Net Zero is the new Brexit, “where Parliament is so hopelessly out of touch with the country”, Nigel Farage has said. The Telegraph‘s Michael Deacon agrees: as people realise the true cost of eco-zealotry they are turning against it. Here’s an excerpt.
Nigel Farage would have been well suited to the job [of newspaper editor], because he possesses an almost uncannily sharp news sense. That is, he has a special knack for identifying issues that matter to ordinary people yet have been missed or dismissed by those who grandly assume they know better. Free movement, for example, or the small boats. He was banging on about these problems long before most of his rivals grasped the true scale of their salience. In short: like an experienced editor, he always seems to know what the next big story is going to be.
All of which is why I think it would be a grave mistake for his opponents to ignore his latest comments about Net Zero. Speaking to the Sun on Sunday, Mr Farage said: “This could be the next Brexit, where Parliament is so hopelessly out of touch with the country.”
The Reform leader’s foes seem convinced that, in fact, he’s the one who’s out of touch. Look at the polls, they scoff. According to the Observer, “Polling experts believe the attacks on Net Zero could backfire on Reform”, because “the policy is overwhelmingly supported by the public”.
Hmm. I wouldn’t be so sure. Many people may indeed have told pollsters that they support Net Zero. But are we quite certain that they meant it?
Personally, I tend to feel that, if you really want to know whether the public supports Net Zero, the question to ask is not, “Do you support Net Zero?” Instead, the question to ask is: “To help achieve Net Zero, what sacrifices would you personally be willing to make? Would you be willing to give up flying? How much more would you be willing to pay in green taxes? Exactly how much poorer are you willing to be? And, given that Britain is responsible for less than 1% of the planet’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, how much difference do you think it would make to global temperatures even if this country somehow achieved Net Zero tomorrow? Oh, and before you answer: did you see the FT headline from February, which read: ‘China’s Construction of Coal-Fired Power Plants Reaches Highest in a Decade’?”
Even asking those questions, however, wouldn’t necessarily lead us to the truth. Because public opinion isn’t always what it seems.
For years before the EU referendum, polls consistently gave the impression that the British public had very little interest in the EU, one way or the other. A week before the 2015 general election, for example, Ipsos asked the public what it considered to be the most important issues facing Britain. The EU didn’t even make the top 10.
Yet, just a little over one year later, 17.4 million people voted to leave the EU. This suggests one of two things. Either a very large number of voters had always held rather stronger views about the EU than they were willing to admit to pollsters. Or, once they were finally forced to consider the issue in real depth, they swiftly formed views that were an awful lot stronger than the ones they’d held before.
Worth reading in full.
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I presume the author is another one who really believes the nonsense of AGW.
The question gives it away ‘given that Britain is responsible for less than 1% of the planet’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, how much difference do you think it would make to global temperatures even if this country somehow achieved Net Zero tomorrow?’
FFS
“Global temperatures?”
What a load of carp.
Indeed. I was thinking about this the other day. Our house is by no means huge, and it’s pretty open plan, internal doors always open. The heating comes on in every room, but there is only one thermostat. It’s definitely not the same temperature in every room, especially when the sun is shining.
They should ask: Do you want the entire British countryside smothered with solar panels and wind turbines entirely funded by your taxes?
It would be wise to add ‘and by a trebling of your electricity bills.’
It’s when people are hit where it hurts, their wallet/purse, that opinions can rapidly change. I often get labelled as a conspiracy theorist (a badge I wear proudly) but I was asked openly at the weekend why electricity prices are so high. Fortunate that the Daily Sceptic had recently published an article on this very subject.
I said global energy prices rose due to unnecessary lockdowns and massive borrowing causing inflation. I said the UK is one of the highest because of our perfect storm of mad Net Zero plans with a little bit of Brexit thrown in.
For the first time since 2019, I got more nods of agreement than derision. It was helped that we were sat in a pub where the licensee overheard our conversation and brought her current energy bills which are crippling the hospitality industry.
And, “How do you feel about all our agriculture being demolished, all our food imported and our manufacturing base taken over by China?”
The rug needs pulling from under climate claptrap first. Needs Mr Farage to call it out for the con-trick it’s been for decades. All dependent on repealing the 2008 Climate Claptrap Act.
Then mount a campaign to Take Back Control of energy bills.
I tend to agree that a lot of political capital could be made out of this, if the issue were to be presented in the right way.
If you brainwash the population for decades with bogus claims of a climate emergency it is no surprise they want something done to tackle it.
Just give them both sides of the argument and the public will soon see sense that there is no emergency and their taxes are being wasted.
That’s a good point. They want something done… by someone else.
Ask them what they’re prepared to do themselves to achieve it. Turn off their heating and lights? Buy less new clothing? Eat less meat or more insects?
Show them items out of the UK FIRES reports like telling them to give up dairy foods and beef, lamb or pork or pushing the price of hydrocarbon fuel to extreme highs or building their houses out of rammed earth or that new steel should not be made.
One of my most left-leaning narrative consuming friend/couple was appalled by the FIRES report (right?) that air travel is to be curtailed to maybe one flight a year. They love their foreign holidays…
Well in every poll that has raised the issue of money and what personal contribution people would be willing to make – as opposed to the extortion through taxes and increased costs – the answer is extremely little. Probably just due to incompetence which is about the only thing government and the snivel service excel at, the way that taxpayers cash is channelled to the unreliable suppliers of expensive energy is a maze of confusing methods that make it hard to easily explain to the masses how it really is not 9 times cheaper than gas generation and is many times more expensive.
…and why do you think those methods are confusing? They are deliberately so, even to those of us familiar with the industry. And of course they were written by civil servants and their lawyers, both of whom are paid by the yard
Now is the time for Reform to lay out exactly what makes up an energy bill, how it’s changed over the years and the truth around subsidy ‘farming’ by renewables companies, supported by the Uniparty. Lay this out, as accurately as possible, and challenge the main parties directly to explain it / justify it or deny it… get on the front foot
The recent DS article would be a good starting point but like COVID debates, the article is far too heavy on facts and needs to be pitched emotionally.
Exactly – I’d go with a side by side graphic showing the % breakdown in 2008 vs now or similar – something pictorial… get it right any you don’t even need to have too much detail. You just want people to look at it, and think ‘hang on a minute, how f****** much?!?’…. They can then join the rest of the dots themselves
I’ll just throw this question out there: Who here believes that if “global average temperatures” started to drop on their own starting next week and continued to show a downward trend for a couple of years, would Net Zero be abandoned since obviously the world is cooling and it’s no longer necessary?
There is no such thing as “global average temperatures.” It’s an impossible.
It’s not really impossible because global average temperature can be easily calculated. But the result is a meaningless piece of mathematical fiction. Or rather, it’s just as meaningful for any particular place as a global average shoe size¹ would be meaningful for an individual person.
¹ Someone urgently needs to research if there’s a trend in global average shoe size and whether or not it correlates with trends in global average temperatures. Maybe, we really need to shrink feet instead of CO₂ emissions! [Sarcasm]
Addition: The area of this planet which is not covered by temperature measurment stations is so much larger than area covered by temperature measurement statements that the latter can sensibly regarded as non-existant. We don’t know anything about the temperature of the overwhelming number of places this planet. This implies that an average calculated from the preciously few locations on this planet where temperature is actually measured really doesn’t even include most of the relevant information.
It’s not only that the calculation is nonsense¹, we don’t even have the data for it to begin with.
¹ Also, canonical CO₂ levels of the atmosphere are measured in a single location of this planet, next to a giant volcano in Haway (Mauna Loa).
A very good point. A very over-generalized statistic like overall global average temperature is like trying to gauge room temperature by sticking a thermometer directly on top of a radiator (or in the fridge).
The international media does this nicely pertaining to weather events. It either ramps up or down the level of coverage of storms, droughts, wildfires and all the rest of it, depending on the level of Net Zero urgency they want to convey.
If and when (hopefully never, but hypothetically) Net Zero ever comes about, all they need to do is focus the public’s attention elsewhere and ease off on the climate scare stories… and then they can say “you see, Net Zero worked!”
You only have to remove a few weather stations with highish temperatures, and close down a few with lower temperatures and, hey presto, using inadequate statistical methods, global temperatures are raised.
Well no of course there is, but it is a totally meaningless figure, being subject to a trillion variables.
Starting with the word average – is that the mean, medium or the mode? arithmetic or geometric? using data from ground stations or satellite data? comparing data series staring from when?
And given that most databases have been corrupted by senseless adjustments over the years what steps do you take to ensure the data is actually valid? UK data includes readings from weather stations that don’t actually exist. ANd quality of data, when putting the data together some is from high quality weather stations many in the UK at least are classified as junk. Therefore your average needs to include let’s say the 90% condfidence limits otherwise it is a meaningless exercise. A fiar amount of computing power required to do that for however many datasets you’re planning to use.
And that’s just the start I am not a statistician and this took me two minutes to write. There will be a thousand other things to take into account. Allowing for major volcanic erruptions for one thing.
So yes there may indeed theoretically be some sort of arithmetic average but like everyhting else in this voodoo science it is complete and utter garbage.
You simply cannot justify destroying our economy and indeed our entire way of life on the basis of it.
It is beyond insane, psycopathic even to suggest you can let alone the damage already wrought supposedly trying to do so.
Or is it simply a massive programme to rip off the plebs and enrich the favoured ones? Which is what it looks like more than anything else.
I think we should be told.
Averaging temperatures from different location is meaningless nonsense. The contrived example I keep using for this is: Let’s say a thermometer in the Sahara records 45⁰C and another in Antartica -50⁰C. This makes for an average of -2.5⁰C. But neither temperature in the Sahara nor temperature in Antartica is “on average, -2.5⁰C.”
Yes of course it is absolute nonsense.
Interesting your point about the measurement of CO2, I’d not heard that before, and your point about the vast areas of the globe whose temperatures go unmeasured at least by ground based stations is very valid.
So are you saying that the average global temperature is not lower in a full ice age, than when the earth is a hot house, because it’s somehow impossible? Both full ice ages and hot houses have happened in the past without any help from human activity, and must represent different overall average temperatures.
Instead of global average temperatures, you could ask about the evidence for unusually cold weather events happening all over the planet, as recorded by the Electroverse website. Even though it’s paywalled, we can learn a lot just by scrolling down the main page of brief headlines and photos on that site, which are never featured in the mainstream media:
Electroverse – Documenting Earth Changes During The Next Grand Solar Minimum
Net Zero, woke, EU rapprochement, immigration – legal and illegal, getting involved in foreign conflicts not our concern.
That’ll do for a start.
Which isn’t far off much of the Reform manifesto at the election.
At least highlighting the futility and ‘wealth destruction’ of the NET Zero policies will allow Reform to distract voters’ interests away from the recent Lowe pressure, and the accompanying political storm.
There is no leader within this nonsense. It would take a particularly compassionate leader to deal with such misguided souls.
‘And, given that Britain is responsible for less than 1% of the planet’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, how much difference do you think it would make to global temperatures even if this country somehow achieved Net Zero tomorrow?’
The 1% figure here is badly misleading. 1% is perhaps true as the UK’s percentage of human emissions. But human emissions are barely 20% of total emissions. So, the UK’s percentage of total emissions is 0.2%.
Here’s the real question:
How much poorer are you willing to be to achieve net zero, given that China and India, with their rampant programs of coal-fired power station building, are both putting out more new CO2 every year than the UK’s entire annual output, and China and India are not bound by the Paris accords to even begin reductions till 2050?
Where are the measurements for judging success, like plotting a graph of atmospheric Carbon Dioxide concentrations against Time?
I wonder what keeps these politicians so out of touch with reality. They are well behind where the general public are.
Maybe a case for participatory democracy….
Money the green scam is very lucrative.
Party whips? You are cast out if you don’t take the whip.