Last month the scandal broke that the Climate Change Committee (CCC) relied on just one year’s wind data when it advised MPs in 2019 that the U.K. would be able to rely on wind and solar power by 2050. This is despite U.K. annual wind varying by 39% from its maximum to its minimum during the period 2009-2022.
Now, it turns out that this error, major as it is, is a mere footnote compared with the much bigger problem of the mismatch between the CCC’s advice regarding carbon capture and storage and the Government’s stated intentions.
The U.K.’s ambition to achieve Net Zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 is heavily reliant on carbon capture and storage technology to remove all the CO2 that the country will still be producing.
According to the CCC report (see below), by 2050 the U.K. will need to be able to store 176 Mt of CO2 in order to achieve Net Zero emissions.
However, as things stand the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) states that by 2050 the U.K. will only have capacity to store 50 Mt of CO2, which is just over a quarter (28%) of what the CCC says is needed, falling 126 Mt short:
The U.K. is a first mover; we are aiming to support the establishment of two CCUS [carbon capture, usage and storage] clusters by the mid-2020s and a further two by 2030, through which we aim to capture 20-30 Mt CO2 per year. The long-term ambition is to reach 50 Mt CO2 annually by 2050. [emphasis added]
This massive shortfall guarantees that Net Zero cannot be achieved by 2050. Furthermore, it would in no way be possible to undertake the engineering and groundworks to build all that missing CO2 storage capacity by 2050, even if the U.K. had the money to fund it, which it does not.
There are of course all number of reasons why Net Zero is unachievable, unnecessary and unjustifiably costly. But the chasm between the amount of carbon capture the CCC says is needed to hit the target and the amount the Government actually thinks it will have available at the time means Net Zero is unachievable even on the Government’s own terms. It means that it doesn’t matter how much the Government cripples U.K. industry and drives it overseas, how successful it is in replacing dependable fossil fuels with intermittent renewables, it will never hit Net Zero by 2050 or anywhere close to it and has no credible plan to do so.
Do MPs and ministers realise this? The danger is that once they are alerted to the issue they will see it as a reason to redouble efforts to slash emissions and accelerate the building of carbon storage capacity. Of course, what they should do is add it to the ever-growing list of why Net Zero is a terrible idea that needs replacing with a proper energy policy that prioritises prosperity and security for the long term.
Stop Press: The Executive Chairman of Fortescue Metals, Andrew Forrest has said carbon capture is a “complete falsehood” that will never work. The Australian billionaire told the 50th anniversary meeting of the International Energy Agency: “We’re going to keep burning fossil fuels and somehow magically get rid of the carbon down into the ground where there is no proof that it will stay there, but heaps of proof that it fails. I say for policymakers everywhere, do not be the next idiot waiting for the old lie to be trotted out and say I believe in carbon sequestration. It has only failed for 75 years… It’s a complete falsehood.”
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That too could backfire & morph into a digital ID for children, the very society which needs to be avoided at all costs, for their ‘safety’.
It will be tracking & tracing of children. Truly terrifying.
How about parents take some responsibility for setting up controls? Difficult to do? Yes. But parenting isn’t easy.
treason
/ˈtriːz(ə)n/
noun
the crime of betraying one’s country.
The abuse of our language becomes more aggregious day by day so I thought it pertinent to provide a dictionary definition and this is from ‘Oxford Dictionaries.’
Is anybody, certainly on here, under any allusions that our government is and has been for over 2.5 years acting daily in a treasonous manner?
We are being insulted, betrayed, denigrated, laughed at on a daily basis. Just one example from yesterday, the F & C spending, whoops ‘investing,’ £11.6 million, or was it billions, and who cares, in taking over coffee plantations in Mexico. Yet this government knows very well that people in this country will shortly be facing live or die questions such as ‘heat or eat.’ If this is not bald, naked treason I don’t know what is.
Would it be surprising if the BBC even now was rehearsing some funeral footage or doctoring some old Stalingrad films in order to present the nation’s dire Winter plight? The queues outside the soup kitchens doubling as warm centres and the pitiful sites outside food banks.
Let’s be in no doubt and no need to corrupt our wonderful language, we are being assaulted and betrayed by a treasonous government.
Government = Mafia
I wish I felt this wasn’t an eternal truth.
Knowing this makes a lot of things easier to understand and deal with.
I’ve posted this before but it bears reposting as it seems to me an excellent from the horse’s mouth insight into how these people think. It’s from Michael Wendling of the BBC disinformation unit, in answer to a complaint I made about unbalanced reporting of an early anti-lockdown protest. He clearly doesn’t see his customers as adults and he’s not ashamed to admit it.
“Of course those who believe in conspiracy theories are not going to call their beliefs conspiracy theories, and are going to call themselves mainstream, moderate people.
We viewed footage of the speakers and spoke to people who were there.
We have no obligation to give a platform to erroneous ideas. We don’t, to take an extreme example, broadcast the manifestos of mass murderers alongside police statements so that people can “make up their own minds”.
I’m not saying the people there were violent. Some of them were (as the story reflected) were drawn by legitimate concerns. But the speakers (Mr Icke and others) were not expressing mainstream views that would benefit from airing and debate.”
It’s that 1% again… 99% are worried about energy costs, rising prices, jobs, crime/policing, education, medical care, but top of the agenda for the 1% is climate change, ‘misinformation’, Russia/Ukraine, gender/homosexuality, racism, hate speech.
Indeed
A nut job conspiracy theorist would think that small groups of powerful people are manipulating the narrative and pushing the 1% issues for their own ends
I have a YouGov account and every second survey has questions about sustainability and diversity etc regardless of the subject- they want to make people think these things are what we should be worrying about
Why do you have a YouGov account?!
I started during covid when they kept quoting polls that said the public supported lockdowns. I thought I should try and correct the imbalance. I’ve carried on doing the same thing with questions regarding their or their clients’ woke agendas. They give you a bit of money from time to time, though that’s not my main reason for doing it.
Fair enough. I tried that for the same reasons but the endless questions about B list personalities was eroding my brain.
I’ve never heard of any of them so I just switch off for those bits
I find it an interesting insight into what the enemy are thinking
I would pay good money to know the extent to which all the woke agenda type questions are requested by clients or suggested by YouGov staff. I reckon mainly the latter as they are almost always worded the same.
The left are better at pushing their causes in general because they find the most abhorrent opponents to their causes and then paint everyone who doesn’t support them with the same brush.
If the right did the same thing then anyone who even said a peep in favour of the Online Safety Bill, even if the views were reasonable like wanting to make sure children didn’t see pornography, then we would loudly and aggressively call them totalitarians.
Our “problem” is that we don’t do that. We try to engage reasonably. But of course it’s a losing battle. We’re bringing knives to the fight while they’re bringing semi-automatic assault rifles.
Funny you should mention this, because this popped up in my YouTube suggestions today and Victor Davis Hanson from just under 4 minutes in has some interesting things to say on this subject: Victor Davis Hanson: This is why the left feels ‘morally superior’ – YouTube
Good stuff. VDH is a legend. I love the clarity with which he conveys his messages.
Unless some mandatory, digital ID scheme which can’t be forged, at least not easily, is introduced, there’s no way to determine if someone sitting in front of a web browser is legally minor or not. Hence, it makes ‘fuck all’ of a difference if this bill is said to be about child protection or about the proper rearing of wild Tibetan donkeys. The effect will be universal censorship by default in order to ensure that no unsupervised children can ever access something the goverment says they must not access.
Policing their children’s behaviour is responsibilty of the parents.
“Policing their children’s behaviour is responsibilty of the parents.”
Absolutely, and there are already lots of tools available to help with this, though I still think the best approach is to talk to them, set an example, and trust them as long as they repay that trust.
Precisely. To see what happens when it goes wrong, look to the publicity given to Ian Russell
Yes, but where ARE the adults these days, hm?
I would argue that the greatest source of misinformation in the last 50 years has been the US Government.
The list of prohibited subjects will be attached in a Statutory Instrument because that can be amended almost immediately by a Minister if “there is an emergency” – with no oversight by Parliament whatsoever.
It will be a Dictators charter.
We have been bombarded with misinformation by the Government for the past 2 years but they have sought to silence whistle-blower experts who were challenging the official narrative. That alone is proof that an Online Harms Bill should never go ahead. It will silence dissenters and critical-thinkers. It’s the equivalent of the Medieval Inquisition and the ban on the Bible being translated from Latin into languages ordinary people could understand for fear it would “challenge the Priesthood.”
But how can we posibly disagree with more censorship when Ian Russell is assuaging his feelings of guilt over his daughter’s suicide by emoting all over the MSM?