No, you’re not having a bad dream: this is what is really happening in the UK right now. The British government, led by Boris Johnson PM, is enthusiastically implementing one of three key demands by Extinction Rebellion, an extremist direct action group which formally launched in the UK on October 31st 2018 and which has been listed as ‘extremist’ by anti-terror police. That key demand is that the UK set up a citizens’ assembly on climate change policy. The Guardian writes:
Counter-terrorism police placed the non-violent group Extinction Rebellion (XR) on a list of extremist ideologies that should be reported to the authorities running the Prevent programme, which aims to catch those at risk of committing atrocities, the Guardian has learned.
The climate emergency campaign group was included in a 12-page guide produced by counter-terrorism police in the south-east titled Safeguarding young people and adults from ideological extremism, which is marked as “official”.
XR featured alongside threats to national security such as neo-Nazi terrorism and a pro-terrorist Islamist group. The guide, aimed at police officers, government organisations and teachers who by law have to report concerns about radicalisation, was dated last November.
After the inevitable outcry from Green zealots outraged (how dare they!) at being called out for what they are – dangerous extremists – but more likely after the police embarrassingly noticed that the British government is busily adopting a key demand of XR, counter-terror police have back-tracked on their original designation:
DCS Kath Barnes, head of CTPSE, said: “I would like to make it quite clear that we do not classify Extinction Rebellion as an extremist organisation. The inclusion of Extinction Rebellion in this document was an error of judgment and we will now be reviewing all of the contents as a result.
Oops! The fact remains however. The tactics, stated aims and behaviour of this group of nutcases were deemed by highly trained counter-terrorist police to be sufficient cause to designate them as an extremist threat alongside other proscribed extremist groups. The government is now implementing a key demand of this group of extremist anti-establishment rebels. Which does make you wonder how ‘anti-establishment’ they really are. But they are certainly extremist. Another of their demands of the UK government was that it implement a policy of net zero carbon by 2025. This was obviously ludicrously unrealistic; however Britain’s worst, most despised Prime Minister ever made sure that she amended the Climate Change Act 2008 to introduce the far more stringent net zero by 2050 target, as her parting gift to the UK. Boris, being continuity Doris as far as climate change madness is concerned, obligingly included the new target in his election manifesto.
So here we are, democracy being seriously undermined by a British government intent on handing control of what will be extremely unpopular economy-wrecking, austerity-and-mass-poverty-imposing, personal-liberty-sapping policies to a group of unelected Green quangos and outrageously biased academics and ‘experts’ who get to decide who they’ll invite as representative members of the public to their climate assemblies so they can feed them full of doom-laden bullshit about climate change. Here is a tweet from one of those ‘experts’ (pictured in the article header with fellow ‘Caboteer’ Prof. Dale Southerton) who thinks she now has a ‘mandate’ to influence the implementation of net zero policies in the UK:
An emotional wreck deciding UK energy and transport policy on the basis of her irrational fears about climate armageddon. Chris Stark, Chief executive of the Climate Change Committee thinks that this deeply flawed, anti-democratic process is ‘as good as it can be’ when it comes to representing the the views of the British people. Jesus H Christ! We really are doomed.
Climate Scepticism 
Here’s a reminder of what happens at these climate assemblies.
https://cliscep.com/2019/07/21/mark-maslins-plans-to-fix-democracy/
“This is the bit where I really make sure you’re depressed.”
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From the UK Parliament site:
“Key themes to be discussed at Climate Assembly UK will include how people travel, what people buy and household energy use. The outcomes of discussions will be presented to the six select committees, who will use it as a basis for detailed work on implementing its recommendations. It will also be debated in the House of Commons.”
So there will be discussions, then outcomes of the discussions, then the committees will get to work, and then comes the implementation stage.
Presumably it is at that point the rest of us will be told how we must travel, what we can and cannot buy and how much energy we will be allowed to use in our homes.
Well, at least we got our chance to vote on all of this. Oh, wait…
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https://www.worldcoal.com/coal/10012020/coal-flexibility-supporting-indias-growing-energy-needs/
“The growth of energy demand in India is quite staggering. Its economy is predicted to continue to grow at an annual average rate of 6.5% through to 2040 and as a result, energy demand is projected to triple over that period.
Renewables alone cannot meet these needs. This is why 40 GW of coal-fired capacity is currently under construction. Further capacity additions are planned to meet increasing demand, including peak loads, and to ensure reliability with more dispatchable capacity.
The Indian government has also recently announced the intention to increase national coal capacity from 194.44 t to 238 GW by 2027. “
According to Global Carbon Atlas, India increased its CO2 emissions by 8% from 2017-18.
India and China combined increase in CO2 emissions from 2017-2018 was 423 million tonnes.
UK annual total CO2 emissions for 2018 were 379 million tonnes, a decline of 8 million tonnes from the year before.
UK CO2 emissions in 2018 were 1.07% of global total.compared to China’s 28.48%. In case someone says “what about emissions per capita?” China has now overtaken us on that score as well:
UK 5.6 tonnes per capita and falling, China 7 tonnes per capita and rising. India is currently just 2 tonnes per capita and much of India still has no reliable electricity. Imagine how much more emissions are to come, as they move forwards.
http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org/en/CO2-emissions
Our low emissions status has not gone unrewarded by the climate:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/mly_cet_mean_sort.txt
The year 2019 was only the 24th hottest in the CET record.
Winter 2019 was the 18th warmest, with 1869 leading as the hottest winter.
Spring 2019 was the 35th warmest, with 2017 being the hottest
Summer was the 46th warmest, with 1976 being the hottest
Autumn 2019 was the 104th warmest, with 2006 being the hottest
It’s nice to know that as we cut our fossil fuel usage even more and our electricity costs continue to rise, it is actually benefiting the planet. It really makes me feel good.
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Thanks Dennis, I’m sure all those ‘experts’ will be explaining that in detail to the people they invite to take part in the citizens’ climate assemblies.
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There is one question that may very eventually dissuade MP’s from their ‘net-zero neutral by 2050 target’. That’s what’s going to happen to the military? If the target is applied universally and the fossil fuel infrastructure is scrapped, there must be some MPs somewhere that will recognise the impracticality, even in 2050, of running tanks and aircraft carriers with windmills and lithium batteries.
On the other hand, if the military is exempt from CO2 counting, as it is at the moment, then does open the prospect of a well-resourced military being able to ‘persuade’ an energy-poor populace to accept a new feudalism.
Fun Fact: The US military is estimated to produce around 6% of the world’s CO2 emissions.
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Perhaps everyone chasing net zero…should actually be net zero personally for a year before voting for it..tell us how that went..should be fun..
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Mob rule.
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Madness of herds. ‘John Adams.’ …
We’re losin’ it… French Revolution. (
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I’m hoping that the private thinking in No. 10 runs something like this. “We aren’t great believers in the zero carbon target but at the moment there are more important things that need our attention more urgently. In the meantime it does little harm to appease the fanatics by giving them the talking shop they asked for and letting them waste their time on it. Any recommendations that come out of it are bound to consist of impracticable nonsense and hopefully when the time comes we can use this to demonstrate to the public that the ideas of these people are extreme and should be disregarded”. Am I a hopeless optimist? Very possibly.
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Jaime,
How do you manage to write this stuff without getting halfway through and saying to yourself, “Screw this, I think I’ll just get pissed instead”?
Here’s to the future, hic!
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John, that does sometimes happen – but then I finish the article anyway. 😉
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KESTREL,
I think that probably is optimistic.
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I’ve been accused of being too optimistic at times on Cliscep. It ain’t necessarily so. Like Kestrel I am frequently only pointing out possibilities, to avert the alcoholism that will surely overtake us all if despair wins the day. True to form, on the assemblies I still aver it’s too early to say but there may be positive crumbs:
What seems certain now is that we won’t know for a while whether they will be highly influential, to the detriment of many ordinary people in the UK, or useless talking shops.
An earlier signal for me will be the decision on HS2. Liam Halligan was I hope not totally uninformed in Boris’s old rag the Telegraph on Saturday:
Cummings is trenchant on the massive % failure of big projects. And, as Michael Kelly showed in a very timely address to the GWPF recently, the transition to ‘net zero’ is a far bigger beast than the little minnow HS2. Doing as mooted by Halligan would be a big signal.
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Like Kestrel, I’m a bit optimistic. This morning’s news is that the Government is planning to reduce air passenger duty for internal flights, the opposite of what the climate zealots would want.
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Paul: Watching Doug Parr, chief scientist of Greenpeace, complaining about this on the main BBC news just now brings a suitably warm chuckle to the heart. But before we all get too excited, least of all Jaime (!), they’re only ‘planning’ to make internal flights cheaper. All the same, the focus on the needs of the new Tory seats and voters in the North is clear. As some of us have been saying, this factor can really help us.
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More evidence – apparently Matt Hancock was asked if we should cut down on flights, and he said no. Cue fuming and ranting from the usual suspects.
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Richard Drake said:
>An earlier signal for me will be the decision on HS2. Liam Halligan was I hope not totally uninformed in Boris’s old rag the Telegraph on Saturday:
>>What’s needed is serious cash channelled into the humdrum local services that get commuters to work, wherever they live – be it Manchester, Newcastle, Bristol, London, or the places in between.
The whole business case for HS2 is to improve the local passenger, and freight, services to the West Midlands. The bottom end of the WCML is full and with more stopping services and more paths for freight needed the easiest way is to build a new line and transfer all the ‘fast’ trains onto that which will free up many more paths on the WCML for the slower trains.
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Another tidbit of hope: “the hottest decade ever” is the second-top headline on the beeb at the mo, after Meghan. It does not feature at all in the top ten “most read”.
Alarm fatigue? Does this kind of news excite anybody any more?
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Check this out, 60% of UK councils have declared a climate emergency:
https://climateemergencydeclaration.org/tag/united-kingdom/
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Dennis, my council (Norwich) is among that number.
One of the things we ought to do as sceptics is, I think, to ensure that such pronouncements are not mere empty words, but bite the councils. For example, our council put on fireworks at midnight on New Year’s. Is that compatible with having declared a climate emergency? I think not. (And it petrified our cats.)
Similarly, they ought not to have decked out the city centre with all those pretty Chrimbo lights, instead pocketing the CO2 savings.
And it would only be logical to close the city centre to motorised traffic, right? Anything else and they could be accused of just declaring an emergency to make the green crocodile go away, but no-one could be that hypocritical…!
As to the airport, that will have to close, etc, etc.
I have yet to write to the council with my demands, but I’ll get around to it eventually.
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Dennis
https://climateemergencydeclaration.org/tag/united-kingdom/
A close relative who is the leader of a Tory controlled district council told me that they had been “instructed” (by Conservative Central Office I assumed) to declare the emergency – completely barking mad though the declaration is.
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More about the leading rabble-rousers behind Extinction Rebellion can be found at http://globalpoliticalshenanigans.blogspot.com/2019/04/spotlighton-extinction-rebellion.html
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