To justify the claim that Western countries must cut their CO2 emissions, the following statements must all be true:
1. The world is warming
2. Humanity is the cause
3. It’s dangerous
4. We can fix it
Therefore, to destroy the claim, you only have to falsify one of them. But which one? Sceptics commonly choose 1, 2 or 3 – largely because they feel strongly about the issues involved. But that’s a mistake: in attempting to falsify any of these, you get bogged down in areas of science where, however learned you may be and however cogent and valid your arguments, you end up with ‘my experts vs. your experts’, where minds cannot be changed and where you may well be accused of being a ‘denier’ or an advocate for fossil fuel interests. That’s what’s been happening for years. And it’s why sceptics are getting nowhere and why Western governments are continuing to pursue their disastrous climate policies.
So you’re left with item 4. And this is different: now you can base your position, not on disputed scientific evidence but on easily verifiable fact: the non-Western world is the source of about 75% of global emissions; a percentage that’s increasing. And that’s because the overriding and understandable priority of billions of poor people in Asia, Africa and South America is to provide clean water, fresh food, shelter, healthcare and education for their children, to improve overall quality of life and to achieve prosperity. This requires abundant, affordable, available and reliable energy – i.e. gas, coal and oil. These people want what we in the West already have, so there’s no reason to think that attitude is going to change for a long time – if ever. There’s nothing we can do about it. So item 4 is falsified.
My advice to sceptics: ignore items 1, 2 and 3 and focus on 4.
Note: the useful four statements concept was inspired by this article in the Australian Spectator. My thanks.
Robin Guenier – March 2023
Climate Scepticism 
There would seem to be some wisdom in this. While I’m a sceptic when it comes to predictive computer modelling, I’m out of my depth when it comes to physical climate processes — not that I haven’t read about it but that I know that in specialist fields, there’s always more to know. So yes, it just comes down claim vs counter claim.
On the Ars Technica website today appeared a fairly long article that sets out to debunk a slew of claims from climate sceptics supporting the view that observed climate change is a natural phenomenon, not human-induced. Ars Technica aims at tech guys.
It may be rehearsing old arguments, but it would be an interesting exercise to make the “nay” case for the factors said to be debunked by the article:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/all-the-ways-the-most-common-bit-of-climate-misinformation-is-wrong/
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It will be a difficult task to break through the forcefield of delusion that haloes policymakers. This is from the Chair’s Forward to the much-vaunted “Independent” “Review” of Net Zero:
The UK is showing “climate leadership”. Other countries have agreed to jump off the Net Zero cliff with us (they will see whether we shout up from the bottom to say we’re still alive before taking the leap). Net Zero is “creating a new era of opportunity.” From the Executive Summary:
Utterly deluded, and intent on measures that will make life worse for everyone in the UK.
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Ian, the article appears to be an exercise in destroying straw men. Some sceptics doubt that CO2 has any effect on the climate, but I think it likely that most of us are rather “lukewarmers” who simply believe that any consequent temperature rise will not be catastrophic. This is a topic I covered in Denierland, but in sum, those trying to dismiss sceptics are treating (human-caused) climate change as a binary variable – it either is, or is not. 1 or 0. My argument is that we need to treat climate change as a continuum between “no harm – maybe even net benefit” and “thermogeddon.” As matters are, if you think the true consequence of climate change is “minor harm” you are still a “denier.” The same applies to those who question any of the obviously excessive predictions, or point out the already failed predictions, or question the usefulness of some aspects of climate policy.
In other words, it’s a lot easier for Ars Technica to demolish an argument that few are making. The hard part is proving the other stuff. Sceptics can look around and note that nothing bad has happened so far. The alarmists are transparently desperate to pin any adverse event on climate change. Their case is weak.
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Unfortunately, falsifying 4 is likely to be no more a magic bullet than falsifying any of the others, because you are not facing rationality, but a belief system. Global society isn’t doing what its doing on climate change because this is the result of an honest and long rational process (giving the best evidence-based policy for public benefit), or even a dishonest and rational process (giving the best policy for elites at the expense of the public), but because it is the output of a long and irrational process (in which most participants are not only honest, but passionately honest). Notwithstanding subsidiary agendas riding the wave (money or power), and even some small break-outs of logic (e.g. support for nuclear), largely, society is doing what its doing because the emergent belief-system of climate catastrophe and salvation exercises a huge cultural grip. Resisting it is like resisting a rising religion or a wave of communist fervour, by which I do not mean it is the same kind of culture as these, but a culture nonetheless, hence resistance is similarly hard and similarly not an exercise in the logic of explaining why it must be wrong, on any basis 0:
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I am not so certain that debunking #4 is a tactic that that the climate woke will respond to in a rational way.
Take a quick look at the Ars Technica article Jit linked to: where the article doesn’t use red herrings, it relies on deception. It is circular, it is counter-factual. But it is Ars Technica, and that sounds sciencey. As to the self destruction so strongly implied in the pursuit of pt. 4, well the climate hypesters really do have a nihilstc bent to their obsession. So what if their failed policies continue to fail.
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The World’s population breathes out over 2.94 billion tons of CO2 every year.
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Robin, scratch 3. and replace with ‘Bad weather happens – it’s our fault’.
As pointed out by other commenters, these people are religious fanatics. Any appeal to logic is not going to put a dent in their self-righteous armour. The world is not warming anywhere near as fast as they predicted, so they’ve just changed the goalposts:
“The climate change alarmists are being forced to admit that their catastrophic projections of global warming are not happening. But rather than admit that they were wrong, they’re just moving the goal posts plus absurdly claiming that the lack of warming is because of their stupid windmills! It’s unbelievable. These people are pathologically incapable of admitting error. Here’s what the Washington Post is now claiming:
In the not-so-distant past, scientists predicted that global temperatures would surge dramatically throughout this century, assuming that humans would rely heavily on fossil fuels for decades. But they are revising their forecasts as they track both signs of progress and unexpected hazards.
[Translation: We got it wrong.]
Accelerating solar and wind energy adoption means global warming probably will not reach the extremes once feared, climate scientists say. At the same time, recent heat, storms and ecological disasters prove, they say, that climate change impacts could be more severe than predicted even with less warming.
Researchers are increasingly worried about the degree to which even less-than-extreme increases in global temperatures will intensify heat and storms, irreversibly destabilize natural systems and overwhelm even highly developed societies. Extremes considered virtually impossible not long ago are already occurring.
Translation: Our silly windmills and solar panels have prevented really catastrophic global warming but extreme weather is worse than we thought, even though global warming is not as bad we pretended it would be, so we still need more windmills and solar panels and a ban on gas boilers, cookers and cars in order to prevent nasty weather.]”
https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/wapo-a-new-climate-reality-less-warming
Their silly windmills and solar panels and other mitigation measures are failing in their own terms (economically and technologically) in developed western economies AND the rest of the world is expanding the use of cheap, readily available fossil fuels. Reality will bite, sooner or later, and their religious edifice must come crashing down. In the meantime, we challenge them the best way we personally can, from all different angles and perspectives. Challenging their abuse of science and facts may not force them to change direction now, but defending science against their assaults is a worthwhile thing to do in itself. We abandon science at our peril.
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Sorry but I believe 4 to be a false argument, and also that the belief that we cannot win the first three arguments is excessively negative..
A climate change believer would consider all CO2 released into the atmosphere to be bad whether it comes from the West or the rest of the world and it should be curtailed. The fact that we are most unlikely to reduce emissions in the third World says little about any need to to clean up our own act.
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Robin,
Thanks for an article that has generated some thoughtful and interesting comments.
I have sympathy with the views expressed by Andy W and by Jaime J, and fine myself adopting a compromise position. I think it’s worth challenging claims 1-3, but I believe that most effort should be put into demolishing 4. No 4 is the key point, I think. Many politicians and policy-makers may be deficient regarding the power of logic (I prefer that explanation to the alternatives, none of which are I think very palatable – dishonesty, corruption, self-interest, even nothing more sinister than a desire to strut on the world stage and claim that “Britain is showing the way”). However, I continue to have faith in the British public’s ability to understand a logical argument when they hear one, and if we keep plugging away at point 4, I think (and certainly hope) that eventually they will rebel. Reading Vinny’s comment on Open Mic about the surge of support for the party formed by Dutch farmers fighting the agenda in the Netherlands offers hope for the future.
By all means, point out the flaw in 1-3, but major on 4 would be my advice.
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Remember how Ronald Reagan in the 80s’ went against Cold War Detente group thinking
from Kissinger and Foreign Policy Establishment? Reagan re-framed the Cold Wars as a
battle of ideas and Marxist Leninism as a vile idea to be defeated. If you think in terms of
of defeat or holding back the tide, well the enemy is already winning…
That CO2 is a toxic, pervasive destroyer of life is wro-ong! Primo Levi got it right,
like Ronald Reagan won the Cold War logic of the situation right imo. )
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Robin, this speech by Konsantin Kisin at the Oxford Union rather bolsters your contention (focus on 4).
He delivers it it his usual witty and incisive way.
The whole speech is worth watching, but he gets into the main thrust at 02:17 (the poor of the world are not going to stop wanting to rise out of poverty and so will ignore climate wokery from those who are much better off than they are).
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Those are two really pertinent comments, thanks, Beth and David – imo obviously! John Ridgway pointed to Kisin’s interview with Tucker Carlson recently on John’s latest thread. (I’ll try to link across to that later.) His presentation at the Oxford Union – and the fact it went viral – is really something to learn from. In line with this I agree that Robin is fundamentally right here – but Jerome Booth and Richard Lindzen have interesting nuances to add. I’d also been thinking about Reagan and the end of the Cold War again in the last week Beth. Powerful parallels there. Will do one or more links on that too – after watching the latest from the Uncommon Knowledge stable. It’s great to have Robin ‘on board’ so to speak!
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The overriding and essential objective in the UK is the cancellation of Net Zero. The way to do it is to show it’s both ruinous and pointless. And has no redeeming features. It’s relatively easy to achieve that; and it’s getting easier. It would be a huge error to introduce extraneous factors that complicate what is really a simple case – a case that doesn’t benefit from a reference to climate science and could even be weakened by it.
The important thing to remember is that the target is the voters – the general public – and via the voters the politicians. It’s not the true believers, not the cultists, not the alarmists, not the blob, not the Twitterati and not the MSM.
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Cancelling Net Zero means cancelling the legislation which enacts Net Zero, which legally commits the UK to drastically reducing its carbon emissions. The basis for this legislation is ‘the science’, not what the rest of the world is doing or not doing. The Act imposes a duty upon the Secretary of State to unilaterally act on climate change. This is the problem:
Duty to have regard to need for UK domestic action on climate change
(1)In exercising functions under this Part involving consideration of how to meet—
(a)the target in section 1(1) (the target for 2050), or
(b)the carbon budget for any period,the Secretary of State must have regard to the need for UK domestic action on climate change.
(2)“UK domestic action on climate change” means reductions in UK emissions of targeted greenhouse gases or increases in UK removals of such gases (or both).
The ‘science’ says that we must act to drastically reduce GHG emissions and the UK is legally bound to play its part. The UK government does at least appear to recognise that getting to net zero via renewables is not technically feasible, therefore it appears to be switching to a renewed emphasis on nuclear. But cheap fossil fuel reserves still get left in the ground and nuclear can only generate electricity; you can’t cook with it or power your central heating with it. You can’t make steel with it. It also won’t power your car, your van, your lorry, your plane or your helicopter. So until such time as the pseudoscientific basis for eliminating carbon emissions is debunked and discredited, the government will not repeal the Climate Change Act.
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“The important thing to remember is that the target is the voters – the general public – and via the voters the politicians. It’s not the true believers, not the cultists, not the alarmists, not the blob, not the Twitterati and not the MSM”
Well I don’t recommend not banging on about 4; the more that the huge gap between reality and cult policies is exposed, the more pressure there will be for delay or compromise on NZ. I merely point out that it isn’t a magic bullet, because we are indeed facing all of the above, united in a world-wide secular religion, which in many places including the UK has embedded itself in law (as Jaime points out), and has an almost complete capture of elites (except most US Republicans). If all the main parties are believers in catastrophism, voting is not a particularly useful tool, and due to the combined proselytization of all the above groups, large slices of the public are emotively convinced too. While we may be grateful for any delay or compromise won on NZ, the West will still steer resolutely towards it while the religious fervour for catastrophism holds sway; I think to undo climate law means that the religion of catastrophism would have to be unravelled first. Most youngsters, even some technically orientated ones, appear to honestly believe that we must ‘tackle’ this ‘crisis’ (hardly surprising, considering the level of emotive cultural messaging they have been exposed to in their formative years), which is very unhelpful for mass resistance or targeting the culture itself.
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Richard,
To reach any target audience, it is important that those who you would wish to listen to your arguments are available and receptive. Unfortunately, we seem to be in a position in which any argument against net zero, including those that challenge points 1 to 4 inclusive, will be flagged to the public as pathological and ill-motivated, by those seeking to control the narrative. The efforts of the likes of Lewandowsky are particularly pernicious in this respect because they purport to justify their strategies by recourse to neuroscience and cognitive psychology. They claim to be making a scientific point. However, Lewandowsky’s ‘critical ignoring’ has as much to do with neuroscience as eugenics had to do with Darwinian evolution. The only difference is that it isn’t the gene pool that they are trying to clean up but the meme pool.
You can be as logical and rational as you like, but the real battle is not to win the argument, but to be allowed a platform upon which to argue. That is why I linked to Kisin’s interview. The fact that his Oxford debate had gone viral seems significant. However, it also why I then linked to the Russell Brand podcast. From that, it can be seen that the battle to be heard is still a desperate one. In a very real sense, there is an existential threat but it is not one due to rising sea levels.
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John: Lindzen and Booth both think the ordinary person is highly receptive to arg 4 and I agree. Booth says that, once they’re convinced by arg 4, and they will be, at that point they will discover and/or decide that the science is also crap. This doesn’t follow strictly logically – it’s just the way people operate!
Jerome Booth has written a whole book about this but I just went to the launch at the House of Commons – except of course you’re not allowed to launch books and other products in those rooms bookable and hosted by an MP or peer. So I’m speaking out of turn at many levels.
Toby Young was at the GWPF/New Zero Watch event concerned and criticised Booth’s approach in certain ways. I remember thinking he had a point too.
I’m an agnostic on how exactly “Tear Down This Wall” will be fulfilled in this area. But I think, this time too, the speed may take quite a few pundits by surprise.
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Richard,
I concede that point 4 seems to be the low hanging fruit that is the most easily challenged, as long as your potential audience hasn’t been turned away at the door by Lewandowsky’s bouncers. I think their ‘inoculation’ goes something like this:
If you want to recognise the bad actor, look out for him/her claiming that net zero is unachievable in the proposed timescale and would be prohibitively expensive, when the truth is that renewables are cheaper and more secure. And be particularly wary if they seem to be making sense.
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Jaime,
Your observations about the 2008 CC Act are accurate. As you say, ‘The basis for this legislation is ‘the science’, not what the rest of the world is doing or not doing.’. And, it’s precisely because it’s what the rest of the world is not doing that matters that I’m certain that the Act must be repealed. Of course I understand that persuading enough politicians to effect that would be extraordinarily difficult and that, even if enough were persuaded, it would be a vast, complex and highly controversial enterprise. But, as attempting to implement Net Zero would be an utter disaster for our country, I have no doubt that pushing to get all this to happen must be worthwhile. Remember: the way to persuade the politicians is first to persuade the voters – the general public. And I believe that would be easier than many people think: they’re concerned with practical realities (e.g. they don’t want EVs, heat pumps, more expensive food and energy, power cuts etc.) – and they don’t have first to be persuaded that the case for eliminating carbon emissions has first to be debunked. All they have to get to grips with is the simple fact that Net Zero is going to harm them without making any real impact on global emissions.
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Andy,
Of course I don’t believe that item 4 is a magic bullet. But nor do I believe we are threatened by a world-wide secular religion. Yes, there is such a thing, but I’ve little doubt that its adherents are a small but very vocal – yet fading – minority that would soon crumble away in the face of harsh reality: do they really want people to die when the wind doesn’t blow? The reception for Konstantin Kisin’s speech and its subsequent popularity were hugely encouraging: many people, and especially young people, are not really taken in by catastrophism and have no difficulty in appreciating sound, well-made argument.
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John,
I don’t see ‘the likes of Lewandowsky’ (why is CliScep so obsessed with him?) having a serious impact on public concerns about the practical and deleterious impacts of Net Zero policies. But I agree with you about the battle is to achieve a platform upon which to argue. That I think is the immediate challenge – a challenge that must be met and overcome.
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Robin,
I think it all started with Lewandowsky’s obsession with the likes of Cliscep, when he did his faux survey of sceptical bloggers. You need to talk to Geoff Chambers about this because it is all a bit before my time. More recently it has probably been myself more than anyone else who has remained obsesed with him (and his like, such as John Cook). This is probably because I obsess over people who peddle damaging psuedoscience, and when it comes to the question of the psychology of scepticism, it seems that all the worst stuff has his name on it (see the Debunking Handbook, for example). Whether or not this is something worth worrying about very much depends upon how influential you think an academic can be. But I have to say that his work with Cook seems to be enjoying far too much publicity in schools, many of which seem to have been encouraged to adopt his propaganda on critical thinking (for example, FLICC, the Debunking Handbook and the ‘inoculation’ stuff). That, at least, I think should be cause for concern.
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John,
Thanks: interesting and understandable.
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“Yes, there is such a thing, but I’ve little doubt that its adherents are a small but very vocal – yet fading – minority that would soon crumble away in the face of harsh reality: do they really want people to die when the wind doesn’t blow? The reception for Konstantin Kisin’s speech and its subsequent popularity were hugely encouraging: many people, and especially young people, are not really taken in by catastrophism and have no difficulty in appreciating sound, well-made argument.”
Bulk public attitudes to climate change across nations are anything but rational, and show classic cultural patterns. Far from fading, those patterns are stronger in recent years, and even the whole covid episode seems to have made little dint on them. Young people are subject to far less surveys, but such data as exists suggests that in general they’re significantly more culturally convinced than are adults. While less than 10% of publics in any nation place action on climate change higher than pretty much anything else, and down to only 3% in religious nations, in an absolute sense these are not small numbers of core believers, and such ardent minorities within strong cultures can gain greatly disproportionate leverage on policy and social behaviour alike (which leverage can also be measured), especially where they’ve captured elites, which in the UK case is almost across the board.
In a rational sense, no-one wants anyone to die needlessly, but we aren’t dealing with rationality. Where cultural or other instinctive drives (e.g. herd instinct) highlights deaths, actions to prevent them can be raised above all other considerations, as happened with covid deaths. However, when the same potent factors work against such deaths as being important, like the tens of thousands of excess cold deaths that have occurred in bad UK winters for decades, or indeed the current spate of non-covid excess deaths, one may scarcely hear a peep. So while Kisin’s speech was great and there are various other hopeful signs, I don’t think one can simply wish away the very daunting social data, or the unfortunately harsh *cultural* reality that Net Zero is already written into our laws, and even in the face of a major energy crisis and a major European war, continues to enjoy support from all the main UK political parties; one can only imagine how far forward its support would have lurched in the absence of these factors.
As I noted before, none of this means we shouldn’t bang on about item 4). What is your estimated date on ‘soon crumble’, and what does ‘crumble’ consist of exactly?
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This is a good article in defence of science and a more holistic approach generally to combating the climate change cult. I don’t agree with everything in the article: some analysis is a little too simplistic, but this resonates quite strongly with my own views:
“Environment is the most pivotal to human survival, no doubt. Without water and a healthy soil, we will have no food… no matter how technology is advanced; and we cannot be healthy without clean air. Rapid urbanization in developing nations is causing serious problems like depletion of groundwater and dangerous pollution; deforestation and human encroachment are impacting biodiversity and leading to extinction of many animals, birds, insects and plants; and toxic chemicals from industries can destroy lives in lakes and rivers. There is no doubt that these challenges need to be addressed urgently.
However, the solution will entail a holistic approach that truly understands nature — not the current “climate change” ideology that simplifies the complex issue to ridiculous slogans, creates a fear-campaign-driven ideological fervor that shuts down rational debates, and misdirects the efforts of scientists.
Climate is chaos theory to the power million. There is no formula and there is no supercomputer that can predict the climate. All the climate models are computer programs written by humans based. These models are laughably simplistic, relative to the earth’s ecosystem.
Let’s not forget that trillions of dollars are at stake with the climate change campaign. Nothing corrupts science more than money. We have already seen that with Big Pharma and Big Food. Those who fund studies predetermine the conclusions. Of course, scientists are humans and they can find global warming or cooling based on confirmation bias or cherry-picking data. Plus, people who are against the dogma are severely punished. Eventually scientists, media and politicians jump on the bandwagon, creating mass psychosis.
Science has been turned into a battle of ideological screaming. And that is a sign of faulty science and/or fake claims.
Unable to win logical debates, the globalists and their minions scream, “Trust the Science!” or “Science is settled!” Well, that kind of dogmatic attitude is appropriate for religious indoctrination. However, science is all about questioning and critical analyses.
When everything fails, these ideologues cry, “Climate denialism.” What the heck is that — supposed to sound like “Holocaust denialism”? These people are guilty of “logic denialism.”
”
https://worldaffairs.blog/2022/12/30/climate-change-or-climate-alarmism-a-scientific-discussion/
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Jaime Jessop
Yes to paragraph 2 re the environment.
Yes to paragraph 4 re the models.
Regarding CO2 , how is plant food
a toxic menace to human life? …Or
dogs, those most benign of critters? 🙂
…A serf wonders.
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Andy: my item 4 doesn’t preclude ‘action on climate change’. Yes, it rules out pointless action: the UK making further cuts to its 0.9% of global emissions isn’t going to make any difference when countries emitting over 70% are intent on increasing theirs. But look at my first CliScep post. I said there that we should abandon Net Zero and ‘come to terms with international political reality by prioritising a strong and growing economy … and … encouraging research into the development of technologies for delivering practicable, reliable, inexpensive low emission energy…’. I suggest some of the more sensible believers might see that as a positive way forward.
Re climate change, I have no doubt that the times they are a-changin. As are attitudes – even those of elites, alarmists and politicians. Just consider:
Sunak’s 5 priorities don’t include NZ.
Hunt’s budget does little for NZ.
Growing government concern at how NZ would increase dependence on China.
The Bank of England downgrading its climate programmes to focus on UK financial stability.
Recent National Audit Office report says that lack of a cost estimate or delivery plan mean ‘DESNZ cannot be confident its ambition to decarbonise power by 2035 is achievable’.‘
Plans to install heat pumps in millions of homes in disarray.
Fears of NZ threat to UK motor industry emerging.
Public don’t support Extinction Rebellion.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine exposed inadequacy of renewables.
Konstantin Kisin speech goes viral.
Huge appeal of the ‘new’ Russell Brand.
Extraordinary success of Dutch farmers’ protest party.
St Greta’s attack on Norwegian wind farm.
Biden approves huge Alaskan oil drilling project.
SVB insolvency exposes ESG (environmental, social and governance) problems. Also Credit Swiss?
German/Italian pushback against EU ICE phaseout plans.
And more.
Of these, the Dutch farmers’ triumph shows how quickly public attitudes can change, demonstrating how peoples’ views only firm up when faced with real issues directly affecting them – pushing fears of catastrophe aside. I believe there’ll be many other examples as NZ begins to bite.
Despite all this, I acknowledge that the chances of the CC Act being repealed, although not impossible, are remote. It’s particularly unlikely to happen under what’s left of the Conservative administration. And Labour? Well, surprising things can happen when voters exhibit strong opposition to policy. We’ll see.
A final comment. I suspect that in any case the whole farrago might unravel quite soon as government faces up to three huge obstacles:
1. grid capacity
2. skills shortage
3. vast cost
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“my item 4 doesn’t preclude ‘action on climate change’. Yes, it rules out pointless action”
I never said anything about your item 4 precluding anything?? I’ve no idea what you’re talking about here.
Re your list of talking points of progress, yes, to which we can add German push-back against EU phasing out of ICE. But the culture is deeply embedded, and as you note yourself: “Despite all this, I acknowledge that the chances of the CC Act being repealed, although not impossible, are remote.”
This is exactly why I asked: “What is your estimated date on ‘soon crumble’, and what does ‘crumble’ consist of exactly?” Because for me crumble would mean the repeal of NZ, without which there will always be a constant battle, whether this sometimes goes well and sometimes goes badly. That there’s a list of such progress points means at last that there is actually a battle, which essentially for decades has not really been the case. But it still only means there’s a battle, not a victory 0:
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Andy,
1. I didn’t claim that you’d said anything about that. My point was simply that not all ‘catastrophists’ are blind to reality and some adherents to the ‘catastrophe if we don’t act’ view would accept that research into the development of technologies for delivering practicable, reliable, inexpensive low emission energy would be preferable to taking pointless action.
2. The German (and Italian) pushback was the last item on my list.
3. Yes, the culture may be deeply embedded – but as I’ve shown it’s becoming increasingly less so.
4. It was referring to what you described as ‘a world-wide secular religion’ when I said it would crumble away in the face of harsh reality. When might that happen? I suggest the evidence I’ve listed shows that it’s already beginning to happen. As I said, I believe there’ll be many other examples as NZ begins to bite.
5. ‘But it still only means there’s a battle, not a victory.’ I agree.
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“Yes, the culture may be deeply embedded – but as I’ve shown it’s becoming increasingly less so.”
You have not shown this at all 0: Quite apart from the fact that what you have shown is circumstantial not quantitative, it shows only that there is an increasing reaction to its increasingly blatant actions. But this could be the case even if the culture is still growing at the same time (especially as cultures are polarising).
“When might that happen? I suggest the evidence I’ve listed shows that it’s already beginning to happen.”
Well if a “crumble” is anything between the retraction of NZ and what is already happening now, albeit you think this is currently the smaller end of ‘crumble’, then I think this is not a definition that provides any help in assessing the situation, bar an optimistic encouragement to fight 0:
At least we agree on your number 5 🙂
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‘At least we agree on your number 5‘
And that it seems is all we agree upon. A pity.
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Did somebody mention Russell Brand?
“Russell Brand is the latest to platform climate conservative Bjørn Lomborg’s ‘reckless’ net-zero cost claims
The Danish commentator has been accused of continuing to misrepresent findings about the costs of cutting emissions, despite pleas from scientists”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/16/russell-brand-is-the-latest-to-platform-climate-conservative-bjrn-lomborgs-reckless-net-zero-cost-claims
How appalling. We mustn’t let reality intrude, must we? The rest of the article is worth reading, to see the “logic” on display at the Guardian.
Apologies, Robin, if this is slightly O/T from your article.
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Only slightly Mark. I listed Brand as an example of how times and attitudes are a-changing – a matter emphasised by your extract from the Guardian. ‘viewed 315,000 times in the four days. Hmm … a good example I suggest of a culture ‘deeply embedded’ becoming increasingly less so. Unfortunately Andy wouldn’t agree.
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“And that it seems is all we agree upon”
We also agree that NZ is bad and that the battle is worthwhile. Surely much more than we disagree on.
And so the Brand interview and reaction for instance, whatever further inferences one might want to draw from it, is very welcome.
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“Lomborg argued that renewable energy was too expensive and appeared to try to undermine the role that batteries play in storing renewable energy.”
That’s terrible. Why would Lomborg do such a thing?
“This situation is beautifully captured by the German word Dunkelflaute (meaning dark doldrums). It is critical that we store enough renewable electrical energy that has been produced during periods of excess generation – such as those during favourable wind conditions – for the inevitable Dunkelflaute periods that follow. But this is far from easy. And thanks to detailed studies on future electricity storage requirements and cost, we know it is not cheap either.
We will need adequate excess renewable generation capacity pre-Dunkelflaute to ensure that stored electricity is available over any such period. On a cold winter’s day in the UK, for example, the country requires at least 40 GW of electricity, which equates to about 1 terawatt-hour (TWh). If half of that comes from variable renewables, then on a challenging Dunkelflaute day we will need to have stored 0.5 TWh – assuming that the other 50% is composed of non-renewable sources of gas, nuclear and biomass.
The situation is starker still for a period of 10 successive Dunkelflaute days – a not-uncommon situation in a typical British winter – where we would need some 5 TWh of battery storage. To get an idea of the price tag, we know that the energy company InterGen is currently building a 1 GWh lithium-ion battery-storage facility at DP World London Gateway, a new port on the Thames Estuary in south-east England. It will cost about £300m to build, so a simple extrapolation would mean that having a 5 TWh capacity would be £1.5 trillion. If we depended entirely on renewable electricity, the corresponding battery storage cost would be £3 trillion. This is clearly unfeasible, so what else could we do?”
https://physicsworld.com/a/why-we-need-to-tackle-renewable-energys-storage-problem/
The UK government and wind energy nutters are very fond of quoting battery storage (available and planned) in terms of POWER (GW).
“There is currently 4 GW of storage projects in planning which could power a combined 6 million homes, in addition to the 1 GW of battery storage already in operation.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/battery-storage-boost-to-power-greener-electricity-grid
This is totally misleading as the above passage illustrates. You can have a huge array of batteries deliver 1GW for a few hours, but if the wind is still not blowing, and it’s cold, and it’s winter and your solar panels are providing diddly squat usable power, then you need batteries which are going to store enough energy to power millions of homes and businesses continuously for at least 24 hours, maybe even days. Even if the UK could ‘sustainably’ source the raw materials to build such a fleet of batteries, it would cost trillions. This is not even accounting for the fact that electricity demand will double or triple when the nation is forced to heat their homes via electric and travel using EVs.
Lomborg doesn’t need to undermine the role that batteries play in storing renewable energy – the cold hard facts do that all by themselves. Nasty horrible facts:
“We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious battery storage. He stole it from us. Sneaky little Lomborgses. Wicked, tricksy, false! Guardian hateses facts!”
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While it’s been fun reading all these arguments, let me interrupt with a quote.
This is from a ship’s, Chief Engineer and he said
“Many people are amazed when things fail. As an Engineer, it amazes me when things work. If it’s man-made, it can fail…”
I suspect that such observations would be echoed by many who maintain the country’s infrastructure, especially the grid. Given what we know about the falling resilience of power generation, I would not be surprised if Net Carbon Zero was ended, not by rational arguments leading to a change in the law, but by a catastrophic grid failure leading to large parts of the country without power for a considerable time.
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Jaime:
Did you see this? It’s shadow Labour minister Jon Ashworth’s absurd waffle when Andrew Neil asks him what would happen when there’s no more gas and the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine: LINK. Not that a member of the current government would be likely to have a better answer.
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Andy:
‘Surely much more than we disagree on.‘
Yes, I think that’s probably true.
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Robin, that Andrew Neil interview of a Labour shadow minister was uncannily predicted by Hollywood in 2006:
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Bill,
A brilliant quote. You may well be right about the mad project being ended by a catastrophic failure. Perhaps our best hope is that it’ll end before it starts because of inadequate grid capacity.
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Jaime (yesterday): what proportion of politicians do you think understand the difference between power and energy?
A follow-up question for anyone to punt at (with more relevance to the head post): what proportion of politicians have any understanding at all about the way the electricity grid works? I will cheerfully admit that I only have a rudimentary understanding of such matters, and I have made (perhaps accurately described as desultory) attempts to learn about them. I am grateful to Chris Morris for widening my understanding about such matters in comments under https://cliscep.com/2022/04/15/toy-model-of-a-future-grid/.
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Jit,
Yes, this comment from Chris Morris:
“Politicians have an uncanny knack of believing they can over-rule the laws of physics. All they have to do is make some pronouncement, or bring in a new regulation, and it will magically happen. Hydrogen can be made at a lower cost than fossil fuels or batteries will become very cheap – that type of thing. And the public at large lets them get away with it.
How many MPs have a genuine science or engineering background? Do they know the difference between a MW and MWh? How many worked in construction project management? That is where the problem is. We have a ruling class with no engineering literacy..”
But isn’t that what the ‘experts’ are supposed to do? Advise the politicians? Also, if you don’t know the difference between instantaneous power, measured in Watts (Joules per second) and storage capacity/energy used, measured in Watt hours (=3600 Joules) you really shouldn’t be teaching in Kindergarten, let alone leading the country. Most of these people had the benefit of a first class public education and I can’t believe they don’t even know the basics of physics and SI standard units. Admittedly, understanding how the grid works is a lot more complicated. My suspicion is that most politicians responsible for these reports do know the difference (which is probably a small proportion of all MPs) and they are deliberately trying to mislead the public by confusing the two. Never ascribe to stupidity that which is adequately explained by conspiracy!
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Much of people’s ignorance of physical units is not really due to straightforward ignorance but to lack of use. In everyday use when would someone (even one with a physics Alevel) have the ability to remember the difference between a MW and a MWh? I find the same problem with new (or relatively new) words. I have lost count of the number of times I have had to look up the meaning of the word “gaslighting “. I am constantly forgetting it. In the same manner the use of some SI units can momentarily disappear requiring a reminder to bring it into focus.
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I’ve missed you Jamie 🙂
Alan:
I resemble that remark! Eventually gaslighting did enter my workable lexicon, with the patient help of my personal wiki. But I think you’re dead right on units we don’t have need of using most of the time.
This has been a superb thread, thanks Robin and Mark (as his amanuensis).
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Thanks Richard.
The origin of this thread is quite interesting. I’d had two articles published by TCW (was The Conservative Woman): HERE and HERE. But, when I offered them a third, Kathy Gyngell (the editor) turned me down because, she said, it wasn’t saying anything new. So I offered it to Mark who kindly agreed to publish it. I then showed him the correspondence I’d had with Kathy and he suggested that I might turn one of my emails to her into a short article. Hence this thread.
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Alan, not MWh or GWh maybe, but certainly kWh, which are basically the same thing, but smaller. We all have all have electric meters which register kWh and that’s what appears on our bills. If, like most people, a person is struggling to pay sky-high electricity bills, they should at least be aware that 1 unit of electricity = 1kWh = energy used by a 1kW heater running continuously for an hour. (Obviously, this doesn’t apply to MPs!) A thousand such heaters running continuously will require a grid battery with a capacity of at least 1MWh; a million, 1GWh.
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I want to go back to Beth’s comment two days ago:
I’ve now watched the video and I think it’s excellently good! And I think Beth is right on the button on how it applies to our ‘situation’ in wanting to overturn the madness of Net Zero. (Aside: Do you have a reference on Primo Levi talking about CO2 or at least Carbon? I assume that’s in The Periodic Table but I’d be very interested.)
Will Inboden, who’s done the new biography of Reagan as a foreign policy wonk (deliberately provocative language from me there), is trying among other things to undo the Guardian’s view of the guy as an “amiable dunce”. (Not just the Guardian but almost all the MSM and academia, then and since, in their superior intelligence and moral faculties, as they show us every day on climate.)
This belittling goes against some key facts, as Inboden shows, expertly prompted by a very unbiased Peter Robinson, who wrote speeches for President Reagan, including the famous “Tear Down This Wall” given in Berlin! To learn about the behind-the-scenes shenanigans that led to that speech being given by the President, in the teeth of opposition from all his much more learned senior aides, do also watch this:
C’mon it’s only a total of two hours out of your day to watch both! I only discovered the Andrew Roberts podcast in the last ten days, including this episode from May last year. (Way behind the pace as usual.)
But what these two videos show me is that overturning something this pervasively evil requires people at the Reagan level and others at a very junior level like Peter Robinson in the 1980s. But such junior people have to have laser-like focus, just as Robin is schooling us in this post.
Here endeth my first lesson! The second has to do with Konstantin Kisin. Because the motion was all about woke and he focused his laser-beam totally on climate alarmism. Isn’t that very, very strange?
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Richard,
Thanks for links to two remarkable videos. My conclusion: even a junior person can get an important message across if: (1) the message is simple and easily understandable; (2) he/she gives focused attention to communicating that message; and (3) he/she has a platform (preferably a senior influential person) from which to communicate that message. And of course for us (CliScep) it’s (3) that’s the problem: we don’t have a platform that gives us access to the essential audience.
I’ll offer myself as an example. Kathy Gyngell was of course right to say my article wasn’t saying anything new. Look at this article published (by Paul Matthews of this parish) in 2014 (the year before CliScep was founded). And then compare it with this (the article rejected by TCW) published here a week ago. The same message – even the same phrasing in places. But who’s listening?
I think we agree that stopping Net Zero is desperately important. But, without a platform, what hope have we of achieving that? Not much, I fear – although I don’t think that should stop us from trying. Our best hope I think is that, before it’s too late, reality will cause voters and politicians to recognise the foolishness of trying to implement the policy. And there are signs that that may be beginning to happen. But that’s not the result of anything we – or likeminded people – have done.
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Robin: “that’s not the result of anything we – or likeminded people – have done.”
Probably true, but it’s a sure sign that what we have been saying is correct. Perhaps, when I (in an earlier comment on this thread) expressed my confidence that the British people are capable of greater displays of logic than our policy-makers and politicians, I have over-reached. Nevertheless, it will be the people who bring net zero to an end – once it inevitably sees them living in cold, damp (due to inappropriate insulation in inappropriate properties) houses that they can’t afford to heat with expensive and inefficient heat pumps; once their foreign holidays (assuming they can afford to take them) are rationed; once their efficient and reliable (and fillable in 5 minutes) ICE cars have been taken off them and replaced with EVs that they can probably neither afford to buy nor to fuel (due to the massive increases in electricity costs down the line due to the abandonment of cheap and efficient fossil fuels), they will rebel, of that I am sure. If only net zero threatened their smart phones – it would be over in no time!
The faster the politicians push net zero at us, the quicker they will seal its death. It sows the seeds of its own destruction.
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Mark,
Good points. But, as I said in a response to Andy, I think there’s a possibility that the whole farrago might unravel quite soon as government faces up to three huge obstacles:
1. grid capacity.
2. skills shortage.
3. vast cost.
Let’s hope so.
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Been travelling on the heavenly Mornington Peninsular, Flinders where Matthew Flinders
rowed his Tom Thumb to chart the coast and where Greens are pushing for more wind
turbine energy. Grrrrrrrrrr.
Richard, I was referring above to Primo Levi on carbon, it’s the last piece in The Periodic Table..
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In the week that the IPCC issues yet another “last chance” warning, and demands that net zero plans be accelerated round the world by a decade, perhaps this story is another straw in the wind to add to Robin’s list of evidence that net zero in the UK is not going to last the course:
“Campaigners fear loophole will let new homes in England be fitted with gas boilers
Regulation may allow ‘hydrogen-ready’ boilers that can run on fossil fuel gas, and are unlikely ever to use hydrogen”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/21/new-homes-gas-boilers-hydrogen-heat-pumps-net-zero
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Beth: Thanks. I have to read that book. In December in London I met a lovely man whose father had been a slave labourer in Auschwitz, like Levi. Like so many of these ‘unspeakable’ things, he really wanted to speak about it. His dad was obviously an amazing fellow – and engineer – but he only shared about these experiences late in his life. His son really regrets that he knew so little about it. Levi did write about it all and so beautifully. But it seems it was too much for him to bear in the end. A reminder than others have faced far greater challenges than we ever have.
Mark: Very encouraging.
Robin et al: I will come back to the Reagan/Cold War analogy. It’s really inspired me. It does show what we’re lacking but I still find hope in it.
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Beth, I doubt I shall ever get to explore the wild and wonderful Mornington Peninsula, but me and the dogs did regularly visit the lovely little church in the village of Donington, Lincolnshire, where Flinders was born and where there is a memorial dedicated to him. Ironic that there is a nearby huge onshore wind farm plus the construction of the Viking Link which will import wind energy from Denmark to England. They’ve blighted Flinders’ birth place with these monstrosities; now they want to blight Mornington Peninsula too, so that the memorial dedicated to Flinders 12,000 miles away from Donington can also look out upon an array of worse than useless, environmentally damaging turbines.
https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/local-news/visited-viking-link-converter-station-8254716
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Mark,
The proposed boiler technology is a superb example of Robust Decision Making at its best. And yet the article refers to campaigners and experts fearing resultant risk. These people seem to love turning logic on its head.
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Richard,
‘A reminder than others have faced far greater challenges than we ever have.’
True. In the 1980s I was CEO of the European HQ of an LA-based electronics group. It’s President, whom I was privileged to know as a friend, was a Hungarian Jew who, after the Nazis had taken power in Budapest, was interned in Auschwitz. He was 16. Unlike the rest of his family, he survived and, after many adventures, settled in the US where became a leading electronics engineer – having a major role in the development of colour TV and GPS. An impressive and remarkable man.
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John:
Looked at another way, the proposed boiler technology is a trap, from an infuriated government, that the greens have beautifully fallen into.
When I say ‘infuriated government’ I don’t mean Chris Skidmore. I do mean Kemi Badenogh. Do I mean Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt or Michael Gove? You know, I don’t even know. But I do see it as a rather delicious trap, which is why I said “very encouraging” to Mark earlier.
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It is has a while since I commented, but Robin’s short article on climate policy is a subject to which I have recently given some thought recently. I do not think makes a very strong falsification of the policy case. A much stronger case consists of three parts that I will comment on separately.
1. The limitations of the Paris Climate Agreement
2. The actual failure of the COP process to drastically reduce emissions this decade. Indeed they will rise.
3. The total failure when setting emissions targets to address the issue of abundant reserves of fossil fuels in the ground.
1. The limitations of the Paris Climate Agreement
Article 4.1 of the Paris Agreement States
Click to access english_paris_agreement.pdf
Unlike Robin, I have no legal training, but it seems to me that if global net zero is desired by either 2050 or 2070 (the 1.5C and 2C “warming” targets) the fact that developing countries with >60% of global emissions have no obligation to even stop their emissions rising is a policy constraint almost impossible to overcome. I say almost impossible, as developed countries (essentially OECD countries) could commit to massive net negative emissions by 2050 to offset. The fact that this has not been seriously addressed in the COP conferences is sufficient to doom the policy to failure.
But there are still two other issues.
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Robin: The Hungarian Jews of that generation were truly remarkable. From John von Neumann to those like your friend who weren’t so lucky – at least initially. I was indebted in July to Dominic Cummings pointing, on his blog, to Book Review: The Man From The Future by Scott Alexander. My comment to Cummings at the time (sadly paywalled):
Sorry to those who heard me go on about this at the time but I still find it very striking. Utter tragedy yet enormous heroism too.
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2. The actual failure of the COP process to drastically reduce emissions this decade.
<The UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2018 Executive Summary major point 2 stated
From 01/01/2020 this gives a budget of about 630 GtCO2e for the 1.5oC target and 1340 GtCO2e for the 2oC target. This equates to around 12 years and 25 years of 2017 emissions.
The EGR 2022 Executive Summary stated
That is the 1.5oC emissions target will be blown through in early 2031. All the efforts of COP21 Paris and subsequent COPs have failed to stop emissions increasing, let alone get drastic cuts in global emissions. A consequence is that those countries like the UK who will reduce their emissions this decade cannot claim to be “leading the way in stopping climate change” as global emissions have not yet peaked, let alone started tracking downwards towards net zero and beyond.
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3. The total failure to address the issue of abundant reserves of fossil fuels in the ground.
McGlade & Ekins 2015 – The geographical distribution of fossil fuels unused when limiting global warming to 2°C (doi 10.1038 Nature) estimated that the global distribution of fossil fuel reserves were around three times the 1100 GtCO2 of emissions that could be emitted between 2011 & 2050 to keep within the 2°C warming limited. In IPCC 2018 SR1.5 the assumptions were changed to allow more emissions before the 2°C and 1.5°C limits were exceeded, and GHG emissions were substituted for CO2 emissions. Yet pro-rata, from 01/01/2024 just 21 years of fossil fuel emissions will breach the 2°C warming limit and 8 years of emissions for the 1.5°C limit.
Yet the BP statistical review of world energy 2020 xlsx spreadsheet that at current production levels that are around 132 years of coal reserves and 50 years of both oil and gas reserves. To achieve the 1.5°C warming limit requires leaving 94% of known reserves of coal in the ground & 84% of gas & oil. Now I know that for many countries they estimates of reserves are somewhat dodgy and likely overstated. On the other hand the US has been running on less than 10 years of gas and oil for 20 years or more and the production of both has increased massively in the last 15 years. Given that there is a huge political problem is getting the countries with most of these massive global reserves in the ground, as my pie charts indicate.
Politically, shutting down fossil fuel production in the next few decades is nigh impossible.
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Richard:
‘…the proposed boiler technology is a trap, from an infuriated government, that the greens have beautifully fallen into‘
Perhaps you’re right. Sunak’s position on Net Zero is interesting. First he bans fracking and then he goes to COP 27 where he makes appropriate noises. Yet his ‘five priorities’ don’t include NZ and Hunt’s budget does little to support it. I suspect (hope) his intention may be to quietly sideline it without direct confrontation with the greens. But I suggest ‘seriously worried’ may be more accurate than ‘infuriated’.
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Sort of in line with manic’s comments:
“Concern over Scotland’s carbon footprint rise despite net zero targets”
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/23403020.concern-scotlands-carbon-footprint-rise-despite-net-zero-targets/
No up-to-date data since 2019, but my guess is that emissions might have fallen slightly during covid lockdowns but will be rising again now. The article continues:
It’s a subject on which I opined here:
And as for observations about the failure of the Paris Agreement, I wrote about it here:
And, for the sake of completeness, the third part of my introductory trilogy:
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Richard: that generation of Hungarian Jews was, as you say, remarkable. Here’s an obituary of my friend. Note: he was at Bergen Belsen, not Auschwitz.
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Richard,
The reason why I was encouraged is because it shows that someone, at least, was still thinking in risk management terms. I do not see it as a trap so much as a welcome dose of reality. Keeping options open should be a fundamental strategy when making decisions under uncertainty. I cannot see why these campaigners and experts can’t see that.
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Actually, perhaps I can. The Germans are not just famous for genocide, they are also well known for inventing compound words that have no direct English translation. The one that appears most appropriate for this occasion is ‘torschlusspanik’. This is the panic experienced when one is overwhelmed by the feeling that time is running out and it is perhaps already too late to act. It is such panic that may be clouding people’s judgement.
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The objective of my first CliScep article was to emphasise the importance of the UK abandoning Net Zero. In the current article (and this extraordinary thread) I hope I may have indicated how (and why) that might be achieved. Articles posted online today by Spiked and the Spectator are yet more evidence of why it’s essential that Net Zero is abandoned.
The first is HEREand the second HERE.
Compare this extract from the Spiked article:
With this from the Spectator:
Of course Xi and Putin are right about Western decline – and Net Zero is evidence of that – yet the IPCC would like to see that decline exacerbated. It’s exceptionally important that we abandon this absurd and dangerous policy.
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What we must realise is that the ‘decadent West’, by virtue of its climate change mania and its fanatical adherence to achieving net zero emissions has, either by design or by mind-blowing incompetence, given the Chinese economy a get out of jail free card enabling it to out-compete Western economies. To a lesser extent, it has provided the same to Russia. That’s why Trump withdrew from the Paris treaty. Now the phony war started in the Ukraine and escalated continuously by the ‘decadent West’ has driven Russia and China closer together and we are supposedly faced with the chilling prospect now of a ‘new world order’ initiated not by decadent Western leaders in thrall to the WEF and the bankers, but by the new ‘Axis of Evil’ that is Russia/China. I’m just a tad sceptical I must admit. China and the West were both malign actors in the Covid drama, which has so severely impacted western liberal democracies and destroyed our economies, leading to the current financial crisis, made worse by the avoidable conflict in Ukraine. The Biden crime family has deep ties to China. Biden’s very first act as Resident of the White House was to sign the US back up to the Paris Accord. Putin does indeed cut a lone figure, as pointed out by the Spectator. He doesn’t look comfortable having to do deals with Xi. I believe Putin’s Russia is more aligned with fading Western democracies and the tradition western family unit than it is with the putatively ‘communist’ Chinese Dragon. I believe our corrupt Western leaders are more aligned with Beijing than with Putin. Things are not as straightforward or as simple as they seem.
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It’s what serfs think, too, about the Decline of the West, weather by design or incompetence.
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Regarding Robin’s view that perhaps we should be optimistic regarding the impending doom of net zero:
“The Guardian view on Europe’s green transition: moving to the slow lane?
Editorial
Germany’s rearguard defence of the combustion engine sends a disastrous signal in the race to meet net zero targets”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/22/the-guardian-view-on-europes-green-transition-moving-to-the-slow-lane
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Flipping back onto the subject of wind power and battery capacity, GWPF have published an article which makes exactly the same points I made in a comment above. Paul Homewood has linked to the article on his website.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/03/23/prominent-physicist-warns-that-wind-power-fails-on-every-count/
“The wind blows somewhat more steadily offshore than onshore, as every sailor knows. Nevertheless, the unreliability inherent in wind energy persists. Figure 2 shows the wind power generated by all UK offshore windfarms in March 2022, as presented online on the Crown Estate website. Over some periods, it rose to the nominal installed capacity of 10 GW. However, for 8 days at the end of the month it averaged no more than 1.2 GW. The green rectangle (added) illustrates that 8.8 GW was not available for this time, presumably because the average wind speed halved. That much energy, 1600 GWh, is 1000 times the capacity of the world’s largest grid storage battery (1.6 GWh at Moss Landings, California). Battery technology has its own problems. It can provide for laptops and other portable applications, even car batteries at up to 75 kWh, but larger batteries have problems with safety and mineral shortages. Batteries 20 million times larger are never going to be available and storage batteries will never make good the failure of offshore wind farms, even for a week. And the wind can drop for longer periods than that.”
Something I didn’t realise also is that the power generated by turbines varies wildly with fluctuations in wind speed, making it even more difficult to integrate wind energy into the grid:
“But the performance of wind is much worse than that, as a look at the simple formula shows. Because the power carried by the wind depends on the third power of the wind speed, if the wind drops to half speed, the power available drops by a factor of 8. Almost worse, if the wind speed doubles, the power delivered goes up 8 times, and as a result the turbine has to be turned off for its own protection.”
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Manic, the inability of the COP process to drastically reduce emissions this decade has its origins in the UN’s first environment conference held in Stockholm in 1972: LINK.
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This one is still rumbling along, and I don’t think it will go away. Straws in the wind, indeed:
“German government in crisis over EU ban on car combustion engines
Green party accuses FDP of gambling away country’s reputation after last-minute blocking of phase-out from 2035”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/23/german-government-in-crisis-over-eu-ban-on-car-combustion-engines
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Of course, what follows might just be a combination of the Guardian’s usual climate hysteria and campaigning, but if what it reports is true, maybe it’s another straw in the wind to add to Robin’s optimism about the slow collapse of the net zero project:
“UK planning to launch watered down net zero strategy in oil capital Aberdeen
Exclusive: Labour decries ‘climate vandalism’ as launch plans signal intention to boost fossil fuel industry”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/24/uk-government-launch-revamped-net-zero-strategy-oil-gas-capital-aberdeen
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And the row about Germany’s attempts to save its car industry (and thereby its economy) rumble on:
“Germany faces EU backlash over U-turn on phasing out combustion engine
Row a further signal of tensions over the green deal landmark proposals to tackle climate crisis”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/24/germany-facing-eu-backlash-over-u-turn-on-phasing-out-combustion-engine
Of course, if the German economy tanks, then so does its ability to fund the EU, so this could have deeper implications and ramifications, especially as and when the net recipients of EU largesse among its members work this out – at which point I would expect them to side with Germany.
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I used to comment quite often on The Conversation, but over the past year it ceased to allow comments on most articles (certainly the ones that interest me). But a couple of days ago one slipped through. As a result, I asked the author (Josh Ettinger, a Doctoral Candidate at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford who is it seems ‘ passionate about the role of storytelling in engaging audiences about societal issues’) two interesting questions (interesting to me anyway). I wonder if he’ll reply.
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Robin, if they don’t allow comments, then it would appear that they don’t have much interest in engaging in a conversation!
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Robin, they are interesting questions, especially since Josh Ettinger in his article says:
No sign of him replying yet, but I’ll be interested in his response, should he do so.
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I imagine Germany’s car industry also relies upon cheap available energy generated by natural gas, the cutting of supply of which German Chancellor Olaf Scholz committed treason by either covering up Biden’s destruction of the Nordstream pipelines or by being complicit in their planned destruction. At least in Germany they have a genuine, viable political opposition to a treasonous government. Here we have Labour and the Lib Dems.
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Mark: Josh won’t have to reply now as The Conversation has conveniently terminated comments.
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Robin,
Keep in mind that you were attempting to engage in conversation on a website that recently published an article on the critical importance of knowing when to ignore someone (see my ‘A Little Less Conversation’). As far as these people are concerned, you squarely fall into the category of people who should be ignored. This they believe can be determined through their so-called ‘lateral reading’. And if that doesn’t work, they could immediately realise the importance of ignoring you by quickly looking at the question you were asking. By ignoring you, they think that they are being very sophisticated and only doing what any right-minded critical thinker would do. You have zero chance of influencing them. To them you are a troll and, as such, you are beneath their contempt. What is more, they think they have the science to justify their attitude. As far as I am concerned they are just intellectual cowards, but there again I would say that. After all, I am just another troll.
The ‘scientific’ paper that lay behind Lewandosky’s Conversation article can be found here:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09637214221121570
Note well its advice on such matters:
“First, do not respond directly to trolls; do not correct them, engage in debate, retaliate, or troll in response.”
You ask why I obsess over Lewandowsky and his ilk. It is because they have helped establish a pseudo-intellectual basis for imposing totalitarianism.
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John,
That may be a recent phenomenon, but I’ve been posting on TC since 2014 and have quite often had exchanges with the authors of articles – including for example Lewandowsky’s colleague John Cook. Moreover, over those years, I’ve had many exchanges with believers which I (and I think they) have found useful and interesting. There may be little chance of influencing the committed believers, but it’s arguably the one place where realists can get their voices heard in the essentially hostile environment of academia. And I think the less committed can be influenced: I’ve noticed over the last couple of years that more realistic comments are appearing there – the subject article is an example. TC’s response to this is to restrict comments, but occasionally one slips through. And, when one does, I think seizing the opportunity to make a comment is worthwhile. With great respect to all here, I suggest that doing so is more important than commenting on friendly sites such as Cliscep, NotALot and TCW.
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I appreciate everything you say. I too used to have some joy on The Conversation but not so much after they started moderating my comments. Perhaps I should take your advice and get back on the horse. However, I can’t say I have high expectations of a website that would post an article that advocates ‘critical ignoring’.
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Interestingly, over all those years I’ve never had a comment moderated. Maybe the fact that TC advocates ‘critical ignoring’ affects their authors, but obviously that’s not true of their commentators. Try again – you might be surprised.
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I don’t always agree with the Daily Sceptic, since it’s rather right-wing for my tastes, but I check in with it on most days to see what’s going on. Since discussion on this thread has turned to The Conversation, the following article, which discusses TC, might be of interest:
“Climate Hysteria and Woke Gobbledegook Are Becoming Inseparable”
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/03/27/climate-hysteria-and-woke-gobbledegook-are-becoming-inseparable/
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Climate alarmism has come out as a full blown religion now. It is indistinguishable from any other religion in its basic core structure. They use ‘the science is clear’ to stifle any dissent, without ever attempting to explain the alleged clarity of The Science. You have to take that as gospel. If you don’t, you are excommunicated, labelled a ‘denier’ or ‘critically ignored’. The Nonversation is a platform for devotees to gather and to make pronouncements about how the world should be ordered, how society should be structured, in order to pay homage to the God of All Things Green who will prevent the destruction of the planet.
https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/the-science-is-clear
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There are those like Robin who argue that trying to counter the climate cult by debating its scientific merits (or lack of) is probably a waste of time now and that we should concentrate on its more glaringly obvious deficiencies. I suggest we should do both, but I also suggest that the essence of the rise of the climate cult is a fundamental battle between science and religion, and that religion is winning. If we abandon science to try and counter the climate cult based only on its logical failings in terms of human society and technology, then we will lose the war of science against religious dogma and therefore ultimately fail in our attempt to destroy climate alarmism and the abuse of science to generate population wide fear in general.
Mike Bastasch issues this warning about how the IPCC has abandoned science in favour of leftist, woke posturing. How should we counter this? By also abandoning science? By admitting that we need something more powerful than scientific argumentation to counter this nonsense? We then must admit to ourselves that science is weak in the face of determined human religiosity and dogma. I think this is a dangerous path to be treading.
“Variations of the words “equity” and “inequity” appear 31 times in the 36-page document. Variations of “inclusive” and “inclusion” appear 17 times. The document even mentions “colonialism” and repeatedly refers to climate and social “justice” for “marginalized” groups.
“Equity,” if you remember, is that word then-candidate Kamala Harris famously described as a system where “we all end up in the same place.” Sounds a lot like socialism, doesn’t it?
The UN report also contains an entire section titled “Equity and Inclusion,” which states “[e]quity remains a central element in the UN climate regime.” The report goes on to state that “[r]edistributive policies … that shield the poor and vulnerable, social safety nets, equity, inclusion and just transitions, at all scales can enable deeper societal ambitions and resolve trade-offs with sustainable development goals.”
In other words, the “woker” the policies, the better. How’s that for science?
Now, if you think “equity” is a fundamental pillar of scientific knowledge, then this is the report for you. But if you’re like most people and don’t think far left political priorities have a place in scientific documents meant to advise policymakers, this should alarm you.”
https://dailycaller.com/2023/03/21/opinion-the-uns-newest-climate-report-is-a-woke-dumpster-fire-masquerading-as-science-michael-bastasch/
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No Jaime you misunderstand my position. I believe the overriding priority now is to persuade government to abandon the disastrous and pointless Net Zero policy. And that can be done without reference to the science. Therefore – as reference to the science would at best add a huge delay to that urgent priority and at worst have you condemned as a denier whose opinions are not worthy of serious attention – I suggest argument about the merits of the the alarmists’ view of should be left until after Net Zero has been abandoned.
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As I explained above Robin, Net Zero legislation is premised on ‘The Science’, so it’s highly unlikely the Climate Change Act will be repealed in its entirety until such time as The Science is revealed to be largely wrong. It’s also highly unlikely that the climate cultists will listen to any type of reason or logic re. unilateral adoption of net zero policies. As long as Labour, the Lib Dems or the fake Conservatives remain in power, Net Zero will not be abandoned until it becomes obvious that it is unachievable, by which time it will already have done huge and irreparable damage to the economy and the social fabric of the nation, not to mention the environment. Attempting to counter The Science with actual science and real world empirical data will not delay the abandonment of Net Zero. It might in fact now be the most efficient mode of attack given that climate alarmists have now abandoned any pretence of actually doing real science in order to inform policy. ‘Climate science’ is now 100% political.
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Jaime:
The problem is I’m a sceptic. I don’t think there is a ‘basic core structure’ for all things called religion, that some subset of humanity, through its superior rationality, has managed to discern. Any more than climate alarmism, of any form, and its cotery of high priests, makes sense.
That paragraph may be worth reading with care. I did after all sign up to our About Page which says
The quasi- for me speaks of imprecision. A useful analogy – but don’t take it too seriously either.
The writings we call the New Testament, translated from first century Greek into English, seldom use the word religion. But here’s a nice definition, if definitions are your thing:
That’s the brother of Jesus, called James, writing, according to tradition. (Googling will find it for you.) But I’m not going to excommunicate or even stifle the dissent of anyone who doesn’t believe that part of the tradition. I’m too busy helping orphans annd widows in their distress. Well, I should be.
Not all religions have such a beautiful summary of what they’re about. Well, I think it’s beautiful. But I’m not going to excommunicate or even stifle the dissent of anyone who … you probably get the picture. I’m into scepticism and hard questions in this area, just as I am for climate policy and for poor old climate science, so called. And I also agree with Robin on the priorities. Not least for the sake of those widows and orphans.
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Richard, your chosen example of the definition of ‘pure’ religion:
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
The climate religion:
To look after orphans yet to be born and widows yet to become wives, in their future distress and keep oneself from polluting the world.
Well there you are. As near as dammit to James’s definition!
But seriously, if we confine ourselves to Western ideas about religion, because it’s mainly the West which is captured by the Climate Religion, these definitions from Wiki are about as apt as you can get:
“Religion is a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations . . . .
The term religion comes from both Old French and Anglo-Norman (1200s AD) and means respect for sense of right, moral obligation, sanctity, what is sacred, reverence for the gods . . . . . . .
In classic antiquity, religiō broadly meant conscientiousness, sense of right, moral obligation, or duty to anything . . . .
The anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined religion as a
A system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion
Geertz’s definition seems particularly apt but looking at the general working definition of a religion, I would say that ‘climate alarmism/catastrophism’ can now be positively identified as essentially religious in nature, certainly not scientific.
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Jaime, that’s very clever but, as I think you know, you’re describing a perversion of what James was pointing to and advocating:
1. ‘orphans yet to be born and widows yet to become wives, in their future distress’ conveniently have no say, no agency and indeed no current distress. Instead of meeting real need, with all the humility that requires, we’ve made up a imaginary canvas where we can draw whatever suits our totalitarian fancy and be proud of our moral superiority to boot!
2. ‘keep oneself from polluting the world’ is also, as you know, the opposite of what James was talking about. I’d say given the context that the pollution he detects in the world is, mainly, a lack of care for real orphans and widows, the fact that, for many, in their struggle to succeed, the defenceless don’t matter. They live in a dreadful sink estate it’s dangerous to even visit so let’s forget them.
That’s where quasi-religion was for me a good choice. (It may well have been my own wording but I don’t remember the details! John R was the main author of About’s second coming, after Geoff C had kicked us off, as you probably remember.)
Some religions are far more destructive than others. For me climate alarmism has the potential to be right at the most harmful end of the spectrum. Naziism was a political religion (Michael Burleigh’s term, building on a number of other scholars) which was the worst example of destructiveness, including of enlightenment ideals (with all those ideas about science and progress through science). This is the really powerful argument of Douglas Murray in a discussion with three other guys in beautiful Fiesole in Italy – a video that was released last October. I won’t give the title as it might put some people off. But I do strongly recommend people do listen to Murray’s views about why we’re obsessed, rightly, by the Nazi period.
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It was a joke Richard. I was being flippant. No need to analyse. Not sure why you brought up Nazism, but yes, I agree, climate alarmism has enormously destructive potential and it is as much a political religion as it is a morality-based religion.
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A religion:
“From Greg Wrightstone, president of the CO2 Coalition who reports they were evicted from their paid and agreed to exhibit just minutes after the show opened. This picture shows them on their way out the door while the show is in progress.
He writes:
We had an exhibit booth and were attending the NSTA convention, but they were having none of it. We were thrown out of the NSTA annual convention yesterday for exposing their position on the teaching of climate change. Our science was not on the “Approved List” by them.
Our detailed rebuttal, Challenging NSTA Position Statement on Climate Change, was published March 23, 2023.
Reliance on “consensus” science and a rejection of critical thinking skills and the scientific method.
NSTA’s embrace of the hypothesis of “harmful man-made warming” despite its basis in flawed science and government opinions and its rejection of all contradictory science.
A primary role for the NSTA should be to develop critical thinking skills for students and to instill in them knowledge and use of the scientific method.
Students should be encouraged to review all facts on a subject (in this case climate change) and make up their own minds rather than be indoctrinated into an established political agenda.
Unfortunately, the NSTA has taken a strong position that is antithetical to the scientific method, critical thinking and open scientific debate. Its position is one of censorship of any scientist or science that does not support the NSTA-approved “science.” The NSTA Position Statement on Climate Change fails to delineate between real science and political science.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/27/co2-coalition-gets-evicted-from-national-science-teachers-association-convention/
I don’t think there is any way of countering this other than by strongly re-asserting the scientific method and its vitally important role in determining policy. They want to teach kids religion and they’re calling it science so that they can get away with it.
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Jaime:
I can only apologise. (Well, actually, I could do a number of things, including a “Look squirrel!” But an apology is simplest.)
Force of habit 🙂
The real reason is that I’ve been thinking a lot about the religion and pseudo-religion spectrum, with Douglas Murray and Tom Holland really emphasizing how extreme a departure Nazism was given what came before it. Meaning we still live in its shadow.
Well that is very well said. It does have its faux-morality but it sure also has its (highly anti-democratic) politics. A horrible mixture.
Robin I think is right about how we best defuse this ticking time-bomb. To mix metaphors again 🙂
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And again:
I think Robin is right that this will have to be a two-stage process. Derail the train, then set fire to it.
My metaphors may need a bit of work. 😉
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We disagree strongly on how best to derail the train. But that’s fine. At least we’re not in an echo chamber here. I’m not even sure that this train can now be derailed in a relatively safe and orderly fashion. It may just be that in the absence of any brakes, it keeps going faster and faster, until the rails cannot support its momentum and it crashes and burns – along with Western civilisation. Pessimistic.
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This:
“Plan D plays the standard trick of reporting battery storage in MW, which is designed to make batteries look like generators. MW is actually the discharge capacity, not the storage capacity. Imagine buying orange juice this way. Tropicana has twice as big a spout as Minute Maid but that is not what you are buying. You buy the juice not the pour speed.
So Plan D has roughly 27,000 MW of solar but just 9,000 MW of storage. Assuming standard 4 hour batteries this gives just 36,000 MWh of storage capacity. That stores the solar for just over 1.3 hours, which does not even come close to getting you through the night. Cloudy days? Forget about it.
So Dominion’s VCEA compliance plan assumes huge amounts of juice coming from somewhere else, which it won’t, plus battery storage that won’t get you through the night. Saying this “might not work” is laughable, but it is a big step up from ignoring the fact that it will not work, which is what all of America’s big utilities have been doing.
Keep in mind that the big utilities are making a fortune off of the bogus net zero game. They make a guaranteed profit on every approved dollar they spend on mandated renewables that do not work reliably.
The big utilities have zero incentive for blowing the whistle on net zero, but at least Dominion has said it might not work. But of course their ever so weak “time will tell” warning lets them keep on spending untold billions on unworkable renewables.
The good news is that Dominion finally admits that the net zero VCEA might not work. The bad news is Dominion Energy will spend hundreds of billions of ratepayer’s money before the inevitable failure of VCEA becomes obvious.”
https://www.cfact.org/2023/03/28/breakthru-a-big-utility-says-net-zero-may-not-be-reliable/
The people who KNOW net zero won’t work are not going to blow the whistle hard because they’re making so much money. The rest of the zealots just BELIEVE that net zero will work, that it HAS to work, in order to save the planet. End result: the train only derails catastrophically, when it’s too late.
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Jaime/Richard,
I’ve enjoyed reading your recent exchange. And I think you might be interested to see the response I received on Monday from my MP to an email I sent him recently drawing his attention to my A Fresh Start article. Here’s what he said:
Hmm … the background to this is that his predecessor at the constituency was a noted sceptic and initially he seemed interested in following his example – agreeing with me for example that it made little sense to pursue emission reduction policies if most of the world wasn’t also doing so. However, it was interesting how even then he was reluctant to be committed publicly, communicating with me by telephone and handwritten letter. But now he toes the line. It demonstrates I’m afraid just how difficult it’s likely to be to persuade politicians to change their minds. But more on that and how best to derail the train (non catastrophically) later.
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Robin,
Thank you for that insight into the minds of Parliamentarians. Desperate stuff!
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Robin,
“This is to say nothing of the broader environmental benefits of Net Zero, which are broadly attested to by credible experts.”
Utter, meaningless waffle. 99% of MPs are a waste of space, either handsomely paid to toe the line, or so idiotic that they just mindlessly regurgitate the approved narrative handed down to them by the ‘experts’. Our so called ‘democracy’ just isn’t working when it comes to critical issues like net zero.
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Robin,
Why am I reminded of Invasion of the Body Snatchers?
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Expanding on my comment above about my MP, I thought there might be some interest in the following
In August 2020, I sent him an email from which this is an extract:
Here’s a transcript of parts of the handwritten letter I received in reply:
[Then there’s a lot of guff about European leadership re exporting and innovative green technology and using the financial sector to incentivise developing countries to cut their emissions.]
But then he became chair of the (powerless) Parliamentary Renewable And Sustainable Energy Group and decided it was okay to support unilateral action.
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Oh for the days of Peter Lilley being your MP, eh Robin? Lord Lilley was up the front/on the panel at the meeting at Portcullis House (House of Commons) I mentioned earlier, at which Jerome Booth presented his new book, Have We All Gone Mad? Why groupthink is rising and how to stop it. Lilley was meant to provide a critique of Booth’s thesis but said he wasn’t going to be much use in that role, as he pretty much agreed with every word! And they both agreed with you on the priorities – reaching the people suffering from Net Zero delusions as the only way to reach the bulk of politicians.
[First link corrected after the initial edit.]
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Yes, Peter is one of the good guys. I knew him quite well when he was my MP although I’ve lost touch with him since then. Bim Afolami, his successor, is a conformist – anxious to avoid upset.
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Lilley was on good form that night in December. Like him, I wore a suit, for a succession of strange reasons – I seldom take one to London on my rare jaunts to the capital. My meeting earlier in the afternoon was with a old Cambridge maths friend who’s made a truckoad of money from his entrepreneurial efforts since our university days. Like the truly wealthy he was dressed much more scruffily than I was! But his impressive offices were a convenient walk away from Lilley, Booth, Michael Kelly, Toby Young et al. (Professor Kelly was as trenchant as anyone about the engineering and economic madness of Net Zero.)
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I envy you Richard. Although I’m not totally deaf, my hearing is pretty bad these days (despite expensive hearing aids), so I no longer join such gatherings – something I used to do quite often. I miss them.
However there are consolations. My favourite New Yorker cartoon had a dog sitting up at a computer with a thinks bubble saying ‘No one knows you’re a dog on the internet‘. Same applies to the deaf.
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To say I empathise must rightly be considered suspect, Robin, as my hearing has remained good so far. My right eye not so much. Twelve days ago I sat close in a restaurant to an elderly gent with a major bandage, plus eye patch, over his right eye. I couldn’t resist asking him what the problem was. The whole eye removed due to cancer at the same Bristol Eye Hospital who’d sadly mucked up my own diagnosis in November 2020. They hoped they’d got all the bad stuff out. That knocked my ‘field defect’ into the proverbial cocked hat! Philip is a 87-year-old Catholic from Ulster and we had a fine chat about the rugby against England in Dublin later that day, about St Patrick’s Day the day before, then about the great saint himself. Sometimes one’s troubles can be a link. But, as you say, it’s also good to be a dog, lying low on the Net.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, at the meeting I happened to sit between two interesting folk, one a retired motor industry veteran and the other Latimer Alder aka Steve Jones. In the discussion Steve gave a few other people, including Booth, a hard time about their pessimism about social media. His Twitter account has had impressive reach, he said, and he was convinced he’d been winning hearts and minds over to climate realism through it. It was good to see him again and to hear this.
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My hearing problem is partly my own fault. I’m old enough to have been conscripted into the infantry (another elderly gent – if I’m allowed to describe myself as such) at a time when the army didn’t provide hearing protection to soldiers. That, according to my audiologist, was probably the start of the problem. Then, in my early thirties I took up clay and game shooting and foolishly didn’t wear protection. As a result I’ve had a problem for about 30 years.
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Jaime,
Here, as promised, is my view on how best to derail the train. Two initial comments:
(1) As I’ve said before, I don’t for a moment underestimate the difficulty of persuading enough politicians to repeal the 2008 Act – a difficulty illustrated by the email I received recently from my previously supportive MP. Nonetheless, as I’m sure any attempt by a UK government to implement the net-zero policy would lead to catastrophe, I think we should do our utmost to prevent that from happening.
(2) There are some signs that the train may be derailing itself: I’m increasingly encouraged by recent widespread anti net zero developments as evidenced elsewhere on this blog. Here’s another: an article by one of my heroes, Rupert Darwall.
So what can be done to hasten this process? I believe (and have done for several years) that there’s one simple message for the general public (and therefore for voters) that we should be plugging whenever there’s an opportunity. It’s this:
The beauty of this statement is that it doesn’t require a discussion of the science. Nor should it require any discussion of, for example, intermittency and backup, energy storage, contracts for difference, the adequacy of the grid, the cost and availability of rare earths etc., the 1.5ºC target, skills shortages, human rights consequences of renewables mining – and all the other subjects that are endlessly debated in relation to climate change. And note: it’s essentially the argument made brilliantly by Konstantin Kisin in his recent speech at the Oxford Union – and that seems to have been very successful.
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Robin,
If we lived in a sane world I would agree with you 100%: a few minor ‘polluters’ unilaterally deciding to reduce their carbon emissions to zero within the space of two decades in order to ‘save the planet’, incurring massive expenditure and indescribable social upheaval in the process, whilst major ‘polluters’ carry on regardless, is both pointless and absurd, even if we accept the basic premise that fossil fuel carbon constitutes a climate destroying pollutant. But we don’t live in a sane world. We live in a crazy world dominated by leaders and activists who are all fully signed up to a climate change cult – either for ideological or financial reasons – which pre-eminently touts ‘science’ in defence of its insane, politically and religiously inspired policy prescriptions. So though your statement may be beautifully simple, rational, clear and compelling, it will fall upon the deaf ears of climate zealots plus those handsomely rewarded Net Zero convinced politicians who, though they may feel the odd pang of conscience in accepting money and/or professional advancement in exchange for promoting the government’s agenda, can at least find comfort in the fact that they are ‘following the science’ whilst lining their pockets. I also doubt it will convince more than a significant minority of the brainwashed younger generations, even though you say “it’s essentially the argument made brilliantly by Konstantin Kisin in his recent speech at the Oxford Union – and that seems to have been very successful.” How successful? Have university students up and down the country embraced KK’s message? Did he really change hearts and minds?
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Robin and Jaime,
Thank you both. It has been a pleasure to watch two fine minds making some excellent points. I’m glad I’m not a Judge who has to decide which of you is right (though my cop-out is to say that in a sense you are both right).
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Well Jaime, I agree with you that we (in the West) no longer live in a sane world. But, as I’ve said before, the target audience is not the relatively small number of climate zealots – powerful though they may seem to be today. No, it’s the far larger number of ‘ordinary’ people – people who are at the threshold of having to live with the hopelessly unworkable consequences of the zealots’ mad beliefs: EVs, heat pumps, ICE vehicle bans, ’15 minute cities’, escalating energy costs, electricity blackouts, job losses, etc. Almost every day brings more evidence that they’re not going to like it. Nor are the businesses that are already beginning to understand the absurdities that net zero policies are forcing on them. As I’ve said, I’m most encouraged to note the growing evidence of a change of heart amongst such people: the hostility to the likes of Extinction Rebellion, the push back against heat pumps, the extraordinary success of the Dutch farmers’ protest party, the growing realisation of the nonsense behind ESG, the EU’s reversal of its ICE ban, the failure of a ‘green’ referendum in Berlin, the Italian government’s slowing of the ‘green’ transition to protect local industry, etc. I expect we’re going to see more of this sort of thing. These are people who are most likely to agree with my view that it makes no sense that we’re having to put with all this when most of the world has other priorities; as their voices get louder politicians will have to listen – and these people can drive political change.
What I find particularly interesting is that this is something new – there was no hint of such attitudes at the outset of the Covid scare where we all fell meekly into line. That’s not happening now: it’s an important development. Don’t give up.
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Quite a lot of recent headlines suggest that there is a definite push-back against net zero and climate hysteria, e.g.:
“How Do You Escape Net Zero?
The U.K. shows the peril of not ditching the policy openly.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/net-zero-carbon-emissions-green-energy-rishi-sunak-united-kingdom-3c6a7741
“Energy security is trumping climate concerns ”
https://www.ft.com/content/65d7d4d5-9aa5-466c-b686-796b2a6cf586
“Polish PM vows to fight ‘pseudo-green’ EU plan to ban petrol cars”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/03/31/poland-prime-minister-mateusz-morawiecki-eu-ban-petrol-cars/
“UK carmakers offered EV sales target loopholes”
https://www.ft.com/content/69ca2924-85f7-42ae-9b5b-5b9907cf12b7
“Stirrings of Euro eco-rebellion
Europe’s Green car wars and what they mean for us”
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/04/stirrings-of-euro-eco-rebellion/
“Experts warn government ‘green levies’ onto electricity will cost households up to £13,000 to fit heat pumps they need to avoid hiked gas bills”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11920815/How-100-year-gas-penalty-affect-YOU.html
“Richard Littlejohn: Welcome to basket case Britain”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-11921963/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Government-unveils-plans-make-poorer-colder.html
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The Spectator had an article about Nigel Lawson by the Prime Minister yesterday. An extract:
My comment:
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It’s interesting, and I think indicative of the growing importance of the subject, that of the top six responses to Sunak’s article three are about climate/net zero. Here are the other two:
‘He also thought the climate fraud and net-zero was a load of cobblers – how about that for radical Rishi…’
‘When you visited Lord Lawson, did he let you know what a Horlicks the Conservatives were making over net-zero?’
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Great to see all three comments.Ever since Cameron talked about “the green crap” (a private comment that was surely intended to be leaked) the Tories have known what they were dealing with. Sort of. The Green Blob scares them far more than it should. Lawson has set a wonderful example of courage, albeit after leaving frontline politics. It’s over to Rishi and Kemi now.
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Personally I think this story (below) is a storm in the Guardian tea cup. However, if the Guardian is so hot under the collar about it, perhaps it does represent another suggestion that the UK is inching away from net zero:
“UK accused of ‘backward step’ for axing top climate diplomat role
Exclusive: Previous holder says loss is ‘disappointing’ and damages UK’s ability to spur global climate action”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/13/uk-accused-of-backwards-step-for-axing-top-climate-diplomat-role
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I agree that the Guardian‘s ‘backwards step’ story is really a minor issue. But it may – along with so many other current items – be indicative of a backing away from net zero. Speaking of which, I was impressed by Professor Fenton’s recent substack article to which Jaime provided a link a day ago.
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Here’s another article, this time by Professor Gordon Hughes, that demonstrates the utter absurdity of Net Zero.
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Here’s yet another.
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And another.
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Robin, this would be enough, surely, but for the fact that the people in charge of pushing Net Zero policies are economically illiterate, socially maladjusted, clinically insane science and technology deniers. But just in case they did harbour any significant misgivings that their actions performed in order to save the planet from an imaginary man-made Thermgaddon might not be in the best interests of humanity or the environment (which is the understatement of the century), the powers that be have ensured that their pockets are very generously lined with filthy Green lucre.
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Hmm… it seems you don’t think much of these people Jaime. Three observations:
1. My MP, who these days pushes Net Zero policies (having once expressed sceptic views), is neither socially maladjusted nor clinically insane. That’s what makes his change of heart particularly damaging.
2. These people are ‘the powers that be’.
3. (Added) I doubt if any of them have read or are likely to read any of the three articles.
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Robin, just noticed this via Substack Notes, via Twitter. Tell me that US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is not a few sandwiches short of a picnic. What do you think caused your sane, rational MP’s sudden change of heart if he was not brainwashed or socially mal-adjusted? What now causes him to openly promote an insane, irrational policy response to an imaginary ‘crisis’?
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Robin,
Thanks for the links. Both articles are well worth reading, IMO. MPs should, but probably won’t, read them too.
Jaime and Robin,
I don’t think net-zero supporting MPs are mad, though they support a mad policy. The only explanation I can offer is groupthink, because the policy coming out of Westminster, Holyrood and Cardiff certainly isn’t rational. It is massively damaging to Britain, yet they have been persuaded (or persuaded themselves) that not pursuing net zero is the danger. They may not be mad, but they do a very good impression of it.
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Mark, Robin,
My take is this: if you are comfortable promoting a demonstrably insane, irrational, irresponsible and extremely damaging policy, formed in response to a supposed existential threat called a ‘climate emergency’ which was declared by Parliament, without a vote and without any scientific evidence whatsoever, if you are socially and psychologically adapted to promoting that false narrative, then you must, by definition, be as insane as the narrative itself.
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The leader in last week’s Spectator was a tribute to Lord Lawson.
He warned about the danger of consensus politics:
“Lawson stepped in because he could see the political consensus had emerged around what is now the net-zero agenda without important questions being asked. Scientists who pointed out the flaws were attacked as apostates, their reputations besmirched and funding withheld. Only those with their careers behind them, Lawson argued, could safely engage in the vital battle of ideas. His Global Warming Policy Foundation became the lone voice posing rational challenge to a general view that seemed intent only on expensive and ineffective solutions.
The real problem, Lawson understood, was the curse of consensus. Speaking in the House of Lords in 2012, he made a point that deserves to be quoted in full: ‘In my rather long political experience, when all three political parties are agreed on a policy, it is nearly always mistaken. There is a very clear reason why that should be. The existence of all-party consensus ensures that the policy in question is never properly debated or scrutinised. If the evidence shows that a policy is mistaken, it should be abandoned. It is as simple as that.’”
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Well Jaime, I understand your view. But many politicians and other ‘leaders’ have for millennia supported policies that to contemporary and subsequent observers were ‘demonstrably insane’. But does that necessarily mean that the politician is insane? In some cases it does: Adolph H and Mao are I suggest examples. But surely that’s not true in all cases? My MP for example – socially adept and obviously very intelligent – has a problem: often tipped for high office, he’s never made it. So he’s manoeuvred himself into a role where he’ll be noticed: Chair of the all-party Parliamentary Renewable And Sustainable Energy Group. I doubt if he’s changed his mind about Net Zero (that there’s no point in the policy if most of the world isn’t interested in emission reduction) but he’s seized on a popular policy (popular in the circles in which he moves – an example, as Mikehig just reminded us, of what Nigel Lawson described as ‘the curse of consensus’) that may just possibly lead to preferment. Cynical and opportunistic certainly, evil arguably – but insane, I think not.
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Robin:
Agreed. But one other word came to mind: cowardly. Cowardice is evil but, as Elon Musk’s BBC interviewer learned the hard way this week, being more specific can help one’s case 😉
It’s a mix of cynicism, opportunism and cowardice in my book. A different mix for different people. But people turn into cowards because they’re not mad. They see likely consequences clearly. We’ve all been there.
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They are not mad, but are acting against the best interests of the people they are supposed to represent. The remaining question is their motivation for doing so. I do not want to think they were doing so deliberately for personal advantage. Groupthink, a superficial to nonexistent understanding of the issues and a genuine desire to steer the best path are a more palatable cocktail. But the preferable answer is not always the true one.
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Mad seems the most appropriate adjective to describe German politicians. The British lot are not that far behind. Let’s not even discuss the Australians. Groupthink is way too tame. Evil, malign, malicious, avaricious perhaps play their part, but this seems like mass insanity to me, a civilisation in decline and determined to tear itself apart:
Atomausstieg: In the middle of the European energy crisis and rising electrical demand from stupid energy transition policies, Germany takes its last three nuclear power plants offline forever:
“Germany has one of most execrably idiotic energy policies in the entire world. Specific anxiety about nuclear power owes a lot to the cultural impact of Chernobyl upon West Germany. An important text is a 1987 young adult novel by Gudrun Pausewang called Die Wolke, relating the experiences of a fourteen-year old girl whose life is torn apart by a similar fictionalised disaster in Germany. A whole generation of Germans grew up on this histrionic gruel, and much of the resulting cultural energy flows into the oblivious and innumerate Green Party, who are anti-nuclear even more than they are anti-carbon.
Like most policies adopted for no reason, the phase-out conveys not a single benefit. It does not mean that Germans will no longer consume nuclear power. It merely means that we’ll import it, at an additional charge, from countries like France. The phase-out is also at odds with the heavily-hyped and Davos-endorsed German energy transition, for it will force us to keep more fossil fuel power plants in operation. Some oil and coal plants have already been reactivated, and more will probably have to be, as our insane government continues to stress the electrical grid ever further with their promotion of electric vehicles and heat pumps. All of this would explain why recent polls have only about third of Germans supporting nuclear phase-out, while 60 percent oppose it.
It simply doesn’t matter that ending nuclear power is destructive, unpopular and obviously inadvisable. We’re going to do it anyway, and state media will publish a whole fleet of articles on why it’s exactly the right thing to do, and then we’ll move on to doing the next stupid thing. It’s very unclear how or when this strange journey of self-inflicted destruction will ever end.”
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/atomausstieg-in-the-middle-of-the
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Looking at them as individuals, the motivation of our political ‘leaders’ with regard to the climate issue (and much else) is hard to fathom. However, although it’s true that – if their efforts are successful – the outcome for our country would be catastrophic and those efforts could therefore be described as insanity, that in my view doesn’t mean that as individuals they (or most of them) are insane.
Consider my MP: Bim Afolami – Nigerian parents; Eton, Oxford and the City; charming and intelligent. As I’ve said, he was once a sceptic. But that was solely because he agreed (with me) that, if most of the world wasn’t prioritising emission reduction, there was no point in our doing so. I think that now he subscribes to the orthodox view: that human emissions are the cause of recent warming and, unless they’re curtailed, we face potential disaster – we must therefore do our bit. I think that, like nearly all the people he mixes with (socially and politically), he honestly believes that. That’s a comfortable place to be – and it means he gets invited to all the right parties. And might even secure political preferment. His weakness of course is that he doesn’t take the trouble to really think through the issues, to ask awkward questions or to listen carefully to alternative opinion.
I suspect that’s the position of many MPs. But is it insanity? I don’t think so. Is it cowardice? Not really.
However there are, I suspect, some MPs who have thought about the issues and do understand that Net Zero is an absurd and disastrous policy. But, frightened of being attacked on Twitter and ostracised by colleagues, they don’t speak out. They’re the cowards.
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Robin, this is a valiant effort in defence of the old normal. Alas, I think that the new normal is those people who appear to be sane, rational, well-adjusted, in fact, completely normal, but who support insane policies, are in point of fact, technically insane, and those of us who resist strongly the imposition of the post science, post evidence, post factual new normal, are in fact the last of the truly sane.
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All life, plants and animal species, are opportunistic, a prerequisite of life, we can’t help it.:(
History’s chequered history shows that while we can be innovative and sometimes altruistic,
we are not very trustworthy; broken pacts on the international front, government disregard
for citizens’ rights on the national front, peoples’ criminal acts against each other. Checks
and balances need safeguarding vigilantly or power corrupts and absolute power is worse.
… In the West the Government has become too powerful and the Press knows where its
interest lies.
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“Germany’s last three nuclear power stations to shut this weekend
Closures, delayed after Russia reduced Europe’s gas supplies, leave conundrum for energy policymakers”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/15/germany-last-three-nuclear-power-stations-to-shut-this-weekend
A conundrum for policy-makers. I should think that’s close to being the under-statement of the year.
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Elonn – grin
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Here’s an extract from an email I received from my MP three weeks ago:
I intend to reply. Suggestions about what I should say would be helpful. And interesting.
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Beth: Of all the commentary on the BBC’s train-crash interview with Elon I enjoyed John Campbell’s the most.
Robin:
I said it was a different mixture for different people. But not taking the trouble “to really think through the issues, to ask awkward questions or to listen carefully to alternative opinion” can easily be cowardice. Because you know, from what’s happened to other people, that even that level of curiosity leads to bad consequences. (That’s why I’m also sympathetic to Jaime’s view that ‘groupthink’ is too mild a term for this thing. But on the accuracy and usefulness of ‘insanity’ as an insult I’m with you!)
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Oops, for reasons that are not worth delving into, that was Drake using Sceptica. And you’all thought she was dead! Sorry to confuse.
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Robin, I’d say this:
“Net Zero has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with energy security. It has been dishonestly conflated with energy security following the West’s provocation of the Ukraine invasion and the ill-advised response to that invasion, which has significantly contributed to the current energy crisis. Net Zero is ALL about unilaterally and absurdly addressing an imaginary global ‘climate crisis’, supposedly ‘setting an example’ to the rest of the world – which IS not, and WILL not, follow our example.
Energy security could be achieved effectively, safely and cheaply, by exploiting our own abundant natural fossil fuel reserves and developing nuclear, WITHOUT significantly increasing our own already relatively low carbon emissions. We could achieve the same effect upon global mean surface temperature (i.e. next to nothing) by becoming prosperous and energy independent vs. immiserating and impoverishing the populace, and vastly reducing their quality of life and freedoms, simply by responsibly exploiting our available rich resources and NOT engaging in a pointless, empty, virtue-signalling exercise about climate. By so doing, we would also be PROTECTING the British environment from the detrimental effects of the proliferation of low density, unreliable and expensive wind turbine and solar panel installations, which take up vast areas of land and sea and endanger wildlife.
Please specifically detail the ‘broader environmental benefits of Net Zero which are broadly attested to by experts’, specifically with reference to the UK, in light of what I have said above, given that, even if we accept the consensus scientific theory that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the principle driver of global mean surface temperature, the UK’s Net Zero policy will STILL contribute approximately net zero to any reduction in global mean surface temperature by 2100.”
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Jaime:
I’d suggest replacing with:
in a letter to an MP.
One, it’s shorter.
Two, it doesn’t get you into a different and highly controversial debate, potentially undermining the point one is trying to make.
Otherwise, I agree.
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It could be as well to mention that even if Net Zero was a crucial step towards energy independence and security, it would also be a dangerous step towards materials dependence on regimes that most certainly do not have our best interests as their core policy. Even if we could power the UK by renewable energy alone without substantial erosion of wealth and freedom, this would not represent an improvement in our independence. Where do rare earths come from, and how are they obtained? The same question applies to cobalt and lithium. Who will manufacture the machines that will enable our independence? Not us.
Then there is the obvious point that carpeting prime agricultural land with solar farms axiomatically harms our level of food independence, which is already at a low ebb.
These are mutually-exclusive aims.
Reducing carbon dioxide emissions has a variety of unpleasant side effects that outweigh the benefit of those cuts – in my view by many times.
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Richard, I might agree that leaving out the ‘provoked’ invasion is best, even though the invasion of Ukraine was most definitely not an act by Russia committed in isolation without any input from Western geo-political manoeuvring and provocation, even though a potential early peaceful settlement was scuppered by our own PM, but most definitely, the West’s response to that invasion has harmed Western energy security (particularly European energy security) immeasurably – not least Biden’s destruction of the Nordstream pipelines, sanctioned by the German Chancellor himself, who seems quite happy to deprive Germans of cheap Russian gas and domestically produced electricity from zero carbon nuclear. So that point is very relevant.
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Thanks for the comments re my MP’s email. Here’s my first draft of a reply:
QUOTE
You say the Government’s Net Zero policy is based on two propositions:
1. It would enable Britain to achieve energy independence and security.
2. It would enable Britain to address the global threat of climate change.
I believe both are seriously mistaken. Here’s why:
Energy independence and security
Because an increasingly dangerous China essentially controls the supply of components and materials needed for renewables – especially rare earths such as polysilicon (an essential ingredient of solar panels sourced in Xinjiang province where China is practicing systematic repression and forced labour of the Muslim Uyghurs) – the UK would increase its already dangerously dependence on it, putting our energy security at most serious and unnecessary risk. Far better surely that we take advantage of our abundant domestic supplies of gas and oil and, based on them (plus newly developed nuclear power), prioritise a strong, growing and resilient economy that can ensure for example we can adapt to whatever climate challenges may occur?
The global threat of climate change
Most major non-Western countries – countries that are the source of over 75% of CO2 emissions – don’t regard emission reduction as a priority and, either exempt from or ignoring any obligation to reduce their emissions, are focused instead on economic and social development, poverty eradication and increasingly on energy security. As a result, global emissions are increasing and are set to continue to increase for the foreseeable future whatever the UK (the source of less than 1% of global emissions) may do to reduce its emissions. Far better surely that, based on a growing economy (see above), we contribute to global emission reduction by encouraging research into the development of technologies for delivering practicable, reliable, inexpensive low emission energy?
UNQUOTE
Any observations?
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Robin,
You, Jaime, Jit and Richard/Sceptica have said everything that I would have thought worth mentioning. Better to keep it short and focus on the key points, I think. That said, I would be itching to add in something more about the mutually inconsistent claims made by the net zero crowd, and the oxymoronic nature of the hilariously named Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. However, that’s just a personal bugbear, so your draft is probably as good as it can be, IMO.
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Meanwhile, is this yet another straw in the wind regarding the wheels coming off the climate crisis charabanc?
“The climate change debate dividing the World Bank
Addressing climate change by transitioning the world’s power grids, automobiles and industries to greener sources will cost trillions — and Janet Yellen and European authorities have no desire for massive new spending right now.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/14/climate-change-debate-dividing-world-bank-00091031
I found it to be an interesting read, and recommend it.
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As is often the case, there is so much material that many telling blows have to be omitted. I found this problem when trying to draft a letter to my own MP. It has gone through several versions and languishes unfinished.
One thing that sceptics and enthusiasts alike could agree on would be the usefulness of a test of Net Zero – a willing sacrificial lamb, er, guinea pig, er, early adopter city or region, which would be willing to live like it’s 2050, just to prove it is possible. For it seems pointless for the rest of us to embark on a dangerous voyage without knowing if it ends at a safe haven or at the bottom of the sea.
Another gambit would be to offer the rational approach of agreeing to meet global average per capita emissions for every year from now until doomsday. Better we all move together than the UK jump off a cliff and hope others will follow. Or perhaps we could agree to match the US’s per capita CO2 emissions? They are such a leader on climate after all.
Robin: all this said, less is probably more in this case, so the draft is good. You could offer more detail on request, or follow up depending on the response you get.
Perhaps add something to the 2nd title about the freeloader effect?
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“the UK would increase its already dangerously dependence”
needs a two character deletion
“the UK would increase its already dangerous dependence”
and then, being in subeditor mode, I wondered about
“the UK would increase its already unhelpful dependence”
as you’d used ‘dangerous’ earlier in the paragraph and sounding less alarmist might be good!
Other than that I’m with Jit:
The ‘supply of components and materials’ bit is so important, thanks to Jit for the reminder of how it feeds into energy security.
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Thanks Richard. I don’t know where the ‘ly’ came from as it’s not in my Word draft. You’re pointing it out is important. As is your reference to my use of ‘dangerous’ twice. But I’ve decided to remedy that by changing the first reference to ‘threatening’ – i.e. to ‘increasingly threatening’.
As Jit says, there’s so much more material that I could have used (and was tempted to use), but I was determined to keep it short and restricted to the two key issues that he really cannot challenge: (1) how a dangerous China controls the supply of key materials – destroying any idea of energy independence and (2) how most of the world is not interested in emission reduction – destroying any idea that we can realistically do anything to combat what he calls ‘the global threat of climate change’.
Thanks also to Jit: I like your two suggestions – maybe one day they’d be useful.
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Robin: just a very small nitpick….polysilicon is not a rare earth.
Maybe the sentence could be re-worked:
“Because an increasingly dangerous China essentially controls the supply of components and materials needed for renewables – especially rare earths such as neodymium as well as polysilicon (an essential ingredient of solar panels sourced in Xinjiang province where China is practicing systematic repression and forced labour of the Muslim Uyghurs)”
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Jit:
“One thing that sceptics and enthusiasts alike could agree on would be the usefulness of a test of Net Zero – a willing sacrificial lamb, er, guinea pig, er, early adopter city or region, which would be willing to live like its 2050, just to prove it is possible.”
Maybe if we offer MPs an extended
holidayfact-finding tour to Lvov, Odessa and Kiev they could see for themselves what it is like to live in a modern city with minimal electricity, now that the Russians have all but taken out the Ukrainian grid.LikeLike
Thanks Mike.
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Many thanks to you all – valuable stuff. Here’s my latest draft of the two key paragraphs of my proposed email to my MP:
Any further comments?
I plan to send my reply to him today. I’ll advise you about his reply – if I get one.
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No further comments from me, Robin. I would say that’s ready to send.
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Is this another example of reality dawning – or beginning to bite?
“Climate change: How to be green on a budget”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-65275210
Reality check – net zero hurts poor people. It is immoral.
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More negativity around net zero:
“Low Traffic Neighbourhoods: Is this the UK’s most abused traffic bollard?”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65243274
And this:
“Greener flights will cost more, says industry”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65295258
Perhaps it’s dawning on people that net zero involves us not driving where we want, not flying where we want, and for good measure, not being able to live in warm houses or eat what we want. As reality bites, I suspect that net zero is increasingly dead in the water. That might explain the ever-more desperate doubling-down by lobbyists and politicians, but it’s darkest before dawn, and I think I see the first hint of light on the eastern horizon.
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From Mark’s BBC article:
“Zuhura Plummer [seriously], an Oxford resident who has campaigned in favour of the city’s LTNs as part of a group called Oxfordshire Liveable Streets, sees things very differently.
“What about the freedom to be able to cycle down the street without getting knocked off your bike? What about the freedom of asthmatics to have better air quality?” she asks.
“We’ve given up a lot of different freedoms for the one freedom to drive your car wherever you want at any time.”
What about the freedom to walk down the street without getting hit by an arrogant cyclist whizzing up silently behind you at 20mph? What about the freedom to use the roads you actually PAID for? Car drivers have given up a lot of hard cash for the ‘privilege’ of being able to use the road network (designed and built for motorised vehicles).What have cyclists ever contributed?
We have a different approach to LTNs here in far flung working class Cumbria where there are none too many plummy Zuhuras. They just randomly close roads with very little notice and open them up sometimes months later.
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Jaime, are you now living in Cumbria?
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Since November last year Mark. One of the few places we could afford to buy a house.
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I mean November 2021
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Welcome, it’s a great place to live. From our Cumbrian fastness we can look on the goings-on in London, Westminster, Follyrood et al with bemusement.
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Long may it be that way, but I fear the fanatics will find their way up here soon enough. All those methane-farting sheep dotted around the green hills and valleys and all those peasants driving gas guzzling cars and quad bikes also contribute to the climate crisis, as we know. It’s got to be electric quad bikes to round up the sheep: old Shep – who used to do a grand job – can no longer be fed on nutritious, high energy working dog meat offcuts as they’ve now been banned according to the lady at my local Spar.
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The feeble communique issued by the Group of Seven ministers at the end of their recent conference in Japan is yet another indicator that the Net Zero tide is turning. Yes, it may look like powerful stuff at first sight – with the usual platitudes about commitment to the Paris Agreement, net zero by 2050, a ‘call for urgent and enhanced action at all levels’ etc. But go a little deeper and the reality is revealed: there’s no sign of agreement on a deadline to halt new coal investments nor of the other firm commitments that many climate scientists have been saying for years are necessary if global warming is to be kept below the danger level. The G7 likes to think of itself as the ‘global leader’ on climate change but, if this the best the leader can do, it’s unlikely that COP 28 in November will amount to very much.
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Mark, Jaime
Actually, I recently spent a diverting hour in a Keswick supermarket carpark, looking on in bemusement at the constant train of electric cars wheezing up to the rank of three electric charging points, all of which seemed in a state of permanent use. Each driver engaged in the same conversation;
“Will you be long?”
“Mutter, mutter, mutter”
“Okay”
And off they would wheeze into their uncertain futures.
Bloody tourists!
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John – Booths, I assume? I have watched them too. Out of season those charging points tend to stand idle.
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Booths indeed. And I may have the numbers wrong. There could be four points, but one was out of order.
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I came across an article today (by Marco Silva, the BBC’s ‘climate disinformation specialist’) from the so-called Trusted News Initiative entitled ‘How journalists can tackle climate change disinformation‘. It includes the following interesting claim:
It’s interesting because what the paper actually concludes is that, because hardly any (0.1%) of the 2718 peer-reviewed papers analysed reject the proposition that humans are the cause of recent climate change, more than 99.9% of scientists therefore agree that human-caused climate change is happening. But what the paper actually shows is that only 16% of the papers explicitly endorse the proposition, only 15% do so implicitly and 69% express no position on the issue. That, to my mind, hardly supports the 99.9% agreement claim.
Have I missed something – or is the 99.9% claim rubbish?
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The correct percentage is presumably (19+409+417)/(19+409+417+4) = 0.995 as a proportion of papers stating or implying an opinion, or 99.5%. So it’s close on that score.
But a large chunk of that is “implied endorsement”, of which an example is:
The authors are not aware that a large proportion of scientists can only get funding if their favourite topic has a relevance to global warming. The forms of words used probably imply nothing more than that. If, for example, I wanted to study earthworms, I might be inclined to put in a grant to study their effect on carbon cycling in soil rather than one on their effect on blackbird population density.
Of course, the consensus is sufficiently milquetoast that I am part of it – but I’m still a denier. This is a sleight of hand by the authors which makes me disinclined to trust their motives. Real climate change that is happening now and is human caused is emphatically *not* the same as saying there is an imminent existential threat from human-cause climate change and that the only answer to it is crash net zero.
However, in the last paragraph of the conclusion, the authors conflate the milquetoast consensus with consensus of impending apocalypse, as follows:
A great fat non-sequitur there. The “urgency and gravity of this task” is not confirmed by this study.
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Thinking about it there is also the issue that while an “implicit endorsement” of human-caused climate change is quite plausibly found in numerous papers, what form of words would an “implicit rejection” take?
This example given for the implied endorsement:
would not seem to match this for the implied rejection:
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You make some excellent points Jit. Thanks. I agree in particular about the weakness of ‘implied endorsement’. But how about the example (Table 2) provided for ‘explicit endorsement without quantification’: ‘Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change’? Presumably the researchers thought this a good example – but ‘contributed’ is absolutely not the same as ’caused’ (or, as Marco Silva has it, ‘driven by’). Is that the best they had? Even the Level 1 example is odd: ‘The global warming during the 20th century is caused mainly by increasing greenhouse gas concentration especially since the late 1980s’ ‘Mainly’ but not ‘solely’. And what does the ‘late 1980s’ qualification really mean? The more you look the weaker this paper gets. Given that Levels 2 and 3 (Table 2) are suspect, there are only 19 strong endorsements left.
And I’m not entirely convinced that it’s legitimate to discard the 1869 who have ‘no position’. How can we be sure that the authors of these studies, most of whom are presumably are under funding pressure, didn’t keep quiet about global warming because they couldn’t bring themselves to compromise their true position?
You make another good point when you reference the implied rejection example. But then there’s this explicit rejection example: ‘…the global temperature record provides little support for the catastrophic view of the greenhouse effect’. It might be reasonably said that nothing in this paper supports that catastrophic view either. (BTW this provides an interesting read-across to the first three points of my paper that prompted this interesting thread.)
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Jit:
Further to the above, it’s interesting that the paper concludes that ‘… the broadly-defined scientific consensus likely far exceeds 99% regarding the role of anthropogenic GHG emissions in modern climate change, and may even be as high as 99.9%.’ It does that by taking all the papers in their sample (2718) and considering the ‘sceptical’ papers as a percentage of that. It notes in passing that ‘If we … exclude papers that take no position on AGW … we estimate the proportion of consensus papers to be 99.53%.’ But it does not allow that to affect its 99.9% claim – which is of course trumpeted by the media and by the BBC’s ‘climate disinformation specialist’.
Of course it’s all nonsense. For two reasons:
1. Science is not done by counting heads.
2. The only way to determine scientists’ views on a topic is to conduct a worldwide (i.e. covering China, India, Russia etc. as well as the US and EU), properly constructed (i.e. clear, unambiguous questions etc.) and correctly implemented (i.e. anonymity of respondents etc.) survey of a fully representative sample of scientists with the relevant skills (in this case scientists who specialise in attribution).
I set out my reasons for the latter point in a submission I made to a Parliamentary select committee nearly ten years ago. Nothing has happened since then to cause me to change my mind.
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The Conversation has just published an article entitled ‘Climate change: multi-country media analysis shows scepticism of the basic science is dying out’. Surprisingly it allows comments. So I made one.
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Excellent response Robin, focusing as you always do on the weakest point in the article in question. That means saying Farage is absolutely right about China – right on that, not necessarily anything else. But how on earth can they gainsay your point, given the stats?
On their survey of the media, what a surprise they left out Twitter. But I can help them there. According to PBS, the most trusted media organisation in the US, in January, Musk’s Twitter changes have put ‘rocket boosters’ on climate change misinformation. I’m sure that’ll show up in the next survey.
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For what it is worth, I have now posted my own views at the Conversation.
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You can see why TC is cutting back on comments. Of the 13 posted so far on this article, 9 are sceptical. I particularly like Steven Carr’s.
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O/T – Jit – “milquetoast” – where do you get those words from, had to look it up.
“of a person : timid, meek, or unassertive” – that’s me 🙂 will use that down the pub.
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Robin – thanks for the TC link.
from the post start, something we idiots might say –
“Any regular viewer of BBC’s Question Time could be forgiven for thinking that old-fashioned climate science denialism is alive and kicking. In a recent edition, panellist Julia Hartley-Brewer called the IPCC’s climate models “complete nonsense”, and dismissed the 2022 record UK heatwave and the floods in Pakistan by saying: “It’s called weather.”
ps – John nailed it in the comments
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Dfhunter,
>”John nailed it in the comments”
Actually, I’m not sure I did.
To be fair, the article does point to research that shows that evidence scepticism is not as prevalent on the internet as it used to be. This research cannot be ignored but I would suggest that the decline is as a result of de-platforming within the mainstream media (after all, the article concludes by emphasising the influence that the mainstream media has). But there isn’t a decline in evidence scepticism that can be measured by reference to its profile on the mainstream media. That would be getting things the wrong way around.
If one recalls, the de-platforming was justified by claiming a need to avoid false balance in debate. Invoking a scientific consensus was useful for such a purpose. When it comes to debate regarding practicality, there is no such scientific consensus to call upon, so another pretext for censorship will have to be found. However, for Net Zero, the de-platforming that really mattered was the removal of a democratic alternative. We can debate about Net Zero’s practicality on the television until the cows come home, but if we can’t vote against it we are stumped. As Jaime has pointed out, we will actually have to wait for the cows to come home, by which time it will probably be too late.
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If there has been a decline in ‘evidence scepticism’ I would suggest that is mainly because the policy prescriptions have now progressed to the point that they are a clear and present danger to people, society and the economy, in fact Western civilisation. It was logical and reasonable to question the shoddy ‘science’ when policy proposals were in their infancy and their real world effects were yet to be felt. The ‘science’ is just as shoddy and the evidence even more threadbare, but the fanatical response to an imagined problem has moved on, so it’s not because the ‘science’ somehow became even more settled and irrefutable; it’s because people like Robin, for example, have understandably decided that questioning the science is less important than attacking the policies. As I’ve pointed out on several occasions, I think it is still vital to question the scientific basis which underpins the policies, as well as the policies themselves, because it will embolden idiot writers at the Conversation and elsewhere to pronounce that ‘evidence scepticism’ died out because the ‘evidence’ became irrefutable and now all that remains is to haggle about the policy prescriptions. This is a very dangerous position to be in, because it basically encourages people to give up on evidence-based science and just accept the post normal, post evidence, pseudoscientific, tea-leaves reading crap which comes under the title of ‘climate science’ – i.e. climate change and extreme weather attribution and detection.
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Richard: re my response to the TC article you wonder ‘how on earth can they gainsay your point‘. Well someone called Rich McKenney has had a good try: a try that includes a rather unpleasant swipe at me – why do alarmists so often think it necessary to be rude to their interlocutors? You might be interested to have a look at it. Also perhaps at my (I hope polite) reply.
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Jaime:
I was going to say exactly this, when I had more than my phone on hand. Very well explained. And yet … John is also right on the level playing field so cherished by the likes of the BBC by now being at a 45 degree angle in any discussion of the science. With the goalposts also moved of course.
In my reply to Robin (forthcoming) I’ll have something to say about how intellectuals and ordinary people typically interrelate with the scientific method and rational discourse generally. Spoiler: it’s not good news for the intellectuals.
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Jaime,
That is exactly the point. Sceptics will challenge whenever and wherever they are allowed to, and whenever there appears to be anything to be gained by it. That is the service they provide. Others are setting the pace and others are setting the agenda. We are not a shape-shifting enemy, we are just an adaptable service provider.
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Robin,
Rich opened by dismissing all who do not share his outlook as being ‘dupes and liars’. It was just unsubstantiated diatribe. When you and others offered certain statements of fact, and politely invited him to point out where the deceit lies, he said this is not addressing his point, but is typical of how trolls respond (to being called liars).
Rich by name and rich by nature.
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John:
It was this sort of ‘debate’ that I enjoyed in the old TC. Now it’s a race to get the last word before the thread is closed – as it probably will be quite soon. I was looking forward to Rich’s response to my reply to him but now there’s a new complexity as Paul Braterman (Professor Emeritus in Chemistry at Glasgow U) joins in accusing me of deploying an ‘argument for delay that’s been used for decades‘. So I’m now looking forward to his response to my reply.
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Well Robin you got some interesting feedback/pushback, not from Paul Braterman but from Rich McKenney.
it’s the same old smear – partial quote “Seize the assets of the oil companies, and their lobbyists and shills, and don’t take a penny out of the pockets of working class people to pay for it until the people who caused this mess have been utterly rinsed into bankruptcy.”
what can you say against this? ties in with “Do People Use Their Brains Differently?” post.
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I’ve just read your latest response to Rich McKenney Robin. Second sentence:
Then nothing about the oil companies. Just the developing countries. I take my hat off to you. Because I happened upon the thread 5 minutes after McKenney’s rant. I couldn’t see the way back to some sense!
We live and learn.
I wanted to draw people’s attention to what Dominic Cummings has published on his (paywalled) blog this week, about how pollsters have got election forecasts wrong, in the US and UK, by not really understanding less educated voters – or not even managing to find them to understand!
Cummings has been polling and running focus groups in the States. He doesn’t say for whom. But this is the thing that struck me: the less educated are far more open to ideas that conflict with their current point of view. Whereas the graduate elite kid themselves that they see all sides of the argument but are actually far more narrow-minded. So they can’t begin to follow Feynman’s strictures within science. Just for one thing.
I feel sure that this is relevant to your aim to persuade the UK electorate of the craziness of Net Zero, so that they will then change the politics. One way or another. I’ll give some quotes from Cummings tomorrow.
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ps – The above Conversation post pic seems to shows climate computer models in action.
I’ve often wondered why we never see a doc on how they work in real time or future.
bet the pointy guy is saying “more red”
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dfhunter:
“what can you say against this?”
Just point him to the Wiki page on Maurice Strong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Strong
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Is Rich McKinney an alias for Naomi Oreskes? Robin, I admire your unfailing courtesy, and ability to keep the debate at the Conversation on track. One of the ironies of the elite’s obsession (and the Rich McKenneys of this world) with net zero and any thoughts that it is achievable, is that it is based on the availability of low EROEI technologies such as wind and solar, being manufactured in China using fossil fuels. There’s a reason China is now the world’s manufacturing centre – the availability of plentiful coal and cheap labour.
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Three interesting emails this morning: a reply (and a follow-up) from the charming Rich McKenney (nothing yet from Paul Braterman) and a reply from my MP to my email to him dated 16 April (referred to in detail above on 15 and 16 April). The latter – quite long, very waffly and not an answer to my email – is of course the most important as it probably reflects the orthodox position of Tory MPs. Assuming anyone’s interested (please say if you’re not) I’ll try to put together and post here a summary with extracts.
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The TC thread has now – as I expected – been terminated. So that saves me the trouble of having to respond to Rich.
As for my MP, you may recall that my email to him was a response to his earlier claim that the Net Zero policy would enable Britain to (a) achieve energy independence and security and (b) address the global threat of climate change. Re (a), I pointed out that, as renewables entailed increasing dependence on China, their planned use instead of fossil fuels would negate both independence and security. Far better I suggested that we focus on domestic supplies of traditional fuels and, based on them, prioritise a strong, growing and resilient economy. Re (b), having noted that most major non-Western countries – the source of over 75% of emissions – don’t regard emission reduction as a priority, I suggested that cutting our emissions (less than 1% of the global total) would have no appreciable impact on the global situation. Surely it would be far better if, based on the strong and growing economy to which I’d referred, we were to encourage research into the development of technologies for delivering practicable, reliable and inexpensive low emission energy?
His reply consists of five paragraphs. Although none respond to my email, I suppose the first and second are vaguely connected to (a). Here they are (try not to nod off):
I can’t let him get away with such rubbish – but how?
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Robin,
Apart from ‘Following on from your last email…’ there wasn’t anything he had written that was actually following on. It’s just stuff he has arbitrarily lifted from one of the endless strategy documents that the government pays for. Either that, or he got a chatbot to write it for him.
I don’t think you will get anywhere by seeking to follow it up.
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The MP seems to be saying that we should invest in innovation, which few would disagree with.
But that isn’t what is happening – that is not how our path to Net Zero has been mapped out. The pathway consists of massive expansions of wind and solar. These are not innovative technologies, but they are sucking up vast quantities of public cash. What we are not doing is throwing money at innovation for twenty years and then adopting a miraculous new technology that will be cheap, reliable and net zero. (I don’t believe such a combination is possible.)
Perhaps the MP would agree that we should remove all subsidies from renewables, with the exception of novel technologies?
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Jit: my problem is that he ‘seems to be saying’ various things (there’s a lot more than I cited). There’s no coherence to his reply. I liked John’s suggestion that it was written by a chatbot – but, although he’s probably right that a reply will get nowhere, I intend to send one. BTW surely cheap, reliable low-emission energy may be possible one day?
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Robin, your ‘sane, rational’ MP is incoherent. He cannot, or will not respond respond logically and rationally to your email. He is functionally insane. Even if he’s not ‘away with the fairies’, he might just as well be, as far as communicating with his constituents is concerned. I struggle to see the difference, quite frankly. You won’t ever get any sense out of him, no matter how hard you try. Presuming that it is him who is actually replying, personally. But even if you managed to get him face to face, and put these questions to him directly, you would not get a straight answer.
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Jaime:
touché. This example of his mode of communication with constituents is a disgrace. But does it mean he’s insane? I still don’t think so – although he’s certainly very foolish. I suspect the reality is that he asked someone else (the ridiculous word salad of his email suggests an inadequate bot) to draft a reply to an awkward constituent.
Nonetheless, I’ll make one more attempt to get some sense out of him. I don’t expect success.
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Best of luck Robin. You could advise him that, considering the nature of his responses thus far to your legitimate concerns and entirely reasonable questions, there is currently an online debate as regards to whether or not he is of sound mind and judgement!
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An interesting idea Jaime. But I think not.
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Here is another reason why ‘evidence scepticism’ is dying out online: because of troll-like ‘ninjas’ provoking ‘climate denying’ Twitter accounts in order to get them banned. I’m pretty sure this is why my first account was suspended and my second one too (helped no doubt by my spreading Covid ‘misinformation’) – which remains suspended to this day, despite Elon’s ‘amnesty’:
The “ninjas” began keeping tabs on prominent Twitter accounts which disputed the basic science of climate change. Whenever those users tweeted something which broke the platform’s rules, they would report them.
Climate change denial is not forbidden on Twitter, but some other types of content are – like threats, harassment, or hate speech. Until November last year, posting misleading claims about Covid-19 could also lead to tweets being removed or accounts being suspended.
“At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether they get suspended because of Covid-19 misinformation or Nazi symbols,” Maria tells me. “When they’re gone, they’re gone.”
“When I engaged climate change deniers, I noticed some of them got agitated. So I continued to do it, until the point they showed harassing behaviour [against me], which is not allowed,” he told me. “Then you can get rid of them.”
I suggest to Arthur that his behaviour may not be dissimilar to that of an online troll. “You could say that, because it is partially true,” he replies.
But I point out to him that, by provoking his targets into crossing a line, he could be causing real-world harm.
“I can’t see any real-world damage worse than what they are doing,” he says. “When they are trying to convince people climate change is a myth, they are inflicting damage upon all of us.”
Spoken like a true missionary and climate change zealot.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-65114966
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An interesting report Jaime. I don’t do Twitter so have no direct experience of this. However, over many years of commenting on TC, my opponents tried two ways to dislodge me: (1) by delving deep into my commenting history (as far back as 2008) they hoped to find something I’d said that might be construed as denial – they failed (but it was why I decided not to get involved with Cliscep despite having been involved in pre-inception discussions); (2) by insulting and vilifying me (something that didn’t seem to worry the TC moderators) they hoped to provoke me into saying something disobliging that warranted cancellation – again they failed, essentially because I’ve always tried to be friendly and polite – which, interestingly, made them dislike me all the more.
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Been a long tradition in History’s Chequered History of authoritarians as far back as Plato
in his Republic asserting “We will close you down.’
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I’ve just now sent an email to my MP (Bim Afolami). Here’s the text:
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A follow up to my letter to Bim?
Probable answer (to my opening question): don’t bother – despite the fact that in normal circumstances it would be useful ammunition for an upcoming General Election.
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Robin,
Why not go for it? The really telling part of the CCA Impact Assessment is the part you’ve already drawn attention to. If your MP isn’t mad, and if he is even reasonably intelligent, then this must resonate with him:
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I’ve just read this article in the Daily Sceptic:
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/04/27/dominic-raab-was-taken-down-by-the-blob-because-he-pushed-through-policies-they-despised/
While it doesn’t mention Climate Change or Nett Zero, it gives an insight into the workings of government that make clear; rational conversations with individual politicians are all but futile.
I fear that it will all end in tears.
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Bill B,
Thanks for the link – an interesting read.
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Yep, thanks Bill. This bit fits very well with what I came on to say:
In other words, the plebs can’t cope with ‘reconciling inconsistencies in public morality’ and other nuances, which, of course, is where the elite and the graduate class come in. And Dominic Cummings says that the exact opposite is true, based on talking to many real US voters in recent months.
But, before that, here’s another example of pleb-disparagement from the BBC this morning, in giving ‘two sides’ of the Pope’s forthcoming visit to Hungary. It’s not hard to imagining the author rooting for the former Catholic priest they’ve selected as the voice of reason as he says:
— Ukraine war looms over Pope Francis’s trip to Hungary
Au contraire, says Mr Cummings, much-beloved-of-the-UK-establishment, in his most recent Substack blog post about the US electoral situation. The post is very long but here’s some background on one direction he takes, talking here about the issues of crime and (yet again) immigration:
This though was what really hit me and made me feel Robin’s early statements about reaching out to persuade the ordinary voter are crucial (not his local MP, bless him):
That’s in the paywalled Regime Change: new data shows Trump beating Biden and beating AOC & Kamala more easily – plus DeSantis matchups. Sorry this is so much later than I said. And I realise that others may not find it as exciting an insight as I do. But I think this is key to overcoming elite groupthink, not least over climate.
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Many thanks for this Richard: most interesting and, as you suggest, an exciting insight. And I’d love to think that it might be the ‘key to overcoming elite groupthink, not least over climate’. But I’ve had the opposite experience when a group that was initially open to looking at climate issues from a wide variety of perspectives morphed into elitism.
In September 2020, I was amongst the first people to join ‘Oxford Climate Alumni Network’ (OxCAN). At first, it encouraged lively and interesting debate. But the organisers didn’t seem to much like that and gradually discouraged it. In time, it settled into becoming a body where essentially all participants took net zero and the like for granted – many from a professional perspective . And I lost interest. But it does make use of a little-used and unsatisfactory vehicle for discussion called Slack and sometimes something is posted there that gives me an opportunity to comment. There was one such yesterday. Here’s the ensuing exchange:
Dr Leighton and Dr Graydon are typical members. He has no doubts about his views and is not, it seems, prepared to take others seriously: why for example raise the completely irrelevant matter of oil company profits? She in contrast has simply adopted the orthodox position, seems surprised to find there are other points of view but is prepared to consider them.
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Robin; thanks for sharing that experience. A nice example of Whataboutery in the remark about oil company profits. It also betrayed his ignorance in being unaware that those oil profits help support the finances of pensions, savings, life assurances, etc, across the globe. He is almost certainly a beneficiary himself.
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My exchange with Charalee on the OxCAN website (see above) continued with her suggesting that the answer to the problem (emerging and other non-Western countries’ intransigence about emission reduction) might be solved by the need to request (‘explore, discuss and seek agreement’) these countries to ‘contribute’. My reply:
I suspect Charalee that you may be missing something of the greatest importance. As you know from the links to which I referred you on Friday, I have been following the COPs and other international climate conferences since 2007. One thing that’s clear to me from this is that China, Russia and other big ‘emerging’ and developing countries are not interested in emission reduction. That’s why the developing countries have ensured that these conferences reaffirm their UNFCCC reduction exemption – seen as a necessary condition of their being involved. (I’ve been impressed incidentally by their negotiators’ clear understanding and influence on the details of relevant treaties and agreements. This applies especially to India and China.)
I’ve concluded that all this is based, not just on an overt determination to grow their economies and eradicate poverty, but also on a view that climate change is not as serious a problem as people in the UN and the West keep telling them – a view that they’ve largely kept under wraps by giving lip service to climate orthodoxy. It’s a position confirmed by several interesting studies published by senior scientists in for example the Chinese and Russian scientific academies. I can provide links if you’re interested.
That may be bad enough. But I fear there’s something else – and this applies to countries that are not friends of the West – countries such as China, Russia and Iran. These countries are I think heartened to see the West embracing an interpretation of science that’s likely to cause serious economic damage and make it increasingly reliant on them for materials and technologies needed for renewables. In the meantime, by exploiting traditional fossil-fuel based energy they go from strength to strength. For them it’s a win-win.
All this suggests to me that there’s no prospect of their having any real interest in side events at UN COPs, in educating their citizens (presumably about Western views of the science), in the views of non-State actors or in any other attempts to persuade them to reverse their climate-related policies. Have a look at my The West vs. The Rest
essay – page 5 ‘Copenhagen 2009’. An extract:
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Robin,
It’s worrying that Oxford graduates can see the world in such simplistic terms. Unfortunately there is a remarkable degree of naivety over the whole COP process and how easy (or difficult) it will be to reduce GHG emissions. I hope that the scales may fall from Charalee’s eyes once she reads your very clear explanation.
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Something else that the Charalees of the developed world might like to take into account:
“Air India, IndiGo: New record as 4.56m Indians take flights in a day”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-65334390
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Mark: it seems that most members of OxCAN fall into one of two categories: either (1) they are personally involved in ‘progressing’ or supporting net-zero (and the like) and therefore don’t want to think about issues that might challenge their assumptions or (2) they are remarkably naïve about international realities and seem to believe that, as everyone must surely accept the ‘settled’ science, a ‘be kind’ approach will overcome any difficulties. Charalee is a prime example of the latter.
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I’ve had a reply from my MP (see above). It came by post not email. Here’s what he said (a shortened version that essentially uses his words):
Any thoughts or comments?
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“Yes, far too little focus is given to the global picture – especially in fast-industrialising nations in Asia. However, we still contribute a higher proportion of global emissions than our population might suggest – it will be challenging to encourage other countries to make the necessary cuts if we are unwilling to do the same: we must get our own house in order if we are to help other countries to do the same.”
This is total nonsense. GBR per capita emissions have fallen sharply and are now less than China and Germany and much less than the USA. We’re on a par with Greece, which is much warmer and not as industrialised as the UK. Contrary to what your MP suggests, we contribute a SMALLER proportion of per capita and total emissions than our population might suggest. We’ve done more than our fair share and the rest of the world is NOT following our example, and never will, no matter how British far politicians go in nailing the British people to the sacrificial cross of Net Zero. Time to pull the plug on this virtue signalling farce.
https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom?country=GBR~CHN~DEU~GRC~USA
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The argument regarding getting one’s house in order is flawed. It may be necessary but it will never be sufficient in encouraging others. For it to be worthwhile we need sufficiency.
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Jaime: I find it utterly depressing that an MP who has a leading role in climate policy by chairing a cross-party climate change committee should be so hopelessly ignorant about a most basic issue: about 35 ‘developing countries’ have greater per capita emissions than the UK. In particular, China’s (8.73 tonnes) are 76% greater than the UK’s (4.95 tonnes). His comments on the China and security issue are equally feeble – inspired I’m sure by wishful thinking.
You’ll probably think it’s a waste of time, but I intend to reply. I can’t let him get away with this nonsense.
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In any case John, the evidence shows it doesn’t work: in 2000, Western Europe and the US emitted 9.6 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 and the rest of the world 13.2 Gt. By 2020, the European and US figure was 7.4 Gt – a 23% reduction. That would seem to be an excellent lead. But did the rest of the world follow suit? Far from it: their 2020 figure was 28.6 Gt – a 117% increase.
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Jaime and John:
Bim Afolami’s idea that non-Western countries are waiting for leadership from us betrays, I believe, an embarrassing, neo-colonial frame of mind – especially surprising coming from someone with a Nigerian background. After more than 200 years of what’s widely seen as condescending, arrogant and often rapacious exploitation by the West, countries such as China, India, Iran, South Korea, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia (and Nigeria!) understandably have no interest in following a Western lead and are confident that they’re quite capable of deciding for themselves and going their own way.
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You are at least getting targeted replies Robin, however nonsensical and absurd. Hold his feet to the fire as long as he can stand it.
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John, I would argue that it is neither necessary nor sufficient to go any further along the ruinous road to Net Zero.
Robin, I’m not even sure this does betray a neo-colonialist mindset. Maybe it did when first proposed as the ‘legal’ basis for CCA 2008, but I think politicians are just using this now as an excuse to impose their own ideological goals upon the UK and I do think there is an element of malice and spite involved in subjecting the British people – whose ancestors kicked off the fossil-fuelled Industrial revolution 200 years ago – to the harshest of retributions for doing so.
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Robin, you mention the UK’s 2021 emissions of 4.95 t CO2/cap. It is also worth mentioning the global average, which (according to Edgar) was 4.81 t CO2/cap. There is every reason to suppose that the gap closed still further in 2022, and that the UK has already reduced its account to the global average.
Regarding the issue of sudden price rises – this is not a logical reason to decarbonise. The alternative to sudden price spikes is not necessarily permanently low prices. We are more likely to be in for permanently high prices instead, which would mean that the “low with sudden spikes” of reliance on fossil fuels is a better situation.
He speaks of renewables, but what he actually means is “weather-dependent” renewables. These will have a very low energy density and will require substantial overbuild and backup. The logical path to security of supply and reliability is nuclear power, which also ticks the low carbon box. If pressed he will probably mutter something about government policy on nuclear, but the sad fact is that this has been left to wither since Sizewell B, and the belated attempts to rectify the situation are not adequate.
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Jaime: you encourage me to
‘Hold his feet to the fire as long as he can stand it.‘
I intend to do just that. But some help might be useful. I’m pretty confident about my answer to the second issue – and plan, despite your interesting point, to use my ‘neo-colonialist mindset’ argument. Re the first – energy security – I’m reasonably confident that I can deal with his ‘we’re redeveloping the supply chain‘ dreamland assertion, but I’m less sure about his claim that ‘we don’t have the domestic fossil fuel reserves to meet our energy needs‘ – and therefore (I assume he’s claiming) have no option but to deploy more renewables. Help on his domestic fossil fuel assertion would be welcome.
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Jaime,
Necessary only in the sense that, if you believe there is a problem that can only be solved by China, etc. taking action, then one cannot expect them to do so if you don’t show equal willing. The problem, however, is that China are not going to act either way (that much is already clear despite the MP’s faith in the power of our moral leadership). So when confronted with two options, neither of which will work, I suggest one should go for the one that at least doesn’t cause self-harm.
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Robin, according to the Euracoal website:
https://euracoal.eu/info/country-profiles/united-kingdom/
As for fracking for gas, I know that Alan Kendall, our resident geologist, is sceptical. This is from the LSE (worth reading the whole article):
https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/explainers/what-potential-reserves-of-shale-gas-are-there-in-the-uk/
This is from what was once called the Oil & Gas Authority (but which, worryingly – I have written about this at Cliscep – is now called the North Sea Transition Authority:
https://www.nstauthority.co.uk/data-centre/data-downloads-and-publications/reserves-and-resources/
I think it’s fair to say that if politicians were to allow – indeed encourage – extraction of oil, gas and coal, we would have enough for many years to come, and could be self-reliant. Reserves are definitely finite, albeit global reserves of all three are massive, but in the context of energy security, it’s the UK’s reserves that matter. It’s fair enough to use renewables as part of the mix to help spin out our reserves of fossil fuels, and we should definitely be majoring on nuclear power if we’re worried about energy security, but reliance on renewables alone, as part of a net zero strategy, is guaranteed to reduce our energy security. You might, in your reply, mention the recent Net Zero Watch press release:
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Robin, you won’t get any clear info on the UK’s fossil fuel reserves because many sources are deliberately obfuscatory and/or reluctant to reveal any plentiful supply. But the shale gas potential was looking very promising until the Green Blob crushed any hope of exploiting this source of gas in the UK:
“Some experts predict that if onshore and offshore reserves of shale oil in Britain meet or exceed their estimates, the country could actually go beyond being energy self-sufficient. The issue is the fact that only a maximum of 20% of these reserves will likely be recovered. Even with only that potential of recoverable shale gas, Britain could still be self-sufficient.
Britain is believed to possess enough shale gas offshore that it would place the country into the top of the rankings of global shale gas producers. The production costs still are high, but it is felt that newer technologies, discovered in the United States, will make fracking for reserves a project that is commercially viable.
Reserves of UK offshore shale gas may eventually exceed 1,000 trillion cubic feet, which compares to the current gas consumption in the UK of 3.5 tcf each year. Even reserves near 200 tcf will put Britain among the top tier of countries with the most reserves. 1,000 tcf would lead Britain into the same grouping as Argentina, the United States and China, which are the current top dogs in shale gas potential.”
https://www.shalegasfracking.co.uk/shale-gas-reserves/
We also have potentially trillions of tons of exploitable coal.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/now-king-coal-set-rule-6923421
The BBC would have us believe we were going to run out of fossil fuels by 2019. Even Carbon Brief debunks this claim:
“So the BBC had the story half right. There are tough questions to answer around the UK’s dependence on fossil energy. Not because we’re going to run out, but because the UK – and the world – has far too much.”
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-why-the-uk-will-not-run-out-of-oil-coal-or-gas-in-five-years/
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Robin,
You could also point out the unreliability of previous warnings of the imminent depletion of reserves. Take this news item, for example:
“You can set your watch to it. In just over five years time Britain will have run out of its reserves of oil, coal and gas”.
That report is now over nine years old.
This is despite the government’s best efforts to make the prediction come true by disincentivizing investment in exploration and extraction infrastructure.
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Robin – not sure if this will help – comment by Mikehig over on Open Mike thread –
“Excellent article on how the govt’s latest windfall taxes will lead to a lose-lose outcome of lower tax revenues and reduced energy security:”
https://watt-logic.com/2023/04/26/impact-of-windfall-tax/
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Thanks everyone – a lot of helpful material.
Putting aside his absurd claim that ‘putting our own house in order‘ is essential if we’re to persuade others to do the same, I think the main issue is his claim that Net Zero ‘enables Britain to achieve energy independence and security’. That, I suggest, is easily countered by showing that renewables’ unavoidable need for Chinese components and materials completely destroys any hope of both independence and security. (No doubt we can nibble away at its edges (e.g. lithium from Australia and Chile), but that’s all – the problem’s still there). And that destruction of independence and security far outweighs any difficulties (price spikes etc.) that may arise from a switch back to fossil fuels.
Anything wrong with that? There are of course many other problems with renewables (e.g. unreliability and intermittency) but I want to keep this as simple as possible.
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Robin,
I think your planned response makes sense, but I wouldn’t ignore the intermittency and unreliability of renewable energy, as these factors also damage (in my opinion, torpedo) the claim that renewables/net zero take us on the road to energy security.
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Robin, the argument that we can source elements such as Li, Co from countries other than China belies the fact that, for example, China has over 5.6 billion dollars worth of Li assets in countries such as Australia, Chile and Canada. It also hosts 60% of the world Li refining capacity for batteries. I believe it is a similar story with respect to other critical elements such as Co. There is a reason for China’s dominance and that is much of the refining and processing capacity is based on coal, oil and gas energy (see – https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-25-years-of-lithium-production-by-country/)
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Having now read the Watt-Logic article linked to by Dougie above, I would say it is very relevant to Robin’s conversation with his MP. It spells out the woes of the windfall tax, and the benefits of domestic production of fossil fuels.
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I think this is quite interesting. About ten days ago I reported here on an exchange I’d had with Dr Charalee Graydon on the OxCAN (Oxford Climate Alumni Network) website. On Friday, Charalee posted this:
I replied:
I fear the answer may be that continuing GHG emissions are caused by non-Western countries – and that doesn’t fit the narrative.
(Dr Graydon’s website.)
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Robin,
I find Dr Graydon’s reply to be extraordinary, but you should be gratified that she is intrigued by your comments. However, intelligent people should be more than just intrigued when such obvious and important points are put before them, IMO.
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Further to my exchange with Dr Charalee Graydon on the OxCAN website, she provided members (including me) with a link to the Transition Studies website
– yet another well-funded site that I hadn’t seen before. She said ‘ it provides interesting topics for discussion on climate change.’ So I’ve made an early contribution:
Any thoughts?
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On a rather different topic but also arising from this thread, I’ve just received an email from Dr John Constable (Director of the Renewable Energy Foundation and Director of Energy at Net Zero Watch) in response to my request that he might comment on the first part (Energy independence and security) of the letter I received recently from my MP – see my comment here on 4 May. Here’s what John says:
I’m not sure to what extent this helps me to formulate a reply. Advice please.
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Robin,
I think John Constable’s reply to you is extremely useful, which is as I would expect, given how clear-sighted and knowledgeable he is. Probably you shouldn’t merely parrot his paragraphs in your letter to your MP, but suitably paraphrased I think they go a long way towards meeting the (weak) points made in the letter you received from your MP. By the way, I loved the phrase “intelligent, but deeply ignorant”. That could stand as a summary of many of our politicians (many, but not all – some of them really are stupid).
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This post from the Eugyppius website makes interesting reading on how the climate/green activists have captured politics in Germany (leaving aside the foreign funding theories):
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/a-vast-foreign-funded-climate-cabal?publication_id=268621&post_id
Much of it resonates with our situation here, especially the point that there are no alternative policies on offer.
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That’s very interesting Mike. Are we heading the same way? Well, it certainly looks as if our political ‘leaders’ would like us to – see my MP’s view (I haven’t replied to him yet) and this response from Sunak when asked, in response to a question prompted by a TCW article, whether he believed that there is a climate crisis:
He added that he believed:
No wonder Afolami (my MP) has adopted his current position on the climate.
However there’s one reason why, whatever our political ‘leaders’ might want, we may not be able to go the same way as Germany: the UK’s dire skills shortage. Whereas Germany has healthy apprenticeship schemes (a completed apprenticeship is considered equal to a degree), we don’t. And, lacking a good supply of technicians, engineers, electricians, plumbers, mechanics etc., it won’t be possible to do the many tasks essential for Net Zero’s realisation.
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Well, the UK has probably been at this for a quarter of a century or so now, and we’ve not so much reduced our emissions as exported them to China and other parts of the developing world; the economy is stagnating; the green jobs haven’t materialised; the “green” industries haven’t emerged in this country, since most of our net zero technology is imported (often from countries that use electricity generated by coal to manufacture it); and the rest of the world isn’t following suit, while global emissions continue to rise. We’ve picked the low-hanging fruit at considerable expense (and environmental damage to our wild places), and from here on in the whole net zero project can only be more difficult and more expensive to achieve.
Given the PM’s belief, I wonder what he thinks has changed to suggest that the next 25 years will be different from the last 25?
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Robin, Sunak parrots the usual alarmist talking points:
‘First, it is important that we recognise the importance and urgency of action needed on climate change. The UN’s IPCC has concluded that the world is warming faster than anticipated, the effects of which are being seen in every single region of our planet. Immediate global action is needed to limit global warming, heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and loss of Arctic Sea ice, snow cover and permafrost.’
First, it is important to recognise that the world is NOT warming as fast as the IPCC anticipated, which is why the alarmists have pivoted to claiming that their imaginary ‘climate crisis’ is demonstrable via extreme weather events which ‘scientists’ obligingly attribute to global warming via extreme weather pseudoscience. Second, it is important to realise that much of the IPCC’s monumental ‘science’ justifying urgent action on climate change is an exercise in politically biased cherry-picking and is deliberately distorted through the lens of policy-making.
https://judithcurry.com/2023/05/13/clintels-critical-evaluation-of-the-ipcc-ar6/
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Net Zero means plenty of UK-based green jobs Mark: e.g. installing, commissioning and maintaining the required wind turbines, solar panels and back-up systems, redesigning and expanding the national grid electrical infrastructure, upgrading the domestic, commercial and public service electricity network, building, installing and maintaining heat pumps in millions of homes and commercial/industrial plants, maintaining hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles and installing and maintaining hundreds of thousands of charging points for electric vehicles … The problem is that the UK doesn’t have nearly enough technicians, engineers, electricians, plumbers, mechanics, joiners and other tradespeople (probably about a million) to do all this. It’s one of the reasons why NZ is unachievable.
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Good points Jaime. I’d already noted your comment on Judith Curry’s article – and plan to respond.
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Jaime: I’ve posted a response to your comment on JC’s article. It’s gone into moderation. In case there’s a delay I thought I’d copy it here:
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Robin, and should those jobs arise the costs will be loaded onto our energy bills! Not only does renewable energy have a very low, or even negative EROEI, it is immensely inefficient with respect to the labour required to build and maintain.
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Paul, it’s unlikely those jobs will ever arise – and certainly not in time for politicians’ dopey 2035 and 2030 targets. The engineering and construction industries cannot get the skilled labour they badly need, apprenticeships last 5/6 years and, in any case, most of our bright young people are going to ‘uni’. Add to that the current impossibility of linking new renewable projects to the grid and things are not looking so good for the sacred Net Zero.
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Can’t see your comment there at the moment Robin, but you make my point yet again. The jokers at DeSmog do not engage with the scientific arguments AT ALL – they rely upon a bog standard, now nauseatingly familiar list of ad homs. This is because they are VULNERABLE. Get past that sham firewall which they throw up every time the Consensus is challenged on the actual science and they will crumble rapidly. Don’t get bogged down in these pointless arguments, I agree; but there HAS to be a way to force them to engage on the substantive issues raised for instance by Clintel.
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Jaime: it’s just been posted there – I had to email Judy to get it released.
You won’t I think be surprised that I believe the DeSmog piece makes my point yet again. It’s just another tiresome example of what I described in my comment as ‘ the ghastly and mind-numbing world of climate change orthodoxy where debate is not allowed and where you’d be dismissed as a ‘climate denier’’. Of course it would be great if you could get past that sham firewall – but how soon could you do it? How could you avoid getting bogged down in all the old nonsense? Your opponents – thousands of them – are just not going to give up easily. They’ve got far too much to lose: in terms of livelihood and reputation. And, while all this unpleasantness is happening, the Net Zero madness will continue.
Far better surely to defer all that for the time being and focus on the straightforward and overwhelming practical reasons for abandoning this absurd policy?
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Robin, what ‘they’ have got to lose pales to insignificance compared to what ‘we’ have got to lose if we cannot take down this cult. We should absolutely attack it from all angles, no holes barred, and we should attack most ferociously where we sense there is a weakness. You may think it is a lost cause, but on a much shorter time scale, look what has happened with the ‘Covid deniers’ and the ‘science deniers’ who challenged the Covid response on the basis of the supposed ‘science’ of lockdowns, testing, asymptomatic transmission, herd immunity, naturally acquired immunity, mass vaccination, vaccine effectiveness, etc. They have won the day. They are winning the fight to recognise the real harms done by the vaccines, using science and evidence. Why should Covid be so very different from climate?
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Jaime: “We should absolutely attack it from all angles, no holes barred, and we should attack most ferociously where we sense there is a weakness.”
I doubt Robin ultimately has any issue with you, or anyone, attacking on the science front as hard as you like. And you’ve already noted that similarly, you’ve no problem with attacking the crash Net Zero fantasy, and indeed you engage on that aspect too. However, I think the Clintel episode will end up less about revealing (scientific) weakness, than for the millionth time, exhibiting the enormous strength of climate orthodoxy that means it has been able to utterly ignore the issues Clintel raises with impunity, and will continue to do so – hence it will become just one more report in a long sequence that has never had any impact at all on the huge growth of orthodoxy, let alone threatened to arrest it.
Perhaps this way of looking at things will help: the fastest way of getting science out of a black hole and back in the land of the living, is highly likely to be through attacking the imposition of hugely harmful fantasy policies. Because only this will generate the powerful enough popular and political support that is necessary for burning the IPCC / orthodox get-out-jail free passes, so finally bringing the science under proper scrutiny.
Covid is different from climate, because the latter has had a 35 year rise that has built up tremendous power and inertia. Not to mention that in this long rise the policy has long since lost any connection to the science anyhow. However, the way they are similar, is that real progress in both likely only comes because of the fact of genuine harms to the public, as you imply above for covid. And compared to anything covid, the Net Zero harms have been in extremely slow motion, yet after decades of steering towards fantasy, serious harms are finally starting to emerge in ways that even uninitiated publics can see (especially with the added pressure of the Ukraine war); ultimately, those harms and their potential to get much worse, are surely the key to winning the public, and so winning the day.
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Andy West’s last paragraph is pretty much what I would have said had I been the first to respond to Jaime’s comment.
Ultimately I hope that all the dominoes will fall quite quickly, but I still think the first domino to be toppled will be the net zero one, because its harms to the public will soon become obvious – then the public will react. The more we can point out that net zero is both damaging and pointless, the more we undermine its foundations.
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Good morning Jaime. If we can get our ‘leaders’ to abandon Net Zero before most of the damage is done, I wouldn’t mind too much if the believers continued to believe. Provided they can no longer wreak social and economic harm on the UK, what is there to worry about? Certainly you could continue to attack them and one day you may even persuade them that they’re wrong – and good luck with that. But please don’t let that battle provide them with an excuse for ignoring the overwhelming practical objections to this absurd and dangerous policy.
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Morning Robin,
I guessed that we would get to this point sooner or later:
“Certainly you could continue to attack them and one day you may even persuade them that they’re wrong – and good luck with that. But please don’t let that battle provide them with an excuse for ignoring the overwhelming practical objections to this absurd and dangerous policy.”
I sensed that the real reason you were against confronting the climate cult on the basis of the science was that you considered it a possibility that this would be detrimental to your preferred method of attacking them on the basis of their insane prescriptive policies. What excuses exactly would you imagine that they would use to then shut down debate about policy? I can pretty much guess, but it would be nice to hear it from you directly. From my POV, NOT challenging them on the science gives them the advantage of claiming that their policies, as harsh and disruptive to society as they are, as costly as they are, are still necessary because, weighed against climate catastrophe, which is predicted and is indeed happening, right on target according to the science ‘which we all accept’, there is still net positive benefit. It’s just a matter of working out the details, but the necessity is established 100%. So I think, actually, NOT challenging these fanatics on the pseudoscience which they peddle daily in defence of policy, lessens your chance of making headway when confronting them on policies.
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Andy, Robin is concerned that attacking the science may undermine the effort to attack policy. I personally think the opposite is true. I feel that we have a test case with Germany as to whether public outrage at the unilateral imposition of insanely destructive energy and environmental policies will shift the cultists and force them to change direction. I don’t see any really positive signs at the moment. Germany seems to be sliding into a hell of its own making and the public seem largely resigned to it.
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The public are challenging the scientists more and more, and the scientists are not happy about it. They call it ‘abuse and harassment’. Maybe some is, but I’ll wager that the majority is cynicism of their portrayal of the ‘science’ in defence of policy. The public smell blood. They sense the vulnerability of the ‘scientists’ and they’re going in for the kill. The same thing is not happening with policy advocates being challenged by policy sceptics. Betts is whining about a more aggressive environment on Twitter. “Outright hostility has increased in recent weeks. It’s mostly just people saying you’re talking rubbish. They don’t want a conversation.” I would love to have a conversation with him about his ridiculous claims about heavy rain in Exeter recently, but Musk won’t let me back on to challenge him, so he has to face the outraged, but slightly less well informed public instead, which gives him the excuse to claim ‘outright hostility’. They shy away from real debate on the science because they know they are vulnerable. But it’s telling, in my opinion, that the ‘assault’ from the public is directed at the scientists, not at the politicians and policy-makers.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/14/climate-crisis-deniers-target-scientists-abuse-musk-twitter
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Andy West: “Perhaps this way of looking at things will help: the fastest way of getting science out of a black hole and back in the land of the living, is highly likely to be through attacking the imposition of hugely harmful fantasy policies. Because only this will generate the powerful enough popular and political support that is necessary for burning the IPCC / orthodox get-out-jail free passes, so finally bringing the science under proper scrutiny.”
That nails it imho. When active push-back starts against the devastation that comes with Net Zero and the like, those doing the pushing will cast about for some “science” to support their position. That will be the opening to lay bare the falsehoods and mis-representations in the climate orthodoxy. Then, hopefully, some brave politicos will climb aboard, like Bridgen and Chope on the vaccine issues – or new movements emerge, as in Holland.
Robin; I’m sure you’re right about the lack of skills and resources shackling the implementation of Net Zero. Unfortunately the cheerleaders and their accolytes will not pay any attention to practicalities until we are well and truly up the proverbial creek. They have form: look at how EVs are being imposed way ahead of the availability of adequate “zero-carbon” electricity to run them, completely undermining their main raison d’etre; ditto heat pumps. They are burning the bridges before crossing.
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‘I guessed that we would get to this point sooner or later’
No need to guess Jaime, that’s always been my position. Here’s an extract from my response to you yesterday on Judy Curry’s blog (echoing a point I’ve made previously on this thread and many times elsewhere):
They wouldn’t have to ‘shut down debate about policy’ – they’d simply ignore any attempt to raise the practicality argument.
And BTW it would hardly be possible for them to claim that painful policies are necessary to avoid potential catastrophe when the main thrust of the practicality argument is that the Net Zero policy is pointless. The conclusion of my Note on Net Zero:
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Robin, at the risk of being annoyingly persistent, you didn’t really answer my question about how exactly challenging climate cult alarmists on the science would be detrimental to efforts to challenge them on policy. You say:
“They wouldn’t have to ‘shut down debate about policy’ – they’d simply ignore any attempt to raise the practicality argument.”
WHY would they ignore any attempt to raise the practicality argument? Also, this is largely what they are doing right now, at this very moment, regardless of attempts elsewhere to challenge the supposed ‘settled science’ which justifies these insane policies. They merely use the ‘necessity’ argument and when challenged on the effectiveness and practicality of their policies, they just resort to the mindless contention that ‘well, we’ve got to start somewhere, if we don’t get our own house in order, then how can we expect others to follow?’, blah, blah, blah. You are NEVER going to get through to these brainwashed dullards – who comfort themselves with assurances of necessity based on ‘indisputable science’ – by appealing to logic and common sense. A full scale rebellion from an extremely upset public maybe, but by that point, the damage will have been done.
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Jaime: “Andy, Robin is concerned that attacking the science may undermine the effort to attack policy. I personally think the opposite is true.”
I think they are separate arguments that are largely directed at separate people and institutions, hence I don’t think they would interfere which each other too much. The public, and even politicians, are not really aware of the scientific issues or indeed that there remains an argument. But although there needs to be much more work on exposure, they are starting to become aware of the policy issues, because of course it is these that have direct downside impacts.
“NOT challenging them on the science gives them the advantage of claiming that their policies, as harsh and disruptive to society as they are, as costly as they are, are still necessary because, weighed against climate catastrophe, which is predicted and is indeed happening, right on target according to the science ‘which we all accept’, there is still net positive benefit. It’s just a matter of working out the details, but the necessity is established 100%.”
I think this inadvertently propagates a wrong assumption (the same one that all policy is based on), and an assumption that is key to this discussion. It is not the science, heavily compromised though it may be, which is the root justification for policy. Nothing in AR5 or AR6 suggests a global catastrophe, or anything like it. The root justification is instead a highly emotive and deeply embedded cultural narrative that has swept around the world for very many years, capturing most leaderships (including presidents, prime ministers, UN and IPCC leadership, religious leaders, economists, business leaders and uncle Tom Cobbly and all). A sub-clause of this catastrophe narrative, is that it is 100% backed by the science, but this clause, and indeed the whole narrative, are completely untrue. The aforementioned leaderships don’t know it’s untrue, they *believe* the narrative, in a religious manner.
So attacking the science is not attacking the main problem, even if it is pretty duff stuff. For this reason a few brave souls, including Lindzen and Peilke Jr, have instead attacked the false claim of the narrative to be supported by science, and quoted the IPCC in support, a clever tactic because orthodoxy (again falsely) says that the ICC must always be right. However, rather as Robin has intimated regarding the mind-numbing world of orthodoxy and the sheer power of its outrage, this just makes the outrage machine even more mad, and the smear and denier calls fall like rain. Lindzen has a video out on the Internet somewhere about this issue, showing that even the mainstream / IPCC science no way no how supports the catastrophe narrative.
This situation should, if one assumes that human decency is a majority trait, be making a lot of climate scientists guilty. For sure only a small minority propagate the catastrophe narrative and are themselves true believers; they call out the IPCC for being ‘far too conservative’, and ‘corrupt’ – in the opposite direction to sceptics, of course! (For an example of their position see the 2018 publication What Lies Beneath – The understatement of existential climate risk, with a foreword by climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber). But it is the silence of the great majority, probably due to a fear of smear or being cast out or whatever other reason, that allows the ‘science support’ sub-clause of the myth to survive unscathed. I recall some sceptics have tried – gently, for this is the only way it would work – to reach out to those climate scientists who are maybe a bit more open, a bit less afraid perhaps, to get them to acknowledge the lack of support for catastrophe, but they always seem to baulk or excuse themselves somehow, before getting too close to a firm acknowledgement of this issue. These types may not be ‘religious’, but deep inside I’m sure their gut tells them what the religion is likely to do to them, if they should cross the line and speak out.
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Andy,
“The public, and even politicians, are not really aware of the scientific issues or indeed that there remains an argument.”
You underestimate the public I think. As pointed out above, the public are going on the attack re. the scientific issues. I believe there are three main reasons for this: the collapse in faith in science following the Covid debacle, the fact that Net Zero policies are now starting to bite, and the current focus of the alarmist fraternity upon weather – as opposed to climate – in order to promote their claims of an existential crisis. With the British especially, the weather is a national obsession, thus hijacking it in support of the climate crisis narrative, especially in the current ‘climate’ of distrust in science and in ‘experts’ is perhaps not such a good idea. The public have begun to inform themselves on the scientific issues and they are not impressed it would seem.
“It is not the science, heavily compromised though it may be, which is the root justification for policy. Nothing in AR5 or AR6 suggests a global catastrophe, or anything like it.”
The science is very much the root justification for policy. It has been for 40 years. The problem is, the PERCEPTION of the ‘science’ has evolved way beyond what the science actually says, and this is largely the fault of the IPCC itself, who have distorted and abused the science – and ignored very large chunks of science – in order to propagate a political narrative based on ‘catastrophic’ climate change. But having said that, IPCC science, even undistorted through the lens of the SPM, still supports the basic concept of ‘dangerous’ man-made climate change, and it is this, as well as the politically motivated distortions and omissions, which must be robustly challenged, because it forms the supporting framework for carbon reduction policies.
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Jaime: “The science is very much the root justification for policy. ”
We will have to disagree. IMO this hasn’t been the root justification for decades.
“The problem is, the PERCEPTION of the ‘science’ has evolved way beyond what the science actually says…”
Yes! I absolutely agree with this, and that is why it is indeed the (cultural) PERCEPTION that is both the problem, and the root justification.
“this is largely the fault of the IPCC itself”
The false perception above is way way bigger than the IPCC, though indeed its leadership is up to its neck in propagating the cultural narrative of catastrophe. But it is an emergent phenomenon that is also propagated by a virtually uncountable number of organisations and individuals, including virtually all of the scientific institutions, all as part of a global belief system. As for the IPCC, I think Caleb Rossiter’s view is insightful, which describes the IPPC as a very layered organisation that increases the alarmist content as material passes up from the bottom to the top. The top may be blind believers, but way down at the bottom this is not so, and indeed the technical chapters in no way specify a global catastrophe. This model is why the SPMs are way more alarmist than the technical chapters, and the leadership pronouncements are way more alarmist than the SPMs.
As noted above, the main fault of the great majority of climate scientists is not that they manufactured picture of global catastrophe, but that they have failed to speak against one that is trumpeted by virtually every authority except Trump, and for those who have contributed to the IPCC, is a gross distortion of their contributions.
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Andy,
“The false perception above is way way bigger than the IPCC, though indeed its leadership is up to its neck in propagating the cultural narrative of catastrophe. But it is an emergent phenomenon . . . . ”
Just like climate sensitivity is an emergent property of the overheated IPCC climate models. Conveniently, they both serve to reinforce the perception that we are headed for Thermageddon if we don’t act immediately to reduce carbon emissions. 🙂
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Jaime, I’ve been debating these issues since 2014 – largely but not exclusively on The Conversation. My opponents have included some senior academics. My position has usually been based on the practicalities – mainly the fact that, as most of the world isn’t interested in emission reduction, there’s no point in our taking unilateral action. They rarely try to counter that (and when they do, they try the ‘set an example’, ‘need for leadership’ arguments – (on that, see THIS )) but instead time and time again try to categorise me as a ‘denier’, sometimes going the extraordinary length of combing through anything I’ve ever written – or trying to do so. And I’ve been interested to note how they apply the label to eminent dissenting scientists. You ask why they ignore the practicality argument. I cannot speak for them all, but I suppose it’s because they don’t have any answers so are keen to get into their comfort zone – demonising people as deniers. And that’s why I don’t think raising your science issues will get anywhere.
As for the ‘necessity’ argument, even brainwashed dullards would find it hard to support the view that doing something pointless is a necessity.
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It’s as well to remember the famous quote from Max Planck:
“Science advances one funeral at a time.”
It seems we have some way to go before climate science advances enough to lose its obsession with CO2.
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Robin,
“They rarely try to counter that (and when they do, they try the ‘set an example’, ‘need for leadership’ arguments – (on that, see THIS )) but instead time and time again try to categorise me as a ‘denier’, sometimes going the extraordinary length of combing through anything I’ve ever written – or trying to do so.”
This is your experience, trying to attack them on the basis of the glaring impracticalities and utter pointlessness of their unilateral carbon reduction policies. 8 years you’ve tried. Most of the time you state that they go for the ad hom, attempting to discredit you personally. But this is the reason why you have stated it is pointless trying to engage them on the science! It would seem that any attempt to reason with them using science, logic or common sense is doomed to fail – because they are brainwashed cultists who cannot summon a coherent defence in support of their religion.
“As for the ‘necessity’ argument, even brainwashed dullards would find it hard to support the view that doing something pointless is a necessity.”
I fear you underestimate them.
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There’s a splendid essay by the excellent Francis Menton HERE. It applies very precisely to the UK – worse if anything as our economy is desperately weakened already. I’m coming round to Jaime’s view that these politicians are insane.
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Not my position at all Jaime. What I’ve demonstrated is that (1) any hint that you’re criticising the science orthodoxy (let alone ‘engaging them on the science’) and you’re demonised as a ‘denier’ and therefore unworthy of an audience and (2) they are distinctly uncomfortable when faced with non scientific practical argument; I think we can build on that. If Lindzen and Lomborg have failed to make progress using science-based argument, what makes you think Jessop can do better?
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Roger Pielke Jr has an interesting essay on the IPCC. He implies that they are using a highly distorted version of the science to nakedly promote a global ‘transitional’ policy which sounds very much like the WEF’s Great Reset to me. As RP Jr. says, they either are a political advocacy group or a scientific assessment outfit; they can’t have it both ways. But they are using the one to promote the other. So how do we best counter such nonsense? They’ve been promoting the ‘science’ for over 35 years; only recently have they revealed that they are globalist Great Resetters at heart. I say they are most vulnerable on the science which they appear to have used as the Trojan Horse to introduce their ‘transition’.
“The IPCC has clearly departed from its role as a scientific assessment and is now much more deeply engaged in political advocacy. Trying to simultaneously engage in assessment and advocacy is never a good idea. I hypothesize that the IPCC’s political agenda of transformational change plays more than a small role in its stubborn reliance on implausibly extreme scenarios and its multiple errors and omissions related to the science of extreme weather and disasters — both of which help to underscore the demand for urgent and large-scale societal change.
The IPCC finds itself at a fork in the road and should be reformed. It needs to either operate as a trustworthy scientific assessment or alternatively, to fully embrace its current role as an environmental advocacy group pushing transformational change. There is no middle ground.”
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-political-agenda-of-the-ipcc
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Robin,
thanks for the “Francis Menton” link, interesting post & comments below.
ps – related to comments above – I remember thinking when “climategate” happened, that the dam would break on how flimsy the MMCC evidence was. it seems nothing will break that dam until the public get hit hard by draconian laws.
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Robin,
“If Lindzen and Lomborg have failed to make progress using science-based argument, what makes you think Jessop can do better?”
You think this is about me? My own personal crusade? Think again. I freely admit to being passionate about science and it goes against every bone in my body to abandon scientific questioning at the behest of those who argue that it would be prudent to do so in order to try to challenge, via alternative methods, a religious cult which uses ‘science’ as cover and justification for its fanatical beliefs. As I’ve said before, that is a very dangerous position to get into. Recall that I suggested a real debate between teams of scientists on both sides in order to try to resolve the issues. That has never been done before, in any formal manner. I can tell you though that I have been challenging climate alarmists and climate scientists on highly specific issues relating to the science and I have rarely been called a denier, except on Twitter mainly by anonymous trolls and of course, in the very early days, by commenters at ATTP – but that doesn’t count because they are all fanatical, spiteful nutjobs there. By being persistent, polite and paying attention to detail, I have made them feel uncomfortable and this is why I am convinced that they are vulnerable to being challenged, now more than ever, with their latest ludicrous attempts to link virtually every sever weather event with climate change.
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Jaime,
‘You think this is about me?’
A shade sensitive J? No, the point I was trying to make – obviously poorly – was that even the most prominent scientists are called deniers if they challenge the orthodoxy, so what hope for lesser beings? Take for example the GWPF – an extraordinarily distinguished Advisory Council yet still they’re dismissed as deniers.
‘it goes against every bone in my body to abandon scientific questioning …’
Your bones are safe: no one’s saying you should abandon scientific questioning. What they are saying is please don’t exercise it at the same time as criticising the practicalities of Net Zero.
‘I suggested a real debate between teams of scientists on both sides in order to try to resolve the issues.’
A lovely idea, but I fear it could only happen in dreamland. Scientists from the orthodox side would almost certainly decline to take part in a debate with ‘deniers’. Interestingly enough I’ve inhabited a rather different version of the same dreamland: see THIS. I wrote that four years ago and, were I writing it today, would make a few changes. For example, I’d propose five scientists selected by the EU, UK and US on one side and five selected by China, India and Russia on the other. I suggest it might be slightly more feasible than your idea – after all non-Western countries’ refusal to adopt the Western orthodoxy is a real problem, so Western scientists should be eager to take part. And it would be wonderful to see ‘our’ believers up against senior scientists from three well regarded academies of science – rather tricky to call them deniers! The main problem I suspect would be that China and Russia would not wish to do anything that might cause the West to rethink its current foolishness.
‘I have been challenging climate alarmists and climate scientists on highly specific issues relating to the science and I have rarely been called a denier.’
That’s most interesting – and encouraging. Where have you had this remarkable – seemingly unique – experience?
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Robin, I very much doubt that my experience is unique. Like you, I’ve been plugging away at this since 2014 and although then I was complaining about often being ignored when I asked awkward questions of scientists, I was not often insulted by being called a denier or conspiracy theorist or whatever. The trick is to get them on specifics and not give them the opportunity to indulge in generalities where they can accuse you of denying the science. It was mainly on Twitter, sometimes on the Conversation and other blogs.
https://wordpress.com/post/climatecontrarian.wordpress.com/5
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Correct link:
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Jaime, two things:
1. Digging into my old The Conversation records, I found that four years ago you and I both commented on two articles: HERE and HERE. Unsurprisingly we were in agreement. I thought you might be interested.
2. I was disappointed that you chose not to comment on my proposal (also four years old) for a non-UN international debate on the science. I thought it ticked many of your boxes – and had the merit of bringing Western scientists face to face with scientists they couldn’t dismiss as ‘deniers’.
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Yes Robin, we agree on rather more than we disagree. I did actually comment a while back (on this thread or another) on your proposal for an international debate on the science; I believe I expressed caution that it would not be a neutral scientific debate, that politics would interfere, because on the one hand you have the EU and US scientists defending the mainstream science narrative, and on the other you have scientists from developing countries questioning that narrative, which countries have a motive for doubting the science because they obviously want to continue developing their economies and raising their living standards by using cheap and plentiful sources of hydrocarbons.
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‘it would not be a neutral scientific debate’
Maybe so Jaime. But it would I suggest be a salutary experience for Western scientists to have to deal on equal terms with senior scientists who questioned their orthodox position.
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Jaime: did you see THIS (‘Scientists Pushing Net Zero Complain of Hurty Feelings on Twitter’)?
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I’ve just come across another The Conversation thread where you and I were both involved: HERE. This one is six years old and is particularly interesting as the author was Mark Maslin. Both you and I exercised a lot of patience. And got nowhere.
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It’s great isn’t it Robin. What appears to be happening is that the public are waking up to the harsh reality of Net Zero and choosing to challenge the scientists plugging ‘the Science’ on Twitter. They really don’t like it. They’re not used to being challenged by the general public; by ‘deniers’, yes. I think this has a lot to do with the absurd attempt to link almost every bad (and good!) weather event with climate change. The public just aren’t buying it.
“Until recently the ‘settled’ science promoting this view had a safe, largely uncontested space to prosper. But scepticism about the unproven hypothesis that humans operate the climate thermostat by burning fossil fuels is growing, with two recent polls showing that over 40% of people surveyed worldwide believe climate change is mainly due to natural causes.”
https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/climate-scientists-on-twitter-oh
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And these sensitive souls regard the following as abuse:
“a fairy tale about the big bad weather”.
“Great stories about BS science Mark. But I am tired of sci-fi.”
“Any luck finding the climate crisis yet?”
Poor things.
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Global warming set to break key 1.5C limit for first time – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65602293
but – “The chances are rising due to emissions from human activities and a likely El Niño weather pattern later this year. If the world passes the limit, scientists stress the breach, while worrying, will likely be temporary.”
good old Justin Rowlatt explained this in his usual “hyper” way on BBC news.
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“Will Rishi Sunak admit the truth about Net Zero?”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/can-rishi-sunak-come-up-with-a-realistic-energy-policy/
I no longer support any political party, and I have never supported the Tories, but the following advice represents their only chance of avoiding a humiliating defeat at the next election. Most of them seem too stupid to understand it.
Sunak seems to be ditching pledges at quite a rate of knots. Much of that will go down badly with voters, but abandoning net zero could be very popular indeed. Does he have the intelligence and courage to see that, and if he does, can he carry the MPs in his party with him? On the latter point, I think he could – all he has to do is point that any chance of not losing their seats at the next election depends on it.
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I think Mark that the answer to both your questions is almost certainly No. Sunk and many of his MPs are still frightened of the green blob. I have a comment (one of 177) on the article. It was a question: ‘Does any UK politician realise that the Net Zero madness means that in effect we are paying for the destruction of our economy and society in pursuit of an unachievable and pointless policy?‘ It’s got 49 upticks – the second highest after a comment about the costs and practical problems of heat pumps. This was – in my view – the best answer to my question: ‘I’m sure many realise it, but unfortunately very very few are brave enough to speak up about it.‘
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The Spectator has another important article this morning. By Ross Clark it’s entitled ‘Europe is turning against net zero’ and is HERE. An extract:
The top comment:
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On 4 May I posted on this thread a slightly shortened version of a letter I had received from my MP. I’ve just now sent him this reply:
You’ll note that at the end I refer to an overview of my position on Net Zero. Thanks to some quick work by Mark, that’s just been posted on Cliscep as a new article.
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