The establishment elite that perform the rites and fashion the weapons of the war on carbon are in danger of slipping into the bad practices of some past priesthoods. The officials and grandees tell us they need to fly around the world to conferences like COP 26 to spread the word. I can see the case for the chairman of the global conference to meet key players face to face in their own settings to try to do a deal, but the case for others is by no means clear. Too many fly around the world to  tell others not to fly but to holiday near to home and to communicate on Zoom or Teams. When challenged about their own lifestyles which seem detached from Mission Net Zero they reply that it is fine because they are “offsetting” all the carbon their flights, chauffeured cars, air conditioned hotels and meat banquets generate. In other words they use taxpayers money to grant aid activities like tree planting or renewable power installation to claim a carbon offset.
As one of leading advocates of net Zero, Bill Gates helpfully explains in his book “I own big houses and fly in private planes- in fact I took one to Paris for the climate change conference – so who am I to lecture anyone on the environment?” “It’s true that my carbon footprint is absurdly high. .. In 2020 I started buying sustainable jet fuel and will fully offset my family’s aviation missions in 2021. For our non aviation emissions I am buying offsets through a company that runs a facility that removes carbon dioxide from the air”. At least Bill Gates uses his own money to offset that carbon footprint and grasps that others might see it differently.
I am disappointed that COP26 is not a virtual conference. The combination of the messaging on jet travel and the wish of many governments to restrict jet travel to stop the spread of covid would seem to make a strong case for a virtual meeting. There will be critics who will not be easily assuaged by knowledge of carbon offsets. There will also be plenty of examination of the nature of those carbon offsets to see if they are genuine and not being miscounted.
The efforts to place a price on carbon are creating inflation in various green investments as well as the more useful boosting of investment in things like trees and renewable power. They are also leading governments into seizing another new way of taxing us, by placing carbon taxes and carbon border taxes on items we need.
Governments  need to explain how they will tax non fossil fuels in the world they want where they lose most of the tax on oil and gas.They also need to set out where all the electrical power is coming up  from to fuel the electrical revolution.
August 12, 2021
Good morning.
That’s because he can afford to ! Many of us simply cannot. And that is what so many here and elsewhere are saying – we are being priced out of the market so that the rich can have it all for themselves. Electric cars will mean fewer cars. Less air travel will mean fewer people on nice beaches. And so on.
August 12, 2021
Yes these people who glutinously consume the worlds resources turn round and lecture us to live impoverished lives to save the planet from their runaway consumption. It really takes the biscuit in rank hypocrisy. As you say their agenda is to reduce our lives to serfdom while they continue to live their glittering jet setting lifestyles.
August 12, 2021
A plane carrying 7 deportees to Jamaica, instead of 50, does not sound best value for money to the taxpayer let alone carbon nonsense. but it is commensurate with this dishonest chaotic govt. Sharmer in charge of business! Struth save us from this nightmare of a Govt.
August 12, 2021
Perhaps all these virtue signalling loons can tell us how life will go on for businesses and ordinary people when there are mass power cuts due to weather or power station failure etc? How is Joe Bloggs going to get to work? How are carers going to get to their patients homes? How are urgent deliveries going to be made? How are emergency vehicles going to charge up? How is little Johnny going to get to school? How is grandma going to get to her GP? I get fed up with the so called elite taking tge piss out of all. They live in massive homes completely oblivious to the challenges ordinary people face every day. We can all see what is slowly unfolding John and it’s not good. People have had enough of them and us. We need a real Conservative party again and not one run by a PM’s green loon wife.
August 12, 2021
Totally agree – I for one do not wish to revert to the lifestyle of my great-grandparents in East London in Queen Victoria’s time.
I don’t have foreign holidays or cruises, I don’t eat meat every day, I recycle waste as much as possible, and because I was prudent in earlier years, I had sufficient funds to invest in a solar-power system – but of course that isn’t just about solar panels (which wear out and need replacing), there’s also the cost of buying and installing the batteries and electronic control system (and batteries wear out too, who’d have thunk it?).
I live in a major country where public transport is almost non-existent, so having access to a car is a vital simply for everyday life – and emergencies; the supply of electricity is variable, to say the least, so draining systems to power a vehicle is utterly nonsensical. Public power points would be instant and highly dangerous targets during public protests.
I am coming to the conclusion that the anticipated global catastrophe is not due to AGW, but due to the brains of all government regimes across the world having been fried and removed! //sarc, by the way.
August 12, 2021
Like the school exam grades, just guess it will be fine! Better than holding govt and failing schools to account! No one fails all is good!
August 12, 2021
Indeed. Carrie on Boris is a complete joke! It’s time for the Government to show us the evidence that CO2 is the enemy and not a trace gas/plant food that makes up 0.04% of the atmosphere. Show me the scientific evidence where this bogeyman is really making a difference! I can understand that hydrocarbons have a finite life, that we shouldn’t pollute the world and destroy the rain forests or build forever on our greenbelt. But get real, your Government has deliberately been importing people from around the world at over 700,000 a year since it was in office but claiming the opposite. None of these 9,000,000 net imports have a carbon footprint! The most dishonest party ……………ever.
August 12, 2021
+1
Quite, most of these imports have come from far warmer climes and most likely use an even greater energy consumption than the native population. But heyho, since when was common sense applied in career politicians decision making?
August 12, 2021
Indeed, Timeaction, Carrie on Boris tells us we have an electric future but isn’t building the extra generating capacity needed to fuel it. And the technology either isn’t there, doesn’t work properly, or costs too much. It’s a total farce. And the most expensive political wheeze ever. Johnson has to go.
August 12, 2021
Correct â weâve now also got to fight against the propaganda that cars are evil
August 12, 2021
It seems to me that the people are less and less represented by each Conservative government.
Sadly the other Parties, better referred to as ‘bunch of half-wits’ are worse.
August 12, 2021
I sadly agree
August 12, 2021
Spot on Fus
August 12, 2021
Some answers to your questions:
How life will go on for businesses and ordinary people when there are mass power cuts due to weather or power station failure etc?
Pretty much the same as it does now. Except because more people will be generating their own power, power cuts will have a far more limited affect and will harm far fewer people.
How is Joe Bloggs going to get to work? He can walk or cycle or take public transport or use his electric car. Or, if he is really lucky, he can use his e-scooter which MPs will legalise if they have any sense.
How are carers going to get to their patients homes?
See above.
How are urgent deliveries going to be made?
See above.
How are emergency vehicles going to charge up?
Via a cable with a plug on the end.
How is little Johnny going to get to school?
See above.
How is grandma going to get to her GP?
See above.
August 12, 2021
Your reply is totally farcical. There will not be the infrastucture for what you are talking about. So, we get a power cut. If my car has fuel in it I can still do all those things. If I have to plug into the electric and there’s a power cut where is the charge going to come from? I sometimes wonder how many brain cells you really have or are they being hampered by something you took last night?
August 12, 2021
You only put fuel in your petrol car when it runs out of fuel. Electric cars donât work that way. You top them up as you go along – like you do with your phone. So you plug your car in when you get home. Or you plug it in when you get to work. Or when you get the supermarket. Youâll rarely need to use what we used to call petrol stations. It really is not rocket science.
The average journey length in this country is 6 miles. The average car travels 20 miles per day. The average electric car has a range of 181 miles (this is increasing every year). How many days are you expecting to be without power?
Incidentally, Iâd like to know your qualifications for being so agitated about technology you have probably never used.
Let me tell you mine. I first had solar panels installed on my roof in 2007. They produced most of our electricity and hot water for most of the year and paid for themselves within 4 years. When we moved we had solar panels installed on our next house too. A bigger house. They also produced most of our electricity and hot water for most of the year. We have since moved again, to an even bigger house, and will be getting solar panels installed soon as part of a bigger renovation project. A project which will cost us 30% more than necessary because of your Brexit.
We have had an electric hybrid car since 2015. It is the best car we have ever own – by far. It is phenomenally efficient. Weâll go fully electric when our car next needs changing – probably in 2 to 3 years time. Many of our friends, family and neighbours are already fully electric. We regularly travel with them, see how delighted they all are with their electric cars – none of them have ever had any problems at all. Ever.
You?
August 13, 2021
Andy, Your comment seems to be a running boast about how rich you are. It’s not all about you. It’s about practicality, cost, coercion, whether your chosen route reduces CO2, whether CO2 needs reducing anyway, etc.
Very few can afford BEVs, solar panels, heat pumps, etc. For many people it isn’t practical either – due to living in shared housing, flats, terraces, houses with no parking, etc.
Everyone’s household fuel bills are rising – more “intermittents” (which you extol) yet higher prices. In reality it is because climate activists’ wishful thinking doesn’t include all costs, but the bills do.
Even with a ground source heat pump your bills will rise (for any given level of insulation) because the typical CoP is 2-4 but electricity is around 6 times the cost of gas. So it’s not just the enormous up-front installation costs, it’s higher running costs too. How delightful is that?
And of course this is where the coercion comes in. You may have money to waste on products that cost a lot both in money terms and CO2 terms, but the majority of people don’t. In fact you seem to have forgotten that the purpose was to reduce CO2, not increase it by splurging on yet more unnecessary goods.
August 12, 2021
Andy, In fact, very few people will be able to supply their own energy needs by 2035 (gas boiler ban date). So your claim that “far fewer” people will be harmed by power (ie electricity) cuts is plain wrong. If most people by 2040 rely on heat pumps for hot water and space heating (almost impossible) then when the electricity fails (as it will frequently if it’s mainly generated by intermittents) most people will have cold homes.
Repeat after me: “the government is not building any extra electricity generation plant”. And they take a long time to plan, build, and commission – upwards of 20 years for Nuclear. Wind and Solar are intermittent, so need “fossil” fuel back-ups – neither Nuclear, nor interconnectors, nor storage, are suitable, either because they are not dispatchable, or simply because they haven’t enough energy availability for the days at a time when Wind isn’t operating.
So you answer none of the questions.
August 12, 2021
You vote for the people you claim are not building the extra capacity you believe we need. Perhaps you should vote for somebody else instead? I donât vote for these people. I have never thought them competent enough to open a door.
Incidentally it is NEW gas boilers that will be banned. It is NEW petrol cars which will be banned. Existing ones will not be banned for many years beyond that – up to, and including, 2050. So we donât need an immediate massive boost in power. We can increase gradually if needed. And with energy efficiency hugely improving all the time it is not clear how much extra we will need. Despite your home now being full of electricals you use less electricity than you did the 1970s. Isnât advancing technology amazing?
If Iâm still alive Iâll be turning 77 in 2050. Those of you already in your 70s and 80s today who are having a hissy fit about this will mostly be in boxes by then. Harsh but true. In boxes no power is required. Problem solved.
August 12, 2021
The problem isn’t solved by the current generation dying.
The problem still remains for the next generation.
Best of luck.
My advice is buy a generator.
August 12, 2021
Nice try, Andy, but it’s been explained to you before that voting for a party means that you vote on balance, and not for every part of the manifesto. And whether you personally vote for the Tories or not, you certainly support their climate policies. Whereas I don’t.
Incidentally gas boilers are being banned in NEW house builds from 2025. And the 2035 date for banning new gas boilers for old houses is in some doubt given the backlash. There will certainly be propaganda and subsidies to push people to adopt heat pumps or hydrogen boilers before then, though. Interestingly, you cannot even support your claim that “far fewer” people will be affected by power cuts.
Your claim that we use less domestic electricity than we did in the 1970s is entirely false. In the 1970s domestic electricity use was about 19 mtoe (avg), reaching a peak of c30 mtoe in 2005, falling in the last few years (to 2019) to c26 mtoe (BEIS ECUK 2020). That’s higher than the 1970s, incidentally. However, there has been a massive fall in UK industrial energy consumption due to the de-industrialisation policies you advocate as carried out by both Labour and Tory governments (from c62 mtoe in 1970 to c22 mtoe in 2019, BEIS).
August 12, 2021
We should be seeing all this infrastructure going in now.
It isn’t and it won’t.
August 12, 2021
When the power fails all the solar panels ‘fail’ too as their associated inverters shut down because a) they need a mains supply with which to synchonise and b) if they didn’t shut down they would start feeding power to your neighbours. (Even if the solar panels could provide a local supply it wouldn’t be a good idea as having power downstream of a fault creates a hazard for repair crews).
August 12, 2021
My Tory council stopped bus services long ago, it also stopped clearing snow and gritting roads!! How do elderly get carrers from the local Tory council!! They don’t in bad weather. Still increase community charge and add on additional cost for adult social care!
August 12, 2021
+1
August 12, 2021
If Monty Python are looking for a script for their next film …… this is it.
August 12, 2021
+1
However, at least with Monty Python you could just switch it off.
I really wish there was a similar switch off for the sheer lunacy, hypocrisy and lies coming out of the Johnson regime.
August 12, 2021
Lewis Carroll got the first – a man truly ahead of his time – with Alice in Wonderland and the mad hatter’s tea party.
August 12, 2021
Your last paragraph is the most important one for me in the post Sir John.
Not only do government’s need to be open and honest about the taxation of all these different fuels but more importantly how much will the on going dismantling and disposal of all the new elements of batteries , turbine blades, solar panels and all the vehicles and everyday appliances that will need to be replaced going to cost and where will it end up?
As to regards carbon trade offs, has anyone asked how many tonnes of carbon are created in say a 12 hour flight? How many trees are going to be needed to absorb that amount of carbon in a similar time scale. The dioxide will be in the atmosphere after the trip and its going to take thousands of trees too cancel that out immediately. Makes the whole carbon transfer off setting process a bit of a finger in the air job.
These people are pissing down our necks and telling us it’s raining. They are doing what is best for them not the world and the people in it.
August 12, 2021
Do people not realise that planting trees causes emissions, saplings have to be raised which uses labour/energy, saplings have to be transported to where they are going to be planted, the people planting them need to travel the site, etc etc. Anyone done any calculations on the carbon offset organisations use of labour and power.
Offsetting is a farce pure and simple, it is simply a con, just like carbon capture, where is all this carbon stored and how does it get where it is to be stored.
The joke is the providers of such gimmicks actually think we believe them !
August 12, 2021
Exactly right. One of the big myths is that planting millions of trees will reduce atmospheric CO2 and it forms the basis of many offset schemes. In 2014, a Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies researcher, Nadine Unger, was pilloried for claiming that trees are not the solution to reducing CO2, if such a solution were actually needed.
“While trees provide carbon storage, forestry is not a permanent solution because trees and soil also âbreatheâ â that is, burn oxygen and release carbon dioxide back into the air. Eventually, all of the carbon finds its way back into the atmosphere when trees die or burn. (More trees, more forest fires?)
The Amazon rain forest is often perceived as the lungs of the planet. In fact, almost all the oxygen the Amazon produces during the day remains there and is reabsorbed by the forest at night. In other words, the Amazon rain forest is a closed system that uses all its own oxygen and carbon dioxide.â
In 2017, a paper in Frontiers of Marine Science, entitled “Evaluation of Primary Production in the Lower Amazon River Based on a Dissolved Oxygen Stable Isotopic Mass Balance” stated that:
“The Amazon River outgasses nearly an equivalent amount of CO2 as the rainforest sequesters on an annual basis due to microbial decomposition of terrigenous and aquatic organic matter.
The Amazon River is a major source of CO2 to the atmosphere, but understanding the interplay between photosynthesis and respiration is critical for understanding the fundamental mechanisms driving these fluxes and the overall productivity of the ecosystem.”
As we know, “The Science is Settled” and a massive tree planting scheme will help the UK get to “Net Zero”.
August 12, 2021
Don’t trees give out carbon dioxide during the night? So for half the time they are surely adding to the so-called problem? During winter in a climate like ours they do nothing at all, and as the days shorten they give out less and less oxygen and put out more carbon dioxide. This carbon offset idea is a scam for rich people to be able to carry on their lifestyles without interference, whilst demanding that the rest of us pay for it.
August 13, 2021
Yes I noticed Johnson senior on GB News last night couldn’t give a straight answer when challenged over whether he will give up his second home and all his travelling around the world. Of course he won’t and when things get back to normal regarding Covid, Boris and Carrie together with the majority of our MP’S will be flying to uncrowded exotic places and staying in 5* hotels again.
August 12, 2021
A govt that is open and honest turbo? Hell will freeze over first
August 12, 2021
Years ago the UN dreamed up Agenda 21 and it dispite them pushing it very few government’s enforced it but picked out the best bits for them. The whole project was about control of the masses by the few.
Call me a cynic but all these years later we now have Climate Change, Net Zero all heavily backed by the UN and the majorities of government’s have picked up the baton and are running flat out to the cliff edge. Ask the question, Who is going to benefit the most out of all of this? It sure as heck not going to be the people or mother earth for that matter.
August 12, 2021
May be wrong but wan’t it the UN said the UK could have a population of 184 million? – Seems like the plan is under way.
August 12, 2021
The UN is no longer a vehicle for world peaceâŠ.itâs a vehicle for world order
August 12, 2021
Glen
The UN is a talking shop, the original idea was good, but it has failed miserably because of “politics”
August 12, 2021
Who is going to benefit? China. The West is transferring manufacturing and wealth to the East. Brexit Facts for U have an interesting article today. There is no point virtue signalling when China, India, the US etc are not going along with this.
Andy says Public Transport. Not where most of us live outside of London.
August 12, 2021
It’s all part of the Big Reset. Get the proles off the road, tax them till they’re bankrupt and confiscate their assets in payment.
Before that happens the population will turn on the establishment to regain their freedoms.
It will be very un British and not very nice. Be warned.
August 12, 2021
Have you noticed the direction of travel under this conservative government
Airline travel bad (except for MPs)
Electric cars for the people (except for MPs)
Electric lorries for transport (except the military nor government departments)
Electric pump heating (except for Westminster)
Cashless society (electronic online banking only)
Utilities household meters (to control distribution of energy)
XR rebellion protests good, lockdown protests bad
âŠ..next IDs and tattoos
August 12, 2021
Forgot to include the imposition of cycle-lanes, wind-farms, police commissioners, and regional mayorsâŠ.and the exclusion of Northern Ireland
Conservative Government = âDo as I sayâ
August 12, 2021
Glen, Good summary.
August 12, 2021
Ian
“Before that happens the population will turn on the establishment to regain their freedoms.
It will be very un British and not very nice. Be warned. ”
…..long overdue, bring it.
August 12, 2021
Two points. One, I have a few words to describe these people and it isn’t ‘elite’. Two, they don’t need to nor feel any compulsion to justify their actions and the damaging effects on freedoms because they can’t be held responsible for there is no mechanism that I know of to hold them responsible
In relation to the UK, the British voter continues to endorse the status quo that is the corrupt two party State so they and indeed those who didn’t endorse the morally bankrupt Tory and Labour parties will have to suffer the disastrous consequences of their naive and self-defeating voting patterns
The tragedy is that ex-Labour voters who have switched their loyalty to the Tories simply do not realise that both main parties share the same vision. Today, there is not two parties with two different visions but one class using free-lunch bribery a few weeks before each GE to deceive the dependent voter who can no longer see beyond the end of their own noses. I know this to be true for I have people with this mindset in my extended family. They are CLUELESS as to what both main parties have become and that makes them sitting ducks for deceitful and manipulative politicians
August 12, 2021
What else can the British voter do? I voted Liberal for decades in the hope of a change to the voting system. I gave up when Clegg failed to get PR as the price for joining the coalition.
I now vote Green. Not because I want to see them in power but in the hope it keeps the environment âon the agendaâ.
August 13, 2021
Keeps the environment on the agenda? We hear nothing except the environment! Voting Green is futile and would really kill off the economy together with most of the poor in this world.
August 12, 2021
All down to the Brexit-style Great Reform Act 1832.
No other possible outcome.
They certainly do not fear for their necks now do they?
And they have almost stripped us of all methods of private idea exchange etc.
It has taken them nearly 200 years but success looks within their grasp.
The revenge of the elite being played out in France!
August 12, 2021
I agree â however Iâm a advocate of the first-pass-the-post system
I believe the problem is with our current government rules/laws and the electoral commission and the hurdles that any new party or independent has to go though to get electedâŠ..the system is stacked against any new-comer
ââYou need to be nominated by at least 10 electors from the constituency you wish to represent. You must also pay a ÂŁ500 depositââ WHY – maybe its to stop the common people from getting elected, if your in the party system you don’t pay the ÂŁ500 and the party get 10 local people to vote on your behalf…its a farse
August 12, 2021
Deposits are returned to all candidates who secure a minimum percentage of the vote. The real problem is the system you advocate – FPTP – and the fact that it fails to deliver a parliament which is representative of how the electorate voted.
August 12, 2021
The FPTP system might not be the problem you suppose. The chief need of any system is that it delivers the means by which the electorate can remove those in power.
For a cogent, concise (< 15 minutes) explanation, please refer to YouTube's "David Deutsch on the AV Referendum (UK)".
August 12, 2021
The FPTP system is the problem. It delivers unrepresentative outcomes where Parliament does not represent the voters. Look at the Holyrood constituencies, for an example. With a minority vote share, the SNP received 62 out of 73 constituency MSPs. Is that representative of the voters? Clearly not.
August 12, 2021
And if you havenât got ÂŁ500 spare youâre disenfranchised from the process ….why did they settle at that amount ?
August 12, 2021
Glen Cullen
“the system is stacked against any new-comer”
As it was in 1930’s Germany.
History repeats, and this current lot won’t be content ’till it does. Bide your time Glen.
August 12, 2021
Agree 100%.
August 12, 2021
I would like to see a ‘none of the above’ box on the ballot paper and if it returns the highest number then no political party gets to dictates. It happened it Belgium and unsurprisingly functioned without one.
Though I doubt our money grubbing career politicians would agree to that
August 12, 2021
I like that idea
August 12, 2021
Spot on, Dom.
August 12, 2021
There is an article by Amber Rudd in the Telegraph today – âItâs critics of net zero who are unconservativeâ
It is drivel from beginning to end, as one would expect of the deluded Libdem, Chelteham Ladies, history graduate and T May supporter. A women with zero grasp of climate, energy engineering or energy economics. It has absurdly wrong trivialisation of the economic costs of the insane and entirely valueless agenda.
There were 150 comments and everyone I saw was correctly damning of of her, her article and the net zero lunacy of the Tories. The comments section is now been closed one assumes they did not want any more sensible comments. Net zero is expensive, pointless, will not save any significant CO2 and politically it is the poll tax but about 100 times worse and 100 times more expensive. It is encouraging how the readers saw through it and her.
Also keeping your old car for longer and not buying a new EV actually saves world CO2 emissions and money. So why is the government agenda the reverse if they want to cut CO2. Why did Boris get a dog? Pets especially meat eating ones cause a huge amount of CO2/Methane and need extra food production requiring land and energy.
How can this government be so idiotic and out of touch with sensible real Conservative voters? What is the real agenda it is not CO2 for sure.
August 12, 2021
One excellent comment says:-
âSix things will defeat the Tory party at the next election; 1). Allowing uncontrolled illegal immigration to continue. 2). Allowing woke, BLM & critical race theory to flourish in all our institutions 3). A green agenda that will punish the working/middle classes 4). Losing complete control of law & order 5). Allowing debt to GDP ratio to head over 100% 6). Tax and business rates sky high.
Conservative voters have had enough of Johnson and his leadership and the party is heading for a landslide defeat, and I write this as an ex-Tory voter.â
Alas what will be the only alternative a Labour dog wagged by an SNP tail!
August 12, 2021
+1
August 12, 2021
LL
“Alas what will be the only alternative a Labour dog wagged by an SNP tail! ”
As a former conservative voter I say; vote for it, or don’t vote at all. It’s about revenge now.
August 12, 2021
Whether you like it or not you have lost the argument so these regular ârantsâ are pointless. Better to move on to influence/mitigate the way forward.
August 12, 2021
Well, that’s a bit imprecise, Nig1. But if you mean the theory that CO2 levels are the world’s thermostat, and the theory that human caused CO2 emissions above a certain level will lead to runaway catastrophic global heating, as trumpeted by climate activists, then it is you who has lost the argument. Even Dr Mann is jumping off that doom bandwagon.
August 12, 2021
The argument is not yet lost if sufficient MP’s of whatever persuasion wake up to reality. The Climate Change needs to be scrapped and MP’s need to demand a re-appraisal of the whole agenda.
LL is not ranting, he is (or should I say “they”?) saying it like it is. The government should not take its current majority for granted.
August 12, 2021
And to be fair to pets, population growth and how to stop it needs to be top of the COP 26 agenda.
August 12, 2021
Whatever you might think of Amber Rudd and I am not a fan, she has at least put the effort in to earn the trust of the electorate and achieve a high office of State to get into a position to make a real contribution, whether we agree with it or not, rather than your zero merely firing off angry repetitive posts from the comfort of your chair.
My respect goes to her.
August 12, 2021
Fine, but she is clearly totally deluded and a LibDem.
August 12, 2021
Just because Lifelogic didn’t go into politics doesn’t mean that existing politicians should have.
August 12, 2021
What Iâd like to discover is whether the MPs know the true agenda.
My MP has gone soooo silent since covid.
Why? Shouldnât he be rallying the troops and giving us all hope?
Donât want too many questions if you ask me.
I asked a local councillor how many in this area had died of covid and how many were in the hospital with covid on that particular day.
She said she didnât know! The figures should have been engraved on her heart.
Actually..whatever the truth this country has become SHAMBOLIC in the extreme.
August 12, 2021
Of course the 150 comments were all angry. It is The Telegraph. A ânewspaperâ written by, and written for, lunatics. I note you were reading it.
August 12, 2021
Almost as lunatic as your laws-of-physics-defying EU low power kettles, Andy.
August 12, 2021
@ Anky – and clearly so were you …
August 12, 2021
They were nearly all sensible, knowledgeable and correct.
August 12, 2021
I’m surprised your rudeness got past our host’s eyes.
August 12, 2021
Sea Warrior. Ha, ha. I’m glad he does. It gives us great entertainment value. Life can be dismal but Andy’s posts give me a laugh.
August 13, 2021
Andy, the standard recipe for the Tories’ clinging on to power for generations has been to stir up division amongst what would otherwise be near-universal opposition.
There’s some truth in your caricature, as in all, but do you really want to assist in this process?
August 13, 2021
What an absurd comment MiC
The divide and rule idea comes from Labour.
August 12, 2021
âLet Alok Sharma flyâ fine but can we assume he and the cabinet do not fly first class as that will probably ~ doubles his CO2 flight output and saves tax payers cash too. Private jets more like 10 times the CO2. I rather suspect he does not do even this.
But he has wisely kept his diesel car which actually saves CO2 (as no new EV and battery(s) are built) though he is still, rather idiotically encouraging, taxing and bribing others to ditch their perfectly fine old cars.
August 12, 2021
Indeed. Amber Rudd, another Lib Dem in Tory clothes, like Hague, Cameron, May etc
August 12, 2021
The green revolution in the UK has left many of the doubters who post here behind. I recently learned from a kMatrix economic report that we are well on the way to building the low-carbon economy that Johnson is promoting.
The UKâs low carbon economy is now worth ÂŁ200.8bn, four times the size of the countryâs manufacturing sector, with growth expected to accelerate even faster in the coming years. More than 75,000 businesses employ in excess of 1.2 million people in the green economy. Using the same methodology, kMatrix found that the manufacturing sector is worth only ÂŁ55.6bn and the construction sector is worth ÂŁ132.9bn.
From communal food gardens, regional home retrofit programmes, regenerative farmers. private recycling companies, hydrogen jet fuel, net zero whisky, district heating systems using hot water extracted from ex coal mines and energy storage systems, British entrepreneurs are involved in thousands of new company start-ups in the green economy.
At the Port of Tyne, hundreds of acres of brownfield land on either side of the river have been cleared to make room for the green energy companies which will shortly be involved in building the world’s largest offshore windfarm (the Dogger Bank Array). Which will be built completely free of subsidy, the output will allow us to export cheap renewable electricity to the EU via the interconnectors
Post Brexit, this is the way forward for the deprived ex-coal mining communities of the N East, who recently voted Conservative for the first time in their history.
reply The majority of people rely on fossil fuels to heat their homes, to drive around and to secure their food.Renewable electricity is still a small proportion of our total energy supply.
August 12, 2021
Solar and Wind are only about 1% of the total energy used by humans.
I note that a science exam question recently was asking children which energy sources were ârenewableâ – solar, wave, wind, hydro, bio, geothermal, tidal, nuclear, gas, oil, coal. They I assume wanted the answer of the first 7.
The truth however is that none are (long lasting perhaps) but not really renewable. The first five comes from radiated nuclear fuel on the sun. Geothermal extracts heat from the earthâs crust, tidal slows the earthâs rotation slightly, nuclear is from nuclear fuel on earth, the last three are also fuelled by the sunâs nuclear energy but stored of fossil fuels. Coal (that they want to ban here and burn in places like Germany, China and India) is essentially just old wood. Wood however the government actually want to import on diesel ships to burn at Drax! Insanity on stilts.
August 12, 2021
You did not mention subsidies once in your post saying how successful the green economy is @Sak
August 12, 2021
Absolutely. Tesla struggles to make a profit from car manufacturing, but has been hugely successful in selling carbon credits to rival car manufacturers that need them to comply with emission related rules. In the 2nd quarter Tesla took $354 million in carbon credits.
August 12, 2021
Correct – and cottage industries and cycling everywhere is going to build and employ a country with a population of 68 million
August 12, 2021
Indeed the green economy and green jobs parasite of the real economy and kills or exports far more real jobs.
August 12, 2021
Sakara
Why would we be exporting cheap power to others, when we have a shortage ourselves and already have interconnections which we use to purchase more expensive electricity daily from abroad.
Surely the idea is to make ourselves self sufficient isn’t it.
August 12, 2021
Sakara G please take your rose tinted glasses off and learn some physics. Sustainable Energy â without the hot air David J.C. MacKay is a good (and free) place to start. It is written by someone who accepted the climate alarmist agenda (hugely exaggerated in my view) but as a Cambridge physicist/engineer he understood the realities, economics and maths of collecting sufficient so called ârenewableâ energy.
August 12, 2021
Wind Power is not the answer. As I write this, 12% of our electricity is coming from wind farms whilst we are importing 18% of our needs from Europe and Ireland. So much for exporting surplus energy when the gas powered turbines are closed!
Sand papering the edges will not work.
August 12, 2021
And it is summer and light so not that much electricity is even needed.
August 12, 2021
Oil & gas (and a bit of coal) account for 85% of U.K. energy needs, despite the billions in subsidies for renewables. It would be good if you could explain how this figure is to be reduced to (or close to) zero.
August 12, 2021
and a bit of wood (young coal) brought over on diesel ships!
August 12, 2021
‘Cheap renewable nergy’.
How many times have we heard that? I can remember when nuclear was being posited that the electricity generated was to be so massive and cheap it would not even be metered. We were told that wind energy is virtually free. Now you say an new array will be subsidy free. All the time bills just go up and up. We may or may not export ‘cheap’ energy, (I doubt there will be enough), but sure as hell the British people won’t get any cheap energy, we are ripped off by government and utilities and will be so forever.
August 12, 2021
+1
August 12, 2021
@ Sir John – reply to your kind reply
With respect, not so. This from wikipedia :-
“In January 2018 metered wind power peaked at over 10 GW and contributed up to a peak of 42% of the UK’s total electricity supply. In March, maximum wind power generation reached 14 GW, meaning nearly 37% of the nation’s electricity was generated by wind power operating at over 70% capacity. On 5 December 2019, maximum wind power generation reached 15.6 GW. At around 2am on 1 July 2019, wind power was producing 50.64% of the electricity supply, perhaps the first time that over half of the UK’s electricity was produced by wind, while at 2:00am on 8 February 2019, wind power was producing 56.05% of the electricity supply. Wind power first exceeded 16GW on 8 December 2019 during Storm Atiyah.”
“On Boxing Day 2020, a record 50.67% of power used in the United Kingdom was generated by wind power. However, it was not the highest amount of power ever generated by wind turbines; that came earlier in December 2020, when demand was higher than on Boxing Day and wind turbines supplied 40% of the power required by the National Grid (17.3 GW). However, on 26 August 2020, wind contributed 59.9% of the grids’ electricity mix.”
August 12, 2021
Thats laughable. Yes, one minute I’m sure it produces what you say and then within a few minutes it can be greatly reduced depending on the weather. Hardly sustainable or reliable. You should drive through the central belt of Scotland on a windless day and see the hundreds of turbines standing still. Oh, I forgot, they have to use electricity from the grid to keep the blades moving in case they get ice on them. It damages them apparently. What a joke.
August 12, 2021
And what happens all the other days/months when there is no wind and no sun?
August 12, 2021
Sakara, For every hour or day you quote where Wind produces a high percentage of UK electricity, I can quote a time when it produces almost none. What part of the term “intermittents” don’t you understand?
Wind and Solar are intermittent – the amount of electrical energy they produce goes up and down. By a lot. Intermittents mean back-ups. Back-ups cost money to build and operate at a moment’s notice. Sheesh, I’ve told you this before – I’d get more sense from a 10 year old.
Moreover electricity is only part of total energy used in the UK – currently most commercial and home heating is gas, and most transport is run on petrol/diesel. You cannot just wish that away. Any alternative must be practical and fully costed and available. Your suggestions are none of those. And if you want to retain a shred of credibility, don’t quote wokepedia.
August 12, 2021
Your figures demonstrate exactly the problem with wind power. It is highly variable and intermittent, causing problems for the grid. The more wind power that is added, the more problems for the grid. There have been very many occasions this year where wind contribution has been in the region of 1-3% of power supplied. Coal has been providing 3%, so low because the anti-coal policy has destroyed reliable energy. When such power stations are closed, they are blown up, as with Didcot, where two workmen were killed as a result.
August 12, 2021
What wind peaks at in âpowerâ on a few windy days is neither here nor there. You are falling for the wind industries selective days/hours con trick. What matters is how much âenergyâ they actually generated over the year not some peak ideal condition hour or minute of power. This perhaps on a day when very little electricity was even needed. The electricity is worth less too as not on demand and needs back up. Most energy used by humans is not electricity anyway but in heating, industry and transport.
Finally huge amounts of fossil energy is used to build and maintain the wind turbines. They need huge subsidies and gov. market rigging.
August 12, 2021
You do not really have (and engineers would not refer to) âan amount of powerâ as power is how much energy it is generating per second which varies by the second with the wind strength. This variation is one of the huge problems of wind as other backup (like gas is needed). The gas plants are then not being run at max efficiency as they too have to be ramped up and down to compensate.
August 12, 2021
And ramping gas plants up and down creates more CO2. The surges that the grid in Southern Scotland had to cope with often led to power outages. The electrical equipment in peoples homes was often damaged. Running a guest house and experiencing power cuts was not a great scenario.
August 12, 2021
And those with time on their hands can also research the days when the wind did not blow and wind farms contributed next to nothing.
I live in sight of the Thanet Wind Farm which has a nameplate output of 300MW, except it produces nothing on a cold windless winter day – of which there are quite a few.
As I suggested in an earlier post, Wind Power is not the answer.
August 12, 2021
Figures from Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy report:
During 2020 wind produced 24% of the UK energy supply, 13% off shore 11% onshore.
But remember that wind is not a constant, so alternatives have to also be on stand by.
August 12, 2021
When the wind blows well and demand is not very high on a particular day, then you get those high percentage figures.
During a whole year (2020) wind gave us 25%, which is good and it is increasing, which is also good, but that is towards the generation of just our total demand for electricity, which is just one part of our total energy needs.
Oil, gas, petrol, diesel, paraffin, lpg, aviation fuel, wood and coal burning create the rest.
August 12, 2021
How many tractors were built last week? You seem to do a great line in unsourced “statistics”.
If we find ourselves exporting electricity I do not look forward to paying the subsidies to do so at negative prices, which is already our experience of this when low demand last year produced surpluses overnight when it was windy. It will add substantially to our electricity bills in future. As far as I know (and according to the Low Carbon Contracts Company’s website) the Dogger Bank wind farms have signed up for CFDs currently worth just under ÂŁ50/MWh. That is not completely free of subsidy, especially when exporting at negative prices.
August 12, 2021
Why should anyone vote for a government that promises to make us less well off? This net zero is just another scam to relieve us of our money.
August 12, 2021
+1
August 12, 2021
As Dom writes above, it is is two party system which does not look like changing soon.
Our only recourse is to vote single issue party or none of the above but to avoid Labour/Conservative getting in most voters vote for the least offensive to themselves of the two.
Time to break the cycle.
August 12, 2021
Well they nearly all do. They question voters actually get is which party will make us less worse off than the others.
On the left (politics of envy side) it is – which party will steal most in taxes of others and give it to us to buy our votes?
August 12, 2021
Spot On
August 12, 2021
From one Cynic to another! I support every word, there is no common sense being used. If the market is there for it, it will thrive. An unwanted or overly expensive product will fail, even if good tax money is thrown at it. This whole subject is being rushed and that will bring failure!
August 12, 2021
Net zero: the wealth that the Davos set plan on letting you keep.
August 12, 2021
This new religion – the green agenda – will see in the destruction of western society. So whether Bill Gates uses his own money to plant a tree is irrelevant.
And none of this self destruction will make an iota of difference to the climate, which has been changing since the start of time!
Notice the term âclimate warmingâ has evolved into âclimate changeââŠ? Why, I wonder?
August 12, 2021
Sharon. Yes, and notice they said that even all these measures might not make any difference. What they really mean is we’re going to make a mint out of all this crap which we have scared the public into believing and when it doesnt work – like it hasn’t each time they tell us we only have 10 years to save the world- we’ll just say, well we did say it might not work. It’s too late. Never mind. There will be some very rich people running around enjoying life watchin plebs like us curtailed in our movements.
August 12, 2021
Our conservative government legitimised the term âclimate changeâ when they called the HoC committee âThe Committee for Climate Changeâ rather than âThe Environment Committeeâ
August 12, 2021
Sharon, It was just a propaganda switch from “global warming” to “climate change” because who can disagree that the climate changes? That deliberate gas-lighting should make everyone suspicious all on its own.
August 12, 2021
In the Telegraph today – Girls set to increase GCSE lead over boys â and we should âaccept they are clevererâ Education expert says female students have outperformed male counterparts since GCSEs set up nearly 40 years ago.
Well perhaps so, but is does not seem to show up much in games like Chess, Bridge or Nobel Prizes for science. They do however score rather better in continuous assessment and teacher assessments as opposed to in exams. The main gender difference is the huge one in their choices of A levels and degrees. Rather few females choose further maths, physics, computer studies, economics, engineering and serious stem subjects (under circa 20% at university in these subjects are female). Preferring languages, drama, english, law, history and humanities in general. Also in their job choices. The state sector jobs are heavily female (teaching is now ~ 76% female over 3 females to every male teacher.
August 12, 2021
And why is this? Because society is still misogynistic and expects women to do most – if not all – of the childcare. And, aside from when they are babies, when do children need the most care? During the school holidays! And which job allows you to have a large part of the school holidays off âŠ. teaching.
The smartest people I know are, without exception, all women. The countries we have done best during the pandemic are pretty much all led by women. Perhaps we need to look at those societal factors which often put women at an institutional disadvantage over men?
August 12, 2021
Yes.
Doubtless ALL women you meet are smarter than you, Andy. (And all the women I meet too !)
August 12, 2021
@ 3 deaths per million Xi Jin Ping is the best leader regards CV-19.
August 13, 2021
I agree Andy – Mother knows best. I assume Mother didn’t have much, if any, influence over you?
August 12, 2021
Oddly enough, Lifelogic, statements along the lines of ‘we should accept girls are cleverer than boys’ confirms gender differences. Which is perhaps not quite what the speaker intended.
August 12, 2021
The calls in your final paragraph for explanations of where the necessary taxation and new electricity will be sourced are well made. On Monday morning the Independent published a piece by Caroline Lucas which she had obviously written in advance of the latest UN Report on climate published the same day. It comprised yet more banal generalisation about how the government needs to do much more! To me this is all highly reminiscent of the campaign to leave the EU borne out of having more and more laws proposed by the European Commission prejudicial to UK interests. Now we have a UK prime minister, and a Conservative one at that, doing the same except with even worse consequences for his country and its citizens.
August 12, 2021
Caroline Lucas is a pleasant enough English graduate with zero grasp of energy realities or anything very much. Better than the other rather nasty deluded green dope.
August 12, 2021
When did my freedoms become a gift of the State as opposed to what they once were which were freedoms as a birthright secured on the altar of sacrifice as per WW2 and WW1?
Listening to this Health Secretary who’s just replaced the previous incumbent referring to ‘new freedoms as per vaccination certificates’ was beyond offensive, beyond decency and the purest expression of totalitarianism practised by the odious government of China
John and his so called libertarian colleagues belong to this party in government that is destroying our ancient freedoms. Their silence on these fundamentally important questions is genuinely upsetting.
There are those who now realise they are being played for fools but you lot in Parliament have passed laws to demonise and criminalise any opposition to this barbaric politics . Even parties like Reform are being strangled to silence them also
The Tory-Labour cancer is undermining all that we are and it will destroy who we are
Maybe politicians like Badenoch will drag the Tories back from their march towards authoritarianism and back towards their true state
August 12, 2021
+10
My birthright freedoms are my own, same as everyone else. They are not for career politicians to think they can barter/blackmail these with us.
And if the ‘services’ my taxes pay continue being denied, why aren’t I allowed a rebate, so I can go elsewhere and leave the GP’s hiding behind their sofas and NHS undisturbed to practise their tiktok dances?
August 12, 2021
Dom, Exactly so. “Freedoms” have become the gift of the state, instead of by right. It is sinister, and unacceptable.
August 12, 2021
About the time the Human Rights Act came in, when our rights became a gift of the state rather than birth right.
August 12, 2021
The fact that not one Conservative MP supposedly on the libertarian end of the spectrum has resigned the Whip in protest at the suspension of our civil liberties for 18 months is a clear indication that either they are not libertarians or they don’t have a single pair of cojones between them.
The Establishment is obviously severely rattled by Tice, the Reform Party and the agenda they are offering.
August 12, 2021
DOM, +1, well said, and it needed to be said, and it needs to be repeated until it resounds in the thoughts of a significant proportion of our populace. That you might find your view cancelled, silenced or suppressed is chilling.
August 12, 2021
Thank you for showing how the rich are behaving and their arrogance and distain for the masses. Gates can and will fly and cruise no doubt and live in big houses consuming vast quantities of fossil fuels which he wants deny the rest of us.
He says all of it is perfectly acceptable for him because he can, he says, offset’ it all. He has massive wealth and he intends to make sure he can continue his luxury life while impoverishing millions.
We must go further than simply writing and complaining and take action to stop his abuse, and his servants in our government who have similar attitudes, from abusing those without priviledge.
August 12, 2021
We no longer have a proper functioning parliamentary democracy but are living under an elective dictatorship. MPs have been complicit in this and should be ashamed. The move to authoritarian state control is remorseless. The tyrants in office and their masters pulling the puppets’ strings care nothing for the welfare of people only for themselves.
August 12, 2021
Agree with your comments Sir J R but once again it is nothing to do with outcomes, it is all about virtue signalling politics. Boris wants to be seen holding a global conference not staring at a zoom screen, the rest of the worlds politicians think the photo ops makes them look statesmanlike etc and everyone likes a free junket.
Animal Farm comes to Glasgow, hubris pie on the menu.
And in other news, talking of politics, it is now being said that travel restrictions are purely political having little effect. Now tell us something we havenât known for some time.
August 12, 2021
Nig l :
“….it is all about virtue signalling politics. Boris wants to be seen holding a global conference not staring at a zoom screen, the rest of the worldâs politicians think the photo ops makes them look statesmanlike etc and everyone likes a free junket.”
I agree and hope that once this junket, which is a danger to our country’s health as well as being completely un-green, is over our PM will do a quiet U-turn having realised that curbing the Earth’s temperature rise is a King Canute project, the Earth having been warming all by itself since the last ice age maximum 22,000 years ago.
In the meantime I hope he will not have pledged the UK to finance the World’s CO2 reduction as well as our own.
August 12, 2021
Tony Heller has some interesting charts showing rising sea levels in a linear not exponential line since the………last ice age! Who’d have thunk it. Also graphs showing temperatures much cooler on average now than the 1930’s USA. He totally debunked Boris recent claims re fires and rain!
August 12, 2021
Come the day come Nigel.
August 12, 2021
For many reasons, now would be a good time for the government to announce that no ministers or mandarins will be attending any future WEF meetings at Davos. The forum seems to be an attempt by unelected rich people to subvert democracy.
I’m still at home. Greece remains safer, on many measures, than the UK. Greece would allow me easy access to that wonderful country but the UK government makes returning difficult, expensive and fraught with risks. And overflowing ‘drop boxes’ and a lack of genome sequencing expose the shambles and lies behind respectable-looking policy. I’ll make this simple for you, Sir John, and any other MPs reading this: I will not vote Conservative again until Johnson has been bounced out of No 10 and I am able to travel easily to safe destinations. The political class has exhausted my patience.
August 12, 2021
“The establishment elite that perform the rites and fashion the weapons of the war on carbon are in danger of slipping into the bad practices of some past priesthoods”
John repeats by implication most of the populist fallacies on the topic here.
The “weapons of war” against climate change are new technologies, which will enable mankind to change its methods reasonably conveniently..
They are fashioned by technologists, by engineers, and by scientists, many of whom are ordinary wage-earners in anonymous places, not by some mythical “elite”.
However, their work is vitally important, and there is no reason at all not to use every means presently at their disposal to advance this and to collaborate in the most effective and rapid ways possible.
They are only a tiny part of the overall carbon footprint.
August 12, 2021
We have been threatened with the imminent end of the world due to human burning of natural fuels for the last 30 years. But CAGW has not happened. So, at the very least the threateners have been wrong. And it is not engineers who are pushing this “net zero” propaganda, it’s politicians from Greta, to Prince Charles, to Boris. It’s even out of the control of climate scientists, now. Maybe you’ll just keep your head in the sand, and hope (believe?) it’ll never affect you. But you are not Bill Gates, so you will not be able to buy your indulgences as he does.
August 12, 2021
The technologists will undoubtedly come up with new things to make our lives better and even non carbon if that is required. But you cannot put a time limit on it by saying that by 2030 no ICE new cars will be allowed to be sold (I know they won’t be produced by then) or that by 2035 gas and oil boilers will not be allowed when the technology to cover the shortage does not yet exist.
August 12, 2021
Sir John, your first sentence says all, but all too kindly.
Are we really expected to believe in the carbon offset sophistry of Alok Gore and Al Sharma? What a disgraceful scam!
I saw Nigel Farage in interview with Roger Hallam. Like the Wizard of Oz, like the incredible East German economy behind the wall that had outpaced the West German version, (yes, truly incredible) there was simply nothing there . . . .
Are we being led to a Pied Piper extinction by implausible nothings and nobodies, the Hallams, Gretas, Carries without a serious rebuttal from our elected representatives?
Seems like it.
Thatâs why DOM is such an important and, to me, welcome contributor. There are many other excellent contributors to your exceptional column, Sir John, and the rational perplexity is probably concealing a great depth of anger.
August 12, 2021
Hallam proved it is impossible to have a sensible discussion with people like him. He just ‘has a belief’.
August 12, 2021
Great post Jim
August 12, 2021
Sir John, being an uneducated prole perhaps you could enlighten me to the connected logic of government polices. We are told by government ministers that the world is in a climate emergency , presumably making sustainability marginal , especially so of countries like ours that imports most of its food. Yet while they tell us this they are are the same time pursuing an immigration policy to add millions of people to our population as if we have unlimited resources, in fact almost every government announcement on immigration gives yet more people the right to come here. I do not see how the two policies are compatible, doesn’t the governments mass immigration policy make a lie of their green agenda?
August 12, 2021
“doesnât the governments mass immigration policy make a lie of their green agenda?”
Of course it does. However, the Johnson regime are not concerned about the native population, as it is hoped, using the threat of exclusion from access to essential and societal needs, the experimental gene therapy will rid the country of most of them, thus reducing the overall IQ level and leaving –
and this is their big mistake to assume, a more compliant and easier to control new population.
Unfortunately due to typical political myopic ignorance and stupidity is the fact the imported population only came here for the freebies promised. Once the freebies (tax payers) have been ‘eliminated’ their new population will look elsewhere for their freebies. And no matter what colour or culture those with material assets have, there will be another (imported) colour and culture who will take it from them, by violent force if required. This is not fallacy or wishful thinking, this is a historical fact that politicians refuse to learn from. Reap what you sow
August 12, 2021
What concerns me is people are already talking about a large number of Afghan refugees coming to the UK. If they arrive without paper work like so many do now, how will we know if they are actually Taliban? If this happens then we are in serious trouble. The violence we could experience will put the IRA in the shade.
August 12, 2021
One of the unrecognised successes of English culture was that we were a people of laws, with the general acceptance to abide by those laws. This gave us the space to direct the nation’s resources to advancing science , engineering etc. In enriching us with very different peoples and cultures they have torn up the stability we once had, with the result the nation’s resources are spent just trying to keep the show in the road for another day, all future ambitions long forgotten. Look at the last year or so, a nation consumed by culture wars, with no space to do anything else, it will be the impoverishment of us.
August 12, 2021
A couple of weeks ago we had a multi-millionaire radio presenter tell us that we must pay for the green revolution and maybe learn to live in colder homes. Last week the same presenter is telling us the Government needs to do something to prevent low-income households from falling into fuel poverty when price increases hit in October.
How much longer can the middle-classes fund the virtue signaling of politicians and the rich? When this expense hits the pocket of workers in this country there will be a revolt. Letâs hope we have a viable political party that represents the people by then.
August 12, 2021
Same with free school meals.
There are those ‘middle class’ families who are ineligible for free school meals but unable to afford them either and so are forced to opt for packed lunches.
August 12, 2021
‘Yes’ we have got the message, the planet is warming up and ‘yes’ a significant cause of this warming up is Co2 and other gases. After that we have embraced a whole lot of impractical ideas that will drive us back to the 17th century and that have target dates, set by this government, that will drag us down into third-world status.
We don’t have a sufficient and sustainable supply of electricity and no practical plan to do so. The current offering of EVs are no better than shopping trolleys, having no worthwhile range of travel and take hours to ”refuel”. In addition, don’t have a flat tyre as the wheel cannot be changed by jacking up one corner, as this runs the risk of distorting the chassis due to the weight of the batteries!!
We have pandered to the vegans and fruit cakes of this world instead of examining and solving the problem scientifically. The quicker we do so, the better.
August 12, 2021
I wonder how long it takes for Bill Gates trees to replace the CO2 his flamboyant life style uses? In the meantime no end of trees are cut down for rail lines, houses, burning in power stations, furniture etc. What a load of tosh. The rubbish these people come out with is endless. I think Richard Branson will have to plant a bloody great forest for all his space travel. It’s ludicrous.
August 12, 2021
The one thing never totally discussed is the security of supply. Not the question about what type, how many generators, pylons and sub stations. The real physical security of supply. People with a grudge against this country could overnight take out the critical elements of the transmission system and render this country totally disabled. When mother nature can overnight render tens of thousands of homes with no heating hot water and now no transport public or otherwise, it does not need too much imagination, but a small force armed with RPGs and explosives spread across the whole country could in one co ordinated strike disable the whole country for days let alone weeks. Even buried power lines are not the answer, lift one or two inspection man holes and the lights go out.
Have the world’s politicians actually thought this whole process out?
August 12, 2021
I remember being alarmed by a UN report in the â80s and ensuring that the home I bought was well above sea level. Thirty years later the sea is even further out than it was back then. The only flooding in our area is where developers have been allowed to build on the flood plains.
It may seem that there are more natural disasters now but is this true? We have far more people on the planet now who will be affected by any adverse weather and the communication of disasters is better than it once was.
I still think that there are too many people on the planet and this is where Governments should direct money and policies. Encourage smaller families, educate girls in poorer countries and stop uncontrolled immigration.
August 12, 2021
Yes, Disney World in Florida was showing a film in 1990 telling us that we only had 10 years before we would all be under water. Thanks Al Gore and co but you can stop the lies now. It’s disgusting that the BBC only put out one side of all of this and some children are actually afraid they are going to drown. Who is responsible for all this carnage?
August 12, 2021
I loathed Disney etc. An industry thriving on transatlantic air travel only to lecture us on the plight of manatees.
August 12, 2021
No one in our government will ever say Al Gore got it rong
August 12, 2021
Nicely summarised, and why we no longer have any time for this absurd religion.
Carbon offsets are another ploy – who ends up with all of the money from carbon purchased?
They are playing us all for fools
Gates and others that use offsetting as an excuse to rub our noses in it us should be asked just why they have to travel? Why they have to have the latest luxury? If they stayed at home real carbon would be saved. There is no reason for their travel, not with electronic means with which to communicate.
Why aren’t they using their vast resources to set an example, live like paupers, as they want us to do — Why are they so special that they can escape the oppressive rules they set for us? If this emergency was real wouldn’t they want to cut out every last piece of carbon they could create?
The short answer is that they are deceiving us – why else do they have beachfront properties if the seas are rising?
The ‘THEY’ in this instance are the same ‘THEY’ that are forcing covid restrictions and vaccines on us – The same ‘THEY’ that wear masks for public show for photo opportunities, then remove them straight after thinking nobody can see them!
This is a double whammy fraud and the same players are involved in perpetuating both.
August 12, 2021
BRyan, yes, notice most of the rich live in big mansions right on the sea front in whatever country they live in.
August 12, 2021
@Fedupsoutherner +1
Obama is just one…just look at the huge parties he holds — maskless of course because elites don’t have to follow the rules — and none of the guests were found to have been drowned due to rising sea levels.
August 12, 2021
Up to 40% of carbon offset money can be hoovered up in consultancy fees. Certificates of Emission Reduction are needed to satisfy the UN criteria and lots of creative spreadsheets are required.
August 12, 2021
@DennisA +1
Which makes it a very beneficial contrived con-trick for some.
August 12, 2021
But Gates is not giving up HIS life ( style) is he?
If one can âbuy offâ a poisonous gas it canât be very poisonous can it?
And remember ( we will not forget) the covid-resistant beach in Cornwall.
Mumbo Jumbo to get our money and assets into their coffers.
While our democratically elected representatives stand by in bewilderment? Amusement?âŠWhat?
August 12, 2021
I am reading the phrase “You will own nothing and be happy.” on forums and newspaper comments everywhere. Part of something called “the great reset”. These are the ones getting the most upticks.
It’s becoming a mainstream belief that an arrogant and hypocritical ‘elite’ is breaking away from the rest of us.
August 12, 2021
Why, when he visited red list countries on his trips, has he been allowed to ignore the quarantine rules that the rest of us are expected to follow?
August 12, 2021
It is clear from John’s opening paragraph that he fully grasps upon what rests his party’s tenure of power.
It is the widespread ignorance, misconception, and myth-believing, which mislead a significant number of people into voting for them.
It’s no surprise then, that the Thatcher governments undermined what should have mirrored the French lycĂ©e system, the comprehensives.
August 12, 2021
How fortunate we are, the poor and ignorant proletariat who post here, to have your pure and brilliant enlightenment (and that of Andy, too) bestowed upon us, MiC.
Perhaps you could set up your own political Party, to which all would undoubtedly come flocking once they had opened their hearts and minds to your insistence that all that emanates from Europe is perfection personified, and all that is (allegedly) based on Left Wing thought is utterly desirable?
August 13, 2021
Look, it’s simple fact SM.
Quite careful and respectable research has been done.
The closest correlation with brexit and Tory voting is with lack of educational achievement.
That is not to say that posters here are from any particular part of the spread at all though.
August 14, 2021
Martin, You’ve fallen for Remain propaganda again. Older people – being wiser – tended to vote more for Leave than younger people did. Older people had less opportunity to go to university in their youth (c4% in the 1960s, rising to c12% in the 1970s) than younger people nowadays (up to about 50%). Naturally, then, fewer older Leave voters have degrees than younger Remain voters. It’s not that older people “failed”, they never had the same opportunities. If anything older people’s IQ rating is higher than younger people’s. Which you’d expect since they tended to vote Leave.
August 12, 2021
Johnson read Classics at university, so he will be familiar with the speeches by Marcus Tullius Cicero, and in particular the one he made 42BC.
It starts with:
A Nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within…But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.
(see BBC, the rest of MSM and PPE graduate Hancock’s dismissal of the Great Barrington Declaration)
I am increasingly of the opinion that is precisely what Johnson is and what he is doing.
My only question is, why?
That as they used to say is $64,000 question, though in today’s terms the figure will exceedingly higher.
August 12, 2021
I always think of climate change as a religion and Bill’s excuses as indulgences.
The rich have always bought pardons for their sins.
August 12, 2021
”I am disappointed that COP26 is not a virtual conference”
I am disappointed that COP26 exists at all….an undemocratic international conference that dictates laws and policy upon nations
August 12, 2021
Sir John
Why is it that I can no longer vote for a party that represents me and my conservative friends?
Roger
August 12, 2021
+1
August 12, 2021
If you had followed this site these last 2 years you would certainly know why.
August 12, 2021
Maybe the ostrich-like stance on electricity is more thisâŠ.
Sorreeee! We have reached the year of doom and there isnât enough electricity.
What a shameâŠno cars, fridges, freezers, lights for you lot. But letâs just flatten the curve!!
As I often bang onâŠthink back to the time when only the rich had wax candles!
And horses, and carriages, and water, and âŠandâŠeverything!
They will herd us into the towns again and hang us for stealing a linen handkerchief.
Because at bottom they are scared of usâŠbut the bloody sheep have handed them the knife!
August 12, 2021
Once attendes know about the filth and decrepit condition of much of Glasgow, they might decide for the virtuous virtual option. I wouldn’t be surprised if our esteemed First Minister up here didn’t start to encourage virtuous virtual attendance, to spare her blushes.
August 12, 2021
Alison
Rest assured any area’s they visit will be cleaned up, they will only need masks to stop the smell of new paint, bit like the Queen visiting really.
Oh I wonder, is Boris taking Carrie with him ?
August 12, 2021
Oh yes! Spot on.
âThe priesthoodâŠâ
Exactly like paying for an Indulgence.
A penny in the box and the soul flies up to HeavenâŠ
Pay to be absolved from your carbon âsinsâ!
Wow!
August 12, 2021
When one see net zero and offsetting, you know your being conned.
August 12, 2021
CO2 offsetting is a big con-trick. Who knows how many times the same forest has been sold as an offset? Or that it will take about six to nine decades of CO2 absorption before the offsetting flora sums to zero. And, that is assuming the forest hasn’t been turned into wood pellets for Power Plants to release the CO2 back into the atmosphere! Consumption Emissions per capita should be the prime metric (domestically produced emissions plus imported emissions minus exported emissions.
A very good read at “How do CO2 emissions compare when we adjust for trade? by Hannah Ritchie”, shows the UK as a significant net importer of CO2 (+42% of its domestically produced CO2). Chinaâs value of -14% means it is a net exporter. The USA at +7.7% means it is a net importer.
August 12, 2021
The COP 26 ‘principal partners’ are Scottish and Southern Energy, ScottishPower, NatWest Group, National Grid, Sky, Sainsburyâs, Hitachi, Reckitt, Glaxo Smith Kline, Unilever and Microsoft.
With companies like these steering the show, we can surely expect the interests of energy customers to be safeguarded… can’t we?
August 12, 2021
John Redwood
The voters seem to have cottoned on to whatâs going on!
How much longer will you be able to support this government which seems intent on destroying our way of life?
When are the Old Tories going to have the guts to stand up for the Electorate?
August 12, 2021
+ a great deal! Yes!!
August 12, 2021
Man made climate change is a Myth, a Hoax and a Scam.
Boris and his ecoloon ideas are going to destroy this Country.
August 12, 2021
Sir John,
Barack Obama’s recent scaled down birthday bash was so well attended that the local airport was overwhelmed with private jets. In a television interview a New York Times reporter helpfully explained that the reason so many celebrity guests were able to gather mask-less and dance the night away, was because they were “sophisticated and vaccinated.” So by this measure we should not be concerned with the number of attendees at COP 26 as they should all be vaccinated sophisticates, just as they were at the G7.
August 12, 2021
We have seen the re-emergence of the medieval superstitious system.
August 12, 2021
Basically, the Net Zero obsessives in Government (and elsewhere in No.10) want the average British householder to:
1. Spend ÂŁ30,000+ switching from an efficient petrol or diesel car to an inefficient electric one
2. Spend ÂŁ20,000+ ripping out their efficient gas central heating system to install an inefficient heat pump system
3. Spend (estimate) ÂŁ10,000+ insulating and redecorating their houses to suit the heat pump system …. assuming they already have double glazing …… if not, double it
In order to POSSIBLY achieve a further tiny reduction in our 1% – 1.5% of global CO2 emissions and absolutely ZERO impact on Climate Change.
It seems to me this should be the first chapter in the book “How the Conservative Party Threw Away An 80
Seat Majority.”
Yet we’re supposed to ignore the choices and behaviours of the hypocrites pushing this rubbish. Including the residents of No.10 who have taken no notice whatsoever of the real reason the natural environment is suffering …… unsustainable population growth.
One rule for them …….
There is NO justification for Sharma to jet around the world in order to “do deals.” It’s just a perk of the job.
August 12, 2021
As went reaction to Covid, so goes net zero.
Faced with incredible forecasts, doom-mongering, petty rules, hypocrisy from the rule-makers, imprudent to outrageous exemptions and loopholes, many of us stopped listening a while ago and have devised our own appropriate responses. If challenged, our rallying cry will be âwe donât believe you!â.
Let COP meet in Glasgow or virtually: I shall not likely notice which saving if Wilfred gets to repeat his G7 triumph showcasing Britain to the world.
August 12, 2021
F57. Glad you brought this up. I can go into a restaurant and eat and drink with friends and others and I can go to the gym and work out with others but when I go into a shop I am expected to put my face mask back on. Where is the sense in all of it?
August 12, 2021
Don’t use a mask, Fus. I don’t.
August 12, 2021
Who ‘expects’ you to put a mask on in a shop, Fedupsoutherner? Has anyone told you they ‘expect’ that? No-one’s told me.
Fewer and fewer people wear these pointless things where I am, and a good thing too.
August 12, 2021
Well, maybe it’s my upbringing but I feel guilty if I leave it off. I went into Sainsburys and everyone was wearing a mask. The sign outside says please think of our colleagues and wear a mask if you can. I know I don’t have to but I feel guilty not doing so. I then went to B&M and thankfully nobody was wearing a mask. No employees and no shoppers. I didn’t either. So nice to be natural again. I must leave it off more often.
August 12, 2021
I may have posted some similar figures on here some time ago in which case these figures are more of an update. Over the past several years since âapocalypseâ was attached to the production of CO2 by man, I have asked all and sundry what they think is the CO2 percentage of the atmosphere. To those who say they donât know, which is the majority, I simply ask what they think the percentage is based on the widespread concern over CO2âs effect on the global climate. The average of all the answers is currently 12%, the highest estimate came from a Conservative ex Minister at 60%, and the lowest, being the only correct answer, from a 13 year old schoolboy who said 0.04%. He owned up to having recently learned the actual percentage. How many MPs know the correct figure, particularly Alok Sharma and Allegra Stratton, and of course Boris.
August 12, 2021
The same with cars â the public have been brain-washed into saying that cars are badâŠ.but when asked, they donât know why, but they constantly report that they are on the BBC..so it must be true
August 12, 2021
It is interesting how the debate around climate has changed. For many years most of you rejected man made climate change completely. Now the evidence for it is irrefutable most of you have changed your position. You no longer deny the climate is changing, instead you are angry at the solutions.
Solar panels canât possibly work in the U.K. you tell us. Yet they do – I first had them installed in 2007 and can tell you they produced most of my electricity even back then. Even in winter.
Electric cars canât possibly work you whine! And yet electric cars are pretty much the best cars on the market. Sure, you use them in a different way to petrol cars but even now as a method of transportation they are perfect viable for the vast majority of drivers the vast majority of the time.
Heat pumps are useless you all claim. And yet heat pumps work perfectly fine for most people.
The awkward reality for all of you is that the long term cost of Brexit is far more than the long term cost of dealing with climate change. Because dealing with climate change, whilst expensive, has plenty of up sides. Brexit, whilst expensive, has no upsides.
You lost the climate debate. Maybe all hush now and let us fix your mess.
August 13, 2021
You are going to help or take over ‘fix the mess’? Well that’s a welcome change of position from you!
Or, is your idea of fixing, just the debate?
Are you going to China, India, USA, S.America etc to persuade and fix the damage you believe to be causing all this wringing of hands and future wasteland of a planet? No?
Thought not.
August 13, 2021
As time passes the more we realise that climate change is natural and almost un-influenced by man. At last the Government is grasping the foolishness of NetZero but it does not like accepting that a major error has been made. How many people realise that if CO2 drops to 0.015% of the atmosphere from the current 0.04% then the planet will die as all vegetation will expire.
August 13, 2021
Andy, Irrefutable? There is no evidence for man-made climate change. It is reasonable to suppose man has some effect, but how much we don’t know – because we cannot separate out natural and man-made variations. Did you know that the GCMs are tuned to remove natural climate change? Evidently you don’t. So man-made climate change is a supposition – a guess. And the idea you have that CO2 is some sort of simplistic global thermostat is for the birds.
Some of your cited technologies work. After a fashion. But they either don’t work well, or are expensive (or impractical) to install, or cost more to run. And despite your claim Solar panels do not work at night (that’s 4pm to 8am in winter – 16 hours), so your panels don’t provide you with electricity between 4pm and 11pm in winter (peak domestic demand). Unless you have storage as well. Which takes valuable living space and costs even more, and which you don’t mention. And almost all BEVs are no good for long distances. Or are you making it all up anyway?
August 13, 2021
Andy
Most did not refuse to agree that mankind had an affect on the climate.
Most did challenge what the percentage effect of mankind on the total effect was.
Even the climate experts had various answers to that question.
The major problem is whether the changes the UK seems determined to independently introduce will actually alter the climate.
And these are changes which will inevitably cause many less well off people to suffer hardship,
Meanwhile Germany, India and China carry on there alternative way.
PS
Net zero will cost the UK trillions.
Brexit not so much.
August 12, 2021
The business, and that’s what it is, of carbon offsetting is a con and an excuse to continue to generate more CO2 at someone else’s expense.
Even more of a con if CO2 generation is held up as the only reason for Climate change.
No one wants to point to population explosion, industrial activity explosion, resulting in poloution, waste, and the destruction of the green environment which manages the natural CO2 recycling .Even now we are only adding less than 5% to the total volume of CO2 recycled. But if we are destroying the green environment which will continue even if we stop our 5% contribution, then how will nature handle the remaining 95% of the worlds CO2 generation with a greatly reduced green environment ?
August 12, 2021
Alok Sharma may well be able to fly to myriad destinations, but let me appraise you of the minefield of trying to book a flight with two of the low cost airlines today. All I wanted was a simple one way trip Alicante to Birmingham. Airline number one, not in terms of service but just the first I tried. I made three attempts but could not get past their desperation to hire me a car. I have cars, but the site had seemingly no way of getting beyond to say no. I gave up on them having been offered three different fares on each visit. Trying contact by phone is impossible unless you have a bottomless purse and an ear for repetitious classical music.
The second airline I tried to book with went smoothly and I gave them full details for payment. They then asked me to contact my banks App. to authorise payment which I did . The money fled from my account but the airline said it was too slow and I should try using another card. Phoning them resulted in fifteen minutes of pop music at my expense and no reply or resolution. Up until now I have been sympathetic of the airline and travel business but these two outfits do not deserve to be in business. Which is sad for the aircrews who once in the air run a very efficient service.
There should be a law that heavily penalises those who hide behind the anonymity of their computers while running an appalling public relations front. I might suggest it to Nigel Farage as a suitable subject to highlight on his GB News.
August 12, 2021
You are right that a virtual COP26 conference would be much better, for the reasons you give. Granted that the conference is going ahead, we should as host set the agenda. Top of the agenda – and perhaps the sole item – should be a modification of WTO rules to deter the burning of raw coal and the manufacturing of CFCs. For each nation – and it is natural to think of China as the worst offender – make the following computation:
The cost per annum of replacing raw coal with decarbonised coal at power stations
The cost per annum of replacing CFCs with something that doesn’t harm the ozone layer
The sum of these two costs (1)
The total value of the nation’s export of goods per annum (2)
Divide (1) by (2) to compute an additional % tariff to be applied to all exports from that nation
Such a calculation and the resulting tariffs would be a first step to deterring dirty economies. And no carbon trading, please; offending nations must suffer.
As with most things, the distance is nothing; it’s the first step that counts.
August 12, 2021
Did you see macron and other glonalists do that silly illuminati pyramid symbol with their hands for the camera? How is a pyramid symbol about equality? It’s about elitism.
August 12, 2021
âThe establishment elite that perform the rites…â
When the establishment elites stop flying round the world to reach their sea side, sea level properties and terribly important hot air conferences, Iâll stop being a ânon-believerâ.
On the ground, in the meantime, it will continue to feel considerably warmer when the sun shines at midday than when it doesn’t at midnight.
August 13, 2021
Reducing the population will reduce energy consumption. As some suspect perhaps the fix is already in.
Excess renewables can be sold or converted to H2 and injected into the gas grid.Using current oil/gas infra. Blending the H2 into gas could help to reduce the need to ban this and that as the net effect could be similar The flexibility & use of gas power plants could be extended by any such excess H2 in the shortrun.