According to the Extinction Rebellion (XR) website we are in the midst of a climate emergency and unless immediate action is taken to achieve Net Zero then we face a climate catastrophe. What is the basis for such apocalyptic predictions? Certainly most people’s lived experience is that the climate has not changed much. In the U.K. the winters are still dark and cold and the summers lighter and warmer. The data support this impression: since the Industrial Revolution, the temperature of the Earth has risen by less than a degree. In fact, XR’s predictions of doom and gloom are based on the results from scientific modelling of the Earth’s climate. But can we really expect the people of the world to change their way of life because of the predictions of a small number of scientists and their models?
During the pandemic, scientific modelling predicted that deaths from Covid would be astronomical unless we went into lockdown. Our Government, and many others throughout the world, ‘followed the Science’ and the subsequent lockdowns caused, and are still causing, immense suffering. However, some countries did not impose lockdowns and so we now have actual data to judge the accuracy of the modelling. In Europe we can compare excess deaths in Sweden, which did not impose a lockdown, with excess deaths in other European countries, which did impose lockdowns. The excess deaths in Sweden are similar to these other countries. We see the same pattern in the USA where some states locked down and some didn’t. Again, the excess deaths are similar in both groups. In other words the predictions of the scientists and their models that there would be astronomical numbers of deaths if lockdowns were not imposed were wrong. The number of deaths was more or less the same whether lockdowns were imposed or not.
If scientists and their models cannot be trusted to predict the spread of a virus a few weeks ahead, then how can they be trusted with a far more complex problem, to predict the evolution of the Earth’s climate a few decades ahead?
Unfortunately Boris Johnson, having ‘followed the Science’ down the wrong turning of lockdown, was undaunted and proceeded to ‘follow the science’ down the wrong turning of Net Zero zealotry. He committed the U.K. to a rushed and half-baked Net Zero programme. In the U.K. we have already replaced all our coal-fired power stations with renewables, a move which may be considered reasonable. But he committed us to replacing all our gas-fired power stations with renewables such that by 2030 nearly all our energy generation will be from renewables. This is madness. Renewables are unreliable: sometimes the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. To depend so heavily on renewables means that either we will suffer widespread power cuts or our electricity bills will increase to pay for costly back-up measures.
Electric car sales in the U.K. are already increasing but by 2030 Boris Johnson proposed a total ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars. This will cause hardship. Typically, electric cars cost considerably more than petrol or diesel cars and will be difficult for some people to afford. Whilst their running costs are lower the average motorist will never recoup the extra purchase cost. Also, the long charge times make electric cars inconvenient for some people. Fine if you do low mileage or have your own driveway, so the car can be charged overnight. But what about people who do high mileage or live in blocks of flats? Other major countries are not proposing bans on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars until much later: 2035 in the case of China, Germany, Italy, Japan and the USA; 2040 in the case of France and Spain; and not at all in the case of India.
Even if the U.K. were to achieve these ambitious Net Zero targets there would be little impact on Global Warming because countries with far bigger carbon footprints are moving much more slowly. The U.K. only produces 1% of the world’s CO2 emissions, China produces nearly 30% and is not intending to make any reduction in CO2 emissions this decade. More generally, the developing world produces 63% of the world’s CO2 emissions and the leaders of most of the countries in the developing world have been clear that achieving Net Zero is low on their list of priorities. Their primary goal, quite understandably, is to improve the living standards of their people, their housing, healthcare and education.
Realistically, the world will make more progress in reducing CO2 emissions if green technologies improve. If green technologies were to cost less than their fossil fuel equivalents and perform better then Net Zero would happen naturally and quickly. There are some promising new technologies, for example the development of smaller and cheaper nuclear reactors and possibly power stations fuelled by ‘green hydrogen’.
Let us hope the next Prime Minister will abandon the Net Zero zealotry of his or her predecessor and instead adopt a more balanced policy. Firstly, be mindful of the limits of scientists and their models. The models may accurately predict the direction of travel – the more CO2 emitted the more the Earth will warm – but the magnitude of any temperature rise is highly uncertain. Secondly, remember that there are two words in ‘global warming’ and the first is ‘global’. So the U.K. should not reduce its CO2 emissions at a pace faster than other countries, particularly those that are major emitters.
Dr. John Fernley is a retired scientist.
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One of the first questions (because it is the biggest cause of the cost of living crisis) the Conservative Party membership will ask is: where does each candidate stand on net zero?
It will be very interesting to detect the foot shuffling, hand wringing, averted gaze, equivocations, of the various candidates on this matter.
And the simple untruths. Candidates will claim what their audience want sto hear but vote according to convenience in Parliament to avoid upsetting their staff, other MPs and the MSM.
I’m waiting for the various candidates to parrot the WEF line “Build Back Better.” That will be the clearest indication possible that the only thing which has changed is the face of the puppet.
Net Zero is a scam from top to bottom, a mechanism to make the populace fearful and therefore more likely to accept extra taxes to “solve the problem”, the proceed of which then finds its way into the pockets of crooks and their mates in the corridors of power. Crony Capitalism. Corrupt transfer of wealth from the many to the few. Doesn’t matter what colour the “government” is, they’re all the same. They get power because they want to control YOU. End of story.
Same can be said of The Deadly Virus. Obviously. But then everyone here knows this.
Although there are lots of sheep out there following the mantra of climate emergency, many quite genuinely, the guys at the top driving all this stuff know its a load of hogwash. I’ve spoken to so many people who have said, ‘if only Boris would drop Nett Zero…Carrie this, Carrie that etc, etc’. We’ll he wouldn’t, he couldn’t. That decision is taken much higher than Prime Minister. Once you see the lie, and then you see the other lies, you finally realise that there is just one big lie. Its not going to end well, and we’re not on the good side.
Cui bono?!
Provides the answer to this and almost every other question and folly.
Well it isn’t me who bono from net zero
And I don’t like Bono, eithers
Off piste is where we go
Renegades, true disbelievers
(Lines 2 and 4 rhyme if you use Cockney)
Well if the polls are to be believed, cuddly Ben Wallace is favourite.
No one has heard of him which probably the point.
He may not be a warmtard but he’s a devout covidian and warmonger who called Brexiteers clowns.
I take it the Conservative party membership won’t be given a chance to choose anyone half way sensible (Chope Redwood Brady McVey Bone etc.)
I would have included Owen Paterson too but they’ve got him already…
I cut up my membership card, and tweeted a video of the process, explaining exactly why, but then I got banned from Twitter. And no, I didn’t renew.
I do not believe there is a majority in Parliament to overturn the Climate Change Act. Even if there was, they would not dare to take on the blob, the array of financially interested academics and the MSM who continue to bay for ever more action on the theory of man made global warming (or, as they now chose to term in, climate change).
The most ruinously expensive legislation in UK history. Until the covid1984 shambles. I suppose nothing will be done until millions of us “waste” our vote like in 2015. Or am I being too optimistic?
No disrespect to Dr John Fernley, but I think anyone who thinks that the British Prime Minister has the power to go against global climate change policy should be automatically excluded from writing for the DS for being too naive.
Next we’ll have someone writing that the next PM should revoke the emergency authorisation of Covid jabs on the grounds that their safety record is not good enough.
“Realistically, the world will make more progress in reducing CO2 emissions if green technologies improve.”
This one sentence destroys the whole case.
What a plonker!
No attempt from the downticker to counter my statement. It is beginning to look more and more like a state employee, 99.9 % of which are sad firkers.
Aye. This retired scientist is a halfway-houser. Direction of travel…hydrogen…mini nukes. He has lost the argument before he starts. Better to go straight to the heart of the problem. CO2 follows temperature so cannot be the main driver of climate change.
https://www.history-of-geo-and-space-sciences.net/2021-05-26_hgss-2021-1_latest-version-of-the-manuscript.pdf
From low concentrations you get a bit of warming but the effect wanes and reaches a saturation point at current levels.
https://clintel.org/the-greenhouse-effect-summary-of-the-happer-and-van-wijngaarden-paper/
Furthermore, since CO2 is food, decarbonisation is one of the most evil things peopls can propose.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
The next Tory leader appointment has got to be the right. Its more crucial than ever they get this correct. If they don’t get it right they are going to lose millions of voters. Personally I doubt if I would ever vote for a main stream party again, and I believe there are many Ex-Tory voters, rather than Ex-Labour voters, who are on the verge of a similar decision. I think this is make or break for the Tories, and if they get it wrong, it will be curtains for them, at least for the next 5-10 years.
If the Conservative Party even so much as mentions ” Net Zero ” , their vote base will collapse. Remember, the last PM. We will be the “Saudi Arabia of wind”. I’m a fully qualified engineer and the political class are as normal; deluded.
True, but the political class are bought and paid for by megalomaniacs who have created this nonsense so they can enslave the western population. Check out what’s happening in the Netherlands around Nitrogen. The guy who has driven the bill through parliament is brother to a man whose farming empire has just had £600m invested in it by none other than Bill Gate. We are miles beyond being able to dismiss this whole thing as a conspiracy theory.
Our wind will last forever.
Saudi Arabia’s oil will not.
Interesting, to some extent. Note that “green hydrogen” is a storage medium for electricity generated by renewables. If it is only used for surplus output from the latter, it might be reasonable – but it is not exactly efficient. Compared with direct use of the electric output from anything (such as electric traction on a railway), it’s crap – roughly 30% thermal at best? Then there are costs to do with it’s storage and physical transmission.
There are some manufacturers promoting the use of hydrogen as a short term storage mechanism for some railway rolling stock, using fuel cells to release the power as required, but presently a lot of hydrogen is a by-product of other things, extracted from methane (‘natural gas’), from firms like Air Products. I think “blue hydrogen” is the moniker for the output via that route.
Indeed. Horrible hydrogen. Since there is nothing wrong with co2 there is pretty much no need.
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2020/06/Hydrogen-Fuel.pdf
Agreed. In most use cases hydrogen as an energy storage medium is silly. Direct use, or batteries make much more sense.
I’m puzzled as to why railway operators think H is the solution. They argue that some parts of the rail network are hard to electrify, so why not use batteries on trains to bridge these gaps?
The most absurd statement any politician has ever said came from the mouth of this roaring arsehole last year. In front of group of young children in Glasgow he referred to the first steam engine as “the doomsday machine.”
As another reminder for anyone whose friends or relatives still think net zero is a ‘good idea’ here what this three trillion pound scam is going to cost in actual stuff:
-636 missions to Mars.
-The cost of an Uber journey across our entire solar system and back.
-3 million KLFs with 3 million furnaces.
-6000 brand new hospitals with free parking.
-16 million fully trained NHS nurses for ten years.
– 6 million fully trained police officers for ten years.
-12 million ambulances.
-750 million ICU ventilators.
-24.8 million affordable homes or social housing.
-Free university education for 60 million students.
-A cheap briefcase containing £100,000 cash for every household in the UK.
-200 billion clean water tanks in Sudan.
-500 billion plastic taps in Sierra Leone.
-60 billion hand washing stations in Mozambique.
-3 trillion pounds towards cyber and physical defence against attacks by our enemies.
-3 trillion pounds towards recycling and cleaning our oceans of plastic waste.
-3 trillion pounds towards protecting elephants, tigers, rhinos, whales and many other rare and endangered species across the world.
-3 trillion pounds towards finding a cure for Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s, Altzheimers, Malaria or any other devastating disease you can think of.
Climate change is a trillion dollar a year business, all funded through western countries tax revenues. Too many people rely on this for income. Too many entrepreneurs, elite politicians, NGOs, media & climate scientists are making millions from this. Until western countries shut down this funding, this wave of abuse will continue.
Getting shot of Princess Nut Nuts will be a good first step in stopping the Net Zero nonsense
“the more CO2 emitted the more the Earth will warm – but the magnitude of any temperature rise is highly uncertain”
– which is exactly why we should reduce GHG emissions as quickly as possible. Playing the Lottery is fine but Russian roulette is not.
If we get this wrong, having to rapidly suck GHGs from the atmosphere will be horribly expensive and be absolutely no fun at all.
Fossil fuels are finite (the supply is limited so they will run out) so we must make the switch to renewables at some point. Let’s not wait until we are forced to.