I recently had a discussion with Mark Littlewood from the Institute of Economic Affairs about my latest book, Build Back Green: The Electrifying Shock of the Green Revolution. You can watch it here:
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I recently had a discussion with Mark Littlewood from the Institute of Economic Affairs about my latest book, Build Back Green: The Electrifying Shock of the Green Revolution. You can watch it here:
Comments are closed.
March 15, 2022
Good morning.
Where do you find the time ?
Anyway, good luck with the book.
March 15, 2022
Anyone who has the intellectual curiosity, can easily find convincing , objective, evidence that destroys the global warming due to Co2 narrative. All the models used by climate alarmist have made predictions not born out in practice.
March 15, 2022
Predictions, eh?
Here’s the context for one.
Three months ago Boris Johnson publicly mocked Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative MP and chairman of the Defence Select Committee, for expressing concern about cuts to British military capabilities.
“We are cutting back on our tanks,” Ellwood told the PM at the Liaison Committee on 17 November 2021. “What is amassing on the Ukrainian border? It’s tanks. But that’s besides the point. I’m saying step back, look at the wider security picture, look at our defence posture, and see what needs to be done.”
He added that in general “capabilities have been reduced”, pointing to cuts to tanks, aircraft and the removal of 10,000 troops.
Johnson dismissed his concerns and responded: “We have to recognise that the old concepts of fighting big tank battles on European land mass are over, and there are other, better things we should be investing in, in FCAS, in the future combat air system, in cyber, this is how warfare in the future is going to be.”
They’re great.aren’t they?
March 15, 2022
Odd idea NHL because your beloved Labour Party wanted even less defence spending.
March 15, 2022
NLH. Yes and don’t forget Net Zero.
March 15, 2022
+1
March 15, 2022
Very interesting points touched upon, such a shame that the vast majority of the politicians can’t, won’t, or don’t want to know about it. The high priestess’s sermons are now all enshrined in law so your wrong and they are right. Bring on the bottom up revolution. Hopefully you will get given air time on the more realistic media outlets.
March 15, 2022
I’ll look forward to reading it ……………………………………….. on my electric-powered book.
March 15, 2022
run by batteries?
March 16, 2022
Yep – my in-flight carry-on has two lead-acid batteries in it. Might be time to upgrade my Kindle.
March 15, 2022
It must be obvious to anyone but the ra k stupid (cue most politicians) that the path we are following is a blind alley.
Revolution indeed, power bills will just not be affordable for many pensioners as they will exceed their income.
The poll tax riots will be like a walk in the park.
I see no one has asked Cuadrilla not to vandalise the gas Wells.
March 15, 2022
Indeed. The sanctions against Russia are meant to cause regime change there.
Poor Russians… they get to burn real gas while we get to burn our virtual fiat.
What does Boris give us in the cost of living crisis of my life time ? Fracking ? Coal ? Oil ???
Nope.
Loft insulation and heat pumps.
I think regime change in the UK is coming a lot faster than in Russia. Andy gives us hard talk on how Putin is going to be ‘retired’, ‘escorted out of the building’ or giving a ‘bullet in the back of the head’ (what lovely imagination these lefties have) but he clearly has no idea of the rings of steel surrounding Putin – each of his protectors and spies reliant on Putin surviving for their very own lives.
March 15, 2022
NLA
+1
And so strange that lefties have always been so strongly against guns.
And hurty wurty…unless they are the ones threatening violence or carrying it out!
March 16, 2022
What a strange, imaginary world you inhabit.
How many Labour voters do you suppose believe that the country should disband its armed forces and disarm?
March 15, 2022
BoJo will look into it when he’s finished asking Saudi Arabia for more oil.
March 15, 2022
Why isn’t he asking the North Sea for more oil ?
March 15, 2022
or agreeing with Carrie on the samples for the nursery redecoration!
March 15, 2022
But Ian, aren’t the pensioners to blame anyway according to a certain contributor here, as we are ALL apparently filthy rich via evil property speculation while also living off younger people’s taxes, we have each personally contaminated the globe during our youthful excesses, we all voted for Brexit and are now living too long for the NHS to cope?
March 15, 2022
+1
Agree!
And isn’t it funny.
We were all only doing what we were told to do.
March 15, 2022
the wise among us hope to avoid a challenge on age for fear of howls of indignation at the burden we put on dinghy immigrants staffing our NHS services (I use ‘services’ a bit tongue in cheek).
March 15, 2022
Ian Wragg
Ian, can I respectively ask you to stop or tone down your common sense and realistic comments.
You will be starting to upset some of the contributors to this site.
Long may it continue.
March 15, 2022
+1
March 15, 2022
It’s called Socialism. There’s really no need to describe it in any other way than that. The State wants to suck the life out of the civil space using any and all means at its disposal. It’s vicious, it’s nasty and it’s barbaric.
The power grab hasn’t even started. At present we have amateur. toy town Marxists in power but when the naive, clueless, dependent voter votes in true Marxists like Starmer then they’ll go for the jugular and introduce all forms of State appropriation, dismantle democracy and erode freedoms down to a minimum to destroy opposition though we are seeing such methods now being introduced under John’s government
How long can the Tory party deceive the voter into thinking they’re still the party of freedom, democracy and the individual? From where I am sitting the Tory party is now nothing more than a progressive, woke extension of Labour and its sister party the Democrat Party of the US.
People are being actively deceived and that is contemptible
March 15, 2022
You are right Dom. I can’t tell the difference now between the 3 main useless parties. I cannot vote for insanity any longer.
March 15, 2022
The Zero Carbon policy is diametrically incompatible with the Petro Dollar.
The Petro Dollar is what maintains the West (and democracy) as the dominant force in the world.
Green policies are nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing designed to destroy democracies in the West.
March 15, 2022
Watermelons, green on the outside red on the inside was the colourful description.
March 15, 2022
Completely agree….however I’m not against green energy I’m just against the banning of brown energy
March 17, 2022
Did you actually listen to Sir John’s conversation?
I’m not sure whether it was an interview, really. It seemed to be an opportunity for the IEA to use a known name to attract viewers so that their interlocutor could press the IEA’s own agenda, which he did at length, and I commend Sir John’s not being diverted from the points that he wished to make, which were, I think, generally good sense and well-reasoned.
March 15, 2022
Actual car sales figures 2020 to 2021:
Diesel sales down 68%
Petrol sales down 16%
Hybrid electric sales up 34%
Battery electric sales up 76%
Of the 5 most popular model cars sold in February 2021 two are all electric.
Meanwhile in Norway – which has pursued electric car friendly policies – virtually all new cars are now electric.
Turns out the products are popular Mr Redwood – but I did chuckle hearing two Brexitists moaning about everyone else’s modelling being wrong.
Reply What proportion of total sales all electric? Still very small
March 15, 2022
Using percentage alone is misleading….please provide actual figures
March 15, 2022
@Andy Norway is blessed not with coal and gas but granite, snow, ice and plenty of tall rivers flowing down fjords to the sea. Norsk Hydro ring a bell? Heroes of Telemark?
Add geography to mathematics and history to your list. People die for freedom as you seem oblivious to Ukrainian men, women and students in dire straits!
March 15, 2022
Fighting for freedom and the poor children suffering to in appalling gruesome inhumane conditions. Unbelievable cruelty that needs stopping.
March 15, 2022
SMMT —
1.65m new cars registered in UK 2021.
Electric bev – 190,727
Hybrid phev – 114,554
Diesel – 135,773
(+mhev – 98,753)
Petrol – 762,103
(+mhev – 198,025)
hev – 147,256
March 15, 2022
According to the Society of Motor Manufactures 38% of new car sales last month were made up of a combination of Battery Electric, Plug-in Hybrid Electric and Hybrid Electric.
A further 15% were petrol or diesel hybrids.
So, in other words, the majority of new cars sold last month in the UK were either fully or partly electric.
March 15, 2022
Odd figures young andy because all hybrids have an engine so the 38% and the 15% are the same.
March 15, 2022
Battery car sales are up mainly second city cars for rich virtue signalling people with parking at home – this is due to government market rigging in taxes, ULEZ charges, congestion charges, subsidies, some cities banning or threatening to ban ICU cars… they do not even save any CO2! Other sales are down as it is best to keep your old car – given the above market rigging and general uncertainty about the green insanity of this government or a Labour/SNP loon one to follow in two years.
March 15, 2022
Insanity indeed on the face of it but we must remember that Boris is in thrall to his globalist chums who intend to destroy life as we know (knew?) it, or even kill most of us off.
March 16, 2022
A Tesla Model 3 is not a “city” car, nor the other top 6 BEVs (According to Admiral).
Given the amount of whining you do one would suspect you are a shill for the oil companies ..
March 16, 2022
Not at all, I am just someone independent & qualified in this area and so understands the reality of electric cars.
March 17, 2022
I very much doubt you are “qualified” for the range of topics you comment on including general chemistry, chemical engineering, medicine, virology, pharmacology, epidemiology, not to mention grid scale electrical systems, and the rest.
Even if you were “qualified” your comments are very “creative” with facts and data. Actually you very rarely offer any data to back up you opinions.
You claim a numerate and physics background and berate those responsible for policy where they have none, yet I have seen very little evidence of a scientific or engineering attitude in your posts.
March 15, 2022
11.6% of sales were all electric they rest petrol, diesel or hybrid, this mainly due to market rigging and as second city cars for the rich. Or as company cars/van for businesses or government departments that like to project a fake “greenwash” image for marketing/PR reasons. They save no CO2 (in fact produce more than keeping you old car) all fully considered they are just “emissions elsewhere” cars. That only work economically in a heavily government rigged market.
March 15, 2022
distorted by new car shortages due to covid hitting production and supply chain, and distorted by the extreme anti diesel measures the state has put into the system.
March 15, 2022
The best selling is a Tesla Model 3 if it lasts 8 years it will probably cost you about £750 PCM plus maintenance, tyres, insurance, chargers over 8 years plus a little electricity £8000 total say. If you do 10,000 miles PA it will be about £1 a mile plus elec. Plus they will soon find a way to tax you – the market rigging will not last long. My old cars cost about 20p a mile including fuel and of that about 12p is government tax on fuel and road tax.
March 16, 2022
Andy, The reason battery electric sales are up is because this government has incentivised people to switch (it won’t last long, Sunak is probably ready to make the switch anytime) and companies like Kia are making more affordable electric vehicles available for fleets in the UK. If the Chinese follow through with their electric city car available for less than £8k then you’ll see the switch over.
There is still a massive problem in second-hand car sales affecting all second-hand car buyers as the risk of a replacement battery being required at too high a cost for this market is too great at the moment. I feel very sorry that people will be priced out of owning their own car freedom in about ten years time.
March 15, 2022
Thank you for making that interview accessible. Some observations. ARM deserves a mention because it’s innovative RISC architecture enabled Apple to create the smart phone. That was c30 years after Intel’s first IC. Along the way there has been continuous innovation driven by the power of Moore’s Law, and competition, not the laws of government. Net Zero in the UK is driven by the laws of governments and “picking winners”. This approach will fail.
Although you do not query the models, perhaps you could challenge your mathematical colleagues at Oxford to explain the mathematical alchemy whereby reliable linear forecasts can be made 50 years ahead in the chaotic system that is our climate, while at the same time ignoring three key drivers of climate, namely solar radiation, volcanic activity and cloud behaviour. Because that is what we are asked to believe.
March 15, 2022
As a (clearly slightly superior) Cambridge Mathematician (now turned Physicist, businessman and Engineer), I can assure you that one cannot predict the climate in 50 or 100 years reliably (this even if we did have all the input dates needed & we certainly do not have them). We do not know future volcanic activity, future populations, CO2 output, methane outputs…future technical innovations, charges in farming, any serious meteor impacts, genetic changes in plants, crops, trees animals, sunspot and other sun activity, wars, when fusion will become practical, the very many complex feedback mechanisms…
We cannot even reliably predict the world climate for the next week or month. Also the weather tomorrow (unlike tossing fare dice) is clearly affected the weather yesterday and so on.
Adaptation to any climate changes that do arise (as they arise) is the sensible way to go be they colder, hotter, windier, wetter or calmer and drier. Wasting billions on a war against CO2 plant food is idiotic, vastly expensive, pointless and counterproductive. The very real danger to lives is the insane net zero political agenda.
March 16, 2022
input data!
March 16, 2022
There is no need to predict the climate reliably in order to act sensibly, only to show that the probability of serious problems if we continue as we are is unacceptably high.
That has been done absolutely assiduously.
You can’t be certain that you will be killed if you run blindfold across a motorway, but only a complete fool would argue that that fact makes it safe.
March 15, 2022
Oldtimer
Good post and smack on the money.
All the time all this saving the world crap has been going on, never once has there been a balanced debate. The people driving it all have had hidden agenda’s.
How much money has been wasted by politicians to get well respected professionals in all of this to investigate, and present a paper only to see it totally ignored?
Aĺl it has done is generate hate bordering on open warfare by the supporters of interested parties where good common sense and reason flies out of the window, destroying real legitimacy in all their claims. And the fable of the emperor’s new clothes gets even bigger.
March 15, 2022
Oldtiner
Excellent post.
March 15, 2022
The problem with your post, OT, is that it is roughly thirty years out of date, and that forecast-, climate- or economic models (for that matter) do not use a linear representation of phenomena. To the very least they involve a few to many non-linear differential equations (have you ever actually looked at the law of momentum and mass conservation plus the first law of thermodynamics, on a rotating sphere), which is why weather forecasts have been using ‘deterministic chaos’ ideas originally introduced by Edward N. Lorenz, the first one to have discussed as early as 1969 unpredictability, ‘butterfly effect’, ‘attractors’ and chaos.
There is a good reason why some weather centres starting in mid’90s started to use ‘ensemble prediction systems’(EPS) to forecast the weather, with practically all such operational meteorological centres nowadays using EPS.
But ask Lifelogic, he will explain everything to you, or maybe not.
March 15, 2022
Another wonderful lecture from Professor Hefner.
March 16, 2022
Thanks, P2.
March 15, 2022
Well the weather forecasters, from my observation of the Met Office forecasts, is that they hedge their bets more than a few days ahead, pointing out the hazards of even short term predictions. That is irrelevant to my point. My reading of WG1 is that the scientists produce what they call “story lines” based on models, not one but several; many of the models fail when hind cast against historical data; they omit key drivers of climate (sun, volcanoes, clouds); they admit they cannot model clouds and their effects (and cite two studies that it would not be worth the effort anyway). They acknowledge that rising atmospheric CO2 produces feedback effects but apparently ignore them. Yet we are assured by the spin masters who write the Summary for Policy Makers that global temperatures will rise by a very precise amount by a very precise date. That is not supported by the evidence – or rather lack of it. Yet the West is expected to commit cUSD 30 trillion to implement net zero based on this flaky advice!
March 15, 2022
There are sensible green policies and there is the Government & May’s net zero insanity/religion the two are very different. CO2 is not pollution and a bit more CO2 & a bit warmer would be a net good worldwide anyway.
Bottom up not top down as you rightly say but starting by accepting “the duff government science” is wrong. As it was on the counterproductive & extended Covid lockdowns and indeed on Vaccinating the young & even children.
Yes the climate changes and yes if all the millions of other things that affect climate are the same then a bit more CO2 will make it very slightly warmer but their is no climate emergency. Anyway no meaningful world cooperation will be forthcoming on this issue.
Many things being pushed by this government and the deluded Committee for Climate Change such as wind, EVs, heatpumps, solar, H2, electricity storage system… do not even save any and any significant CO2 anyway. The whole idea that atmospheric CO2 concentration is some king of world thermostat is clearly drivel. Millions of other factors and many are far more significant.
Too many people with their snouts in the green subsidy trough . A parallel with the corn laws that protected rich landowners – where is the Richard Cobden of today? Is it Farage yet again?
March 15, 2022
Yes LL. It is Farage again. He was brilliant tonight in Dudley.
March 16, 2022
He certainly is adept at exploiting the widespread misconceptions peddled by everything from Daily Express headlines to bar room loudmouths, yes.
March 17, 2022
What a dull cliche statement NHL
As bill says, you can do better than this.
March 16, 2022
He admitted that he was wrong when he said that Russia would not invade Ukraine.
Well done, Nigel, we’d not have known otherwise, would we?
March 17, 2022
The EU, the UN, the UK and the USA also didn’t think Russia would invade Ukraine so he is in good company.
Where was your prediction?
30 posts a day and yet I cannot recall any predictions from you NHL.
March 15, 2022
JR there is no doubt at all that (almost invariably) scrapping your old ICU car and causing a new EV to be built will cause far, far more world CO2 than keeping your old IC car. This even if it is always charged on lower carbon electricity (it will not be as we do not have any available). It will also cost far more, be less flexible, have limited range and very inconvenient, much longer refill/recharge times. Especially bad if you lack home parking/charging space for you 1,2 or 3+ cars. Useless for towing too.
A typical EV might only do 80,000 miles or even less before it becomes valueless due to the battery devaluation rendering it virtually worthless. This will use only about £5,000 of electricity and this will not come from zero carbon electricity as we have none (and very little spare low carbon electricity either). The manufacture of the car and battery (plus recycling) will use far more fossil fuel energy than this alone. Currently it will also raise no tax for the government (to largely waste) as they are mainly not taxed or congestion charges and are even subsidised with grants. The poor subsidising the rich yet again.
March 15, 2022
Lifelogic :
Agreed.
The least any Government can do is to insist that all evs are designed so that battery replacement is feasible and easily performed so that the whole vehicle does not need to be scrapped when the battery is no longer functional.
March 15, 2022
They will mainly be scrapped when the battery loses its ability to hold the charge, rather like all the old phones with sealed in batteries, it will rarely be economic to replace the battery. The vehicle makers will ensure built in redundancy by charging too much for any replacement batteries & parts.
March 15, 2022
You are wrong about meat production and methane. The solution is not to eat less meat, but for farmers:
a) to capture carbon in their soil through good pasture management.
b) capture methane through anaerobic digestion plants (manure). Sewage plants need converting as well.
c) and by feeding ruminants seaweed supplements (to reduce flatulence).
March 15, 2022
Good post James.
March 15, 2022
Never before has so much rubbish been so earnestly discussed by clever men.
And so precisely used to destroy lives.
Except maybe in religious circles?
And even then it was usually ( always) about ££££££££££££££s
Not forgetting the useful idiot foot-soldiers, of course, who always suffer too.
March 15, 2022
Of course.
At bottom this is all really about.
Finding new markets.
Keeping flagging capitalism going.
More money for the few…on highly favourable “green” terms. Planting a forest in someone else’s country = absolution from pollution.
An escape route from the financial mess they have created.
March 15, 2022
Off topic, predictably the Court of Appeal in Belfast has dismissed the case against the Irish protocol:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-60738556
Ruling that the 1800 Acts of Union have not actually been repealed but one section, Article 6, now has to be read subject to the Act to approve the EU withdrawal agreement including the Irish protocol.
Dry stuff, but the reaction from Baroness Kate Hoey is that the Belfast Agreement is finished:
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/opinion/kate-hoey-the-belfast-agreement-with-its-fatal-deception-is-finished-3611236
“If you had told me, or I suspect Lord Trimble, that the principle of consent was in fact merely symbolic and thus law-making and judicial powers over Northern Ireland could be handed to a foreign power, and the very fundamental basis of the Union itself – the Acts of Union – could be, in the lady chief justice’s own words “subjugated”, then there is no way that I would have ever supported the Belfast Agreement in the first place.
It is trite to point out that if law-making and judicial power could be handed to Brussels without offending the principle of consent, then so long as Northern Ireland remained technically within UK territory, law-making powers could equally be devolved to Dublin.
No self-respecting unionist can ever again operate the institutions of the Belfast Agreement. And nor can any of us pretend we are blind to the fatal deception at its heart.
It is finished.”
Surely we can all see where this is likely to lead, and it is somewhere we must not go, and is it not long past time for so-called “Conservative and Unionist” MPs to tell Boris Johnson that the present protocol has to be radically amended. Not its interpretation changed to reduce checks at points of entry into Northern Ireland, but the protocol itself changed to eliminate all EU checks on incoming goods.
I come back here to the same obvious thing that I wrote in that Irish Times letter in September 2018:
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/brexit-time-to-mind-our-own-business-1.3636142
“The legitimate interests of the EU and its Irish satrapy do not extend beyond the nature of the goods circulating in its own EU Single Market, and it is gross impudence on the part of the EU to presume that it should be able to continue to control goods permitted in the United Kingdom once we have freed ourselves from the EU, any more than the EU can expect to control goods permitted in the United States or other “third countries”.”
March 16, 2022
Denis, if you’d just remembered that Parliament is sovereign and cannot bind its successors then you would have saved yourself an awful lot of virtual ink.
March 16, 2022
And if you’d read it more carefully you might have noticed the word “predictably”.
March 17, 2022
I did notice it, but inferred that you meant that the Court would be biased in your opinion.
If you had understood my point then you would not have bothered to write your piece at all, nor many others.
March 17, 2022
You inferred incorrectly.
And did you also notice what Kate Hoey said?
March 17, 2022
Yes, she is as unhinged as ever.
March 17, 2022
Yes, and I guess that as far as you are concerned Lord Frost is also unhinged.
https://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2022/03/henry-hill-frosts-proposal-to-unlock-the-protocol-negotiations-has-london-given-brussels-reason-to-bite.html
“Which brings us back to Frost’s speech, wherein he says:
“On the EU side, it means getting real about a Northern Ireland Protocol that is now unworkable because of the events of last year. If the Protocol isn’t redone then the poison between us will remain. Northern Irish politics is in a downward spiral that is shaking the foundations of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement and the peace process. It’s in everyone’s interests to deal with that, and the EU will not escape its share of the responsibility if things go wrong.””
March 17, 2022
You lefties keep using mental health slang as a way of adding abuse to people.
It isnt acceptable.
March 15, 2022
The people need cheap reliable energy now….please tell your boss to start ‘gas fracking’ today
March 15, 2022
Maybe we all need to become Bunteresque?
A goodly layer of blubber to keep us warm.
Oh..but no food.
Are bugs fattening?
In what huge quantities?
And do they fulfil JR’s consumer compliance criteria?
They are VERY environmentally friendly.
Yum!
March 15, 2022
Do we wish to conduct our lives in an environmentally acceptable way or do we wish to crawl through life as planet vandals. Look at the detritus following a music festival and many other events to get the man/ woman on the 39 bus reaction. When man becomes a community, such as a corporation or a parliament he/she is no better. Our supermarkets continue legally to over indulge in plastic wrapping, sugar and salt up to the level they can get away with, because those paid to regulate have already been bought off. Were we the UK to decree that all fishing nets should be made of natural fibre it would solve much maritime pollution and the excess of foreign trawlers in our waters. My cynical conclusion is that too many people are indifferent as long as they believe it does no affect them, but it does.
March 15, 2022
Sir John,
At some point, such as when we start to have intermittent electrical power with the National Grid’s expectation of “volatile pricing”, you will be forced to examine and discuss the science of CAGW.
This is because the advocates of the Net Zero Strategy, whether they be those who believe religiously that the world will burn up in a couple of decades or they be the fifth column communists out to destroy the West’s economy and democracy, will demand that we continue the Strategy to the bitter end, whatever the economic/social/democracy costs because the ends justifies the means.
March 15, 2022
Excellent interview Sir John.
I am javing difficulty with the ‘taken as given’ part. Given by whom? By scientists who say the science is settled? When top scientists always state that science is never settled but is continually evolving.
They say that CO2 is a warming greenhouse gas but it is only .04% of the atmosphere. It is also absolutely essential to plant life and if it dropped too low, plant life would die and so would we. As I understand, CO2 has historically been much higher, and no, we did not all die, did we.
Somehow the delusion in the main parties is mammoth and following them would be suicidal!
Mr Farage, as usual understands.the mood of the electorate far better than our elected representatives.
i hope it does not take him 20 years to get us that referendum because long before that there will have been a revolution of the kind that our politicians do not like, brought about by politically engineered poverty, in the name of Net Zero!
March 15, 2022
The context of the Green revolution and the Net Zero agenda is the world economy of which our share continues to shrink. What is the point of this policy when taking into account the ever increasing carbon footprint of China which is now the world’s largest factory and ’emitter’? China does have environmental concerns but these are rational, being predicated on atmospheric pollution by noxious gases which mainly result from their use of coal as an energy source. The modern world cannot exist without manufactured products and these require dependable and cheap energy; if they are not made here they have to be made elsewhere and most of the save-the-planet products which the government is trying to foist on us, cost more than the equivalent product designed for cost and economy of use.
As I walk into town I invariably pass a forlorn car plugged into a public charging point and wonder whether its owner wishes he could drive round the corner to the local petrol station like everyone else in the neighbourhood despite the fuel being heavily taxed and far from free but used in a vehicle that cost far less and will last far longer.
March 15, 2022
For thrust. The cost of manufacturing those batteries for EVS is rising very quickly.
March 16, 2022
My calculations using latest raw material prices suggest they have trebled since late 2020. At the end of January they had only doubled.
March 15, 2022
LL
I’m sticking with my 1993 Peugeot 306 turbo diesel, nearly 200.000 miles, always starts, not a Chip in sight, no electronics, fabulous!
March 16, 2022
+1 cheaper and better than a new EV and save CO2 too should that concerns you.
March 15, 2022
An interesting interview, where sensible questions were asked, and time allowed for answers to be given.
Perhaps a training video using some of the footage could be made for the BBC. !
March 15, 2022
BBC reporting that the fracking gas well heads will be sealed up by the 30th June on order of the governments qango ‘Oil & Gas Authority’ and the government says it can not overrule the regulator…..SirJ please tell Boris he has just lost the next general election
March 15, 2022
Daily Mail on Line: Asking the question Did Putin plot with eco-warriors to stop UK fracking to make us more dependent on his gas supplies?
High lighted on the Not a Lot of people Knows That website today.
Would not put anything past the man.
March 15, 2022
Turbo. Highly likely I would say. Apparently the EU is paying Russia billions a tear for energy. They are heavily reliant on Russia. Who are tge silly blilies now then?
March 16, 2022
I think that you will find that it is mainly privatised companies, usually national, buying Russian fuels, not any European Union institution.
They buy from whomever gives them best value, don’t they?
March 18, 2022
FuS, which part of the EU would buy Russian gas? the EU Commission, the EU Council, the EU Parliament? Some of the EU27 countries are reliant on Russian, not all. Bosnia-Herzegovinia, North Macedonia, Moldova are 100% reliant on Russian gas (uk.news.yahoo.com, 03/03/2022). Germany is at 49%, Italy 46%, France 24%, UK 5%.
But even these figures can be somewhat misleading, as the fraction of gas in the total energy mix of each country has to be accounted for. Gas accounts for 15.8% of the Primary Energy for France in 2020, so 0.24 * 0.158 = 0.04, 4% of total French energy is dependent on Russia.
For UK, gas accounts for 40% in 2019, so 0.40 * 0.05 = 0.02, 2% of total UK energy depends on Russia.
Now a subsidiary question: if I were a fracking company would I want to spend £m/billions to possibly help UK get rid of its ‘dependence’ on Russian gas? Maybe only if the UK government were to guarantee the same level of profits I could get working in other non-UK gas rich environments.
March 15, 2022
Stop These Things March 16th 2021 No end date for coal and nuclear
All of a sudden, even its rabid the anti-fossil fuel Greens have backflipped on plans to kill off Germany’s nuclear and coal-fired plants. Necessity is, in this case, the mother of ideological reinvention.
Tsvetana Paraskova tells the tale of how reality is driving Germany’s grand renewables reversal.
Germany Goes For Full Energy Policy Overhaul Amid Ukraine Crisis
Oil Price
Tsvetana Paraskova
28 February 2022
The Russian invasion of Ukraine upended the energy policy of Germany. In just a few days since Putin decided to invade Ukraine, Europe’s biggest economy – heavily dependent on Russian pipeline gas and the end point of another project to receive natural gas from Russia – has suspended the new pipeline project and said no energy source is off the table when it comes to ensuring German energy security. {continued)
Begs the question if they can move the goalposts why can’t we?
They are putting their industrial economy first it would seem. They obviously do not play with a busted flush.
March 17, 2022
Rational people accept that to win an existential war it may be necessary to make compromises.
And to do that it might be necessary to abandon previous objectives, or to suspend them, or to accept only a partial realisation of them.
It’s a pity that some anti-European Union fanatics are clearly incapable of doing this.
March 15, 2022
A very interesting conversation.
Thank you for bringing this subject out into the open.
It is a shame our media giants don’t give this great debate of the modern time more prominence.
March 15, 2022
OT
In light of the actions by Pakistan and possibly India who is going to stand up and demand the cessation of any further UK foreign aid funding?
More to the point will the government actually enforce it?
March 15, 2022
like this interview John very much
thanks for doing this stuff
very best wishes
March 15, 2022
I have to say that Farage in Dudley tonight was brilliant. He explained how Net Zero was ridiculous and asked why we still have 5% vat on our bills plus the green levy of 25% added. The rich may be able to afford it but the poor can’t. Those that rent will have heat pumps and insulation done for them probably with an increase in their rents but those at the bottom end of home owners will struggle. What’s new? EVs are about to become more expensive too. He spoke so much common sense this evening on a number of issues he made the MP’S look like numpties. Etc ed Best programme on tv tonight.
March 16, 2022
100% agree
March 16, 2022
You make a point that EVs need to be “cheaper, faster, better” and also highlight Apple as the main driver of smartphones.
But Apple products have never been cheap, very much the opposite, yet very many people use them and chase ethe latest versions. The answer has been the adoption by mobile operators of packaged tariffs that include the expensive device and amortise the cost over a period of time.
The same business model has applied to cars for decades – PCP and PCH, so the cost element is malleable.
Also your comparison between old ICE and new BEV with regards to CO2/Energy costs associated with the replacement only hold, to an extent, if you force the early replacement of the ICE with an EV. The comparison doesn’t hold by your measures if you compare new ICE with new BEV.
March 16, 2022
A very interesting discussion, particularly the sections from 35 mins on “universal tax” and “go for growth”, I wasn’t aware of the envirnomental kuznetz curve.
But, how do yo suggest the government engages with the public to enable meaningful discussion, what platforms? I feel your bog enables more discussion and engagement that the usual government approaches of shouting policy at sitting targets with focus groups as fig leaves.
Completely agree with your proposals around exploiting “reservoir management”.