Some observations on 2023…
Net Zero scepticism
Net Zero scepticism, if not climate scepticism, has exploded, and is now a fixture of the mainstream, albeit a minor part. Former ministers and broadsheet news media began to find their voices in ’23. This is largely confined to the centre-Right, but that may be merely a consequence of the realities of power – a Labour government is going to inherit the same problems of their own making, and it will be difficult to sustain the consensus. The GMB’s interventions shows that the broad Left’s support of the Miliband set’s preferences cannot be taken for granted. However, independent media and analysts are far ahead of the mainstream, which has yet to form robust critiques of green ideology, except in extreme (e.g. XR/JSO) cases, and is still inclined to apologise for climate alarmism, and/or tinker with policy. The cross-party Westminster consensus on climate holds for now.
Cancellation on steroids
Power is doubling down on its predominant ideologies, and consolidating with unprecedented attacks against the conventions of one-time liberal democracy (RIP). Governments throughout the West have given themselves the power to impose increasingly draconian interventions to police speech, under the pretext of protecting the public from ‘online harms’. In 2023, the concepts of ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation’ fully escaped the dank confines of the Blob’s nucleus, and are now a cancer: A mutation of the principle that might-is-right. The doublespeak extends from passing off official lies as unimpeachable truth to claiming that this ‘protects’ democracy. Financial institutions have weighed in, appointing themselves as regulators of the public space, though debanking scandals have embarrassed the blobs. ESG is toppling globally, especially in the U.S., but seeking surer foundations in Europe and the U.K. Mainstream discussion has yet to properly connect ESG to authoritarianism and rising costs of living. In the U.S., new precedents are being set for using criminal and civil courts as political weapons against critics of all sizes. Blobs are keen to extend this combination of regulation and lawfare into Europe and the U.K. These are, of course, reflections of the facts of political establishments’ loss of moral authority, and the growing gulf between them and publics, forcing them to take increasingly reckless measures against their own failures.
The UNFCC/COP process and climate alarmism is a busted flush
Attempts to consolidate the climate agenda, at all levels of government, using increasingly high-pitched rhetoric are increasingly falling flat on their face. Epitomised by António Guterres’s sloganeering, such as ‘Code Red for Humanity’ and ‘Global Boiling’, the global political agenda is simply embarrassing. Geopolitics is repolarising, with the west committed to harming itself, apparently in the interests of its sworn enemy in the form of the dominant partners of BRICS nations. One time ‘developing’ nations have found their feet, and they are not going to follow the West, leaders of which have no longer any leverage over any but officials of the poorest governments. The world now has (always did) far more serious problems to contend with than can be solved through happy-clappy green idealism, advanced only by billionaire-backed green NGOs and ersatz ‘civil society’ organisations, many of which are merely ESG lobbying outfits in ‘third sector’ drag. Western politicians succeed only in signalling to the rest of the world the failures of the green agenda, and their hypocrisy and lack of competence and good faith in all matters, including the green agenda, financial regulation, rule of law, democracy and security: They will put their self interest and ideological ambitions before the basic needs and interests of their own populations. The putative achievements of COP26 are already collapsing, with global financial institutions falling out of the Bloomberg-centric ‘alliance’ (GFANZ). The most recent COP was an inconclusive mess, which drew most hostility from the green blob itself, and only served therefore to demonstrate the hopeless fracturing of the world into irreconcilable parts.
The world is not decarbonising
Global CO2 emissions reached 37.15 billion tonnes in 2022 – a slight increase over the pre-covid 2019 record of 37.04 billion tonnes. The world consumed 44,854 TWh of coal in 2022 – pretty much where it was a decade ago in 2014, though agencies such as the IEA are reporting this as a “return to record levels”. Reduced consumption in the West has been matched by growth in Asia, where consumption has tripled since 2000. Oil and gas consumption have also been flat since Covid, reflecting recent extremely high prices – which we might expect to have reduced demand more significantly – though 2022 gas consumption is down on 2021. Coal, oil and gas accounted for 26.7%, 31.6% and 23.5% of global energy demand respectively – a total of 81.8%. 14% of primary energy came from renewable sources – up from 9% in 2010, and barely more than a doubling from its historic 6% through most of the second half of the 20th Century. And those figures for renewables depend on the dodgy ‘substitution method’, which multiplies the contribution of renewables by around 2.4, in order to ‘account for’ the inefficiency of fossil fuels, but which are thus an attempt to inflate the apparent viability of green energy.
The world is not boiling (at least not from climate)
Natural disasters and extreme weather continue to have zero negative influence on any metric of human welfare, when today’s statistics are compared to the past. There are no problems in the world that can be better explained by climate/weather than by the incompetence of policymakers: War, disaster, disease and poverty, where they occur – which they generally do far less frequently than in the past – owe their existences to decisions made by people assuming, often illegitimately, power.
Climate activists are getting sillier by the day
Although it seemed scarcely possible that the green movement could prove itself to be even more intellectually hollow, recent years have seen greens plumb new depths. Starting with the emergence of Extinction Rebellion and its franchises such as Just Stop Oil, a new generation of activist, with negative mass between the ears, has increasingly made its presence felt. They block roads and throw soup. But they have zero capacity to defend their ideas and understanding against criticism, much less state their objections to any counter-position in any reasonable way. Their view of the world is wholly emotional and irrational, yet is seemingly carried on the authority of institutional science – the population of which is no more grounded in reason, though is far quieter. They are collectively the worst of people: Entitled, ignorant, irrational, unreasonable and narcissistic. But I am being too kind. They, like all such zealots, are also dangerous. They exist because society at large has failed to confront green ideology, and because there are such people who seek licence to give expression to their impulses, which would otherwise be prohibited, or at the least inhibited. Unchallenged ideology festers like gangrene.
Debate with silly people is pointless
Over the last year, I have been on 10-minute ‘debate’ slots with a grown man wearing dungarees and plaits in his beard, calling himself a “professor” (whose name I cannot be bothered to find), weather-bloke Jim Dale, fire-and-brimstone eco-zealot Donnachadh McCarthy, and wind spiv Dale Vince (among others). I have also had a constant supply of vapid invective from Twitter trolls. The green blob does not send out its best and brightest to fight its cause because it is not a movement that is founded on the best and brightest – it has no culture of debate, democracy or science, and it eschews these things, requiring only obedience and emotion from its adherents. In fact environmentalism requires the suspension of rational faculties. Hence, you will only find appeals to authority, not a sense of history, proportion or logic in green arguments. That is how ideologies work. They need to be protected from criticism by seemingly unimpeachable claims to truth, which are beyond the moral or intellectual capacities of unbelievers’ understanding. Bad faith thus precedes green activists’ contributions to ‘debates’. They are there to harass, to waste time and to smear and fear monger, not to contest the issue. We need to speak to the vast part of society that has been excluded from politics by the green blob’s dominance, not kid ourselves that blobbers of consequence will lower themselves to debate: They don’t believe they have to. Hence you do not find any fake academic, blobcrat or wonk defending their work; you find only the jokers. And we need therefore to overcome the limitations of news media in the era of Ofcom.
Global climate politics has regrouped in local politics
Global climate politics (see above) is dead, and has been since Paris. National politics, at least in the U.K., despite the Westminster consensus, is similarly stalled. Sunak’s smallest possible U-turn on the car ban date signalled the growing recognition that the Net Zero agenda risked generating real conflicts. The Government has few means left at its disposal to hide its interventions behind fake ‘market-based’ solutions, such as rising sales mandates – i.e., salami-slicing. The emphasis has therefore shifted to local government. LTNs and CAZs/ULEZ and 20mph zones are the consequences of climate change being reframed as ‘air pollution’ (with no scientific foundation). Similarly, local authorities are now penalising older car owners – a regressive, class-based tax – for services such as parking. And they are using their functions in the planning system to require Net Zero compliance faster than is mandated by national policy. This is happening because of mass disengagement from local democracy, with turnouts rarely above the 35% mark, and often barely making it into the teens. This makes local government extremely vulnerable to the blandishments of the blobs.
The Blob is dead. Long live the Blob!
The most ridiculous outfit in the world is the WEF. We should take some comfort in the fact that it has spent countless £millions on the most self-destructive PR campaign in history. But the WEF is just one of countless such organisations and agencies, which we should not obsess over. Moreover, the Blob is a liquid. It can pour itself, and its unflushable turds such as our former PMs, through any crevice into any institution. It can therefore reconstitute itself, whether or not it is the WEF. We need to see the Blob as a tendency, not as a particular organisation with particular attachments to ideologies. As well as being liquid, it is fickle. It has no real form or structure or agency. It can be defeated, therefore, not through mere exposure and humiliation, but by us, organising ourselves in our own interests – and that is the Blob’s worst nightmare. We don’t need to kick it out of institutions; we displace it. Notice, for example, that despite the powers that some credit him with, everything that Tony Blair ever touched is now a pile of rubble and corpses. But neither that, nor the WEF’s agenda are yet a done deal.
The ghost of Covid lingers…
A number of things surprise and disappoint me. First, though other transformations of culture that were triggered or encapsulated by much less significant events, we do not yet mark the current time in the way we did, for example, ‘post-Diana’, as ‘post-Covid’. Yet lockdowns were the most significant political intervention into our lives in postwar history, marking the end of perhaps centuries of political norms. Second, when I point this out to some, they are puzzled that I could think it not a jolly old time as they found it. They do not even recognise their house arrest and their impoverishment as such. Perhaps because they were not separated from their relatives, or did not care. Or they did not see their parents left to rot under illegitimate DNR notices, or their children forgo their formative opportunities and education. Or perhaps their assets allowed them to survive inflation, where countless others had their businesses and livelihoods destroyed. Worse, and third, they do not seem to recognise the architecture of the future being built on Covid as a model, not as an abomination that must never be repeated. However… the Covid lockdowns have focussed the minds of many on the nature of politics, power, money and public institutions. And many are being brought together on this new understanding. As well as launching Climate Debate U.K. this time last year, it has been a great pleasure in 2023 to have been working with @Togetherdec, which unanimously decided at its AGM to focus on a No To Net Zero campaign. Please get involved and support them if you can in 2024.
Things I have not mentioned much: War, and other contemporary ideologies such as gender and confected grievances. This was simply getting too long, and I want to focus on climate. Happy New Year to you! May your homes be warm, your babies plump, your plates full, your jobs fruitful, your horizons broadened and your cars powered by petrol and diesel.
Subscribe to Ben Pile’s The Net Zero Scandal Substack here.
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.
This, I think, is one of the greatest signs of complacent society’s narcissism. In retrospect, me and Mrs G were relatively unaffected by lockdown. We live in the sticks so we see relatively few people anyway, our family live away and are pretty independent, and their kids were less affected by lockdown than many. We’re retired, so weren’t facing the “submit of be sacked” dilemmas of many.
So to a large extent our grief and anger were vicarious. It was obvious what harm was being done to the great majority of people, to our democratic institutions, to our economy, and to people’s spiritual lives. It was obvious that the whole thing was based on lies, and that a nation built in lies will soon die.
None of that took unusual insight, nor rare moral character, so why is it so hard for the “furlough brigade” to think beyond their phone screens?
Your answer lies in your comment, as you and Mrs G are a self contained unit with no need for others to validate your existence.
However, you are sadly in the minority as most people have to be part of group think and will go along with anything just to belong.
I am in your camp and feel very sad for the millions tricked into an experimental jab (s) and the millions of kids being tricked into believing the world will end in 2030.
I’m in a similar position, as, even though middle aged and living in a city, none of myself, my wife, parents or children were significantly negatively affected. Vaxx-passes at work never arrived in the UK branches of either my wife’s or my employers.
(Indeed, after being homeschooled for a few months my kids leapt past the other children when they returned to school.)
The main impact has been on happiness; I no longer look at people the way I used to. In the past I might have considered them foolish for holding political views that I disagreed with, but I did not see them as a dormant existential threat to myself and my family.
I do now.
Not only in relation to Covid, but also in relation to other matters such as the suicidal push to net zero, the trans insanity, immigration.
I find it very hard to make new friends now (not easy when you get a bit older anyway), relationships with my old friends are slightly frayed (2 or 3 are still vaxxed, one for work and one for travel, as they put it; third one is a normie but relaxed) and those with acquaintances are shallow.
Exactly the same for me and Mrs tof.
Spot on, The wife are retired and live in the Highlands so were relatively unaffected although I caused a ripple of consternation for not wearing a mask but very few challenged me – my wife thinks I am intimidatory.
However, while dining with a friend and his wife in the Lake District, I rattled off a whole of indisputable facts about climate to his wife who had trained as a meteorologist and was working in a science lab for a polluting industry. She was very defensive and argued strongly for Net Zero and asked why I could not see the damage to the Earth. I repeated a whole load more facts and she turned to my wife and said “Why does he keep giving me facts, I do not understand numbers”!
I rest my case.
A meteorologist that doesn’t understand numbers but claims to be a scientist. Oh dear.
I’d not heard of the 2.4x substitution factor applied to (so-called) renewables before now.
A quick search found this on our world in data, which argued that coal/gas are measured based on input while wind etc are measured based on outputs.
I have little experience of this sector so have no idea if this is valid. Does anyone here know enough to clarify?
GDA
My two pen’orth on the article, not studied in detail:—— A straight comparison between coil/oil/gas vs renewables in the form of solar/wind can’t surely arrived at by studying output only. I may have missed something, but unless the cost of set up and disposal is taken into account, the comparison is a meaningless exercise. Take wind power as an example. Whilst output may be more efficient than burning coal, what about the capital cost of turbine plus installation? Lifespan maintenance and cost of decommissioning. Intangibles such as environmental impact to wildlife and those living in close proximity to the installations, not to mention aesthetics and despoliation of the countryside.
My point is, that by the judicial use of omissions, lies, damn lies and statistics, it’s a case of pick your desired outcome and arrange the ‘facts’ accordingly.
A coal plant will last for 60 years though. A wind turbine will last for only 15. Straight away this alone makes coal more economical.
Thanks all.
It appeared a plausible argument on the surface, at least to the uninitiated, and it made the graphs look better than I expected. I get suspicious when people apply fudge-factors. Accomplished liars. Most wouldn’t care enough to ask beyond this.
Heat machines produce waste heat. Power stations lose about 60%-70% of energy as heat up the chimney. Combined cycle gas turbines get to about 50% efficiency. Here’s an explanation:
https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Thermal_efficiency#:~:text=is%20the%20total%20heat%20energy,the%20Second%20law%20of%20thermodynamics
Ultra super critical pressure coal power plants at 300 bar and 600/600 °C can achieve efficiencies in the range of 45% to 48 % efficiency.
In the combined cycle mode, the new “H class” Gas turbines with a triple pressure HRSG and steam turbine can run at 60 % efficiency at ISO conditions.
https://www.brighthubengineering.com/power-plants/72369-compare-the-efficiency-of-different-power-plants/
The whole point about unreliables is that they cannot produce reliable power and are therefore useless to any modern society.
Wind turbines are between 20% to 40% efficient at converting wind energy to electrical energy. Solar efficiency is around 20% to 25%.
And since solar and wind are positioned where conditions are best and land available – or offshore – they are remote from point of use of the electrical output, therefore their output is reduced by transmission losses.
In the generation of one energy form another some energy is lost, up the chimney of gas and coal. But there is no mention of the energies expended to produce solar panels and wind turbines, in countries that use coal and gas power generation to make them. The RM cost of Gas and Coal make there use a commercial viability, compared to the cost of mineral abstraction, processing and refinement prior to product manufacture of the unreliables, makes no sense environmentally, commercially. The quest for net zero makes no sense what so ever, to me it is utter 8oll0cks, but very disturbed by its progress.
Coal gas and oil (also Nuclear) are full-time high-energy density energy sources and are the cheapest way to produce energy. Renewables (ie wind and sun) are diffuse (spread out, not concentrated) energy sources that require huge areas of land to produce part time energy. (Energy that is not On Demand). It cannot provide base load and requires 100% back up from full time energy sources like fossil fuels and Nuclear (but mainly from gas, which is the easiest backup source. You cannot run Industrial Society on Renewables, and anyone who tells you this is either an imposter or does not understand how energy works.(and probably both)
The deception here is to compare apples and oranges. Wind/solar are intermittent, coal & gas are not.
So, in comparing marginal cost to increase supply, ie which is least expensive to build and run to add to the grid, coal or gas, or wind/solar – wind/solar appear cheaper because they ignore the cost of the fossil fuel plants required to plug the intermittency gap and provide grid stability.
A 100MW wind generator may be cheaper than a 100MW coal generator, but the former at best will have an output for at best 30% of the time, the later 90% to 95% of the time.
Because of that intermittency, every 1MW of wind/solar added to the supply, requires an additional 1MW coal or gas to provide the back-up.
Currently, wind/solar are not adding to capacity, but replacing existing capacity. Coal stations were shut down by 2015 to be replaced by wind, so no additional supply has been added. But since wind cannot replace the actual output from those coal stations, their output has been replaced by about 30% from wind/solar and the rest mostly from gas, nuclear and imported electricity.
We have in fact reduced domestic output, for a much higher cost because there are two parallel generating systems operating.
As more wind is added to the mix, the cost will only go up.
Precisely. Wind and solar will at times be contributing very little – I’ve seen dips as low as single digits especially at night. So you need to have close to 100% of peak demand using other sources that can be always on. So if that’s the case, why use wind and solar at all? I guess you can swap it with gas as that seems easier to turn up and down, but you still need to build and maintain all those gas fired power stations.
“So if that’s the case why use wind and solar at all”? ————POLITICS. The politics of the UN’s Sustainable Development. The wealthy west has become prosperous using the finite resource of fossil fuels in the ground and we are to STOP doing that. We are to be fobbed of with inferior technologies (wind, sun) —-But our own politicians are fully onboard with this impoverishment of their own citizens and have signed up fully to it all by implementing NET ZERO etc. The excuse for all of this eco socialism is the manufactured “climate crisis”
Excellent summary. One thing I would flag up, in addition to the weaponisation of the law & invented laws (non-crime hate being an example), I would point out the primary purpose of the Hallett Inquiry is to validate ‘lockdown’. To underline their value, that they should be introduced sooner (ie, with even less evidence of need) & that they should be tougher (legitimising greater authoritarianism).
All the GREEN is a “busted flush” and “dead”?????? ————Eh well I sit here typing this with the Gas Central heating keeping the house nice and cosy, but the “busted flush” has just bribed 240 people in a town only 2 miles from me called Buckhaven to get rid of that best central heating they ever had and to take hydrogen. The roads up there are currently all dug up as this very expensive folly is being piped into houses and they are all receiving their free boilers (bribe). Except one chap I spoke to who actually did his sums and came to the conclusion that hydrogen running costs would be extortionate and refused the bribe. But Gas is ofcourse now the enemy of the phony planet savers and heat pumps that cannot cut it are all the rage with the “busted flush” ———My petrol car sits handily in the drive, but the “busted flush” are determined to be rid of such vehicles and that would have been taking place in 2030 had Sunak not realised he needs all the votes he can get and put it back to 2035. The “busted flush” continues to roll out smart meters in order to ration energy use and charge more at peak times. The “busted flush” will drive towards monitoring all our carbon footprints via the Digital ID so we cannot use more CO2 than the eco socialists allow us (not very much). ——–And all for what? Mostly for NOTHING, as Brazil Russia China and India all continue to exasperate the world government in waiting hoping to use irrational fear of a non existent climate crisis to control every aspect of our life. ——–So sure. I hope you are right and that people are slowly coming to their senses that climate change has nothing to do with the climate, but as far as it all being a “busted flush” I am not so sure. ——I will be sure when the heat pump companies go bust and Net Zero is abolished, we all get to keep our car and gas central heating and the phony planet savers run away with their tails between their legs and Greta posters get ripped from the walls of silly teenagers. Till then I will remain riddled with anxiety that these imposters might eventually win. —————PS Great Article by the way
The (preciously few, but I know few people, anyway) people I know who’d qualify as The Current Thingers™ (not going to use the official label here) seem to be pretty pissed off with the neverending onslaught of climate change propaganda and generally consider it to be a pretty transparent fraud. The current-thingers making climate headlines seem to be a convenient minority.
Buckhaven – “town on The Firth of Forth in Fife”.
Reminds me of the old football score East Fife 4 Forfar 5.
BTW Agree with all your points. Best of luck with your battle(s).
Nail gunned. Thanks Ben.
You too.
We had a bad year recently when reservoirs started to run dry. This was blamed on climate change. Is this the same sort of climate change that has produced so much rain this year, or are there different types of climate change?
Straight from the horses mouth (ie official climate change propaganda distributed via German MSM):
2023 was the hottest year on record, average temperature a whole 2.3⁰ warmer than the global reference period from 1961 – 1990 (first number may be wrong). But it wasn’t a particularly wet year, only the sixth wettest year on record.
What they don’t tell is that they’re recycling the 2022 claim of the hottest year on record, average temperature then 10.5⁰ C, increased to a whopping 10.6⁰ C for 2023, ie, essentially, no change. Not the mention that 10.5⁰ C isn’t a temperature anyone would call warm, let alone hot.
For the second claim: I don’t know how far records go back but assuming that they’ll at least go back to 1970 seems safe. 1970 – 2023 are 53 years. 2023 being this 6th wettest year on record means 47 of these years, 88.68%, were less wet. This obviously means 2023 was an exceptionally wet year.
In the life of this planet a measurement period of 53 years means diddly squat.
The same is true for pretty much all of the history of mankind since it started (around 2600BC). But that’s besides the point which was about German climate propagandists claiming that 2023 wasn’t a particularly wet year while quoting the proof that it actually was in support for their claim, presumably based on the assumption that most people will take their statement at face value without bothering to do the (fairly simply) math demonstrating that it’s wrong.
Agree with all you write Ben, and similarly I am beginning to find quite a few people realising the reality of net zero and the insane green blob’s inability to understand planetary science and climate/weather.