In my Spectator column this week I’ve run an idea up the flagpole: Why not start a group of militant, anti-Net Zero protestors. We could call it ‘Just Stop Snake Oil’. It was inspired by listening to Lord Frost’s Global Warming Policy Foundation annual lecture in which he laid bare just how ruinous the Government’s commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050 was likely to be. Here’s an extract:
During the Q&A that followed the lecture, I asked Lord Frost if we should take a leaf out of our opponents’ book and set up a militant anti-green-activist group. The eco-protestors say their reason for disrupting major sporting events and holding up traffic is to stop people ignoring the ‘climate emergency’, a rationale I’ve always found baffling, since the professional-managerial class talk about nothing else and the public is bombarded with environmentalist propaganda 24/7.
But net-zero sceptics like me genuinely are a beleaguered minority, unable to get a hearing in the public square. In fact, we are exactly who the eco-protestors imagine themselves to be – concerned citizens desperately trying to draw attention to an impending disaster, but dismissed as ‘alarmists’ by policy-makers. So while the antisocial behaviour of Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain makes little sense – they’re like pro-communist protestors in Soviet Russia – similar antics by climate contrarians could make an impact. If I unfurl a giant banner outside the Green party’s Brighton headquarters saying ‘Just Stop Snake Oil’, people might sit up and take notice. At the very least, it would draw attention to the fact that there is another side to this debate.
Not surprisingly, Lord Frost wasn’t convinced. It was bad enough having to contend with the eco-loons wreaking havoc on our roads and bridges, he said, without the provisional wing of the Global Warming Policy Foundation adding to the chaos. In any event, he didn’t think that trying to disrupt the Derby did the other side’s cause much good. Wouldn’t it be better to let them continue to lose friends and alienate people? By all means ridicule them, he said. But for God’s sake don’t imitate them.
I’m not so sure. Judging from the reluctance of juries to convict eco-protestors, the public seems pretty sympathetic. Yes, commuters may be unimpressed by someone lying in the road when they’re late for work, but many admire the activists’ courage and commitment. According to an Omnisis poll published last year, two-thirds of people support taking non-violent direct action to protect Britain’s environment and 75 per cent are in favour of installing solar panels on farmland. More recently, Ipsos found that 84 per cent of Britons are concerned about climate change and more than half think we should aim to achieve net zero sooner than 2050. It looks to me as if the tactics of the pink-haired militants are succeeding.
Worth reading in full.
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The only way to sort the new post-Thunberg protestors is to allow armed security guards at institutions and events and give them the right to use lethal force. The protestors have escalated their behaviour and become more psychopathic and dangerous, so we have to fight fire with fire.
I would question the Ipsos poll. Polls usually have an agenda. And ‘climate change’ does exist because of the Sun and the Moon influencing the planet, but there are major questions about whether ‘anthropogenic climate change’ exists. However, most people don’t know the difference and ‘experts’ deliberately conflate the two.
The Climate has always been in a state of flux. The time to worry is when it is not.
Indeed. I ask people, what they think is the “correct temperature” for the climate?
Gets them thinking.
Once they give you an answer, you can then point out to them that the climate doesn’t have a temperature. All temperature is local ie wherever you stick a thermometer.
A lot of demeaning conflation is going on targeted at anyone who cares to mobilize their grey matter and question anything. The moronic catch-all term “climate denier” is testament to that. Let’s just break this down a second:
“Climate denier” on the face of it would suggest that I deny there is a climate. Not a maniac last time I checked.
So am I a “Climate-Change denier”? No, I would agree with anyone in possession of an intellect greater than my cat’s that the climate is and always has been changing, ever since there was a climate to speak of. What is the ideal scenario that would satisfy eco-protestors and green politicians? A static climate remaining forevermore at an agreed-upon temperature? Let’s ask Goldilocks her opinion.
Finally, then, am I a Catastrophic-Anthropogenic-Climate-Change denier?. There you’ve got me. Yes I am, and proud of it!
And we should all be allowed to protest. Nobody, however, should be allowed to deliberately ruin people’s commute or cause death by log-jamming traffic hence blocking emergency vehicles.
The best way to deal with JSO and other eco-lunatics is to follow the example of Germany. Police there recently raided the homes of leaders of their equivalent to JSO/extinction rebellion and froze their bank accounts. JSO are clearly an example of organised crime and should be treated as such, along with anyone who funds them, including Dale Vince and all the foundations set up by the Gates, Rockerfellers etc. Any government with an ounce of common sense, especially one that calls itself conservative would tell the police/MI5 to due just this and sack any civil servants or police chiefs thar stood in their way even if it meant bringing in new laws.
But the current tories are not really conservatives or they would never have given us the NET ZERO amendment to the climate change act in 2019. It is funny how Cameron and Johnston were laughing at the climate nonsense, calling it all the “green crap” until they get into government where they had to pander to the WEF and UN
The killer argument for Johnson was probably Come to our COPs and shag prostitutes for free! :->. People who are less cheaply bought will have required some money. But compared the amount of money which is to be had in the course of this Funnel taxes into useless products project, that’s spare change.
It is a problem for government, because how can they come down like a ton of bricks on protesters when it is the government that filled their heads full of the nonsense in the first place? It seems they are happy for them to do their dirty work for them and help keep the phony climate change emergency in the public’s consciousness.
“More recently, Ipsos found that 84 per cent of Britons are concerned about climate change and more than half think we should aim to achieve net zero sooner than 2050.”
Given the willingness of representatives of this professional-managerial class to lie about anything that can be spun as a ‘noble cause’ and happens to align with their ESG investment portfolio, what reason is there to believe these kinds of poll aren’t a total fabrication?
And don’t forget, nine out of ten NHS staff believe tackling climate change is THEIR number one priority. Not patients – climate change.
Well apparently that’s what a creepy crawler, lick the WEF arses senior NHS manager said in a meeting with his bosses. WEF bosses that is.
84% are concerned about climate change? Feigning concern is easy.
Tell me what they say when you ask them if they want to never be allowed to fly again, or if they want to be vegan, or if they want to have their gas boiler ripped out, or if they want to give up their car, or if they want to give up all imported goods.
Precisely.
This is an excellent idea Toby and one that has been on my mind for some time. Why should the common sense brigade always be on the back foot?
I can absolutely guarantee that our evidence is stronger than any lies the eco nutters could produce.
We could collect a list of crippling questions:
Would you give up foreign holidays for the rest of your life to achieve net zero?
Are you willing to pay £15k ( minimum) to rip out your boiler and replace it with a heat pump that doesn’t work, for net zero?
Will you become vegan or eat insects for net zero?
You get the picture.
I’m in.
Great idea, absolutely onboard but you’re competing with the Rockefellers, the Gettys, Soros, Carney, UN and the WEF – all of whom are no doubt behind contrived nonsense polls like this one and seem to have bought off/brainwashed everyone in a position of power across the board now even down to the police where it comes to their climate emergency scam.
I’m gonna start printing and distributing local leaflets with a bit of science/historical data accompanying sites/resources etc but mainly focussed on costs which I think is the only way to get through to every day working people. Like; Net Zero will change the Earth’s temperature by zero degrees yet is due to cost you 6,000 brand new hospitals, 43 million nurses, 16 million police, 25 million affordable homes or £107,000 for every household in the UK.
Given that the MSM is a corrupt cartel of globalist basement gimps now, I think ground level leafleting highlighting the insanity of costs and accompanying website links/data/resources is the best way to start waking people up.
If I could use your Just Stop Snake Oil handle too that would be even better. Maybe we could spoof their design..
“So while the antisocial behaviour of Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain makes little sense – they’re like pro-communist protestors in Soviet Russia”
It makes sense if the aim is to make the government look moderate in their climate policies. I just assume they are a distraction tactic.
They’re the shock troups of the people behind the climate change agenda and they’re supposed to force the population into supporting their goals regarldless of what they are – presently, presumably mainly the UN demand to pull Nut Zero forward by ten years because all their past predictions are now claimed to have been wrong[*] – by soft terrorism. Or still soft terrorism. Real communist terror organizations of the past like the German RAF also started with damaging stuff and causing disruption to draw attention to their cause before they switched to kidnapping, bank robberies and murder.
[*] But they meanwhile fixed their crystal balls and all their current prediction must obviously be 100% accurate …
They’re the Provisional Wing of the Eco Nutters. The Political Wing infests Parliament, particularly the House of Frauds, the Civil Service and Quangocracy.
If you’ve got ten minutes watch this to see a grassroots idea coming to fruition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKCjf6AhaqE
Why does everyone always assume that pollsters would be politically neutral and committed to determining the truth when each and every other organization which could even have a remote influence on practical politics has been invaded and turned to support the UN establishment narrative? Especially when they’re such an obvious choice for planting would-be truths?
If real people were very concerned about climate change and itching to take ever more radical actions supposed to prevent it, they’d be voting green. Even in globalist subjugated Germany, less than 20% do.
Polling companies depend on their reputation for being accurate to make money. So it’s not in the polling companies’ own best interests to deliberately publish inaccurate results.
They make money by supplying the results required by those who pay them.
Like Imperial and their modelling.
How old are you?
Modelling is not polling. It’s irrelevant to mention modelling in a discussion about polling. Polling has flaws, but the more accurate a polling company’s polls are, the more reputable the polling company will be, and the more money they will make. I don’t know what part of that you don’t understand. Do you think anyone is going to pay a company that produces inaccurate polls which nobody will believe because they have a history of being inaccurate?
Well, what happened to Theresa May’s landslide victory in the general election she called because she believed in this prediction and how did Corbyn manage to dismantle the red wall when polls predicted he’d earn a respectable result. Which polling company went out of business because of these two glaring misassessments? And let’s not forget the third major pollster debacle, the Brexit referendum, whose outcome also went against poll predictions.
It’s impossible to assess the accuracy of an opinion poll for the simple reason that nobody can tell if the participiants were telling the truth. Even if they were telling the truth at the time of the poll, they could meanwhile have changed their opinion. Assuming no changes of opinion as granted, assessing the accuracy of the result would require exhaustively questioning the whole population it’s supposed to apply to which is practically impossible. Hence, polling companies are free to publish whatever they want because nobody can verify their results.
“Hence, polling companies are free to publish whatever they want because nobody can verify their results.”
Ah….The $cience.
Have you any evidence that any reputable polling company deliberately faked results because they thought they could make more money that way?
You have still not responded to my question re NPI’s. Over to you.
I get your point that it isn’t always possible to assess the accuracy of an opinion poll, but it is also often possible. For example, the polling company in question, Omnisis, mentioned in the article, published a pre-election poll for the local elections last month, and their results were “very close” to the actual results, as you can see here:
https://www.omnisis.co.uk/polls/local-elections-2023-how-accurate-was-our-pre-vote-poll/
There are junk polling companies which will provide results that advertisers want, but they are consequently not reputable.
For those of you who don’t believe the Omnisis poll, mentioned in the article, do you believe this Rasmussen poll, and if so, why?
According to a poll in the USA in December by Rasmussen, a reputable polling company:
“68% of adults say they’ve gotten a COVID-19 vaccination…
…7% reported major side effects from the vaccine”
= 12 million Americans (not counting those who died)
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/covid_19/concerns_about_covid_19_vaccines_remain_high
And discussed in this YouTube video:
4.35 into video
7% of vaccinated Americans say they have suffered a major side effect
= 12 million adults in the USA [at 5.20 into video]
(and that’s not counting people who have died)
At 5.45 into video:
10% Republican say they have suffered major side effect
6% Democrat say they have suffered major side effect
5% Independent say they have suffered major side effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljrMPvk4mjo
If you think reputable polling companies can be bought to fake desired results, why do you think no reputable polling company has produced a poll contradicting the Rasmussen poll?
If someone wanted to pay a reputable polling company to produce fake results, they’d have to pay all the polling companies to do same, as it would look very suspicious if one polling company’s results were totally out of line with all the other polling companies. There are often differences, but not huge differences.
It’s never possible and a poll whose outcome was very close that what it tried to access is just a euphemism for The poll was demonstrably wrong but someone believes this doesn’t matter.
I can suggest exactly where and when to start the fight back.
Dale Vince, finder of Just Stop or ill…, is also owner of Forest Green Rovers, recently relegated to League 2.
How about, whenever FGR are not losing a game next season, someone runs on the pitch in the 89th minute and glues themselves to a goal post so the game, and points, get cancelled.
You go first.
“Not surprisingly, Lord Frost wasn’t convinced” No, he wouldn’t be, the opening paragraph of his speech conceded the central point that ‘CO2 emissions’, otherwise known as plant food, are driving ‘climate change’. Carbon is the building block of our biochemistry. Its ability to form stable bonds with up to 4 other atoms including g carbon allows for the synthesis of long chains of organic molecules, the building blocks of all the life forms on our planet. To demonise carbon is to demonise all life.
Can we unfurl the ‘Just Stop Snake Oil’ banner outside Pfizer’s headquarters too?
The Telegraph is probably still a fair reflection of what conservatives think. 91% of this quite large vote of about 9000 want to scrap net zero.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/05/28/insurance-industry-net-zero-fossil-fuels-republicans/#comment
The table is buried towards the end of the article. Suspiciously few comments.
Toby, why don’t you sponsor a series of public debates on the science of climate change? Why stoop to the level of these nutters most of whom wouldn’t have clue as to what they were debating.
They wouldn’t turn up to a debate they had lost from the start.
Polling results are irrelevant unless you know the questions asked.
“Are you concerned about the environment?” No-one will say NO.
“Do you support measures to reduce pollution?” No-one will say NO.
“Do you support peaceful protests to highlight environmental concerns?” Very few will say NO.
Etc
The tactics of the pink-haired militants appear to be working because the Eco Nutters and Establishment have bombarded us with propaganda for over a decade (since before the Climate Change Act was passed) – and they support the Provisional Wing of their movement, who are getting a free pass as they disrupt the lives of working people.
They will stop working when ordinary people understand that it is their lives which will be severely restricted and who will be forced to pay £tens of thousands in order to comply.
Producing evidence that the Just Stop Oil protesters (and the rest) are being paid to protest and disrupt working people’s lives will be far more effective than any silly Snake Oil stunt.
There is a pattern of behaviour here that runs through our political establishment. We are right and you – the plebs – are wrong. Do as we tell you for the ‘greater good’. That is their mantra and woe betide any of you if you go against it or challenge the woke brigade, who support the authoritarianism. They will gladly scratch your eyes out and get you cancelled. This attitude is amplified a 1000 fold by the policies the government is introducing to achieve the myth of net zero.
Lord Frost gave an excellent annual lecture for the GWPF articulating many of the concerns that ordinary people have about the cost of net zero. He thinks that reality will eventually make everyone come to their senses when it hits them where it hurts most – in their pockets. We just have to keep speaking out to illustrate the economic fallacies behind this scam. I think he and his colleagues, who think like him need to do more, they need to attack the ‘scientific consensus’ because the ‘science’ upon which net zero is based is fundamentally flawed and needs to be called out for what it is – a money making scam, hiding behind the pretext that it’s being done to save the planet, even at the cost of the humans who live on it (who should be ‘removed’ in any case as they are the cause of runaway climate change blah, blah, blah).
Perhaps, but I think there needs to be a fundamental reform of the democratic process. We can’t carry on with a two party dictatorship that ignores public sentiment. What is the purpose of democracy if it doesn’t represent the views of the electorate? A vote once every five years may change the flavour of the dictatorship but it doesn’t help when the masses are deliberately ignored in the interim period. Career politicians are only interested in their careers and are largely immune to the impacts that their policies have on the majority of the population. We need a better class of politician.
Lord Frost was of the view that parliament is composed of many intelligent people but unfortunately they were also rather full of their own opinions. If they are so intelligent then why are they so incapable of assessing the shortcomings of their net zero policies? They may argue that they rely on the advice of experts to help them formulate policy but most of the experts are industry insiders and professional lobbyists paid to influence government policy.
One of the things never mentioned is what climate are we talking about. Which part of Britain are we talking about? Presumably we still have a temperate maritime climate with temperate rain forest in places on the west coast but not on the east coast. Are we to seek uniformity of climate in Britain?
How does that compare with everywhere else in the world given that there are different climatic zones?
We need to realise Toby that these silly protest people have been brainwashed and manipulated by endless tales of a climate emergency which is the language of politics, not science. Governments all over the western world (except the Trump one) are manipulating their citizens into accepting radical changes to their lifestyle, standard of living, health and welfare in support of the political agenda of Sustainable Development with “Climate Change” as the excuse. There has to be irrational fear otherwise people will simply not accept their perfectly good cars being removed, their fantastic gas central heating being ripped out, their electricity prices trebling because of reliance on the unreliable which is wind and sun, and a total control of the global economy, wealth and resources by unaccountable Bureaucrats and their “settled science”. On most mainstream news channels they speak daily of the “Climate Crisis” as if it were something that was as clear as day and something we can see in front of our eyes like a pillar box, when infact in the real world minus the speculative climate models there is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event. The more easily manipulated turn to placard waving and gluing themselves to buildings, but those are simply governments useful idiots. They mostly know NOTHING about energy or climate yet DEMAND we listen to their braindead rantings that would have us back in the stoneage where their placards would be telling us we are ruining out of stones. But make no mistake. It is NOT these people we need to be worried about, it is the POLICY MAKERS using junk science as the excuse for their political agenda of Sustainable Development that would collapse if their scam was exposed for what it is——The biggest pseudo scientific fraud EVER.
Excellent post
Cheers. Many of yours are very good also. But there is nothing going to change by us slapping each other on the back huh? I feel we need a new “Global Warming Swindle” type of program on Mainstream Channels with all the stuff in it that regularly appears here from Toby Young, Chris Morrison, Andrew Montford, Ross Clark etc, and all the Government free scientists that don’t have to pander to Washington, Westminster, the EU, the UN and the WEF. As long as the public continue to be fooled by talk of Climate Emergencies they are going to keep being fleeced out of their prosperity and freedom.
One thing that concerns me about this piece is the despoiling of farmland with solar panels. I have them on my roof, which is the correct place for them. I’m still not sure if the environmental impact of their manufacture and eventual cost of their disposal will exceed their environmental benefit, but fitting them on productive farmland is a big mistake. There is far too much disapproval of farming already, and we need our farmers to provide food for us. We already import far too much of it, and we must not destroy farming in the same way as we have our fuel industry, so we become far too reliant on food from overseas.
It is not simply that the government net zero policies are ruinous, it is that fact that there is no man made climate crisis or even a minor influence on climate from releasing carbon dioxide. How can well educated people like Dr Patrick Hart who was interviewed on GB News fail to understand some fairly basic physics and ignore all the empirical evidence that proves there is no crisis? There is also no possibility of having a rational discussion with any of them. It doesn’t help that Rees-Mogg who did the interview also believes the nonsense of man-made global warming.