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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Summit of the Futile.
One would hope that the human desire for the pursuit of happiness would win out in the end, but I think we’re in a downward spiral in our lifetimes.
You can control some of the people some of the time, but you cannot control all of the people all of the time. ———This has to be the message we steal from Abraham Lincoln and apply to the tyranny of today.
I ‘enjoyed’ reading this.
My only concern is how technology has changed how ‘leaders’ now can control the systems, making it harder to non-comply.
And whilst they are playing their ‘future’-games, a lot of harm will be done to the individual.
The real control mechanism is the welfare state (cradle to the grave) – once they had control of our health, education, and social ‘security’ – we were all bought and paid for, propagandised, controlled and manipulated into serfdom to the governing elite.
Technology is actually a means of resistance.
Summit of the Tyrants and Psychopaths.
Defund the UN and WHO.
End the farce.
They are just the tip of the iceberg – there are hundreds of other international bodies, organisations we don’t see all part of the nexus of control.
That would make an excellent poster.
What are the tractor production figures?
Just asking so I know when they miss them.
1.5 million houses.
I too enjoyed reading this. However the first appeal to authority – that of a deity, is followed and believed by quite a number, a growing number of inhabitants of this continent. “The first puts ultimate authority in God, from whom all other forms of authority derive; this is the position of the medieval scholastics” and can be argued to be also a possibility in the near “future”? I would be very interested to read Dr. McGrogan’s refutation of that possible scenario.
Yes great article. ——“A Sustainable Future” = A world run by communist technocrats at the UN controlling of the world’s wealth, resources and YOU. ——Except I do not recall voting for any of these people, do you?
The main underlying characteristic of these elite goals and aspirations is that nothing is measurable and so, like everything else at the UN, there is zero accountability. The UN theme should simply be ” Keep the cash coming fools” and be done with all the posturing.
““to protect the needs and interests of present and future generations”
Like the future generations that were booted out of their farms in the Netherlands for the Climate Agenda. Some farming generations went back over a century, what about the future of those kids you cun*s. There are plenty more examples from all walks of life that are under threat from these Globalist psychopaths.
There will be only one way to stop this.
Sooner or later people – the majority – had better understand that, or simply acquiesce and become slaves.
correction … This all stems from yet another deluded pipedream of world communism dreamed up in 2021 by the current UN Secretary-General Comrade Ayatollah Antonio Guterres, called Our Communist Agenda.
I think this is one the most hopeful essays I’ve yet read about today’s dystopia because it carefully shows how eventually (maybe not in my lifetime) the current (western) “world government” may come to an end (perhaps to be replaced by another dystopia, but let’s not cross bridges until we come them). And Dr Grogan’s essay demonstrates how it may be effective that everyone who has a voice – however small your voice may be – can play their part in preventing – or ending – the tyrannies (of #netzero, #woke and #pandemic, etc.) under which we live by spreading the truth – as each of us see it – and to participate in debate, to voice (reasoned) opinions, and to keep going. As with Bob Marley’s “Small axe fall big tree”.