I was reminded last week in a conversation with a GB News editor about just how little understanding there is in the mainstream media of just how much Net Zero could end up costing the country.
To some extent this ignorance has been deliberately engineered. The original Climate Change Act in 2008 included no sort of cost-benefit analysis at all; it was passed almost unanimously through Parliament on the basis that when you are saving the planet, costs do not matter. It was the same story when Theresa May amended the 2008 Act to set a Net Zero target.
The idea that the public should know the cost of decisions made by their MPs was regarded as abhorrent by them and still is.
Since then, much of the media have been complicit in refusing to discuss the issue of cost. Nevertheless, there have been attempts to put a figure on it. In 2019, then Chancellor Philip Hammond warned May that reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 could cost the UK more than £1 trillion.
On the other hand, the Climate Change Committee has claimed the cost would be more like £200 billion over thirty years. However, this excludes the costs we are already paying and is based on unrealistically optimistic assumptions about the future cost of renewable energy.
So, who is right?
It is of course foolhardy to try to predict what will happen in three decades time; we have no idea what the economy or
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While this observation is certainly true:
“It is of course foolhardy to try to predict what will happen in three decades time; we have no idea what the economy or technology will look like then. Anybody who thinks they do know is a fool and anybody who claims they do is a charlatan!”
Nevertheless, we can build upon the immutable laws of thermodynamics to understand that net zero is divorced from reality. Two examples of applying the laws of thermodynamics to some net zero schemes.
David Turver, Government Seeks Advice on Crimes Against Thermodynamics. https://davidturver.substack.com/p/government-seeks-advice-on-crimes-against-thermodynamics
Roger Andrews, The cost of wind & solar power: batteries included. https://web.archive.org/web/20190112154033/http://euanmearns.com/the-cost-of-wind-solar-power-batteries-included/
With the attempt to have our kids voting at 16, and the education system so Left and Woke leaning, I hope people will take time to study exactly what the schools are indoctrinating our kids with when Climate Change and Net Zero enter every aspect of the curriculum.
Kids are incredibly inexperienced and naive when it comes to being sold a simplistic, damage-free, utopian world a la John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
To them such a future is held back only by greed and the ravages of capitalism.
It won’t take much for the Net Zero zealots to induct and unleash an entire army of readily influenced voters.
Unfortunately it will take a heck of a long time before even a fraction of them will come to realise that they seriously need to question what they believe to be fact.
Of the vast numbers that remain, how many will be ushered into positions of power?
.
It’s already happening now.
A vote at sixteen will just about lock it up.
“…when half of us will probably be dead.” Not our children.
President Trump will save the world from this madness. 49 sold Jaguar EV’s won’t 🤣
Utter utter foolishness
Vainly destroying the basics of society
“… it was passed almost unanimously through Parliament on the basis that when you are saving the planet, costs do not matter. “
Ditto the response to the Wuhan Flu
Ditto DEI
It is ironic that the next article is about the ascendancy of China. Of course they will be delighted to replace indigenous British industries with ones of their own, as they are already doing with electric cars and solar panels and numerous other domestic and industrial sectors.
I can imagine a time in the future where gas boilers are sourced and sold on the black market, where even robbers target properties where they know gas boilers are installed and rip them out to sell on the black market.
The problem with billions and trillions are that they are impossible to grasp by the vast majority of people, and they can be massaged, depending on your agenda. For example, quote billions per year to minimise the cost, or total billions to maximise the cost.
Percentage of the average electricity bill is a good-ish way to convey the problem, but it does not convey the damage to the economy, and can be dismissed by the ever growing army of people that get automatic cost of living pay/benefits increases.
Lack of feasibility, and utter pointlessness are good arguments, for example what is the point of using the shallow/windy North Sea to achieve Net Zero, when most of the world does not have a nearby shallow/windy sea.
Five more years of killer Millibrain will turn this country in to a Turd World shithole to top ALL Turd World shitholes.
The soundbite ‘net zero’ emanated from the WEF and UN. They produce designer phrases and words. The laws of physics and economics will make net zero null and void.
It’s a control program for humanity, nothing more. We are being subjected to managed decline. This includes de-industrialisation, forced migration, loss of freedoms, and poverty created by high prices.
And remember, all this is not a one off forever cost, it will all need replacing a lot sooner than fossil fuel infrastructure over a period of 20 years ish!
Electric cars are now throw away items, windmills last 20 years at best, solar panel efficiency degrades quickly and leads to replacements, heavily used electricity infrastructure cost a lot in constant maintenance, not to mention most of it is non recyclable and goes into landfill after use..more pollution for the future!
We are throwing away long use reliable technology to replace it all with short term unreliable, inefficient and expensive Chinese crap!
It’s almost like the Chinese planned it all this way, isn’t it?….
The calculation also excludes opportunity cost. If that £101 billion was invested instead in economic growth activity, how much better off would we be? It also excludes the economic destruction brought about by net zero , i.e. the industries that will close or be scaled back as they are no longer competitive. The only beneficiary of net zero is China – see preceding article!
“cost of complying with decarbonisation targets which will be incurred by industry.”
Well no they won’t most probably, because there’ll be no industry left.
There’ll be lots of folk on benefits and widespread appalling destitution, but no industry.
I don’t know if many readers of the DS remember Christopher Booker but I used to read his Sunday Telegraph column religiously when he was alive. I also read one or two of his books, especially the ones on the religion of AGM (Anthropomorphic Global Warming) as it was known then. He predicted the cost of transitioning to a carbon free economy would be prohibitive. He foresaw all the problems and complications that the government is experiencing now.
I think he thought like most of us do, that it’s the insane who are running the asylum.
Is that you Delingpole ? Booker is his favourite sage ,RIP , we could do with him now .
Alas not. Booker was his surrogate father, and Delingpole carries on with his legacy fighting the noble cause. As you say we could do with sage Booker now. He would have torn these numpties to shreds.
The problem actually lies with the editorial policy of newspapers, and advertiser boycotts.
Sorry to nit pick but it is Anthropogenic GW.
Haha. 😅 I know that. I didn’t read it properly! Thanks for pointing it out.
I guess your TLA is to do with circumcising androids. LOL
Seriously, though, I used to assiduously read Christopher Booker. Sadly missed.
Circumcision is another rabbit hole that needs exposing but not literally of course! Lol.
As you say Booker is sadly missed.
One point that is rarely mentioned in the discussion of heat pumps :
Our gas boilers are idle for most of the time. We only need central heating in cold weather.
It doesn’t cost very much to have a gas boiler that is idle 75% of the time.
It’s a very different matter if you have to supply electricity to a fleet of heat pumps that demand lots of electricity in cold weather, and none in summer.
Renewables are particularly capital-intensive – almost all of the cost of wind and solar is the cost of manufacturing and installing the wind farms and solar panels. If the electricity is only wanted 25% of the time, the cost per unit is four times higher.
Heated water is required all year round.
It’s intended to cripple the British economy. We are being deliberately “levelled down” to 2nd world status.
The UN has admitted the climate change SCAM is about transferring wealth from the west to Africa and Asia.
Global Communism in action.
UK can be ‘sued’ by the Useless Nations/World Gov. for ‘violating’ nut-tard zero or ‘climate policies’. A cult absent of reason, real science, reality, and common sense. Designed to transfer wealth, enrich the elite and subjugate the clueless sheeple.
And there it is the utter futility & stupidity of net zero or nut zero in one article. Such vast expenditure & disruption to our country should at the very least be subject to a referendum. The lack of scrutiny & accountability of successive governments from Blair onwards is truly appalling & undemocratic. I bet this doesn’t get discussed in schools either!
I for one have zero desire to pay or use any of these subsidised & hugely environmentally damaging “green” energy cars, heat pumps, solar panels or bird killing wind turbines!
Add in to the above the additional cost of alternative heating when houses are not warm enough & the inconvenience of electric charging for vehicles & our economy will grind to a halt & we will be back living in caves!
You are absolutely not allowed to challenge the nut zero orthodoxy in schools, even the independent ones.
Not so much a referendum, it should be subject to armed uprising.
This is a fight for our lives and our civilization.
Far be it from me to incite violence or law breaking of course, I mean in theory.
War is the pursuit of politics by other means so if the ballot box does not work what does that leave.
I’ll say again – electricity is not energy. Static renewable sources of energy are of no help to any mobile application, This accounts for a very large proportion of fossil fuel use. In addition, and is always forgotten, fossil fuels are used for many other products,
Until we overthrow the politicians who embrace the unproven thesis that the planet is doomed unless we curtail CO2 emissions, nothing will change.