The Swiss Parliament has rejected a ‘landmark’ climate ruling from the European Court of Human Rights that claimed the country’s climate policies breached its citizens’ rights by being insufficiently severe. The Guardian has the story.
A panel of Strasbourg judges ruled in April that Switzerland had violated the human rights of older women through weak climate policies that leave them more vulnerable to heatwaves. Activists hailed the judgment as a breakthrough because it leaves all members of the Council of Europe exposed to legal challenges for sluggish efforts to clean up carbon-intensive economies.
But the Swiss Parliament’s lower house voted on Wednesday to disregard the ruling – with 111 votes in favour and 72 against – arguing that the judges had overstepped their bounds and that Switzerland had done enough. The declaration, which has been adopted by the upper house but does not bind the federal Government, accused the court of “inadmissible and disproportionate judicial activism”.
“This is terrible from a rule-of-law perspective,” said Corina Heri, a law researcher at the University of Zürich, adding that “the whole system would fall apart” if lots of states started to pick and choose which rulings they complied with. “The term ‘slippery slope’ is overused, obviously, but it is a dangerous precedent to create.”
The KlimaSeniorinnen – or Swiss female climate elders – are a group of 2,400 women over the age of 65 who took the Swiss Government to court for failing to do its fair share to stop the planet heating [sic] 1.5°C (2.7°F). After years of setbacks in regional and national courts, they escalated the case to Europe’s top human rights court and scored a partial victory.
But in a fiery debate on Wednesday, Swiss politicians attacked the court and mocked the women.
Jean-Luc Addor, from the Right-wing populist Swiss People’s Party, the largest in the federal assembly, said: “These ‘climate elder’ are just a bunch of apparently healthy ‘boomeuses’ [female boomers], who are trying to deny our children the living conditions they have enjoyed all their lives.”
You see, Tories. You can just ignore the European court and the sky doesn’t fall in. After all, it’s often just a bunch of souped-up Leftist activists with law degrees.
Worth reading in full.
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I love Rowan, but why the heck is he writing for the Guardian? Still, he’ll get a lot of resistance from that readership, so maybe “no publicity is bad publicity”.
On the contrary – it is the perfect place to put his article. In the Telegraph, or indeed here, it would make little difference. Few of the readers are likely to be interested in EVs. They might get a warm feeling of yet more evidence they signed up for the right side, but they were convinced anyway. However, a good number of Guardian readers are interested in EVs. It is a useful perspective that may influence their decision.
Whatever your view about any topic – what is the point of preaching to the converted? Put your arguments in front of those who disagree. That’s why I comment here.
You don’t get banned here.
True. Although some commenters have told me to go away!
Please don’t go away. ——–I don’t even want the silly stop oil people to “go away”. I just prefer them to get “out of the way”
That was why I wrote “Still, he’ll get a lot ….”
Yep, he will be classed as a “climate denier”, by the Guardian and it’s readership. As if they were all “climate confirmers” who know exactly what the climate is doing and going to do and who also have the solution (usually bigger and bigger government controlling everyone’s life, the same solution as was deemed necessary in the seventies when it was global cooling that was all the rage) ———I remember about 5 years ago complaining that Electric cars were being fobbed on us and a person who owned one said “Have you ever driven an electric car”? —I replied “No”.—— So he said “Ah so there you are then”. ——-I replied “But I am not complaining about electric cars, I am complaining about government policy that is determined to coerce me into one”
By the way, this article’s image was AI-generated. Not bad, huh?
I am puzzled as to why you got three down arrows.
The image probably isn’t pro-Putin enough — and it’ll probably get more down votes now!
For goodness’ sake – this place is all about authenticity. AI blurs the boundary between the real and the fictitious meaning nothing can be taken at face value. Make this place an AI free zone, please.
Now that totally irrelevant and provocative comment is worthy of a down-tick and underlines your clear obsession with your lost cause.
It rather depends on what the humans tasked the AI to do and how much effort went into telling it.
There was something wrong with Atkinson’s tertiary education if the logic displayed here is anything to go by. He’s fully on board with the “climate crisis” but now is feeling a bit “duped” by the whole EV business. Didn’t university teach ‘research’ Mr Atkinson? He strikes me as being petulantly dumb.
Step by step. When (OK, if) he wakes up, he’ll be a cracking ally.
What’s wrong with his logic? He believes
CO2 emissions will cause a climate crisis.
EV vehicles create more CO2 than fossil fuel vehicles over the complete lifetime.
Therefore, EV vehicles are contributing to the climate.
You probably dispute the first premise but the logic seems fine.
A good insight into most of the societal projects being foisted on us. They are all based on terrible, flawed assumptions.
Obviously I don’t agree about the first premise but the second is certainly giving me pause for thought. If Atkinson is correct and they do create more CO2 emissions than fossil fuel cars there may be some interesting consequences. Whatever the environmental pros and cons, they are attractive cars for some people. They are fast, quiet and are likely to become cheap to run again as gas/electricity prices continue to crash. They are very relaxing in traffic. So eventually climate sceptics may be more inclined to buy one than climate “alarmists” like me. If that happens I am willing to bet DS will stop publishing negative articles about them!
With current technology, resources and infrastructure, my estimate is that at best we can only replace 10-15% of petrol diesel cars with electric cars. So that with current technology and current resources; 85-90% of current motorists will not have a car or will only have a low range micro car for local travel. Full electric cars would seem to be going on a lease or subscription basis and be for corporate and business users. The electric car policy is a massive hit on the travel freedoms of the hoi-polloi.
This does seem to be the underlying aim of much of this net-zero scam, to put the ordinary man on the Clapham omnibus back on the Clapham omnibus, living in a tiny eco hutch in a 15 minute city.
I think you’re kidding yourself if you think that the running costs of EVs will reduce in step with the reduction in gas and electricity prices. Governments, having become hooked on the wonders of taxing ICE vehicles, are going to start noticing the reductions in revenue as more drivers switch to electricity. There’s going to be pay-per-mile systems installed or differential costs for “traction” electricity and normal domestic (or both!). Why do you think it’s compulsary to have a smart-meter installed if you want a car charging point at home? You can be sure that it’s not to save meter-readers feet!
Why do you think it’s compulsary to have a smart-meter installed if you want a car charging point at home?
That’s not strictly true.
You’ll need a smart meter to use a dual-rate tariff, since smart meters understand and report on your electricity consumption throughout the day. But not every home can have a smart meter fitted – and not every customer wants one. In these cases, some suppliers, like EDF, can offer a competitive single-rate electric car tariff that you could opt for instead.
However, you would probably want one if you can.
Maybe also you will realise that when you are told things will make a big difference and then you find out that they won’t after all, that you maybe are getting told something for reasons other than those given. (Maybe the CO2 emissions are not really the reason for all the green stuff) ———Plus Electricity prices will never “crash”. If anything they will maybe get back to where they were before the Ukraine situation that conveniently camouflaged the rise in prices that the adoption of renewables have been causing (which is easily checked by looking at your electric bills over the last 15 years or so).—–I remember when Obama said “Under my plans electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket” (with an emphasis on the “necessarily”)——-So I am sure that some people might find electric cars “attractive”, and that is up to them, but those of us who don’t are not going to have much of a choice in that regard. ——PS. “Negative articles” are not something anyone (including the DS) should stop publishing if they happen to be true. But I suspect the Guardian and Independent etc will be very reluctant to do so.
“The Climate Crisis” ????. ———-I have seen a pillar box, and I have actually stuck envelopes in them, so I am pretty sure they exist. I have seen an Elephant when I was at the zoo, and on the telly on wildlife programs, so I am pretty sure there are actually elephants. ———-But a “Climate Crisis”, eh let me see now where have I seen that again?—– Eh,—- Oh yes I remember now, a “Climate Crisis” is one of those things you get from computer models full of assumptions and speculations which normally don’t match up with what is happening in the real world and are put together by government funded data adjusters.
If the premise is wrong, the conclusion is wrong, no matter how good the logic.
If the premise is wrong, the conclusion is wrong, no matter how good the logic.
Actually that is not necessarily so. For example:
False premise: All swans are white
True conclusion (based on good logic): The swans on our river are white
“What’s wrong with his logic?”
You answer your own question:-
“He believes
CO2 emissions will cause a climate crisis.”
Logic is usually meant to be the process of deducing conclusions from premises. It is not about whether the premises are true in the first place. Of course you may define “logic” differently.
Clearly he has a blind spot. I like him, he’s hot on free speech.
Or pretends to when trolling here.
The first car battery fire in a tunnel or ferry will cause problems
The first one which explodes after a multiple motorway pile up will do the same.
There is a lot of inertia in those batteries so the impacts at motorway speeds are likely to be more severe.
It would appear judging from comments so far that even here on DS some people believe in the nonsense of “climate change” and to make it worse ascribe some of it to the presence of Co2.
Dear, oh dear.
“Dear, oh dear”
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, founded by the late Nigel Lawson, is probably the most important organisation standing against climate alarmism, certainly in the UK. It acknowledges the greenhouse effect, as do Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen, two of the biggest hitters standing against climate hysteria.
HP, presumably in your eyes they are “controlled opposition”, and people listening to their pronouncements are being naive?
To be clear, while I do acknowledge the greenhouse effect and man’s contribution to it through burning fossil fuels, I do not think we are anywhere near climate crisis or that man’s contribution to climate change is that significant.
MichaelM
What you say is accurate. But the factual evidence clearly shows that a trivial increase in an essential and harmless trace gas and even the also trivial increase in temperatures are both 100% beneficial to mankind and the environment.
It is exceedingly unlikely that this assesment of costs and benefits will change over at least 50 years.
In the meantime peoples lives are being ruined by grotesque and preposterous “solutions” that cannot work to “problems” that, essentially, don’t exist.
Cui Bono?
Dale Vince and all his GangGreen politician, media, academic, corporatist, landowner mates.
7941, I agree with everything you say.
My point is more about how we persuade those who subscribe to the climate alarmism agenda. We don’t do it, IMO, by assertion and denial of something that is supported by scientists on both sides of the discussion (ie the greenhouse effect). There are many valid arguments we can use, so why attempt to use one that is invalid?
But the factual evidence clearly shows that a trivial increase in an essential and harmless trace gas and even the also trivial increase in temperatures are both 100% beneficial to mankind and the environment.
I have a moment so here we go once more. I’ll try to break down the elements of what you say and stick to the simple and irrefutable.
CO2 and methane are trace gases in the sense that they are a very low concentration, but that is irrelevant. All that shows is that there’s an immense amount of other gases up there such as oxygen and nitrogen. There’s about 3*10^12 tonnes of CO2 which is plenty to do the job (sceptics never mention CO2 is a trace gas when emphasising it is essential for plant growth – which it is but there was enough at 280 ppm).
CO2 levels were almost constant about 280 ppm for the last 10,000 years and have increased to 420 ppm since the start of the industrial evolution (i.e. about 50%). I don’t think you can call that a trivial increase.
The increase in temperature is more controversial because there are many different ways of measuring it. Sceptics like to use UAH as the most conservative record. This shows about 0.13 C per decade, 0.18 C on land since the MSU satellite record began in 1979. Is this trivial? Well it amounts to 1.3C over a century. The last ice age was about 6C colder than now. So it is quarter of the way to a change as a big as an ice age (but the other way). Seems non-trivial to me.
Is such a change 100% beneficial? At an absolute minimum simple physics tell us it must amount to a significant increase in sea levels and this not beneficial if you live in a low lying coastal area. There are, of course, many, many other possible impacts but these are open to debate.
I have made no reference to “controlled opposition.”
Our planet has had many periods warmer than currently but pre the industrial revolution.
The so-called ‘greenhouse effect’ is totally caused by water vapour, which actually is not a warming effect, but delays cooling.
Short wavelength solar heat energy arrives at a planet’s surface, is attenuated and is redirected back towards Space as long wavelength heat energy. Energy in = energy out, so no residual heat. Example: the Moon.
Earth’s atmosphere contains water vapour which absorbs some of the emergent heat energy delaying its exist, causing an imbalance so heat leaves Earth to Space slightly less quickly than it arrives. Thus we have a stable overall near surface temperature.
Mars which has 93% CO2 atmosphere but no water vapour is continually freezing.
Earth: 2% to 4% water vapour; 0.04% C02 – warm enough to sustain life.
Mars: 0% water vapour; 93% CO2 – too cold to sustain life.
Still believe in the CO2 ‘greenhouse gas’ nonsense?
Mars has about 0.016% of the mass of the atmosphere of earth. So the actual amount of CO2 is not so very different. However, 0.016 is less than 0.04. The lack of water vapour (plus the distance from the Sun) does account for the lower temperature. But water vapour is a feedback not a driver. Unlike CO2 the amount varies from day to day depending on several things including the temperature. If the atmosphere cools you get less water vapour, if it warms you get more. It amplifies whatever effects longer lasting GHGs initiate.
JXB, no-one is saying that the greenhouse effect or even CO2’s role within it is the main determinant of a planet’s temperature. Maybe proximity to the Sun might be the most important determinant?
I am also reluctant to dismiss CO2 as a greenhouse gas, given that eminent physics and climate scientists on our side of the argument acknowledge it as such.
Thanks for that.
Probably it isn’t. It is just one. Plenty of other information out there which is not ‘lukewarm’.
“Hydrogen is emerging as an interesting alternative fuel, even though we are slow in developing a truly “green” way of manufacturing it”
Rowan should have payed more attention to the eternal wisdom of Homer Simpson:
“This perpetual motion machine Lisa made today is a joke, it just keeps going faster and faster…. Lisa … In this house, we OBEY the laws of thermodynamics!”
I am sorry to break it to Mr Atkinson but Green doesn’t really mean the inevitable discovery of better, more advanced, more efficient and ‘cleaner’ technologies maintaining modern living standards (including private vehicle use) at the same time as addressing the illusory ‘Climate Emergency’, but rather a swift and unceremonious march back to the primeval swamp (with the already poorest and most vulnerable leading the way).
He should have kept going in his at best half-hearted investigation and found out WHY such an obviously nonsensical and impractical solution as EVs would ever have been considered.
I.e the age old malign influence of ideology over pragmatism and morality.
’Green energy solutions’ = self-licking ice-cream cones.
“Hydrogen is emerging as an interesting alternative fuel” —Except Hydrogen is NOT a fuel. It has to be manufactured and that is very expensive. So hydrogen is only “interesting” if people are happy with very expensive energy.
He’s late to the party but the average Guardian reader is more likely to accept the message from him than from the likes of J Clarkson.
Although Xi Jinping’s promotion of the GangGreen agenda in the West (obviously not in China) always finds happy and grateful ears in Grauniad readers.
I’m a retired automotive engineer and over coffee and off the record, I’ve been told by Renault engineers that the EV revolution is deeply flawed. Atkinson’s piece makes riveting reading.
Big Rowan fan going back to early 80s, but hey, what’s wrong with the end of Rowan’s second paragraph (as quoted here)?
“…the automobile’s fight against the climate crisis”
Reminds me of Monty Don’s casual references during the Chelsea coverage to our “scorching summers”. One decent summer and the world is apparently aflame. Chris Morrison, of this parish, and many others, would tend to disagree. Monty and Rowan are I’m sure not part of the priesthood of this movement; it’s just that their automatic use of the terminology of The Narrative is surely evidence of the success of the alarmist lobby. Depressing.
The problems with hydrogen in ‘regular’ engines are:
1) the energy ROI is only ~30%, so 70% of the input energy is wasted.
2) is a very hard gas to transport & store without leakage as a a very small molecule. An entirely new infrastructure would be needed, using high grade materials, which is expensive and itself world need a lot of energy to manufacture.
3) What ‘green’ energy is going to be used to make the hydrogen, as it doesn’t occur naturally (see also 1).
Everything you say, plus…
There is a reason why it doesn’t occur in nature on Earth, and that reason can be found by considering the Sun where it does occur in nature and it is perpetually turning into helium because it is so reactive nature doesn’t want it.
Hydrogen is an odourless,colourless, highly reactive gas which burns at 2024C with an invisible flame which means you could walk into burning hydrogen without realising.
The Green idiots are falling around to find solutions – previously rejected as non-visible, dangerous, costly – to address the problems their non-sustainable, ideology creates.
There is no climate crisis. CO2 is not the earth’s thermostat. Nobody can accurately predict earth’s climate. The UN led climate change cult in rich Western Countries has nothing to do with climate. Money has been pouring into the climate change hoax for over 50 years. It is staggering to see how easily educated people who typically live far from nature, are so easily deceived and given false beliefs. Covid was a case in point and took only a few months of co-ordinated propaganda.
I think it’s a mix: wilful ignorance, wanting to hang out with the cool kids, afraid you won’t look smart if you don’t agree with the experts, plus grifters, charlatans and evil minded misanthropy.
During Ice Ages atmospheric CO2 was around 180ppm, yet we are told the threshold for CO2 driven warming is 350ppm, so what drove warming to move the Earth out of the Ice Age, particularly since increases in CO2 atmospheric, lags many centuries after warming?
During the Tropical Ages, atmospheric concentrations were 4 000ppm or higher, so if our current atmospheric level of 420ppm is plunging us towards irrecoverable warming and the end of all things, how did Earth cool down and enter another Ice Age?
Bang on.
‘But if you zoom out a bit and look at a bigger picture…:
Try doing that with magic hydrogen, Rowan.
And you don’t mention in your bigger picture that the emissions no longer coming out of the exhaust are now coming out of power stations instead, and more of them due to energy loss in transmission and battery charging.
In The Beginning: there were steam cars, electric cars, internal combustion cars. I wonder why we ended up with internal combustion vehicles and not the other two? What has changed to make electric vehicles suddenly a better option? And if the better option, why legislation to force us to buy them?