Last week the Spectator hosted a debate on Net Zero, provocatively titled “back it or bin it”. For the proposition, economist and journalist Liam Halligan and Lord Peter Lilley stood in at the last minute for Reform Party MP Richard Tice and energy market analyst Kathryn Porter, neither of whom were able to make it. Opposing the binning were Bob Ward, Policy and Communications Director of the Grantham Research Institute at the LSE, and Shahrar Ali, former Deputy Leader of the Green Party. Good. Debates about climate policy have for too long – and still are – too rare. But can they ever achieve anything, when such debates have at their core a fundamental contradiction?
I am not merely talking about the impossibility of reconciling entrenched, counterposed and mutually hostile positions, decades in the brewing, which have for that time created an atmosphere that can be characterised as, at best, ‘febrile’. As far back as the 1990s, the rise of the climate agenda somewhat coinciding with the arrival of domestic internet access, climate change ‘denial’ provoked intense outrage, despite the scientific consensus not speaking of “unequivocal evidence” until the IPCC’s 2001 Third Assessment Report. And, as soon as that claim was made, it was examined, and rather than cementing the foundations of a global policy agenda, it became a wellspring of fierce controversy.
In my view, and I think in the view of many others, that is how it works: once you claim to have “unequivocal evidence”, your claim that this fact
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Nobel Prizewinner Prof John F. Clauser, a physicist who co-won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, has publicly claimed that “there is no climate crisis” and has called mainstream climate science a “hoax” and “pseudoscience”. This level of clout needs to be pitted against Bob and Ali, who are media operatives and not scientists.
A simple question to Ward – name the paper that incontravertibly proves that CO2 changes the climate. As an ecoactivist he would know it off the top of his head. But of course, no such thing exists. He could also be asked why we had the Mediaeval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period and the Minoan Warm Period – all warmer than today’s alleged ‘global boiling’.
I miss Liam Halligan. He was excellent on GB News and nobody of any substance has replaced his quality of economic review. Yes, like a few others, he does still think we need renewable energy but it happy to poke holes in their current economics. His take on the new report showing that unreliable energy subsidies will TRIPLE by 2030 would be interesting.
I don’t think that there has been a philosophical debate since Catholicism imprisoned, tortured and worse the people who wouldn’t accept their cult beliefs, as we have seen in recent years with the high priests demanding the silencing, retraction of arguments (a la Galileo) and ultimately imprisonment for those who refuse to accept the dogma of the religion. In some respects, with the promotion of energy restrictions and assisted dying we are not far off calls for execution of the non-believers.
Locally, we have had a charity request for a statue to commemorate the loss of some of the Solomon Islands, which is, apparently, totally due to man made climate change. I don’t deny the disappearance of these islands, apparently because sea levels have risen three times as much in that area as other nearby parts of the Pacific. How this local anomaly is possible, I am not sure, but a deeper investigation reveals unstable land washed away by storms and tectonic movement, but in the world of climate change, the loss is 100% our fault, so the people of the West Midlands are morally bound to pay for this memorial. Cultish madness.
Since copper was invented as a resource over 5 000 years ago since when about 700 million metric tons of copper ore have been mined.
In order to meet global Net Zero would require a similar amount be extracted within the next 20 years. That is impossible.
Net Zero is impossible, therefore.
Anthropogenic Climate Change is a religion and so cannot be argued against. Feminism – the blind belief that women have been deliberately oppressed by a cruel patriarchy, God – the blind belief that a higher power exists beyond the world we know, technology – the blind belief that technological ‘progress’ is inherently good, Scientism – the blind belief that science can explain EVERYTHING, even Capitalism is a religion – the blind belief that the accumulation of wealth and materialism leads to a better life. Any criticism of these religions are usually met with incredible hostility, because they cannot be proven (no matter what their disciples preach).
We only know what we know, and what we should increasingly know as we go through life is that we don’t know a great deal at all. As I get older I understand I know less, not more, than I used to. And that, itself, is a religion – the religion of the not knowing.
It was a pity that Kathryn Porter was ill as she knows the figures and could have made Wards lies about renewables plain. David Turver is another that knows the figures but maybe the Spectator hasn’t heard of him.
No one ever mentions how beneficial CO2 is for the planet. And no one points out that reducing CO2 would actually be a bad thing. Interviewers should challenge ‘experts’ on what Net Zero means – make them define it clearly as most of them don’t seem to have a clue.
Not to mention, every time they wheel out the 40 degree thing, pointing out where the temperature was recorded and why the Met Office relies on junk sites.
It’s plant food. The more they get, the better they do. And without it they die.
…and so do we.
Thanks to Ben for the report, and to Halligan and lilley for presenting the case in the debate. It shows once again the nakedness of the net zero emperor.
Given the chance, Restore Britain will repeal the vile Climate Change Act immediately and all that goes with it including the disbandment of those overpaid clowns in the Climate Change Committee.
Climate is one of the most complex, non-linear, chaotic systems known to man. Therefore, by definition, it cannot be predicted. To ignore chaos is fraud. To claim that any extreme weather event was caused by man’s emissions of carbon dioxide is fraudulent.
But we know Restore will not get the chance to do anything except disrupt the only chance there has been in living memory to overthrow the Uniparty by democratic means.
Sadly all too true.
Debate… lol
Net zero, carbon neutral =
Two ticks on the back of a dog arguing about which one of them owns the dog! 🐕