During the Tory leadership campaign, Liz Truss realised Net Zero was not popular among party members so she agreed to have a Net Zero Policy Review. Unfortunately, she has appointed Chris Skidmore MP to conduct this review. He is a former Minister for Climate Change and one of the architects of our present Net Zero policy, so the opposite of a fresh pair of eyes. Indeed, on accepting the appointment he tweeted: “I’m committed to ensuring we continue to lead the world in our Net Zero plans.”
Not a great start for a review to say you are going to continue the present policy! And this ridiculous talk of “lead the world” needs to be dumped. The U.K. is responsible for an insignificant 1% of global CO2 emissions. Three countries, China and America and India, are responsible for 50% of the global CO2 emissions. What is the point of the U.K. paying the early-adopter cost of rushing to achieve Net Zero when these three countries are all moving so slowly?
This week an event named the Net Zero Festival is taking place in London. According to its website, “The climate crisis presents a real and present danger to global development and stability”. Chris Skidmore is the keynote speaker at the event, so presumably he believes this alarmism and exaggeration. Since the Industrial Revolution, the Earth’s temperature is reported to have risen by just one degree. This is a significant rise and possibly a concern, but it is nowhere near a ‘climate crisis’ and a ‘danger to global stability’.
These claims are based on the wilder predictions of climate models, but there is an increasing public and scientific realisation that these models cannot be trusted. During the pandemic, one of the main reasons the country repeatedly went into lockdowns was because of the frightening predictions of epidemiological models. With hindsight, we now know these predictions were wrong. If scientists cannot predict the spread of a virus several weeks ahead then how can they be trusted to predict the temperature of the Earth several decades ahead? The answer is they can’t and over 1,100 scientists recently signed the World Climate Declaration, which concluded that “climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as global policy tools”.
Earlier this year, Chris Skidmore went to the United States to lead a study group at Harvard that was sold as follows: “A Study Group led by Senior Fellow and former U.K. Energy Minister Chris Skidmore will focus on the challenges of how to counter popular opposition to Net Zero policies.” This sounds like the perfect training for someone who is going to neutralise a Net Zero Review.
Liz Truss and her Government seem willing to challenge the Green Lobby on some issues, for example by supporting fracking and the North Sea oil and gas industry, so it is disappointing that the Net Zero Review has been effectively nobbled by appointing Chris Skidmore to conduct it. We urgently need to ditch some of the ill-judged and intrusive Net Zero policies put in place by Boris Johnson and his Government. For example, the rush to build more and more wind farms and solar farms which will lead to power cuts and higher energy bills; forcing people to buy electric cars which are expensive and, for many people, inconvenient to use; having Government inspectors come into our homes to see if they meet approved energy efficiency standards. This is already happening for rented properties, how long before it is extended to all properties? Many older properties do not meet these energy efficiency standards and so costly works are required.
These are the policies which urgently need reviewing. However, expect Skidmore to do nothing of the sort.
Dr. John Fernley is a retired scientist.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
What a wasted opportunity. There’ll be no change then from the current CCC – climate change crap!
Here we go.
Liz Truss was going to be the all singing, all dancing enforcer of traditional conservatism, well at least until she got the PM job. A couple of weeks in and what do we see unveiling before us? Another WEF stooge with only one agenda – 2030.
That didn’t take long did it?
It’s now more true than ever that politicians can only be judged by their actions, not their words.
The fix is in.
Still doing nothing about the illegal invasion either.
A tax cut taking us back to last years 67 year high isn’t going to cut it.
Quelle surprise!
Politician Decides to Prolong Good Crisis.
In other news,
The Pope is Declared Catholic.
Hmmm. “Earlier this year, Chris Skidmore went to the United States….” Does that gel with his belief in the concept of “Net Zero”? In debit on his “zero account” perhaps?
I’m struggling with the definition, how stable is the definition itself, and how it’s being used. This place https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-is-net-zero seems to be a reasonable place to explore a bit. At least it attempts to explain the difference between “net zero” and “carbon neutral”. However, it’s based on the belief that we can do much to influence “climate change” (which is a normal and natural effect in the main, some might say). To that extent, it’s a political position, is it not?
It’s just the same as ‘sustainability’, ‘social Justice’, ‘theory’, ‘global average temperature’, ‘hate’ and ‘denier’ – terms that mean whatever those using them to push an agenda want them to mean, using the idea of conceptual consensus established through ideological laundering by the media to give the appearance of legitimacy.
After another little cogitation on this matter it is quite clear that Truss is not just having a laugh at us she is actually blatantly taking the P and in a very Orwellian manner.
“Right, we’ll announce a climate review. Has TB got one of his team who is suitable? We’re only playing pretend afterall?
Flunkey: TB on the ‘phone Prime Minister.
Thank you Sir Tony.
Sir Tony says Skidmore was “elected” for just this job. Tell him he’s got the gig. Sir Tony will send him the full review. We can release it in the New Year.
Yes, Prime Minister.
They’re either dishonest, thick, corrupt, gullible, or they have a gun to their heads.
Just proving they’re all liars.
The UK economy is tanking because the Government have announced tax cuts without cutting public expenditure, the ban on fracking has been lifted, but the qualification that locals have to give their permission means that organised eco-loons and NIMBYs will block it. It’s like when Blair said he’d deport foreign criminals, safe in the knowledge that his barrister wife would block them.
It’s smoke and mirrors: governments talking big in the knowledge that they won’t be allowed to go through with their plans.
This nothing more than I expect from a PM who is a WEF cultist. It’s just a continuation of the controlled demolition of the economy to justify Truss’s boss’s Great Reset.
They are liars, very well aided by the media. A radio news bulletin this morning (not BBC for a change) talking about the rise in the cost of living said it was due to the war in Ukraine – just that, no other cause was mentioned or entertained. What would they do without that war to pin all the blame on?
and pray tell how does one measure such a thing ?
A completely meaningless number essentially pulled out of thin air.
Agreed. If you can average millions of data points, most of them not anchored by their most significant common factors, you can use selection of those data points and averaging methodology to tell any story you want. The main reason scepticism of the catastrophic warming narrative struggles to gain traction (besides not telling an exciting story) is that it points to failing of rationality amongst apparently educated people so vast that it’s scarcely believable without the context. The context points to a collusion of those with power to meddle with the workings of civilisation so seismic and ill thought out that it would be terrifying to believe.
“There cannot be a lasting recovery without a global strategic framework of governance.. The more nationalism and isolationism pervade the global polity, the greater the chance that global governance loses its relevance.”
– Klaus Schwab
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.”
– Ottmar Edenhofer, UN International Panel on Climate Change Fourth Summary Lead Author
“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,”
– Christina Figueres, executive secretary of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The answer is not at all because the earth as such has no temperature. Only different location on earth have temperatures and they vary wildy. Averaging is a mathematical algorithm to reduce or eliminate the effect of random errors in a series of measurments of the same quantity and averaging measurements of different quantities makes no sense whatsoever.
But that’s just like the vaccine effectiveness against infection howler: The whole edifice is built on a lie. But people pretending to be critical of COVID vaccination (or climate change) simply refuse to learn that: Instead of telling everyone that Don Quichotte fighting windmills is pointless nonsense, they keep argueing with him about the right way to fight windmills. I fear this means that the proponents of both are much cleverer than the opponents as they’ve set a trap for the latter these don’t even want to escape from because they don’t realize it’s a
trap.
🙁
How many years will it take, do you think, before this really starts to unravel? At the moment we have ( is it 10?) consecutive years with no change to the climate. Of course, this is bad news for pro change lovers, so they keep tinkering with the records to date to make things look bad, but they can’t keep doing this, I would think you can only tinker once with a certain set of information, otherwise surely the game is up? So, what if the next 10 years are as benign as the last, where does the climate change lobby go from there?
They go after dissent using government authority. They use the media to redefine the meaning of words. They memory-hole any inconvenient failed predictions. They complete the purges of institutions, removing the few remaining academics and researchers with any integrity or scepticism. Then they go after the raw data.
Whatever gloss Truss had has worn off very quickly.
Our only hope is that she does disastrously in the short term and is hounded out too. Of course this means more disaster for the country, but as my wife just commented, short term pain for long term gain.
I think perhaps our best chance is a quick and decisive victory in Ukraine that totally discredits the Western bellicosity and the misguided and costly support for Ukraine.
Generally, I tend to agree with that. OTOH, no so-called conservative government since 2015 has, regardless of election results, survived for a full term. It may be about time to rename The Conservative and Unionist Party to The Chaotic and Unedifying Party because they keep staging coups against their own prime ministers only to present a successor they’ll again stage a coup against after he or she had proved to be another dud in office. Apparently, they can only win elections but not actually govern.
As much as all these things are true. I’m wondering how much latitude Truss has in just rolling the bulldozer through Nett Zero. We have our own laws and all manner of international agreements and commitments, and we can’t just strike a line through them all or ignore them. Really, anyone would think this stuff is just one phone call and an e-mail. Its ingrained in everything we do, and will take some dragging out.
At this stage I think the best we can hope for is that we start to back off the subsidies, we commit to some fracking, oil and gas offshore and some nuclear, and we don’t enthusiastically adopt any more of this ruinous rhetoric. Give it time, and it will die on its own.
Your optimism is sorely misplaced.
So is that of people who think Truss will fix energy today, and immigration tomorrow, leaving Friday clear for the restructure of the NHS.
The stuff that can be fixed is going to take time, and there’s a lot of it that just can’t be fixed, not in one generation.
There’s nothing I can see to stop the government handing out so many visas.
Its the illegals arriving by dinghy that are the big problem. People arriving with skills that we need, committed to making a life for themselves here are less of a concern, imo…
All quiet in Leicester, I presume?
Here is an extremely brutal but most welcome take down of Truss and the current state of this country:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/liz-truss-and-the-collapse-of-the-british-pound-sterling-hyperinflation-looming/5794548
Worth reading in full as they say round these parts.
Nett zero what? If some ignorant imbeciles are still referring to CO2 as what needs to be reduced they must be protected from the real current science or not able to understand it. There are lots of pollutants that need to be reduced, but CO2 is not one of them.