urban affairs to trick them into something).
For me, the giant elephant in the room which I don’t see being discussed is that we don’t want to stop the spread of viruses.
The idea that we don’t want respiratory viruses spread is, in my view, insane and incredibly destructive.
We used to understand this. We used to talk about colds getting around, letting children catch them and human immune systems getting stronger from them.
To me it’s like telling everyone to stop walking because they might sprain their ankles. And most important of all, old people must never walk because they are at greatest risk of falling and breaking a hip or something else.
No, you do the opposite. You walk a lot, and often and do all you can to strengthen you muscles so that the day you step on something in a funny way, your muscles are as strong as possible and have the best chance of keeping you on your feet.
If by any chance masks do stop the spread of viruses, which is seriously doubtful, the last thing we should do is wear them.
The world has gone mad. Completely mad. They’ve tried to re-engineer so much of human society in just three years (and made such enormous inroads) that we”re losing track of the most basic reality.
Not only that, it’s based on an assumption that most people won’t understand the physics of it all. After all, we’re talking about a tiny compound with a size of around 100 nm. So small it will pass through most fabric that we have available, and is quite likely to be part of the air we breath, particularly inside places with a lot of air circulation.
Very well said. As I’ve posted elsewhere, eradicating the spread of mild infectious diseases is quite possibly a very dangerous thing to do – even if it were possible at reasonable cost and without disruption to normal life, it might lead to utter catastrophe.
I cannot help but think of the measles parties of old. To be replaced by the chickenpox parties (I have known this to happen).
About the authors of this:
C Raina MacIntyre receives funding from mask manufacturer Detmold for testing of their masks and is on an advisory board for mask manufacturer Ascend. She receives funding from Sanofi for investigator-driven influenza research, and from NHMRC and MRFF. She has been an expert advisor for Ontario Nurses Association (ONA) In the matter of a proceeding under the Labour Relations Act, 1995 between ONA and Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation.
Abrar Ahmad Chughtai had testing of filtration of masks by 3M for his PhD. 3M products were not used in his research. He also has worked with Paftec on research in respirators (no funding was involved).
Dr Fisman has served as an expert witness for the Ontario Nurses Association and the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario in legal challenges related to safer working conditions in healthcare and schools. Dr. Fisman has served on advisory boards for Pfizer, Astrazeneca, Merck, Seqirus and Sanofi vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, influenza, and S. pneumoniae. He holds current funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and Health Canada.
For those of you who don’t know, the Ontario Nurses Association is very pro-mask.
I spy an oxymoron. Let’s consider the second point – that masks stop infected people from spreading the virus. If they are infected and they know it they should be isolating, and if they are isolating they don’t need to wear a mask…
Masks are splashguards (Mike Yeadon) and dust filters.
Respirators from P100 upwards can work against viruses, but only with full PPE and for max. 45 minutes, during which one has to stay quiet.
(Steve Kirsch had an article on a study showing that about 6 months ago).
In practice, only 3% leakage of the splashguards and dust filters already results in 100% inefficiency against either, and their mishandling is by now legendary and inevitable.
In practice, they simply cannot work, even if they were efficient, which they aren’t, least of all in educational or business settings where people speak and thereby moisturize them.
Masks were introduced solely for psychological and power display reasons and in particular to prepare for and normalise other assaults on bodily autonomy, like invasive testing and gene-therapy mandates.
Correct. And in the real world, almost no-one bought any kit that could do what was promoted. No training, or education to do with it’s use either. A lot of junk was sold, with tiny labels (in less than 8 point text) that most would not read, to the effect that they were not actual medical masks at all. They were labelled in larger text on the front of a pack as “face covering”. Almost all supermarkets did that; the only benefit was improved sales income.
So true. For all practical purposes, the masks as worn in practice were utterly useless and not fit for purpose.
TBH I don’t much care whether they “work”. Covid was/is a mild inconvenience for most people, in the same bracket as flu. I’m not prepared to wear a muzzle on the offchance it might stop me spreading “covid” to someone.
Just a reminder that if your workplace is still insisting on mask mandates, get in touch with the Workers of England Union who will fight for you. Unlike the other bigger national unions who happily go along with government diktats.
Go to https://workersofengland.co.uk
You can be based in England, Scotland or Wales. All are welcome.
‘….public health officials must act in a precautionary manner to take action even when evidence is uncertain (or not of the highest quality), particularly when the harms and costs of such action are likely limited.’
Dr Soares Weiser, Cochrane’s Chief Editor
Herein lies the problem within the medical profession once again:
Ignorance.
Cochrane’s Chief Editor is talking manifest nonsense:
EU (from whence the ‘precautionary principle emanated) legal advice regarding the ‘precautionary principle’
‘the general principles of risk management remain applicable when the precautionary principle is invoked. These are the following five principles:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/the-precautionary-principle.html#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20European%20Commission,be%20determined%20with%20sufficient%20certainty.
The man, if he had any decency, should resign forthwith.
Indeed, he is turning the precautionary principle (the original Rio Declaration Earth Summit 1992 version) completely on its head.
Indeed. Publication bias is very real. Another example is the Fargo school mask study, which is still a preprint and not yet published even a year later, versus the highly and fatally flawed Boston school mask study that got pal-reviewed and published in the NEJM rather quickly. Guess which study found that masks didn’t make a difference, and which one claimed that masks worked?
For some it is the assumed ‘Truth’ that masks work and therefore any other opinion is wrong and therefore should be censored.
They never question their assumptions, presuming that they are infallible and can never be wrong.
For me, what is most important is free debate and allowing open science to find the actual truth.
Not allowing free science to discover the facts and truth is not real science but ideology.
If some says ‘The science is settled’ you know they are talking ideology, not real science.
If the objective is to stop the spread of viruses then the best method is no contact with other people.
Everyone should stay in a closet by themself and never leave.
Suppression of adverse views is normal behaviour, of which scientific examples go back to the persecution of Galileo. It has however just occurred to me that, given the Danish mask study was one of the first, we should remember Tycho Brahe, who developed the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, and elevate both to the Galilean pantheon.
Great, you always feature in m articles and will do so again this week
https://dailysceptic.org/why-children-should-not-be-masked/.
Masks don’t work so why are people continuing to push for them ?
https://hughmccarthy.substack.com/p/masks-dont-work
Not Masks Again
https://hughmccarthy.substack.com/p/not-masks-again
The desperation to mask/muzzle people is beyond sinister.
Adrian Esterman in South Australia has made it his life’s work to try and keep people muzzled…what is going on with these people?!
There are so many individuals with ‘doctor’ and ‘professor’ titles seeking to interfere in other people’s lives, and steal their personal autonomy and bodily integrity.
On what authority do they do this?
It’s way past time to call them out, make them accountable for their influence on policy.
Free speech and open free science is the enemy of the ‘woke progressive’ ideology so they want to censor, ban, demonize and smear any other opinions other than their own.