The international committee responsible for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s official climate scenarios quietly delivered a bombshell last month: the notorious RCP8.5 'business-as-usual' pathway — the extreme emissions scenario that has underpinned virtually every climate alarm, every Net Zero urgency claim and every justification for Britain’s ruinous energy policy for the past 15 years — has been declared officially “implausible” and eliminated from the next generation of models feeding into the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report. The “era of global boiling” speech of the UN Secretary General António Guterres in 2023 now sounds even more ludicrous than it already did then.
Roger Pielke Jr. – whose research has been heavily cited by the IPCC across all three Working Groups – analysed this stunning admission by the panel in his Substack the Honest Broker on April 29th. The high-emissions scenarios (RCP8.5, SSP5-8.5 and SSP3-7.0) that dominated research papers, government reports and headlines are now recognised as describing futures that will not happen.
Yet while the IPCC itself has finally abandoned the nonsense doomsday model it once promoted as the “baseline”, UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, his fellow Net Zero zealots in Whitehall and his globalist colleagues in power in the EU, Canada and elsewhere press ahead with Net Zero undeterred. Indeed, ‘Mad Ed’ and gang are doubling down on the very policies built atop that now-discredited foundation. This is "Intellectual Yet Idiot" governance.
The "Intellectual Yet Idiot" class and Miliband’s credentials
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It is simply untrue that high gas prices automatically inflate the revenues of modern renewables.
Most UK renewables are now financed under Contracts for Difference (CfDs). These contracts fix the generator’s effective selling price.
Suppose an onshore wind or solar contract is struck at £70/MWh.
If wholesale electricity prices fall to £50/MWh because supply is plentiful, the generator receives £50/MWh from the market, and a £20/MWh top-up through the CfD mechanism,
bringing total revenue to the agreed £70/MWh.
If wholesale prices rise to £120/MWh because supply is tight, the generator receives £120/MWh from the market, but must repay £50/MWh through the CfD mechanism,
again leaving £70/MWh net revenue.
So modern CfD renewables do not generally profit from high gas-driven wholesale prices. Their revenues are largely fixed in advance.
The more important question is the reverse one: the extent to which renewable policy inflates the cost of gas generation.
Without carbon pricing, with high utilisation and historically normal gas prices, efficient CCGT gas generation could produce electricity at roughly £50/MWh. That would undercut much current renewable generation once whole-system costs are included.
However, carbon pricing adds roughly £25–35/MWh to gas generation costs. That alone pushes gas-generated electricity toward roughly £80/MWh.
Gas… Read more »
The original aims of the EEC/EU were control of the basic commodities to run an economy: Coal (ie energy), Steel (manufacturing) and Agriculture (food). It aimed to destroy any vestige of self-sufficiency with the ultimate objective of creating a United States of Europe.
The EU is currently building an integrated electricity system across Europe, inc the UK because we are still a part of the plan “despite Brexit.” That is what Red Ed and his fellow Intelligent Idiots are doing.
If we are allowed to drill the North Sea, their completely illogical arguments in favour of windmills and solar will disintegrate. Thus we must be forced into a fully electric, interconnected electricity system where we will be reliant on “our friends” in the EU to supply us when we cannot generate enough ourselves.
The objective is a fully integrated EU energy system, controlled by “the Elite” with price rationing to reduce consumption and the threat of being cut off if you “misbehave.”
It is all about control.
I am very definitely not intellectual, though I could possibly be an idiot, but even I can see that this man is a dangerous maniac.
Sort of related to those quotes from Orwell and Sowell is Paul Ehrlich’s “To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer”.
The fact that Andy Burnham has a Dutch wife and she sits on the board for Manchester-based public electric vehicle charging network Be.EV, and is also the Chief Marketing and Customer Officer of Octopus Energy Generation.tells you he is Pro EU and pro net zero. Follow the money.
What if Milband is a bought & paid for puppet who’s implementing a well planned looting agenda called 2030 that involves bankrupting the UK so that we all end up cap in hand beggars living off Larry Fink and Xi vouchers? It’s probably time the DS properly explored that idea on these pages.
This cannot and will not be mere idiocy.
Agreed. They have a policy Agenda which they are implementing. It’s ideological, not economic or even practical …. which is why they are not dissuaded by evidence or argument.
Red Ed is “on a mission” …. he is delivering it on behalf of his paymasters (Globalist/WEF) and he expects to be well-rewarded when he is kicked out at the next General Election. Just like Alok Sharma.
He may be an intellectual scapegoat, but what about the Permanent Secretary and the rest of the department? The belief being promulgated is much deeper than the brain of that guy in the image shown.
He’s a psychopath.
A group of personality traits including shallow emotions, lack of empathy/remorse, manipulativeness, and often superficial charm.
Does he fit?
Dr Doshi missed out that in addition to a PPE, Mad Ed apparently has a Masters in economics. Astonishing, but true. He also missed that gas generation has a ‘carbon’ tax added to it to try to make it closer in cost to expensive wind and solar. And that in addition to the benefits he lists of BP making good profits are the dividends paid to pension funds that lots of people have in their pensions.
He also has A Level Maths and Physics but still chooses to ignore logic
It seems that idiots like Miliband are increasingly talking about energy security and claiming that renewables are cheaper rather than the saying the UK needs to reduce carbon emissions. Presumably this is because they’ve realised that fewer and fewer people believe we’re facing a climate crisis so they have to keep trying to justify their stupidity rather than have the guts to admit they were wrong.
Energy security – 16.3% coming from interconnectors right now. Nuclear France is propping up a few countries around it – currently exporting 10GW and 3GW to pumped storage.
29% at 6.20 this morning.
The chap in the picture above….did he and his friends set fire to Starmer’s buy to let property? Starmer could Shirley do better than him? Honestly Kier, if you want some rough just join Grindr darling.
Is it true there is a ban on reporting the trial?
I was told there might even be a ban on reporting there is a ban on reporting but that doesn’t make any sense otherwise how would anyone know there is a reporting ban and a ban on reporting there is a reporting ban.
Confused? I am.
no ban
Please God, give us an election 🙏
Scrap marginal pricing?
Essentially saying: we’re prepared to pay this much – take it or leave it.
What could possibly go wrong?
We’d have no electricity – all this talk of scrapping the link, completely ignores the fact if you want (or need) electricity desperately to keep the grid online, then you pay whatever… having ‘cheap’ wind or solar when you don’t need it is worth sod all…
Ok, good article, but please, do we really need a daily reminder of what Milibund looks like? A picture of a lavatory brush would be sufficient to portray the general appearance (lest we forget), but without those mad eyes.
I prefer them all with a covid mask lest we forget how they all enthusiastically embraced it.
For a bit of variety there could be a picture of a different Muppets character each time there’s a story about Miliband.
Your wish is my command.
… or his official representative, a bacon sandwich.
Belief Yet Oblivious?
With enough incentive, people can make themselves believe all sorts of things. The unscrupulous because it’s a route to power, the useful idiots because it’s a route to feeling virtuous.
Ed looks like a Wallace & Gromit character [claymation] so here he is.
Another. There are some short videos too.
I can’t tell the difference from the real thing.
Can you?
See what I mean?
Very well executed. He is helped by that goofy look in my opinion. It distracts from the damage he is doing.