Tony Blair is right to say the transition to net zero will prove too dear and too unpopular with the public. He failed to point out that the policies to import gas instead of using our own, to get people to buy battery cars and recharge them from gas generated electricity, and to close down our energy using factories to import instead all mean more world CO 2.
These policies deindustrialise the UK. They make consumers poorer paying all the green levies, carbon taxes and windfall taxes taxes. They divert massive amount of capital to replacing perfectly good energy assets. They mean a big rise in state debt and interest charges taxpayers have to pay as government spends on carbon capture, increased grid and renewables.
There needs to be drastic and urgent change of policy. Will the PM move Mr Miliband out of his current job and get on with reversing the taxes, subsidies, high energy prices , bans and import based strategies which are doing such harm?
April 30, 2025
Good morning.
There is an old joke that went – “A tourist asked a local for directions to the next town. To which the local replied; I wouldn’t start from here !”
Slightly cleaned up to pass moderation but the point well serves. And that is – If I was PM and I needed to sort out the Cabinet, I wouldn’t start with RedEd.
Just saying 😉
April 30, 2025
Now we know who really is pulling 2TK s strings
There may be a slight pause on the ruinous road to net zero but the uniparty has too much invested in it to reverse policy.
After closing down all energy intensive industry with the loss of good well paid jobs admitting they eere wrong would cause anarchy.
Only when we get a Reform government together with Vance in the USA will the whole excrement show be dismantled
Yesterday wind was providing 3% of electricity demand and after 6pm solar almost zero. Gas and Nuclear providing a whopping 67%.
Iberia should be a wake up call bit it won’t be. Milibrain will insist it was caisef by Spain needing more renewable energy
Idiots the lot of them.
Time to buy some popcorn I think
April 30, 2025
Scientifically ignorant morons or crooks in on the scam? Take your pick.
Blair even despite him coming round to reality on net zero, still wants the moronic carbon capture lunacy. It is CO2 they capture, harmless, net beneficial plant, tree and crop food…
May 1, 2025
No reason why they can’t be both.
May 1, 2025
I thinkthe wake-up call was the Gran Apagon in Spain. It seems to have started from the solar dominated south east of the country, where excess supply resulted in overvoltages, amplified by interactions between the solar farm inverters. These became severe, and exceeded the power levels for a major transmission line which tripped out. The power tried to redistribute across other links, and 1.3 seconds later a second transmission line disconnected. That left the rest of the country seriously short of electricity, and because they had so little inertia providing generation from nuclear, CCGT and hydro, the result was that the grid frequency fell extremely rapidly, I would guess below 47.5Hz, because 60% of demand was disconnected in a program of automated disconnection that operates in tranches relative to frequency including 40% of Portugal’s supply and the interconnector to France which was only exporting under 1GW, and also large swathes of generation including all the nuclear most of the CCGT, 10GW of solar, along with plenty of hydro, wind and other.
Portugal has since decided not to trade electricity with Spain for the time being to avoid importing the next power cut. That will force them to run CCGT to provide stability to their grid.
I’ve mentioned before that across Europe we are seeing solar surpluses at midday that drive prices into negative territory. These are severe in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. For now the UK tries to take advantage with huge imports, but it leaves our own solar increasingly dominant in domestic supply at the expense of inertia providing generation. NESO plan to operate at progressively lower levels of inertia, exposing us to a Spanish style collapse, which could also come if the Continent suffers a similar powercut feeding our imports. There is a high degree of complacency at NESO and in DESNZ about these risks. Instead of covering up important frequency events such as in December 2023 they should be investigating them thoroughly, and putting their zero fossil fuel ambitions on hold.
May 2, 2025
Thanks for this relevant information. You are a bright shining light on this blog …
May 3, 2025
I’m shocked hefner, that you agree with the last sentence ” they should be…putting their zero fossil fuel ambitions on hold”
May 3, 2025
Why do you say that, MiB? Don’t you appreciate an intelligent, knowledgeable and detailed comment?
April 30, 2025
You say extreme net zero John. There is no other version. It’s not achievable in the medium term and 90% of the world is ignoring it.
April 30, 2025
Only the ‘white’ world was suckered. Also by the Asylum scam and the clot-shot scam.
No wonder the rest of the world thinks we stole their wealth – we are obviously too stupid to create anything.
April 30, 2025
Currently wind is providing 0.58gw or 1.9% if demand
Says it all
April 30, 2025
We’d be dead in the water if it wasn’t for gas power generated energy
April 30, 2025
Net zero is the biggest barrier to growth we have, followed closely by tax and regulation.
If Rachel the PPI complaints officer is sacked the markets will react, if Ed the blinkered goes there will be some eco zealots on the street.
Taxes can be reversed. Power stations that have been destroyed have gone forever. Industrial capacity has gone forever.
April 30, 2025
In that case the Marxists got what they wanted. Climate change act 2008 the most expensive piece of legislation in history, our kind host being 1 of only 3 MPs who voted against it. Everyone else is complicit! Why did Cameron carry on Blair’s work?
April 30, 2025
….and they’d do it again tomorrow ….can’t trust tory or labour
April 30, 2025
He aspired to be the Heir to Blair.
April 30, 2025
Indeed who would want to start from here, what an appalling state the country is in given the appalling management that started with John Major (actually even with Thatcher and has continued through to the dire Starmer. Tax, borrow, piss down the drain, over regulate, lockdown, coerce to take net harm vaccines plus net zero lunacy too.
If you vote Conservative you get lower taxes says Victoria Atkins Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs just now on Talk Radio. Does she think we are morons? We got far higher taxes, gross economic mismanagement, the farce of Covid lockdowns, net harm vaccines, corruption and 1m + net immigration PA. They promised on thing and delivered the reverse. Kemi the “engineer” is still unlike Blair pushing net zero. Not much of an energy engineer then!
Reply I suspect she was talking about local government claiming Conservative Councils do charge less than Labour or Lib ones.
April 30, 2025
To reply well perhaps. But overall under the tories taxes have gone up hugely for the last 14 years+. Victoria Atkins also claimed Kemi was in first on the row back on net zero before Blair – hardly she is a let’s go over the cliff but slightly more slowly than Labour. I see that the climate change committee headed up a classics graduate has rejected Blair’s call. Having heard this women on the BBC it seems she knows as much about energy, physics, electric engineering, entropy as I know about Greek and Latin. Why was she appointed did all the sensible scientists refuse or was a sensible scientist who understood the realitied of physics and energy engineering the last thing they wanted?
April 30, 2025
I watched the election shouting match on Channel 4 last night. The words “net zero” were uttered once, by the Reform representative, but that was instantly shut down. On the other hand the Liberal Democrat was allowed plenty of time to deceive the public about a customs union with the EU, and a young man in the audience was encouraged to say that we should rejoin the EU. The discussion centred on how the government should spend more money on this that and the other with no consideration of where that money was to come from when the UK economy is now 22% smaller than might have been expected before 2008 when something happened to cut the long running trend growth rate from 2.7% a year to 1.1% a year. Not before 2016 when we voted to leave the EU, or before any later date connected with the protracted process of formally leaving the EU, but before 2008, the very clear break in the chart of per capita GDP shown here:
https://globalbritain.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Ewen-Stewart-Chart-1-UK-GDP-per-capita.jpg
Reply Yes , dreadful hosting of debate. Why encourage comments on EU and foreign policy for a programme on local government. Little discussion of Councils anti motorist policies, wasteful spending, Council bankruptcies etc.
April 30, 2025
Indeed a good chart on the link dire growth per cap in recent years (fairly dire even before that) and now we have even more anti-growth Starmer and tax to death, doom loop chancellor one Rachel Reeves.
April 30, 2025
Even the dire growth in the chart you link is probably a large exaggeration as they usually under estimate the real population rather considerably. Also GDP is rather a poor measure of real economic health and living standards as government counts all sorts of entirely negative activities as being a positive contribution to GDP.
April 30, 2025
I can only wonder what on earth you were doing watching Channel 4, Denis. So others don’t have to?
Thanks, but knowing what it’s like, I wouldn’t anyway.
April 30, 2025
@ Reply – I cut the BBC out of my life twelve years ago and consider I am the better for it. I have also not spent c.£1,700.
April 30, 2025
Same here in 2016 and feel better not feeding the monster.
April 30, 2025
Snap. But I am only 3 years in.
April 30, 2025
Us too. I think 5 years now.
April 30, 2025
I switched off after the first 5 minutes. I knew what I was going to get, when Channel 4 was hosting it. They are anything but impartial. I live in St. Albans. Daisy Cooper is my MP, but I wont be voting this time. It doesn’t seem to matter what the ordinary person thinks, they are expected to just pay for all the crazy ideas these Parties come up with.
April 30, 2025
Do we really have to give Blair credit for pointing out the bleeding obvious to the Eco Lunatics in the Establishment?
Did he have anything interesting to say about invading other countries and starting/participating in illegal wars?
The only news report I’d like to see on Blair is one reporting his arrival in The Hague.
April 30, 2025
I watched a YT Vid recently with a Former British Diplomat to the UN. Let us say that, it was very illuminating and confirmed a lot of what people thought of TB.
April 30, 2025
I’ve just searched through the report for various keywords and cannot find any recognition of the potential scale of the damage that the pursuit of net zero may have already caused for the UK economy and therefore for public finances and therefore for public services. Similarly when Daily Telegraph journalists write about the cost of net zero they almost always focus on the future cost and ignore the 22% shortfall in GDP that has accumulated since 2008, a large part of which lost growth, and tax revenues, must surely be connected with Parliament’s decision that it was more important to save the planet from overheating than to grow the UK economy.
And that number is not just my number that I worked out from official GDP statistics; the Resolution Foundation got there before me. From page 40 of this 2023 report “Ending Stagnation”:
https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Ending-stagnation-final-report.pdf
“Looking back over the past 15 years reveals that Britain’s economy in 2023 is 22 per cent smaller than it would have been had we continued on our pre-financial crisis trend.”
So all pre-2008 projections for what public provision would be affordable in future years suddenly became hugely over-optimistic, and as that core problem of long term economic stagnation was not caused by leaving the EU obviously it would not be solved by rejoining the EU.
April 30, 2025
They’re not going to report on the completely wasted sunk cost of the nonsense so far.
Blair’s “revelation” is just part of the NuLabour Grandees’ attempt to drag the Party back towards something approaching sanity before the next General Election. It’ll get more frantic after Thursday.
April 30, 2025
Bliar is like a (bad influence ed) in this country
Him and gold giveaway Broon did more to damage this country than any government until 2TK took over. For once I agree with him but would be interested in his motives, after all he’s the epitome of WEF thinking together with all the other uniparty leaders.
It must be losing hom money.m
April 30, 2025
Quite so. And now we no longer refine crude oil in the UK. It’s hard to believe that our own government is so intent on damaging our economy, resilience and security.
May 1, 2025
is that ‘our’ government or others pulling the strings?
April 30, 2025
Well some joy in heaven over one sinner who repenteth perhaps. But I give no credit to Blair he has been a complete disaster for this country (see David Starkey) the foolish law graduate still thinks we would concentrate on carbon capture another mad waste of money that wastes vast amounts of energy for zero benefit.
April 30, 2025
A bit more CO2 plant food and even slight warmer are on balance a net good especially for the UK. Anyway nothing the UK does will make any real significant difference to CO2 anyway. It just exports our industry and makes the UK even more uncompetitive.
April 30, 2025
It is an interesting phenomenon to observe – how probably 90% of people, and almost 100% of politicians and the media, have fallen hook, line and sinker for the climate change scam. Is it mass hypnosis? Mass stupidity? Mass gullibility? Collective hysteria? It’s as mystifying to me as getting loads of people into churches to mutter nonsenses to an imaginary deity. It is all very baffling and proves the adage that you can fool most of the people most of the time.
April 30, 2025
Oh it’s more cruel this way. He’s actually scared at the idiocy he has sown and can’t do anything about it. He thought he could destroy all of us and remain in the WEF elite, and his sons following. But now he sees there will be nothing for them to Lord it over.
He’s not stupid, so he knows. Pure unadulterated torture.
April 30, 2025
Donna: Too soon ? Mr Blair has now ‘clarified’ his comments since yesterday …. It’s now reported that he thinks PM Starmer’s approach is “the right one”.
Also reported yesterday Downing St has drafted a proposed joint statement with the EU that commits UK / EU to rejecting Trump’s most controversial policies. Said to be the most significant political declaration on Europe since Brexit. Commits Britain & Brussels to the Paris Climate Agreement and free trade ” both of which Mr Trump has publicly objected to while in office” The declaration will be the centrepiece of the Britain & Brussels Reset. Apparently.
April 30, 2025
Perhaps the results of tomorrow’s local elections and the Runcorn bye election will concentrate Starmer’s mind. Even if they do he will probably screw up energy policies even more as he scrambles to change direction. Nothing less than repeal of the Climate Change Act and a new energy secretary who believes it needs to be repealed will do.
April 30, 2025
Starmer’s loathing of us will increase when he sees how we vote. It will not occur to him that we are right after all we were wrong on the Brexit vote weren’t we?
April 30, 2025
Sir John,
Sadly, I cannot see any main party cutting back the net zero nonsense. Too many people have pumped too much money into it and are making too much money to give it up.
The biggest mistake we made, was to allow the environmental lobby to combine the anti fossil fuels and the green agendas into a single issue, which made it easier for them to ignore any questioning voices.
I am sure, as technology increases, so will our ability to cut our use of fossil fuels. I am sure we need to grasp the nettle and go down the nuclear route. We needn’t have plastered our green and pleasant land with ugly windmills and solar farms.
I note that Blair also continued his impression of a dog with a bone pushing again for digital id.
April 30, 2025
Will the PM move or sack Mr Miliband ?
Simple answer, No.
Our PM seems to rather enjoy getting involved in the problems of other countries, where he can share responsibility, rather than spending time in charge of sorting out our own problems.
He is not a true leader, that is why he wants to rejoin the EU !
April 30, 2025
Let’s hope he goes all out on Ukraine. The defeat there is looming large.
April 30, 2025
The answer to your question is no. Starmer has recently doubled down on his commitment to ‘clean energy grids’ and ‘growth in new clean energy jobs’. To expect otherwise would be to expect him to renounce a major plank of his political belief system – and demote the apparently most popular minister in the eyes of Labour Party members. We continue to expect power blackouts outs in the near future, and contorted justification for them, by a government with a huge majority.
April 30, 2025
Bliar’s consultancy produced this report. Apart from being factually wrong, it had all the hallmarks of being a paid-for piece of research. Dig into that, and doubtless the client will have been the fossil fuel lobby.
Green industries in the UK are the fastest growing sector in the economy. Bliar should shut ….. up
April 30, 2025
Then why are they subsidised? Let’s remove all the extra charges etc and see if the bloom standing in their own two feet.
April 30, 2025
ft.com 22/12/2023 ‘Tony Blair think-tank revenues hit $140 mn as governments pay for advice’.
Do you have a proof that the Institute for Global Change is subsidised by the Government? If yes, you should give us the reference.
April 30, 2025
I was referring to ‘green industries are the fastest growing sector of the economy’.
Peanuts for think tanks are irrelevant,
April 30, 2025
There you go, Hefner:
‘The Tony Blair Institute confirmed that it had received donations from the U.S. State Department.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair_Institute_for_Global_Change/
Always happy to do your research for you. ):
May 1, 2025
Thank you, a lot of governments (Azerbaïdjan, UAE, Russia, USA, …) have had contracts with the TBI. My comment was about the TBI being subsidised by the UK Government.
May 1, 2025
The FCDO and USAID are among listed donors in their latest accounts.
May 2, 2025
Donations or contracts?
As presented in gov.uk 31/10/2024 ‘Summary of responses: UK international development white paper, call for evidence’, the TBI had participated in the exercise.
Then I can only find
– devtracker.fcdo.gov.uk ‘Tax and Economic Governance Programme (TEG)’,
– institute.global 20/05/2024 ‘Governing in the Age of AI: A new model to transform the state’,
which looks like contracts to me.
April 30, 2025
‘Paid for piece of research’
That’s a laugh from the blindfolded. The whole climate scam is paid for research, otherwise it would never have surfaced.
May 4, 2025
If you go against ‘paid for piece of research’ you should somewhat enlarge the scope of the comments and see how most think tanks are paid, Institute for Economic Affairs and the others on both the right and the left. How do you think Liz Truss had had her bright ideas?
I am afraid you are like a horse with a one-sided blinker …
April 30, 2025
Green industries without exception rely on subsidies paid for by the consumer
Remove these subsidies and the industries evaporate
Trump has banned all subsidies to wind and solar, just watch them disappear
April 30, 2025
+1
April 30, 2025
When all else fails SG, resort to slurs about the fossil fuel lobby.
Very poor.
PS
By how much will the UK getting to Net Zero reduce global temperatures.
Do you know?
April 30, 2025
Did you read this report? Did Sir John read it? Did any of the distinguished contributors to this blog read it?
What do you make of the ‘positive disruption’ the report is advocating? What of its nuclear energy advocacy? What about SRM? What of the financial constraints? What of what it says about international collaboration with the present biggest emitter countries? What? What? …
Or is it the usual, John’s saying ‘Jump’ and most people here answering ‘How high?’ without asking themselves first ‘What?’ and ‘Why?’
institute.global 29/04/2025 ‘The climate paradox: Why we need to reset action on climate change’.
April 30, 2025
Oh you really are triggered now hefner.
Too many home truths from your former hero Tony Blair has made you very irritated.
April 30, 2025
“Green industries in the UK are the fastest growing sector in the economy.”
I don’t think destroying the rest of the economy is something to brag about SG. “Green Industries” can’t and won’t survive without massive subsidies …. and those subsidies won’t be available when the economy has been completely trashed by the Eco Nutters.
April 30, 2025
+1
April 30, 2025
Are green industries the fastest growing in the UK?…or is it just that all the others are being destroyed by the NZ Zealots
April 30, 2025
The Climate Change Act is a child of Blair is it not?
Happy to see Blair say net zero is destructive but I’d like to see him recant too.
April 30, 2025
I have been thinking of myself recently as being a bit of a nutter. As well as a generator, I have also installed a large battery that can provide (essential) power to my house in the event of a power cut – as just experienced in Spain and Portugal (and a bit of France). I am today making a list of other essentials to stock allowing for not being able to buy anything in the shops – as their tills won’t work – and more than a day without electricity will see looting and rioting.
As well as food, water, loo paper etc. I am beginning to think about having to defend my property when others notice I still have electricity.
April 30, 2025
Oh, and I’m going to make sure I have some cash available too.
April 30, 2025
In the last couple of years I’ve bought two bio-ethanol fires and a year’s supply of fuel; a calor gas fire and two large bottles of gas; a gas camping stove/gas; a 4-charge mobile phone re-charger; candles and matches; I have 3 months supply of food in the house and I keep a stash of cash.
You can’t rely on the Government.
May 1, 2025
Are you having a bunker dug too?
April 30, 2025
Black out blinds. Keep your electric supply secret.
April 30, 2025
So Blair has come out and accepted his Party’s fixation on Green energy policy is wrong because the facts don’t support the nonsense storyline.
Will he shortly come out and state clearly his open borders policy is wrong because the facts do not support the nonsense story line of advantageous multiculturalism?
April 30, 2025
This should be an excellent opportunity for some clear blue water for the Conservatives. Even slippery Sir Oinky is going to find it difficult to repudiate net zero – it has quasi-religious status on the left.
It is of course like a long drawn out lockdown: a very expensive policy foisted on us by ‘expert’ groupthink which is not and has never been subject to proper, rigorous, scrutiny and debate. Dissenting opinion, however eminent and qualified, is denigrated and cancelled. The education system and the state controlled media parrot the party line, and so the public by and large goes along with it, albeit grumbling, as the ‘experts’ know best. In the end a change is forced after the huge damage becomes clear for all to see, with the costs far outweighing any possible benefit.
Tony Blair has excellent political instincts which is why he sees Labour must repudiate net zero. But, as you say, avoids pointing out the fundamental fallacies at the heart of the policy.
April 30, 2025
I am frustrated by lack of enforcement of solar and batteries required on new build. Why has this been a requirement with all new houses built. I have emailed Milliband and Rayner on this subject just falls on deaf ears. I even put forward a logo Generate it We’re you use it.
April 30, 2025
They can’t sell new builds already, lumbering them with no energy source but the costly ‘pumps’ would kibosh yet another industry completely.
May 1, 2025
It you want a reason why it is a bad idea look no further than Spain’s blackout caused by overreliance on solar. You could also look at OFGEM’s announcement that they are going to have to increase charges for local power networks substantially (but they have no idea how much). Domestic solar is a big driver of that cost when installations are more than sporadic.
April 30, 2025
Sir John, you seem to have forgotten Blair’s role as one of the instigators of all things global warming. I remember during his premiership a TV advertising campaign which featured a cartoon of a pet rabbit drowning in a flooded back garden. We were told that this was going to be happening more and more often and that it was all our fault for driving our cars or even simply turning our lights on at night. The drowning rabbit was obviously designed to frighten our children to death. Fortunately, it didn’t frighen mine because I told them it simply wasn’t true.
If you look hard enough online, there is plenty of evidence that Blair as Prime Minister was a climate change fanatic and that he has consistently maintained that view until recently. He has lately changed his mind and one must be grateful that he now acknowledges the truth (especially as he seems to still have a lot of influence over the more gullible in our midst), but the least he should do is apologise for the damage (and the financial cost to the nation) his ridiculous stance over the years has caused, and he should also apologise for sneering at people like me who were never taken in by the scaremongering.
April 30, 2025
It’s impossible to take anything Blair says at face value – when he was in #10 the Millibands thrived under his leadership. Blair was all for immigration and windmills. I don’t believe anything has changed in the Blair camp.
We are seeing more theatre from him!
All sensible people, those that saw Brexit as an opportunity can see through the falsities of net0 – there is no manmade climate change. The whole subject is being used by those seeking power, for the sake of it, over the rest of us.
Let’s continue to take anything Blair says with a very large dose of salt — He’s done too much damage in the past to be trusted in any way!
April 30, 2025
One can only hope. But 2TK appears unable to make any sensible domestic policy. Or perhaps I should say any sensible policy. No previous government has proved this dire so early in their tenure.i fear they cannot escape the culture of doubling down when proven wrong. Despair do I.
April 30, 2025
Net zero is key to the de-industrialization and degrowth one leg to the ‘transformation of Britain’ the other being changing the composition of the citizenry. These globalist ideas are openly talked about at universities and privately within activist groups. Of course, few would vote for them. It is one of the tragedies of the Conservative Party that they have not understood this agenda and moved to expose it and counter it. The ideas hide in plain sight.
April 30, 2025
Milliband is a fanatic but in Labour he is merely the front man. Removing him is not enough. Starmer’s Gang wouild just put in someone else – perhaps not such a twit but still a climate catastrophist.
April 30, 2025
I gather that Blair still favours ‘carbon capture schemes’ – the biggest ‘Net Zero’ lunacy. I won’t be employing his consultancy anytime soon.
April 30, 2025
+1
April 30, 2025
Blair is another one with horns growing out of the side of his head – remember him with George Dubya down on his knees praying for guidance before he lied about WMD in Iraq – millions died
April 30, 2025
Is not Mr. Blair still an unpopular figure amongst the Labour party so he might not have much influence?
Meanwhile, the British public still seem slow to grasp the damage being done, perhaps because they have absorbed so much propaganda about the net zero scam.
April 30, 2025
Agreed! We need an energy secretary who is a level headed thinker who will balance the needs of the country , and not someone who is obsessed at completing the job at any cost and however dis advantageous to the U.K.that maybe
April 30, 2025
After all Labour’s so-called achievements this is likely to become a protest vote. Few of them are prepared to be on the streets with normal people but only their party supporters.
After the Spanish power disaster lets hope that “the penny drops” for many to link the dots.
Bin men, rats and Labour linked.
Pork pies supplied by Starmer on St George’s day.
Not a good time for them despite the sunny weather.
April 30, 2025
With the rapid advance of the forces of Reform, parking their tanks firmly on Conservative and Labour lawns, and Blair’s intervention, we do seem to be making headway in keeping the hearts and minds of voters firmly against Net Zero.
Heat pumps are dead in the water and manufacturers are finding it impossible to shift enough EVs to satisfy the eco zealots in the government. We are seeing little or no progress towards building a fleet of SMRs and Miliband’s answer to everything is to stop gas production and build more unreliable wind and solar !
Power outages as we saw on the Iberian Peninsula should be a serious warning, yet 2TK seems unwilling to change course, even a little, despite the fact that they are deliberately cancelling thousands of jobs in the Scottish oil and gas industry. That alone is very damaging to our energy security and will have a severe effect on tax receipts and our balance of payments. The only indication that he might be listening, would be the sacking of Miliband in the inevitable post-local-election reshuffle.
Can we really afford to wait for a Reform-led government to take power in 2029 ?
May 1, 2025
Let us not forget the plans for insulation of buildings that won’t pay off for at least a hundred years. That is, never. That will be a huge bill pouring money away pointlessly.
April 30, 2025
How crazy does it get the Uniparty and their factions set out to destroy the UK for the sake of WEF Socialism. From the outset the plan was to disadvantage the Nation and its People.
The Taxpayer is being forced(forced) into funding and subsidising Foreign Governments and their industries, while the Government sends UK Industries down the drain and banishes them.
The big question why is it none of our major competitor Nations have the same malicious punishment for their people?
April 30, 2025
When a Government decrees a change of direction on a whole Nation that every one the must follow by law, a decree that will cost vast amount of money. Latest guesstimate the current Laws will cost the UK People £108billion.
Regardless of the cause, and the religion, (there is no reasoning) being followed would someone with half a brain also set out to remove the countries income? Deindustrialising, having an import only policy on the materials required to just live, feed, survive, then expect £108billion to materialise to pay the bill of a malicious Uniparty cant be explained in words printable here.
The Chinese, the Danish, the German, the French and many more governments have not thanked the UK Taxpayer for their funding – in reality they just laugh. How could the electorate vote in the Uniparty the party of destruction – its just self-harm
April 30, 2025
Tony Blair says that Labour’s Net Zero policies are VIEWED as unrealistic & unworkable and hence they are an electoral handicap. Not that they are wrong, for the report states that global emissions of CO2 are the highest they’ve ever been and global temperatures continue to rapidly climb.
According to the UAH satellite data the warming is 0.14 degrees C per decade. This is not “rapid”. In fact the IPCC Working Group 1 (“The Science”) can find no signals for climate change (precipitation, droughts, storms) other than this mild warming. See Table 12 in Chapter 12. And on P95 the IPCC say that doubling CO2 causes a mere 1.2 degrees C of warming.
Tony Blair and the Tories are essentially both now saying that whilst Net Zero is necessary to save the planet implementing it it will bankrupt the county and the necessary lifetsyle changes will not be popular…..what a surprise! Tony Blair’s solutions include a world government and sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere.
April 30, 2025
OR, At least you seem to have read T.Blair’s report.
Now please tell me, if CO2 has practically no real impact (according to Shula & Ott and to you) therefore no impact on sea ice, how comes that there are now various cruise companies (Hurtigruten, Noble-Caledonia, Seabourn, …) who offer Northwest Passage cruises during the Northern Summer? Those ships are cruise ships not icebreakers.
S&O say that there is no such thing as downward long wave radiation (DLWR) at the surface. The polar atmospheres are colder and much drier than atmospheres at lower latitudes, which makes absorption by water vapour less likely to overwhelm the part of the DLWR due to CO2 (and other greenhouse gases). The larger warming at high-latitudes than at low-latitudes then appears to follow the (wrong according to S&O) radiative transfer theory.
Please tell me or give me a reference how they explain such a differential warming and the reduction of the ice pack in summer. Thanks a lot in advance.
April 30, 2025
Instead of continually demanding answers to multiple questions in your posts hefner, why not simply tell us your own views supported by a little bit of data?
It’s the usual form of debate.
May 1, 2025
Have you ever looked at the sites I have (multiple times) been quoting?
Here are some new ones (just for you):
wmo.int 19/03/2025 ‘State of the global climate 2025’
copernicus.eu 17/04/2025 ‘Europe’s warmest year on record’
theccc.org.uk 30/04/2025 ‘Progress in adapting to climate change – 2025 Report to Parliament’
My own view is that:
– Shula & Ott is BS science, because they do not consider the steady-state solution to the atmospheric problem by doing what is usually done when integrating partial differential equations, ie considering some small time intervals over which they consider the various processes at work, solve for that particular time, then move to next time interval.
Their ‘finding’ that there is no downward long wave flux at the surface is simply ridiculous as it is a quantity that has been measured by various instruments for at least fifty years.
– Happer & van Wijngaarden use a proper radiative transfer theory but in a very biased way. First they only consider the doubling of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) concentration from the present value(s) (which allow them to ignore what has been happening over the last 50-60 years). Second they essentially only look at the long wave fluxes outgoing at the top of the atmosphere where the impact is indeed small whereas any type of similar calculations show the impact to affect the whole atmospheric column, from the surface to the top, affecting both upward and downward long wave fluxes.
I hope you’ll be satisfied and stop pretending I am refusing to debate. By the way what are you bringing to the ‘debate’?
May 1, 2025
You mischaracterise the Happer and Wijngaarden analysis. They divide the atmospheric column into 500 layers, estimating the local parameters of composition, pressure and temperature for each, which results in differing mean free paths between molecular collisions that transfer kinetic energy and for photon interactions with GHGs. They then calculate the radiative energy flows both up and down between successive layers to produce a net result at the top of the atmosphere. It’s not a TOA only analysis as you imply.
May 1, 2025
Well at least I am managing to encourage you to produce some data and arguments rather than passive aggressive sarcastic comments.
So that is nice.
May 2, 2025
They show only results at TOA, and don’t even mention anything happening at any other levels.
May 1, 2025
Checking on the Arctic ice extent I see it is now towards the higher end of the previous 5 years, so I suspect the lower extents in late summer will be no lower than previously. Such cruises are always subject to route changes, and are often undertaken by rich green enthusiasts who are suitably misguided by the alleged experts on board who preach apocalypse. They should cut their emissions and not take the cruises.
May 2, 2025
I agree with your comment on Arctic cruisers but not on the rest …
Climatology is usually calculated over 30 years.
marine.copernicus.eu ‘Arctic sea-ice extent’,
‘The Arctic sea-ice extent (ASIE) decreased by 12.7% per decade in September (that’s the summer minimum) from 1979 to 2022’. ‘The fifteen lowest minimum ASIEs have all been recorded since 2007’. ‘The fresh water content in the Arctic Ocean is growing’.
April 30, 2025
Sir John
Whatever he might say, why would any one listen to Blair? He is the architect of a failing Nation.
Those that followed him chose to keep us on his path and not to address his incompetence. In fact morphing into a One Party State probably pleases him no end
April 30, 2025
What the Country, the People are up against
From the Telegraph
“Ed Miliband claims Britain’s sky-high taxes on oil and gas producers have no impact on household bills.”
““No, that’s wrong,” the Energy Secretary said when a Sky News presenter suggested the North Sea taxes were a key reason that the UK had some of the world’s highest energy bills.”
May 1, 2025
Just like Rachel from Accounts’ tax increases on employment have had no impact on struggling retailers and small businesses, many of which are now just shutting down.
Beales last surviving Department Store in Poole is closing down with posters informing the public that they can buy the remaining stock in their Rachel Reeves Closing Down Sale.
May 1, 2025
and the high costs of Interconnector electricity have no effect on our ‘highest energy bills’.
April 30, 2025
Well, if Tony Blair could do what our host posits then he would have some relevance after all…
April 30, 2025
No, Blair is still a proponent of carbon storage and carbon trading ….costing the taxpayer hundreds of billions (Blair is just promoting himself and his website – ‘Institute for Global Change’
April 30, 2025
I will not be holding my breath! And I have still heard nothing from the Conservative candidate for tomorrow’s local council election.
April 30, 2025
Completely agree. Why are so many MP’s so easily captured by this flawed ideology? Why do they allow the Net Zero fanatics at The Climate Change Committee to brainwash them so readily? Why don’t they undertake their own independent research? Why don’t they consult energy experts from both industry and academia? Why is Labour MP Graham Stringer virtually the only MP on the Government benches who sees through this nonsense? At last we now have a Conservative leader who does understand the stupidity of Net Zero but it’s desperately late as Reform UK are surging ahead in the polls! From Cameron onwards we’ve been pursuing the wrong energy policy by the insane dash for wind and solar. But is Starmer listening?
April 30, 2025
Behind all the decisions made to achieve Net Zero is the strange CO2 accounting system.
If we use our own gas and oil resources, they add onto our CO2 figure.
If we import them, they do not.
Same with manufacturing of steel aluminium, glass, bricks, et cetera.
The CO2 created by the manufacturing process is added onto the CO2 output total of the importing nation, not the UK.
That’s the problem with setting targets like Net Zero, every decision is aimed at reaching the target regardless of the negative economic and social effects on the UK
April 30, 2025
From Guido
Labour councillor Sebastian Salek takes to X to openly cheer the government’s creeping return to the EU on the eve of local elections. The Waltham Forest councillor proudly declares that Labour has already begun the process of rejoining the bloc – “not through campaigns or slogans,” but through “technical deals and unsexy laws.” As Guido has been warning…
https://order-order.com/2025/04/30/labour-councillor-praises-starmers-plot-to-rejoin-eu-on-eve-of-local-elections/
April 30, 2025
European Countries are heading towards the complete loss of their indigenous car industries and the UK is amongst the leaders in this dubious aim.
I have no interest in buying an EV, but I am interested in the development in the technology and that inevitably means looking at the Chinese car industry. Last year I signed up to the CnEVPost Newsletter which provides a fascinating insight into progress in China. Search for “CnEVPost Newsletter”
Reading what is happening in China shows that Europe is so far behind that is is already looking impossible to for us to catch up. Every week, new high quality EV models are announced and the production numbers and retail prices quoted are extraordinarily low. Yet, unlike the USA and EU, the UK government is refusing to put tariffs on car imports from China. They are taking full advantage of this windfall by charging far more for their cars here than they are being sold for in China.
The extra profit they are making is being used to develop more models and new technology, whereas if we were levying tariffs, that money would be staying in the UK.
Just last week, a great looking new electric sports car was released in China with good performance and excellent range, yet the price in China is just $31,500. That is less than £24,000 ! The ISC01 is from a Chinese startup backed by smartphone giant Xiaomi.
We are a milion miles away from producing anything like that in Europe or the USA, so unless the mad rush to end production of IC-engined cars is stopped, the European car industry will die a not so slow death.
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April 30, 2025
These statistics show the scale of the problem :
The Xiaomi car factory alone can produce 40,000 new cars EVERY HOUR. That’s one every 75 seconds.
https://emag.directindustry.com/2024/07/29/inside-xiaomis-ev-factory-where-the-company-produces-an-electric-car-every-76-seconds/
In the whole month of January 2025, the entire UK car industry produced just 82,997 vehicles.
That dropped to 72,318 in March. Source : the SMMT website.
https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle-data/car-manufacturing/
In the same month, Xiaomi received 88,000 preorders for a brand new model in less than 24 hours.
April 30, 2025
No UK tariffs on Chinese EVs ???
May 1, 2025
“As of April 2025, the United States imposed a 100% tariff on electric vehicles (EVs) imported from China, effectively excluding brands like BYD and NIO from the American market. In contrast, the European Union introduced duties of up to 35.3%, while the UK has chosen to maintain open markets.”
This is taken from Reuters on 25th March.
Chinese EVs are much more expensive here than they are in China. Instead of tariffs, which would go to the UK government, the extra cost of the cars we import from China go to the manufacturers as much higher profits ! That is why we should impose tariffs on them at least equivalent to those charged by the EU but I would charge 50%.
May 1, 2025
Remember that taxpayers are subsidising most EV sales here as well.
May 1, 2025
But that is still £24k we’d never pay for a car.
May 1, 2025
I have paid more than that for a quality car but never anywhere near full price for one.
These days you don’t get much of a car for £24,000 here in the UK !
May 1, 2025
Reply to Mark : Hardly any private buyers are going for EVs because of all the well-understood disadvantages. The government has had to bribe business users to run EVs by giving tax breaks but hasn’t been prepared to offer the same subsidies to private buyers.
May 2, 2025
It depends whether you want a car for A to B journeys, even an old one can do that for many more years. If the latest plate, or the Pullman inside, or the toys/gadgets, saving the planet does it for you, then pay the £thousands.
April 30, 2025
Sci-fi and thriller films used to depict ‘energy’ shortages and cuts as a means of control in the future, creating downward spirals of society during widespread and lengthy power outage.
Total Blackout
The Trigger Effect
Revolution
The Signal
Grid Down Power Off
Off goes the power, people can’t eat, no communication as all phones are digital, relying on power, no heat, and plants controlled by electricity.
As for Blair – Bernie on X has a list of items the Tony Blair institute has advised government to do:
* Ban on new gas boilers
* Petrol/diesel car ban by 2030
* Push to reduce meat and dairy
* levies on frequent flyers
* Everyday carbon pricing
Time is running out to save our planet – says Blair. We must work together to effect the meaningful change necessary, because this climate crisis is existential and the action needed is immediate. We must cut emissions by 45% by 2030 to have any chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees. This will require proactive coordinated action across policy, finance and technology. Together, therefore, we have to identify and take the real actions required. That’s why I’m speaking at the Global energy Transition Congress and Exhibition. Leaders from government, energy, finance, technology and the hard-to-abate sectors of industry are going to address the barriers we need to overcome to turn global pledges into real projects. The Global Energy Transition Conference will focus on achieving progress and meaningful solutions to get us to where we need to be as quickly as possible and as practically as possible. By working together we can establish the real change necessary and accelerate that global energy transition. Together with the right practical measures and the requisite urgency. We can build a brighter better future.
April 30, 2025
422 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France…oh dear
May 1, 2025
and more of those nasty capitalist landlords are saying ‘can’t vet them, won’t house them!’
April 30, 2025
O/T channelcrossings.org 29/04/2025 ‘Border security contracts linked to small boat Channel crossings’.
According to Crown Commercial Services and ContractFinderPro, 213 contracts worth a total of £3.77 bn have been distributed from 2015 onwards.
April 30, 2025
Just think what that £3.77 billion could have achieved had it been spent instead on homelessness or helping disabled people or on education of special needs children or on reducing waiting lists in hospitals or on carers for the elderly.
May 1, 2025
or a glorious possibly faulty aircraft carrier?
April 30, 2025
As at 3pm Wind providing 6% and french interconnectors 19% ……net-zero saving britain…,,oh dear
April 30, 2025
Here in Wokingham, we are not having any Elections. So, it comes as surprise that the Liberal Democrats have sent out their latest electioneering paper today, we will save the planet by creating waste ‘bumf’.
In this circular (who paid for it?) the LibDems maintain that because of there expertise and money saving Wokingham has been voted the fifth best council in the country. One of its achievements listed is fixing Wokingham’s potholes?
While they were at this trumpet blowing they took to reminding us that our Wokingham’s Liberal Democrat MP doesn’t live in Wokingham and his efforts have been focused on getting his own local Hospital updated?
April 30, 2025
Tony Blair writes in his foreword:
“So, the movement [Net Zero] now needs a public mandate, attainable only through a shift from protest to pragmatic policy.”
No it requires a mandate through a rerefendum and not by the Civil Service issuing another dodgy dossier.
April 30, 2025
He did not get his ‘pragmatic policy’.
April 30, 2025
Latest in the Telegraph “Sir Tony Blair has claimed Sir Keir Starmer’s approach to net zero is “the right one” a day after he appeared to criticise his green policies.”
That didn’t take long!
April 30, 2025
“Tony Blair is right to say the transition to net zero will prove too dear and too unpopular with the public.”
But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to continue with the transition. Stalin didn’t end collectivisation despite it being unpopular with the peasants, caused social unrest and led to the deaths of millions.
For he writes:
“The choice is clear: innovate and cooperate or face a future of escalating climate chaos.”
And saving the planet is THE ultimate excuse for any unpopular policy. The Covid lockdowns will be as nothing compared to climate lockdowns.
April 30, 2025
As an aside following the Carney ‘victory’, Alberta has reached the required number of signatures to trigger a referendum on Separation from the rest of Canada.
May 1, 2025
Not quite true. Alberta has now introduced Bill 54, which would in the future (ie, if it is voted in the provincial parliament) require the signatures of only 10% (instead of the previous 20%) of the registered voters, collected over 120 days (instead of the previous 90 days) to call for a referendum, and that whatever the question.
So as can be seen it is faaaaaaaaaaaaar from what LA was saying. Sometimes it is better to read the info from proper press agencies (AP, AFP, Reuters) than from whatever clownish site some people appear addicted to.
And BTW only about Alberta’s 30% of the voters had previously said that the province might be better off outside Canada. Furthermore the Alberta Premier, Danielle Smith, a Conservative, said on 29/04 after Carney’s election: ‘I believe in Alberta sovereignty within a united Canada’.
April 30, 2025
“Will Tony Blair persuade Labour to dump Miliband and extreme net zero?”
Well, not if he repenteth in just one day…