Problems with green products- do they really cut CO 2?

Many people who accept the science of climate change do not buy electric cars and heat  pumps because they do not see how that lowers CO 2. The establishment and the main parties all hold the same strange idea that forcing more people to buy these two products will in some way cut world CO 2. It is difficult to see how this would happen given current limits on renewable power.

If I bought a new electric car today and plugged it in to charge it the grid would need to call up more gas fuelled electricity to handle the needs of my recharger. We are usually using all the renewable power we can produce. If I spent a lot of money on a heat pump that too would require grid power to fuel it. How does it make sense to burn the gas in a distant power station and lose some of the energy in transmission when I could burn the gas directly in my home boiler and capture more of that energy as usable heat?

For the establishment view to  work we need much more renewable power to power the grid, with reliable ways of storing green electricity for days and times when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. We are someway off that situation. Before demanding we switch cars and heating systems government and the energy industry need to decide how to make storing renewable power economic. There would then be a long period of gaining permissions and implementing the work necessary to put in extra renewable capacity, extra grid capacity, and the approved ways of storing. These might be the production of green hydrogen with all the additional changes that would then require, or more large battery installations, or more pump storage systems. None of this is easy to do, quick to complete or cheap.

There also needs to be whole lifetime accounting. Ripping out a gas boiler and putting in a heat  pump uses large amounts of energy to make or scrap or install or remove the products. Much of the work  today is undertaken by suppliers using fossil fuels . This CO 2 needs to be accounted for. Early retirement of gas boilers or petrol cars may add to world CO 2 from the CO 2 involved in their replacement. It has been shown you would need to do a high mileage for a number of years in an electric car, recharging it from renewable sources, to cut overall CO 2 compared to running your older petrol car for longer.

140 Comments

  1. Stred
    January 6, 2024

    The production of electricity to include transport, heating and industry would have to be tripled at least. During a winter lull in wind and with solar being near zero, with nuclear reduced to 5 to 20% if we are lucky, the UK will require at least 2 weeks storage. As there is no way to store electricity by batteries or gravity, whether using pumped water or weights, the only possibility is production of hydrogen and the Royal Society has recommended the building of large caverns to store it. Engineers have shown that even this would be inadequate and extremely expensive. The alternative to burning natural gas is to split it into hydrogen and carbon dioxide and pump the latter under the North Sea. This would use more gas and also be very expensive. In practice enough back up by carbon fuel generation would be required but no new gas, oil or coal stations are planned. This information has been available in the book Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air by the late Prof MacKay for years. But apparently no-one in government has read it.

    1. PeteB
      January 6, 2024

      Spot on Stred. All of the eco claims for us to move to 100% green erlectricity simply cannot be delivered now or at any future point. Battery storage capacity as a percentage of total demand is measured in seconds, not hours or days. Politicians really should be honest on this point.

      The only solution that will work is to harness nuclear fusion. At that point electicity supply can be available 24/7 at the levels needed. All of the solar panels and windmills can be ditched. The National Grid will still need to be 3+ times greater though.

      1. Hope
        January 6, 2024

        JR, why are EU countries (and UK in lockstep) attacking farmers to make it cost more to produce food! Yesterday German minister fled to ferry after 100 farmers demonstrated against tax breaks on diesel cut and tax increases to farming. UK did the same with red diesel.

        Could your dim witted govt explain why they have a mass immigration policy, where we now find only 15% of non EU migrants seek or have jobs, but is acting against growing food!

        JR, we were promised your govt would give money to farmers to boost industry once out the EU CAP. Another broken promise? Snake putting country in lockstep with EU? Please explain.

        1. Hope
          January 6, 2024

          NB: Obviously we had Holland stealing land from farmers to stop food production.

          Why are EU countries and Snake’s lockstep UK deliberately trying to obliterate food production while deliberately encouraging mass immigration? How does this help the planet? I do not want to eat insects and will not be forced to do so.

          I also note EU allowed by Snake to decimate our fishing stocks and wreck the seabed by industrial fishing. Even though EU doing a deal with Iceland which would harm our fishing industry. Is Snake really that stupid or just treacherous acting against our national interests?

        2. BOF
          January 6, 2024

          Hope
          Surely nothing to do with reducing world supply of food, forcing people to consume artificial protein in the form of laboratory produced meat and insect products. Nothing to do with super rich individuals who control production of these products and vast tracts prime farm land who just happen to believe the world is overpopulated.

          Whatever, NO FARMERS NO FOOD. I wish UK farmers would get there and join Dutch, German and French farmers with country wide protests.

        3. Sharon
          January 6, 2024

          Hope

          Mark Steyn discussed this topic a year or so ago. Ultimately, the globalists want four global food hubs and so want to reduce, farmers and farm animals; which is why The Netherlands farmers fought back… though that was EU initiatives, I believe.

          It is unbelievable, I know!

          1. Mitchel
            January 8, 2024

            Part of the reason for the Ukraine war was for the west to secure control of that span of rich agricultural land from Bulgaria/Romania to black earth Russia

        4. M.A.N.
          January 6, 2024

          Where’s the information re the 15% immigration employment coming from?

          1. Mickey Taking
            January 7, 2024

            Presumably the range of NI numbers issued to them is known, and stats available? If not – WHY not!

    2. Lifelogic
      January 6, 2024

      Indeed a sensible Cambridge Physicist/Engineer like myself “Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air by the late Prof MacKay” available free online I think it certainly it used to be. Still pretty much spot on as the laws of physics do not change.

      But electricity production would need to be more like ten+ times as much if everything was run off low carbon electricity and batteris or synthetic fuels. Just the energy needed for Lufthansa Airline would prob. use up nearly the whole of the German grid output. Not that battery aircraft would be remotely practical anyway. So it would have to be fuels made (rather inefficiently) using electrical power. Plus you really need to power all the mining and production of batteries, wind-farms etc, done offshore with renewables not fossil fuels as now and all the manufacturing that the UK has exported due to high green crap energy costs here. Thanks to moronic government net zero policies.

      1. Hope
        January 6, 2024

        Cut all inter connectors with EU would be a good start. Self sufficiency in energy is a must.

    3. Dave Andrews
      January 6, 2024

      Storing electricity in batteries only works for the batteries manufacturers. Gravity works for peak load requirements, as currently in Dinorwic.
      The best option I’ve seen for energy storage is liquefied air. Takes about the same volume as needed for battery storage, without the colossal mineral requirements. Very inefficient of course, but that’s the snag with energy storage.

    4. graham1946
      January 6, 2024

      Then of course there is the most obvious question of all – with only one percent of global emissions why do we put ourselves in sack cloth and ashes and bankrupt the nation in order to save what? Bigger nations produce tens of times the amount we do (even if the do-gooders say how wonderful China is doing on renewables – and overlooking many coal fired power stations being built)? We could just stay as we are, making virtually no contribution to global warming or whatever it is called this week, until better solutions come along. Is it just punishment for being a successful nation in the past (we aint now), introducing the world to industrial revolution which lifted more people out of poverty than anyone else has done. Or just a profit making scam for political supporters? Politicians obviously have no regard for the people who put them in parliament or this question would be asked and answered with a better reply than ‘we will lead the world in wind’ or some such tripe.

    5. IanT
      January 6, 2024

      Much is currently being made of the flooding going on around the country, with (of course) the inevitable Climate Change being blamed (Sky bringing Climate Doom to a TV near you)
      But whether you think that these changes are man-made (or not) it seems to me that the UK can do nothing in practice to change it. What we could do is a great deal more to protect ourselves from it.

      In this country the impact is likely to be all water related. Either too much water or too little. Rather than all this Net Zero nonsense, let’s start taking flood and drought a lot more seriously. These are areas that we can influence and should be doing so as a matter of urgency. Stop that ÂŁ20B spend on “Carbon Capture” for instance and start working on water management, new resevoirs, new flood defenses, planning laws protecting flood plains… Whilst we were at it, perhaps someone could also come upi with a viable and affordable energy solution too – because renewables clearly are not either.

      Charity begins at Home – and you’d think our numbskull politicians would realise that in an election year…

      1. Lifelogic
        January 7, 2024

        The idea that a sensible way to stop or reduce the UK flooding (as it always has done) is to reduce the tiny percentage on CO2 that is manmade in the UK (using EVs etc, that do not even save CO2) and wait for a hundred years or so is moronic. What is needed is more dredging, flood pains, flood relief schemes, houses that can safely be flooded occasionally (if you must build in flood plains) vegetation that slows down run off


  2. Will
    January 6, 2024

    For the establishment view to work we need much more renewable power to power the grid, with reliable ways of storing green electricity for days and times when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining.
    Actually, no, as this will just compound the massive collateral costs of trying to accommodate the intermittent nature of wind and solar. We just need to get real, cut out all of the Nut Zero crap and let people get on with their lives with a reliable electricity supply, currently from gas but hopefully, if the politicians get their collective fingers out, from nuclear.

    1. Jim+Whitehead
      January 6, 2024

      Will, ++++
      Like a car waist deep in a flooded ford after following the directions of its SatNav, we’re guided by a senseless government into an impossible and impassable position.
      All that was needed was early realisation of the foolishness of being a follower of the unthinking and simply stopping and retracing route back to sense and safety.

  3. Mark B
    January 6, 2024

    Good morning.

    This is all displacement activity and disguises what is really going.

    And what is going on ?

    The decline of Western Civilization.

    1. Everhopeful
      January 6, 2024

      +++
      Agree
      The powers tb have decided, without our input, that what we earned by our blood, sweat, tears and bl**dy GENIUS should now be SHARED OUT!
      And apparently our reptilian govt. AGREES.
      But first they battered most into a kind of cringeing submission by means of Marxism.

      1. Everhopeful
        January 6, 2024

        Is it “cringing”? My iPad insisted on the “e”.
        This is how it will be with AI
        No autonomy 
lead into error and danger by computers like Horizon.
        Imagine a car driven by Horizon!!!

        The machine can not be thwarted.

        1. glen cullen
          January 7, 2024

          Why is every EV managed by wifi and you need the latest smart-phone to use a charging station with an in-credit bank account ….its all about control

    2. glen cullen
      January 6, 2024

      Agree – Net-Zero is a western disease

    3. Bloke
      January 6, 2024

      What does a Net Zero cutter look like?
      Does it have a blade?
      Is it a person who causes other people to act or do nothing?
      Someone cutting has to be sharp and hard enough applying adequate force.
      Is it a contraceptive that reduces demand from an increasing population?
      Is it something in China or India that prevents the presently-undeveloped portions of their 2.8 billion fellow citizens from becoming heavy consumers?
      A single grain of sand can cut an engine at a critical point, yet apparently nobody has found how to use it so far.

    4. Original Richard
      January 6, 2024

      Mark B ;

      Correct.

      There is no CAGW and the Net Zero “solution” is intended to impoverish the West with expensive and unreliable/chaotically intermittent energy and the electrification is to be able to control us through the smart meter.

    5. Ian B
      January 6, 2024

      @Mark B – funded by the UK Taxpayer

    6. Ian wragg
      January 6, 2024

      Today 65% of our electricity is being generated by gas, nuclear and biomass (good CO2 according to the government. Chris Skidmore resigning jut shows what a limp dumb he really is. Where does he think the electricity will come from for these magic Ezvs and Heat Pumps if oil and gas production stops.
      150+ other countries aren’t signed up to this act of self flagellation so who is really driving it

  4. Lifelogic
    January 6, 2024

    Well very few people who know what they are talking about think that a bit more CO2 even a doubling will cause very much warming at all. See Prof. William Happer videos. A bit more CO2 plant, tree and crop food and slight warming is a net benefit on balance. We live in a period of a relative dearth of CO2.

    As to whether electric cars and heat pumps save CO2 they do not in general especially if run from electricity generated from gas, coal, oil, wood
 and they will be as we have now spare low carbon electricity and it cannot be cost effectively stored. Just the fossil fuels that go into mining and making a new EV car mean that keeping your old one is almost always better at reducing CO2 should you wish to reduce CO2 that is!.

    I just arrived in Cambridge and had to heat up a stone cold house the efficient gas boiler did it to toasty warm in 18 hours. A heat pump might typically have taken 4 days and would cost far more as electricity costs far more than gas as does the installation. Even allowing for the CoP efficiency of heat pumps (which is invariably exaggerated). This means people leave them on while away wasting more energy.

    1. Dave Andrews
      January 6, 2024

      Our industrial unit has no gas heating fitted, we use electric heating and wish to develop the rest of the building (currently we occupy just the ground floor of a two-storey unit). In this context, air source heat recovery looks attractive. A gas boiler with plumbing and radiators is not cheap either.
      At home we have a gas fired combi boiler. We feel no urge to replace it with heat recovery.

      1. Lifelogic
        January 7, 2024

        New gas supplies connections can be very expensive but then so can beefing up an electricity supply. Oil can be reasonable. Ground source heat pumps can be better when practical as the ground says warmer than the air in cold days (when most heat is needed) so CoP should ne hogher. If manual workers (and not too many of them) you can just heat the workers with direct electric radiators on colder days.

    2. graham1946
      January 6, 2024

      I am no scientist or engineer, but I do know someone who has a heat pump, big radiators and all the other costly gubbins that go with it and I can say, I would not like to live in their house when it is cold outside. I much prefer my well insulated country cottage with oil fired heating and a wood burner. The heat pump is also much more expensive to run and they have to wear more extra clothing than I do in my nice warm home. Energy efficiency with electricity – yeah right. I’ll stay as I am thanks. My home also has adequate ventilation and is not hermetically sealed which will store up problems for health and the buildings in the future. Another ‘diesel is best’ moment, I think.

      1. graham1946
        January 6, 2024

        PS. Since installing their costly system, they are now installing a wood burner. Go figure.

    3. Mickey Taking
      January 7, 2024

      Why didn’t you keep a basic temperature going via thermostat? Lucky to avoid frozen pipes which might happen in the next week.

  5. Lifelogic
    January 6, 2024

    So Skidmore former energy minister and net zero priest resigns. So is this man do dim, scientifically ignorant (I assume no science beyond 16) and deluded as to have fallen for this Net Zero con trick or does he have some vested interests or is he paid to think this?

    He contributed to the fairly sensible Britannia Unchained book so he seems rather confused in his politics. Though the relatively sensible Kwasi was also rather confused and ill informed on Net Zero too.

    1. Lifelogic
      January 6, 2024

      You ask “How does it make sense to burn the gas in a distant power station and lose some of the energy in transmission when I could burn the gas directly in my home boiler and capture more of that energy as usable heat?”

      Well clearly it does not make sense as at least half the energy is wasted at power station and in transmission. True some of this is made up for by the CoP of the heat pump you might get 2x the heat out for heat in – but electricity is usually over three times the cost of gas anyway. Reflecting power station losses and other costs.

      In fact there is often rather more logic in using gas to heat to house and to generate the electricity you need at the house using the “waste” heat for heat or hot water. With modern lighting, efficient fridges, tvs, computers and electronics you can manage with rather little electricity so long as you do not use electricity for heating or EV cars. Combined heat and power as they called it, but since the net zero CO2 devil gas religion this is rather out of fashion. Gas cooking & kettles can be over three times cheaper than electric and usually better in CO2 terms too.

      Also do not imaging that wind energy is really that low in carbon. Loads of fossil fuels, concrete and diesel ships needed to install and maintain them. Plus it needs back up usually from gas making the gas plants run less efficiently (and be more capital intensive) as they then have to ramp up and down to serve the wind farm intermittency. Far more expensive and energy demanding too to connect up and maintain hundred of offshore wind farms than one Gas Power Plant.

      1. Iain Moore
        January 6, 2024

        A wind turbine requires 80 gallons of oil for lubrication to run it .

        1. Bingle
          January 6, 2024

          It also takes electricity back off the Grid when it needs to be protected from a too strong wind.

        2. Lifelogic
          January 6, 2024

          Which doubtless needs changing periodically using diesel boats.

      2. miami.mode
        January 6, 2024

        LL, you’re probably correct in stating the CoP of a heat pump as 2 but a quick check on the web shows anything up to 4 or more and it would also appear to depend on the outside temperature.

        When there is a formula such as “COPheating = Qh / E = (Qc + E) / E = COPcooling + 1” it is obvious people would get confused i.e BS baffles brains.

        1. Lifelogic
          January 7, 2024

          CoP (especially for air source heat pumps) is lowest when it is cold outside but this is exactly when most heating is needed. Noisy too.

    2. Peter
      January 6, 2024

      Skidmore has a sideline Net Zero job that brings him ÂŁ80k per annum :-
      https://members.parliament.uk/member/4021/registeredinterests

      The Emissions Capture Company (industrial decarbonisation and clean technology).

      For a career politician, he may think it wise to move on now and get more of this sort of work.

      Headlines may boost his standing with the Net Zero crowd.

      1. Lifelogic
        January 7, 2024

        Declaring a vested interest is surely not sufficient, it is still a vested interest declared or not.

    3. MPC
      January 6, 2024

      I suspect he’s had an offer he can’t refuse in the ‘renewables industry’. We’ll see before long.

    4. Stred
      January 6, 2024

      Some reports say he’s got a job lecturing in greencrap at some American University. Let’s hope DIE doesn’t get him.

  6. Lifelogic
    January 6, 2024

    Perhaps JR will be kind enough to let me explain why Junior Doctors are so vastly underpaid.

    Victoria Atkins our health secretary & barrister (on circa ÂŁ159k PA) just this is just how much junior doctors are underpaid:-

    Salaries for junior doctors range from £30k to £65k. So an average of about £47.5k over the first ten years typically aged 25-35. Most Doctors will have about £100k of student debt plus interest on it at circa 7%. Take home average over the ten years will be about £34,000 less commuting costs circa £1,500. Bit then to pay off the student loan fully over 10 years costs £13,800PA leaving £18,700 PA. But rent on a small room in a shared flat in many regions is about £12,000 PA, Council Tax, Water, Heat, Light, TV tax, insurance, dental, prescriptions, prof. fees, pension contributions, leaves them about £5 a day left for lunch, food, drink, fun, holidays, clothing
 this for ten year. No chance of even renting a self contained studio flat let alone buying one.

    Lucky to be able to buy two coffees in London for ÂŁ5. Plus as public transport is so unreliable especially outside normal hours they will certainly need the odd Uber taxi. So how are exactly they expected to live Ms Atkins unless they inherit or are carried by parents or partner…

    GB news and the Telegraph have this totally wrong too. Even a 35% pay rise is insufficient, it would after 40% tax, pension conts. and NI only give them only an extra ÂŁ22 a day free for food & fun. Sir Howard Davies thinks it is not that difficult to get on the property ladder and they need to save. So how exactly can a junior doctor save anything from this pay?

    How can he be so absurdly out of touch?

    Reply We need first of all to establish what the average pay is. Nuffield Trust says in year to March 2022 full time equivalent average was ÂŁ57,000. A rise is planned for this year. There is a London allowance. I agree they need to decent pay.

    1. Lifelogic
      January 6, 2024

      So at circa 35 they have worked hard for about 15 or 16 years University + as a Junior Doctor. They have zero net assets, live in a rented room in a shared flat and have lived off ÂŁ5 a day for lunch, food, drink, fun, holidays, clothing for ten years! Even worse should they have children to feed clothe and need child care . Better off on the dole or woking in a cafe from age 16 by a long way.

      So not a profession for anyone who is not independently rich to start off with then.

      1. Sir Joe Soap
        January 6, 2024

        Pension?
        Transferable skills?
        Both assets they have acquired for their time and money that the Sports science or Photography with Gender studies student probably doesn’t.
        It’s a market and Ms J Doctor can happily transfer to a job in research, marketing etc. if the grass is that much greener.

        1. graham1946
          January 6, 2024

          Pension? Yes for later on, probably in their seventies – what use it it in their 30’s? Can you buy a house based on a pension due in 40 years time? They ARE working in a market, but the ‘market’ does not pay them properly which is why we are short of them. We can’t just ramp up doctor provision like a widgets factory. This government’s ‘austerity’ programme has ruined all our public services and increased the national debt by at 3 times the level they inherited. Tories are no longer credible on the economy and tax – they have turned Tory/Socialist a combination no good to anyone.

        2. Lifelogic
          January 6, 2024

          Not a fair market really as largely rigged with a single virtual monopoly NHS employer unless you leave the country or profession. If you come top in you medical degree you get no more pay just a better choice of hospitals. In law you would get double the starting pay ÂŁ100k at some firms.

        3. Lifelogic
          January 6, 2024

          Pensions, to someone aged 25-35, are another liability – they would often be better keeping the money and buying a house. They are not thinking about when they are 68!

      2. Narrow Shoulders
        January 6, 2024

        This will always be the case while health is a public enterprise. Admin and management takes ups too much cost.

        In the private service sectors there are more customer facing staff and they are renumerated in a manner that encourages them to deliver more services.

        Junior Doctors wishing to earn more money should be campaigning for a private health service. We can’t afford a public one with all the hangers on.

        1. graham1946
          January 6, 2024

          Yes but the private hospitals do not provide for accident and emergency, Intensive Care (if you need that when in a private hospital you will likely be transferred to the NHS). They pick and choose elective procedures for the most profit and of course insurance companies don’t like paying out. My Life Policies are cut each time there is a review the nearer they get to paying out. There is a need for both private and the NHS (if it was run properly with no political messing about), but totally private? Who would buy the billions of pounds of assets anyway, or do you suggest we just give them away to some corporates for nothing?

          1. Narrow Shoulders
            January 7, 2024

            If the NHS did not exist then emergency services would be provided.

            You mention increasing costs per claim. Have you seen the NHS increasing budget? Someone is meeting those premiums.

            I do think there is room for public private partnership with the admin side being run privately and taxpayer funding paying for work provided rather than issuing grants for merely existing.

      3. Colin
        January 6, 2024

        If they’re on ÂŁ57k they can afford to rent a flat, not a room, and if they have a partner they’ll be able to buy a house. And once they become a GP or consultant they typically earn over ÂŁ100k.

        Even first-year junior doctors are paid more than the average earnings of the people whose taxes pay their wages. None of those people have got a 35% pay rise.

        And your suggestion that the pay of a newly-qualified junior doctor should be comparable to that of a Cabinet Minister is absurd.

        1. glen cullen
          January 7, 2024

          +1

      4. A-tracy
        January 6, 2024

        Lifelogic, if they took jobs outside of London, (apparently there are lots of NHS jobs to go around in the rest of the Country) their costs would reduce, their earnings stay the same, but their spending power would increase, then the government would have to do something about London and high value areas and stop this ridiculous one national wage for all areas the same.

      5. Mickey Taking
        January 6, 2024

        Are you ignoring the other 35 year olds who have also worked hard, been paid less than the Jnr Doctors, have to rent or still live with parents or crash with friends, no chance of saving for an astronomic deposit to get a mortgage, which is then subject to monstrous bad management of Government and its plaything organisation that are supposed to keep inflation at 2%.
        This is the real world in the UK… bloody tough on everybody who have incomes under say ÂŁ60k.

    2. Ian B
      January 6, 2024

      @LifeLogic
      Some more enlightened Industries pay off the student debt when they join their organizations. It wouldn’t be a stretch for similar to happen to Doctors and Medical Staff employed full time in the NHS.
      Maybe that is where these Hospital managers should be spending their(our) money instead of ‘discrimination’ staff.
      In a similar context as the Hospital Management are given money with no expectation placed of what it provides, they should be employing the Doctors and arranging their pay. It should under the current set of circumstances be a government thing.

    3. Lifelogic
      January 6, 2024

      To Reply – I have use ÂŁ47.5 (for the first ten years which is the lower pay years) which basically gives them ÂŁ5 a day disposable. If it were ÂŁ9,500 more this after 40% tax and NI would give then ÂŁ12.50 more. If they had childrent they would lose child benefit though so then even less. Still ÂŁ17.50 is better than ÂŁ5 but still not remotely enough for food, lunches, fun or to save anything.

    4. a-tracy
      January 8, 2024

      John, please establish the average pay for each year after graduation and inform us if you could price up the entire benefits package. Have you considered offering more money today with a workplace pension if they take more money today?

      Some people say it takes seven years of university before doctors start earning, but online courses are five years before FY1 starts; how does this compare with doctors we import from India, Pakistan and Nigeria?

      People say that if British doctors leave the UK after five years of subsidised medical training, they don’t have to pay back any student loans. Is this true, or do the student loan company chase them abroad?

  7. David Andrews
    January 6, 2024

    The whole process of CO2 accounting is a farce, a scam and an irrelevance. It results in a colossal waste of resources. If new technology is good enough it will displace old technology by user choice. That will only happen if the new offers compelling benefits over the old, such better functionality and/or lower costs. Government will do better if it provides an environment that enables such substitution to occur than pretending it knows best by shoving it’s pet projects down people’s throats.

    1. Lifelogic
      January 6, 2024

      Exactly.

    2. agricola
      January 6, 2024

      David Andrews
      Spot on.

    3. Jim+Whitehead
      January 6, 2024

      DA, +++++

    4. Ian B
      January 6, 2024

      @David Andrews +1
      It is also of note that this Conservative Government is saying buy from China the Worlds Largest Polluter or we will punish you. Is that because China is not on this Planet, has not signed up to this NetZero Crap.

  8. R.Grange
    January 6, 2024

    How does it all make sense, indeed? Meanwhile in your own constituency, Sir John, developers are going ahead with the greencrap agenda. It’s reported in a local paper that 256 houses to be built in Finchampstead will all be fitted with heat pumps. How much they add to the cost, and whether any of these homes will be “affordable”, wasn’t reported.

    1. agricola
      January 6, 2024

      R Grange
      If unaffordable they can always be used to house asylum seekers as in nearby Farnborough.

      1. Timaction
        January 6, 2024

        They could deport them the same day but drag their feet refuse to take positive action costing English taxpayers ÂŁ8 million a day. A political choice they hide.
        Every imported product could have a CO2 certificate showing the amount it took to manufacture and transport that product. It could also show the per capita CO2 footprint by the producing Nation. Then a ready reconner comparison on a similar UK product. Job done, nut zero and its rank stupidity would cease over night.

      2. Diane
        January 6, 2024

        Farnborough: There is a statement from Rushmoor Borough Council to be seen on line. 113 self contained flats / 346 capacity to be used for asylum seeking families. To be used as a temporary measure….. A known UKG contracted ‘supplier’ is to provide on site services and security.

    2. Ian B
      January 6, 2024

      @R.Grange I to take issue with the over building locally, without the infrastructure and resources(water, electricity, etc) in place. The bit that is not quite right in what you say is the Heat Pump, in a new build that was designed for it. There is probably just a few pounds(10’s) difference and that can be either way. A home designed and built correctly nowadays with a Hvac and a Heat Pump would probably escape even using the HP on most days other than for water. The bit in this Conservative Government thinking that is wrong is in the retro fitting these devices in homes that have not been designed for them – ÂŁ30-50K would be a realistic cost that doesn’t then get a pay back – UK Electricity is one of the Highest Costing in the World. Heat Pumps need large amounts of affordable electricity
      The bulk of UK Electricity comes from foreign government owned facilities, which the UK Taxpayer subsidies. Those same governments are using the same supply to create affordable local energy in their home countries – thank-you UK Taxpayer

      1. R.Grange
        January 7, 2024

        Thanks for your useful comment, IanB. I’ve looked further into this and discovered we have to distinguish between ground source heat pumps and air source heat pumps. GSHPs are more expensive than ASHPs because of the need to install a ground heat exchanger – typically the price for a full installation ranges between ÂŁ18,000 and ÂŁ35,000. But this connection to the ground is what enables a GSHP to perform more efficiently than an ASHP, particularly in winter. I don’t know what kind of HPs these new homes in Finchampstead will have, but it looks as if the choice is between higher cost or poorer performance in winter. I wonder which option the developer will be going for.

        1. Ian B
          January 7, 2024

          R.Grange – Finchampstead will be air sourced. Even in a new property although they are capable they consume masses amounts of electricity, the electricity we don’t have in the UK unless we the taxpayer subsidize Foreign Government with cheaper electricity in their home Countries. In the UK we pay over the odds for our short supply electricity, not the going market rate to enable other Countries to undercut us.

    3. Mickey Taking
      January 6, 2024

      Earlier in the year a niece bought a pleasant 1-bed flat and found the heat pump to be totally inadequate now winter has arrived, and it hasn’t really got cold yet!

      1. Mickey Taking
        January 7, 2024

        oops- I should have distinguised – it is an air sourced.

        1. Mickey Taking
          January 7, 2024

          and spelt it better!

  9. DOM
    January 6, 2024

    John completely misses the point though being highly intelligent I suspect that’s deliberate.

    It’s not about the climate. It’s not about heat pumps. It’s not about EV’s. It’s not about racism nor misogyny. It’s about the total politicisation of life itself to impose a rigid orthodoxy. We’ve been here before. 1917 Russia. 1933 Germany. The end result will be the same. Freedom loving people will at some point fight back against the detritus that seeks to destroy our world and replace it will something very, very different

    Reply I oppose wrong limitations on our freedoms. I am not your problem!

    1. Sharon
      January 6, 2024

      Dom, apart from your point about SJR, I totally agree!

      Looking at so much, the pandemic, mass immigration, the net zero, the identity politics – the list is long – it’s entirely illogical, but achieves the same, chaos and confusion, and division of views, family, society as a whole.

      I don’t think the scam will work, more and more people are questioning things and saying no, but it will leave a great big mess behind in its wake!

    2. Lifelogic
      January 6, 2024

      Both points are valid, CO2 is not really a problem more a benefit and the methods they push to save CO2 do not really work.

      Typically to make a 1KWH battery it might use 50KWH of fossil fuels to mine and manufacture. The battery might then only last circa 300 charge discharge cycles. So you perhaps get 300kwh of useful energy out. But then you have to put 50KWH in to make it, about 800kwH of gas burned to charge it and perhaps 25KWH to recycle it. So nearly three times the fossil fuel energy in for each KWH you get out. About the same as a petrol car. But that is cheaper, has far less weight, wears tyres and roads far less, can be refuelled in three mins, has much more range


      1. dixie
        January 7, 2024

        If that is the best a self-proclaimed “sensible Cambridge Physicist/Engineer” activist can do then your cause is truly lost.
        Hints;
        1. Your comparison is not like for like – you ignore the energy need for extraction, refining, processing, storing and distributing required for petrol (and diesel).
        2. Lithium car batteries last significantly more than 300 cycles – Tesla claims circa 1,500 over a 22+ year average working life.
        3. The official US government source for fuel economy information has EVs at over 77% grid-to-wheel energy efficiency compared to petrol cars at 12-30%. Your energy comparisons are not accurate or reasonable.
        From direct experience my EV weighs less than the diesel car it replaced with less tyre and brake wear, can be refueled on my drive or anywhere there is a 3-pin mains socket or type 2 charger available, and has sufficient range for my needs. It has also had a superior reliability compared to my previous Merc.
        Also, my car is predominantly charged using wind or solar, either from my roof or via Octopus who claim 100% green generation. The exception would be public charging but I haven’t used any for the last 3 years. So no gas power generation involved.

        Reply If you add a new EV to the UK system there will not be additional wind or solar energy available to recharge it most days.

        1. Mickey Taking
          January 7, 2024

          Fascinating – how do Octopus filter the electricity for you in order to ensure it was ‘green’ produced?
          Just asking.

          1. dixie
            January 7, 2024

            It is for Octopus to ensure they meet their claims .. they state that there will a mix of supply but they aim to balance demand from their customers with renewables generation into the grid and other renewables supply.
            Aside from that my charger can detect when then there is surplus energy from my panels and that is used to charge my car.

        2. dixie
          January 7, 2024

          @Reply that is not strictly true though, existing PV owners switching to EV will not inflict as high a load. In addition Octopus (at least) offers a tariff to use overnight surplus for EV charging fo rPV and non-PV owners.
          But you should ask the question of government – how they plan to ensure there is sufficient and sustainable renewables-based grid energy and public charging networks to meet the projected demand … I would be interested in the answer.
          More to the point, what provision is the government making to increase power generation to enable more manufacturing and industry?

    3. agricola
      January 6, 2024

      Reply to Reply.
      In that you are part of the governing party, but obviously in disagreement with much that they do, rebel against it, join Reform, making a significant gesture. You will never change their thinking or resultant disaster inflicted on the UK population.

      1. IanT
        January 6, 2024

        I will vote for you at the next election Sir John but I have to say that there are many of your colleagues that would not get my vote.

        If I lived in Wellingborough I would be very temped to support Ben Habib, partly because I agree with much (but not all) of his views but also because your Party needs a terrific kick up the backside. I’d also like to see Reform at least balancing out the Lib Dem vote in Westminster.

      2. A-tracy
        January 6, 2024

        Join Reform and go to work for GB news to echo your point to a none listening government, what’s the point of that! You have got to be in that chamber to convince others MPs of your point and team up to make things happening, no amount of carping on from the sidelines will make changes.

        We have suggestions from the left to reduce voting age to 16 so the indoctrinated children in our state school system will vote for the unionised socialist parties, wake up. Reform is spreading themselves too thin, if they were serious they’d pick off the North East or North West like the SNP in Scotland.

      3. Lifelogic
        January 6, 2024

        Well with FPTP Reform will be lucky to get a single MP let alone any power later this year.

    4. glen cullen
      January 6, 2024

      Agree – Freedom & freedom of choice is the only weapon of the common man ….and thats being taken away by the policies of net-zero (can’t politcians see that)

      1. Lifelogic
        January 7, 2024

        And by market rigging in healthcare, energy, education, tv broadcasting, transport, planning


        1. Mickey Taking
          January 7, 2024

          Sounds like a sort of communism – thats what you get – take it or leave it no alternatives.

          1. Mitchel
            January 8, 2024

            Capitalism always strives for monopoly to boost profits.Communism believes competition is wasteful.

  10. Richard1
    January 6, 2024

    Indeed. Do you know the ‘Conservative’ MP Chris Skidmore? It’s reported he wants to resign asap due to outrage at the govt permitting new oil & gas licenses. It would be interesting to hear his take on this. Presumably as an educated and intelligent man who takes an interest in these things he is aware that in the U.K. renewables account for c. 4% of primary energy (the global figure is c. 1%)? How does he propose home heating, cooking, transport and industry will continue if oil and gas aren’t permitted, given the limited output of renewables, their intermittency and the current absence of technology to store power output?

    1. Lifelogic
      January 6, 2024

      If he is a well educated and informed man on this topic he surely must be a liar and doing it for other dubious reasons. But perhaps he really is just deluded and in thrall to the net zero religion?

      He read Modern History it seems so prob. no science beyond 16.

      1. Richard1
        January 6, 2024

        Sir John was an historian and understands these issues very well.

        1. Lifelogic
          January 7, 2024

          True but this is rare. I have heard even energy ministers who do not know the difference between or units for energy and power!

    2. Ian B
      January 6, 2024

      @Richard1 – with that sort of thinking he demonstrates a position off being anti-UK first. The need to signal a ‘virtue’ seems to grip these dim wits before they realize what they have said.

    3. Mickey Taking
      January 7, 2024

      He was not going to stand again anyway. Could it be that he wants to add to pressure on Sunak?

  11. Everhopeful
    January 6, 2024

    The agenda
the headlong rush to “achieve” Net Zero is the ONLY objective.
    Had the powers tb actually wanted to cut “emissions” and believed there was merit and viability in so doing 
then the “green” products would have evolved organically ( I actually doubt that is possible because WEATHER is not dependable and energy harvested from it can not be easily stored).
    As it is there actually are no products and carbon accounting is one huge scam.

    The dreadful and probably fatal desperation to rid us of an essential gas/petrol/coal mirrors the Horizon scandal.
    Whoever ultimately pulls the strings must indeed be powerful and fearsome.

    And plastic is a wonderful and revolutionary product. See how brainwashed we have been against it. Why?

  12. Wanderer
    January 6, 2024

    Keep plugging on (no pun intended).

    If enough of the population get to understand it’s all claptrap then we might be able to push back against net zero and the other authoritarian ploys to make us subservient.

  13. Mick
    January 6, 2024

    STOP this idiotic road to self destruction of net zero rubbish, ozone /climate change they are all but a thick smoke screen to screw every last £££’s of our money, put simply if the great British people really believe in this net zero crap then there would be more than one MP in Parliament, what’s needed right now is a party to be truthful with us and stop all this disaster nonsense of that we will all fry in 30 odd years time , this is a fundamental reason why we are struggling to make ends meet because net zero rubbish as a effect on every aspect of our life and our a hard earned cash, when the weatherman with all the satellites and computers can’t get the next day’s forecast right and the research scientist who get funding to peddle this crap we should take there views with a pinch of salt,

  14. agricola
    January 6, 2024

    Nett Zero is all top down dictat with all the responsibility put on the end user. From current government point of view thi7s makes sense because they are maxed out on tax take and bond borrowing. They do not have the money to renew the grid or create the charging infrastructure.

    This is a fact before we question the wisdom or total lack of it in what they are trying to force upon us. I spent Christmas Day lunching with friends at an edwardian house where all other houses were 1930s at latest. No off street parking so cars bumper to bumper on both sides of the street. Imagine that with charging cables across the pavement tripping people and tangling wheel chairs and mobility scooters. That is the reality of government dictat and lack of intelligent thought.

    Notwithstanding the above, government and their scribes have managed to trash all other forms of infrastructure and public service. They then have the gaul to trumpet the UK as the sixth country in fhe world in terms of wealth. Technically if true, none of it has trickled down to our crap infrastructure or to the population in general. It must be in the hands of a very small number of people well cushioned against raids by HMRC. While I believe in Brexit and Sovereignty, one trip around Europe tells me how incompetent our government is in its failure to produce quality of life for its population. The sooner we are rid of the along with their opposition the better it will be for the people.

  15. Brian Tomkinson
    January 6, 2024

    Man-made climate change and net zero are scams designed to impoverish and control the majority for the benefit of a globalist cabal. Human life is based on carbon and without carbon dioxide there would be no life on earth, as we know it. Doomsday predictions of what will happen have been made for decades and have never been realised.
    Even the terminology was changed from global warming to climate change to be all embracing. When are MPs going to represent their constituents instead of the globalists?

    1. glen cullen
      January 6, 2024

      I don’t believe that half our MPs know where there constituency is 
.they’re told by their party agent where there constituency office & home is !

    2. Lifelogic
      January 6, 2024

      +1

  16. Narrow Shoulders
    January 6, 2024

    Why not ask the Prime Minister what the benefit is in increasing overall Carbon output in order to fudge the accounting in a PMQ Sir John?

    Personally I would rather we just scrapped the push to net zero as it is not needed but in the absence philosophy becoming mainstream I would like the accounting scandal to be exposed (we have seen from reaction the the Post Office TV series that the public can get exercised by accounting scandals when they see them).

  17. Javelin
    January 6, 2024

    EV cars shift pollution outside urban areas to where electricity is created.

    I suggest that ULEZ zones are placed around cities to keep urban electricity usage down to a minimum 😉

  18. Paul
    January 6, 2024

    Climate science- LOL. All the “climate science” spouted is a collection of grossly manipulated statistics, half truths and fear mongering. Co2 is vital for plants, more is better. Global temperatures have been much higher than they are now many times in the past- we’re in an ice age right now. Green tech is almost entirely BS and only suitable for small scale off grid applications. If you did away with fossil fuels there would be a societal collapse within a week- possibly within hours. The covid scam showed just how quickly loo paper disappeared- multiply that by a million and you’ll get a slight vision of the hellish Mad Max world it would be very quickly.

  19. Old Albion
    January 6, 2024

    Why on earth should the UK be concerned about cutting our CO2 output? It’s so tiny as to be irrelevant
    0.00045% of the global total.

  20. David Cooper
    January 6, 2024

    “The establishment and the main parties all hold the same strange idea that forcing more people to buy these two products (electric cars and heat pumps) will in some way cut world CO 2.”
    Minor amendment for reality, following your debunking of this idea as total nonsense: “…all profess to hold the same strange idea…”
    Now for a potentially more truthful sentence: “The establishment and the main parties all hold the same strange and sinister idea that it is necessary to reduce quality of life for the middle and aspirational working classes by forcing them to buy these two inferior products, knowing full well that this will in no way cut world CO 2 but that it will make them easier to control.”
    Why can they not leave us alone, how can we rise up against this, and who might be best suited to lead the uprising?

  21. majorfrustration
    January 6, 2024

    Heat pumps and EVs are the next Horizon

  22. glen cullen
    January 6, 2024

    The Tory net-zero strategy can be found in their ‘Mission-Zero’ publication, which describes its objectives and recommendations, it’s a publication that could’ve been written by either the EU or UN
    Sadly its our governments plan 
.you hear much about it in the media and I bet it wont to referred to in their manifesto 
I would welcome SirJ’s response to the publication
    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63c0299ee90e0771c128965b/mission-zero-independent-review.pdf
    It’s a 340 page doc, but read page 15 ‘key actions for 2025’ and page 293 ‘recommendations’ (the recommendations read like a politburo directive for control of every function of state and the people)
    I CAN NEVER VOTE TORY WITH THIS ‘MISSION-ZERO’

  23. Jim
    January 6, 2024

    All this stuff about EV cars and oil is a waste of time. The real problem is humans – too many.

    Well too many who burn up too much fuel, and I don’t mean cow dung. There are two solutions – cut the number of big rich consumers by say 300 million and keep it that way or cut the number of poor consumers by say 3Bn and keep it that way.

    Of course the rich consumers and their politicians might kick up a fuss which is why I propose the bigger number of poor ones – their politicians are easier to keep quiet. Not very nice but a suitable job for politicians.

    1. glen cullen
      January 6, 2024

      ”The real problem is humans – too many”
      You’re wrong, we have to many politcians ….trying to act like god determining the controlling the weather

  24. Ian B
    January 6, 2024

    Then add in the extra punishment of raising the Road Tax this year, extra parking charges if the vehicle is not deemed Net Zero, so on and so on. It is just an excuse to raise tax instead of controlling spending.
    Then take the 20mph limit, it will always increase CO2. It is just a get out of not having provided an adequate local infrastructure.
    Then we get to the BIG one instead of banning petrol and diesels vehicles, this Conservative Government is to slap massive extra taxes on the Companies that sell them instead of EV’s. Political double speak once more from a clueless weak Conservative Government

    1. Ian B
      January 6, 2024

      In essence with the new tax regime for None Net Zero vehicles this Conservative Government says the UK Citizen must be forced by way of a punishment to buy more from Chinese manufacturers.
      If CO2 is the question also dropping of the ‘rules of origin’ that stated that just 45% of a cars manufacture should come from within the UK or the EU, was also saying you must by Chinese. Just realise how low that figure is, it confirms the cars are not made in the UK or the EU but are assembled from imported components, 90% of which come from China – the Worlds Largest polluter.
      Now reflect on our Conservative Government’s actions and punishment taxes, they are in effect saying if you the UK Citizen/Taxpayer doesn’t buy from China the World’s largest CO2 producer we will punish you. Conservative Government double speak, we will ensure World CO2 emissions by taxing the ‘hell’ out of you for not aiding that dream.
      The much heralded said to be Indian owned Somerset battery plant, is just not quite as the image suggests. The Indian company is the front, they don’t have the expertise, China is the other partner – the aim is to import from China the Worlds Largest CO2 emitter then make out they finished item originated in the UK
      This Conservative Government’s intention is not to reduce CO2, it is to punish the people of the UK for its own failings

    2. glen cullen
      January 6, 2024

      Have you noticed that politcians only talk about rising net-zero taxes and never about the rising sea levels

    3. Mickey Taking
      January 7, 2024

      Universal 20mph in any built up environment will add pollutants to the ‘local’ atmosphere, more than would be the case when engines were running more efficiently.

  25. glen cullen
    January 6, 2024

    Conservative Environment Network (CEN) manifesto –
    Page 22 ‘A ban on fracking is overwhelmingly sensible for four main reasons
    Page 28 ‘necessary to bring forward the phase out date for sale of new petrol and diesel cars to 2035’
    Page 29 ‘Road pricing is based on the principle that those making use of public roads should pay a sum of money’
    Page 35 ‘New Clean Air Zones near schools and high streets’
    Page 36 ‘Tax fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides at point of production’
    Page 42 ‘extend greening commitments to all public authorities’
    Page 50 ‘Make green finance a core theme’
    Page 58 ‘Build on the success of the UK’s coal phase-out
    https://www.cen.uk.com/_files/ugd/047866_2303a8dc2eca42058d5927c2239c0e86.pdf
    So are these Tories conservative or green ?

  26. RichardP
    January 6, 2024

    You have described the situation perfectly. It would easier, cheaper and more environmentally friendly to replace the Establishment CO2 fanatics than our boilers and cars.
    If this nonsense continues there will be no British car or boiler manufacturers left.
    We could end up with a Cuban style motor industry. We will be driving old cars, serviced by back street garages, because there will be no new cars available that we want to buy.

  27. Ed
    January 6, 2024

    If you want to be net zero by 2050 (say 25 years time) then on a back of the envelope calculation you would have to generate 300GW of non fossil fuel energy.
    You may as well plan to have unicorns eating fairy dust and running in giant hamster wheels.
    Also carbon dioxide is the gas of life and we need more.

  28. Bert+Young
    January 6, 2024

    Making a decision depends on many factors and all individuals have preferences and influences of their own . When a national decision is made of one sort or another no Government can assume that it can and will be implemented without consequences ; this is very true with the imponderable matter of climate change . Indicating choice is one thing but expecting immediate compliance is another .

  29. Colin
    January 6, 2024

    “Many people who accept the science of climate change…”

    Now then, Sir John. Do we mean “science” or “The Science” (the kind that’s “settled”)?

    To quote the World Climate Declaration, led by Nobel Prize winning scientists Ivar Giaevar and John Clauser:

    “To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. We should free ourselves from the naĂŻve belief in immature climate models. In the future, climate research must give significantly more emphasis to empirical science. There is no Climate Emergency.”

    Legislators and policy makers should familiarise themselves with the counter-arguments to the alarmist narrative behind Net Zero, and look at the evidence, which does not in fact support the idea that continued use of fossil fuels poses some kind of threat to humanity or the world. We are in danger of impoverishing ourselves and losing our freedom on the basis of what amounts to a pseudoscientific quasi-religion.

  30. Keith from Leeds
    January 6, 2024

    As with the groupthink and refusal to accept they were wrong at the Post Office/ Horizon IT management level, so the same applies to Net Zero. The blunt refusal to think, research and educate themselves by the majority of MPs shows the same mule like stubbornness.
    CO2 is a beneficial gas, not a problem. So starting from a false premise the Government and a majority of MPs are happily impoverishing the UK and the people. Perhaps voting Reform may destroy the Conservative Party and a proper Conservative Party can then be built from the are wreckage.
    Ignorance is bliss and it seems that is the state of most of our MPs.

  31. glen cullen
    January 6, 2024

    Even the Social Democratic Party (SDP) are more ‘conservative’ than the tories

    ‘We will withdraw from the 1951 UN refugee convention, the ECHR and all other international instruments’
    ‘We will reduce net migration to 50,000 per annum’
    ‘a government ‘Buy British’ policy’
    ‘The House of Lords will be abolished & An English Parliament will be established’
    ‘No public sector employee should be paid more than the Prime Minister’

    Their website doesn’t even mention climate change or net-zero, because they don’t have any policies of climate change or net-zero 
the tories could learn something

    1. Mickey Taking
      January 7, 2024

      I’m afraid the more recent Tories are sheep, and incapable of learning very much at all.

      1. glen cullen
        January 7, 2024

        Isn’t there any hope !

  32. Kenneth
    January 6, 2024

    Similar argument for recycling.

    Much if it requires extra journeys and extra energy to refurbish/re-purpose. From the studies I have seen, most recycling is bad for the environment.

    Glass and metal can be effectively recycled but they were recycled centuries before the propaganda.

  33. Ian B
    January 6, 2024

    Sir John
    The other big question in dealing with this imposition of the UK people is out of the 197 Countries that inhabit this planet only 6 (Just 6) have created Laws Rules & Regulations that cause hardship to their own people the electorate. The other 188 Countries on this Planet refuse to jeopardise their economies for a ‘Virtue’ Signal, as that is all it is.
    They (these other Countries) are also laughing at the UK; this Conservative Government is forcing its own people to buy from the World’s Largest Polluters and to reinforce this position is punishing its people for not doing so.
    The World grows wealthier at the expense of the UK – thank you the Conservative Government

  34. Ian B
    January 6, 2024

    So, Skidmore quits, because he cannot support reducing World Pollution, reducing World emissions. Poor deluded sole.
    Or is he leaving as he knows under Sunak/Hunt the Conservative Party has signed up for its own demise.
    The Conservative Party has to sort itself out, and quickly. 5 years of labour is worrying but another 5 years of this crowd would be a bigger disaster.
    Take note, CCHQ just as with those you have foisted on us you aren’t listening and can’t hear, you have become the problem

  35. miami.mode
    January 6, 2024

    Have just seen Robert Jenrick on TV saying that rain etc is getting worse and causing more floods. Nothing to do with concreting over much of the countryside to build houses or diverting the courses of rivers, of course!

    1. Mickey Taking
      January 7, 2024

      For more than 2 decades we have continued to concrete over ordinary fields that Planning allowed – at the behest of Governments, and various groups, farmers included, wanted their fields to drain better. So where as it used to be that high water (from rain of course) would lie and soak through naturally, especially where it was traditionally a flood plain, now we create fast flow in few hours to eventually reach the sea. The result often is housing flooding and sewage emptied into streams and rivers. In recent years this policy is coming home to bite with a vengeance.

  36. Lynn Atkinson
    January 6, 2024

    I see in a poll this morning that 97% are calling for the ‘caring Lib Dem Ed Davey’ who refused to question the ‘evidence’ from the Post Office and ‘computer evidence’ in the heartless, inhumane Post Office case.
    It is the very same ‘caring, hugely limited’ people driving net zero.

    Basically it’s them or us. All of these irrational, deluded and low quality people, chosen by the Party machines for those very qualities, must go. I applauded the resignation of the ‘Green tory’ today and hope the rest will follow.

  37. forthurst
    January 6, 2024

    The Global Warming Hoax is yet another attack on Western civilisation by the perpetrators of the communism scam; purportedly to share a nation’s wealth amongst the proletariat it was in fact about transferring all wealth to the Nomenklatura, an alien group which operated under pseudonyms so as to disguise their true identities.
    The Global Warming Hoax is in a similar vein. As with communism there are the perpetrators and also the fellow travellers who hope to profit from it and those of modest intelligence, the majority, who are innately gullible and will swallow any establishment scam whether it is the need attack some country or other, the need to import millions of unassimilable aliens or the need to close down the economy to save the planet.
    Once farmers have been financially induced to use their land to accommodate windmills and solar panels, once farmers have been discouraged from farming by high energy costs increasing the costs of fertiliser and fuel and encouraged to ‘re-wild’ their productive land, the international crime syndicate will then declare that the approach taken was entirely wrong and all subsidies will have to be withdrawn forthwith; the syndicate will then buy all the land cheaply from the bankrupt farmers, clear the detritus from it and proceed to grow food once again, charging the proletariat extortionately for it.
    Its always about wealth transfer and its always about transferring wealth to the pathologically avaricious.

  38. Chris S
    January 6, 2024

    The key to cutting emissions is rational and scientific analysis of what will work best for the country in the short, medium, and long term.

    Until the grid can deliver sufficient reliable green electricity, there is no point in having too many EVs and heat pumps. To increase green and reliable electicity can only be achieved via more nuclear, and that can only be delivered economically and reasonably quickly via UK designed and built SMRs. Currently, it would just mean burning more gas.

    As we are inevitably going to require ÄŁas and oil for at least another 20 years, whatever the government does, it will be much greener and better for our balance of payments to use our own oil and gas rather than importing it.

    Current EV are too expensive and short ranged, so only business drivers are acquiring them because they are receiving massive taxpayer-funded subsidies.

    Given the chronic lack of infrastructure, trying to force EVs on the general public now is pointless, futile, and probably doomed to fail until better batteries are available and they will not be deliverable until at least 2030-2035. So why is the government continuing with its plan to fine manufacturers ?

    Heat pumps are never going to be a solution for millions of homes. The army is already experimenting with electric boilers. They have none of the disadvantages of a heat pump, and are far cheaper, but they wil require the grid to deliver a huge increase in electrical power and currently that costs three times the price of gas.

    Reducing our emissions can only be achieved by reducing net inward migration. Even if building three cities the size of Southampton every year was Ă chievable and affordable, the emissions they produced, along with all the extra vehicles, would dwarf any savings made elsewhere. We cannot continue to allow 700,000 extra people to settle here.

    There are plenty of other examples of ill-thought out policies, but none of the simple facts I have detailed above are being addressed. Why not ?

  39. Ian B
    January 6, 2024

    Sir John
    In answer to your question ‘Problems with green products – do they really cut CO2?’ in a UK context how can they? It’s a ridiculous a weird concept. CO2 is a World generated situation.
    At best or is it worse the UK is said to account for 0.04% of all World emissions. Then factor in the UK’s Conservative Governments answer to the situation they pose is at the same every time, punish the UK and its people with so-called green taxes. While at the same time forcing everyone to import more of everything from that Countries that are the Worlds Largest polluters and also import by the most polluting methods. So Conservative Government policy is to increase World pollution
    197 Countries in the World only 6 have gone down the path of trashing their people and their economies – the UK being 1 of the 6.
    Every bit of this Conservatives Governments actions on this front have directly resulted in increasing World CO2 by another magnitude while making the Country poorer and un-competitive. This is the Boris Johnson vanity project his self-imposed race that the rest of the World as they are too busy creating economies and wealth is not engaged in.

  40. Original Richard
    January 6, 2024

    “The establishment and the main parties all hold the same strange idea that forcing more people to buy these two products will in some way cut world CO 2. It is difficult to see how this would happen given current limits on renewable power.”

    Not strange at all once it is understood that CAGW does not exist and the Net Zero “solution” is simply a means to impoverish and control.

    Not only does the historical climate data show that CAGW is simply hysterical nonsense but also in addition the calculations of Happer & Wijngaarden on the real atmosphere, including water vapour, omitted In the IPCC models, have proved that doubling CO2 produces a negligible increase in the GHG effect (see the CO2 Coalition website for details).

    Plus the politics shows that CAGW is nonsense :

    – It only applies to the West. China and India can carry on burning as much coal as they wish.

    – Expensive, inefficient, unreliable, chaotically intermittent renewables have been selected for our low CO2 emitting power instead of cheap, efficient, reliable, weather independent and secure (not reliant on China) nuclear fission.

    – The elites carry on with their own high CO2 emitting lives.

  41. MFD
    January 6, 2024

    Well said Brian, We must fight against the WEF Gestapo forcthe good of our children.

    Why Sir John would we want to waste money trying to reduce CO2 when it has been much higher in generations past. And also does good for the life of our world!

    No Sir, I will not follow the scam and certainly not waste my money.

    Those horrible people can dance all they want , I am not for shifting!

  42. Original Richard
    January 6, 2024

    “The establishment and the main parties all hold the same strange idea that forcing more people to buy these two products will in some way cut world CO 2. It is difficult to see how this would happen given current limits on renewable power.”

    Not only is renewable power limited – hence intentionally selected for low CO2 emitting power – but it is currently twice the price of nuclear fission, which with improving technology will cheapen further still, and can only exist with a completely parallel electrical energy generating system as backup. Except of course there is no intention to provide grid scale back up. No plans exist and nothing is shown in the 2035 NGESO FES 2035 or 2050 energy flow diagrams. It is clear that demand destruction is the intended method for demand to match supply.

  43. Original Richard
    January 6, 2024

    On Wednesday 10th May 2023 the PM told the HoC :

    “
.we have seen the price of renewables such as offshore wind decline from £140 an hour [per MWhr] to about £40.[per MWhr]”

    https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-05-10/debates/4C4C2408-4EFA-47E4-9700-87EE1A74264A/Engagements#contribution-32002637-9390-49D4-90DC-65CF43CB4B6E

    Both are 2012 prices.

    At the coming Auction Round 6 (AR6) for renewables we will see fixed offshore wind CfDs at just over ÂŁ100/MWhr and floating offshore wind (needed as we move further offshore into deeper waters) at just over ÂŁ240/MWhr (both 2023 prices).

    So will the PM be making a statement in the House to update the House on the price of electricity from renewables?

    BTW, renewable electricity is of course of very poor quality electricity because it is not reliable.

  44. paul cuthbertson
    January 6, 2024

    As Donald J Trump says it is the GREEN NEW SCAM and He knows more than anyone what is going on. Nothing can change what is coming, NOTHING.

  45. Barbara Ramskill
    January 7, 2024

    So true Sir John, why do the majority of the Conservative Party not agree with you ?
    I do believe you should get together with Ben Habib to save Country.

  46. KB
    January 7, 2024

    Washing machines used to be hot and cold fill as standard. Now cold fill only is standard.
    Seeing that people will have tanks of heat-pump (or solar) heated warm water to use in the future, why are we not mandating that appliances must have the option of hot fill ?
    Why are A-rated fridge freezers so much more expensive than the large number of E and F models still on the market ?|

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