Earlier today I posted a comment on Robin Guenier’s most recent piece about the UK’s Net Zero Policy. I was irritated (yet again) by an article in the Guardian. This one was headed “Factcheck: no, Richard Tice, volcanoes are not to blame for climate change” and was written by Simon Evans of Carbon Brief. Suffice it to say that Carbon Brief and the people who write for it see the world very differently from me. One example of our substantial differences can be found here. My opinion is that Carbon Brief’s work is anything but even-handed, and that they need to be fact-checked every bit as thoroughly as they feel the need to fact-check others. It’s a war of attrition, and although they are the ones with the resources and open access to a national newspaper that is fully on-board with their agenda, I am not inclined to be ground down and let them get away with peddling opinion under the guise of fact-checking. And so, having commented earlier, I decided that a more detailed analysis might be useful.
As I said in my earlier comment, I am not a fan of Richard Tice, and I shall not be voting for his Reform Party at the forthcoming general election. Nevertheless, I don’t believe he should be unfairly traduced. If Mr Evans wishes to present his disagreements with Mr Tice’s comments and with the Reform Party manifesto, that is of course his prerogative, but I bridle more than a little when I see an opinion piece masquerading as a fact-check.
The opening paragraph of the fact-check gets things off to a dubious start:
Despite 40C record heat in 2022 and the wettest 18 months on record this winter, this general election seems set to test the UK’s political consensus on climate change like never before.
The reference to 40C heat provides a link – but it links only to a Carbon Brief article. Fair enough – I shamelessly link to my own articles from time to time – but it doesn’t offer a factual, as opposed to an opinionated, basis for the claim. As we sceptics constantly point out, claims of record 40C heat in the UK are driven by dodgy practices, such as relying on low-grade weather stations that don’t meet WMO standards and which have high margins of error, as well as taking temperature readings when jet fighters are landing nearby, that sort of thing. The Carbo Brief article that is linked to duly relies on the Coningsby measurement that marginally exceed 40C. Well, if Carbon Brief can cite their own work, then we at Cliscep can do likewise – here’s Jit’s take-down of the hype around that dubious record temperature.
The wettest 18 months claim is backed up by another link, but only to a paywalled Financial Times article. Having said that, the claim is all over the internet, and whatever the truth of it, it has been unusually wet over much (but not all) of the country. Regardless, those two statements about weather don’t “prove” man-made climate change, nor do they make the case (implicit within the paragraph) that the UK’s political consensus on climate change is a good thing. After all, isn’t the whole point of an election to present the electorate with a choice, rather than with a consensus whereby it doesn’t matter who you vote for?
After observing that Reform has eschewed the consensus in favour of outright climate scepticism, we are told:
Last Friday, in an interview with BBC Breakfast, the Reform leader, Richard Tice, offered a summary, saying that the UK should scrap its net zero target since, he claimed, it would “make zero difference to climate change”. Instead, he argued we should simply adapt to global heating.
The link offered to the BBC Breakfast interview doesn’t work (though in the absence of a TV licence, I couldn’t watch it anyway), so I have to rely on Mr Evans’ summary of what was said. If Mr Tice said that the UK’s net zero target should be scrapped because it make zero difference to climate change, then Mr Tice is correct. The UK contributes less than 1% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions on an ongoing basis, and most of the rest of the world is increasing those emissions. Nothing the UK does can make any measurable difference to the climate. Adapting to climate change, rather than, Canute-like, forlornly and unsuccessfully seeking to stop it, is a sensible and thoughtful position to adopt.
We are told that he then cited the IPCC and blamed the sun and volcanoes for climate change. It’s at this point that Mr Evans actually makes a good point – the IPCC does indeed blame humankind for all of the warming that the planet is currently experiencing. And yet climate scientists seem to be at a loss to explain current levels of warming that weren’t predicted by their climate models. They are very reluctant to admit that the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption has had anything to do with it, but it might have done. A lively discussion has been taking place in comments on my article about volcanoes here.
Mr Evans tells us that:
Contrary to Tice’s first falsehood, reaching net zero emissions is the only way to stop climate change, according to the IPCC.
This is where context and nuance are important. It’s true that the IPCC is keen on reducing emissions to net zero in order (in the view of its authors) to stop climate change. However, they are clear that those reductions have to take place globally. I challenge Mr Evans to find a single statement from the IPCC to the effect that a single country such as the UK can do anything about climate change by unilaterally achieving net zero if the rest of the world doesn’t follow suit. And it is a fact that most of the rest of the world most certainly isn’t following suit.
We are told that Mr Tice said “Net zero will make zero difference to climate change, as confirmed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that says if you get to net zero, it’ll make no difference to sea level rise for between 200 and 1,000 years.” I suspect that the IPCC is less sanguine than that, and I confess I haven’t checked. However, claiming something over a 200 to 1,000 year time frame is different to claiming that it won’t ever happen or that the IPCC says it won’t happen. And so Mr Evans’ rebuttal is not directly on point when he says “Second, far from saying that net zero makes no difference to sea level rise, the IPCC says the rise will be greater if emissions continue to increase.” The IPCC does say that, but pointing that out doesn’t meet head-on the focus of Mr Tice’s claim. As for the logic of adaptation ahead of mitigation, we are told:
Third, while adaptation is important, it cannot be the only response to global heating. The IPCC says there is a “rapidly closing window of opportunity” to secure a livable and sustainable future for all” by cutting emissions, and that many will be unable to adapt if this opportunity is missed.
Perfectly true, but again it neither demonstrates that Mr Tice is offering misleading facts, nor does it meet his argument. If the rapidly closing window of opportunity is about to shut, because the rest of the world is leaning on the window rather than keeping it open, then it is futile for the UK to fight them. And, selfish though it may be, if the UK can, unlike some countries, fairly readily adapt to climate change, then the fact that adaptation is a problem for others doesn’t mean that it’s wrong for UK politicians to put UK adaptation policies ahead of futile attempt to mitigate. Next we are told:
Finally, it is a fact that we humans are causing the climate crisis, not the sun or volcanoes as Tice implies. The IPCC says it is “unequivocal” that humans are responsible for heating the planet and that our emissions have caused 100% of recent warming.
Well now, what is a fact? Is it a fact that there is a climate crisis? For the likes of Mr Evans, that is unarguable, but it’s nevertheless only an opinion, however firmly held. If there isn’t a climate crisis, then humans aren’t causing something that isn’t happening. It’s true that the IPCC says it’s “unequivocal” that humanity’s emissions have caused 100% of recent warming, but that doesn’t make it a fact. It’s the considered opinion of a lot of scientists, and it’s not unreasonable to give due weight to their opinion. Nevertheless, opinion, however much based on science, is not fact. Scientists have been known to be wrong, and even scientific consensus can change. After all, isn’t that how science works?
Next Mr Evans moves on to attacking the section of the Reform Party’s manifesto dealing with energy and environment. He claims to have counted “30 false or misleading statements about the climate crisis and efforts to limit global heating” but is sadly a little coy with regard to identifying and dealing with them one by one. Instead he falls back on a link to an article in Skeptical Science, and the irrelevance of claims that CO2 is essential for photosynthesis and represents only 0.04% of the atmosphere. It’s true, I am happy to accept, that these points are irrelevant to the question of the UK’s energy policy, but they are not false or misleading. The same can be said about talking points such as the Roman Warm Period and vine-growing in the north of England in centuries gone by. Mr Evans dismisses this stuff, reasonably enough inasmuch as it is irrelevant to an adult discussion of energy policy, but his own claim that such warmth was only a regional phase and was quite different from “unparalleled” “global heating” today is itself not without controversy.
Next it becomes really interesting:
It falsely claims that climate action has “sent energy bills soaring”. In fact it is the UK’s heavy reliance on gas that is predominantly to blame.
There’s just one problem – it isn’t a false claim. His link to his own assertion on “X” and to another article he wrote at the Guardian linking to another piece of work he produced at Carbon Brief don’t change that. Please do refer once more to The Lies Have It to understand how Carbon Brief’s assertions about the relative prices of gas and of renewables must be taken with a large pinch of salt. You might consider the egregious basis on which such claims are made by reference to the Levelised Cost of Electricity while you’re at it.
Next we’re told that Reform is wrong to blame Net Zero for increasing inflation, because Mr Evans believes that the key drivers of inflation are fossil fuel price shocks and climate-induced food price rises. Linking to himself again on “X” and to a European Central Bank research bulletin whose authors argue for this point of view and urge that models should incorporate these assumptions, is not the same as proving that Reform’s claims are wrong. And we sceptics, unlike much of the populace from whom the costs have been well hidden, are very much aware of the high levels of subsidies paid to renewable energy providers and of the costs loaded on the suppliers of fossil fuels.
Moving now towards the end of the article we find this:
Reform says net zero will only be possible at a cost “estimated by the National Grid and others at some £2tn or more”. This is misleading by omission. In 2020, National Grid did indeed put the cost of a net zero energy system at around £3tn. The next line from the document by National Grid pointed out: “Scenarios where we hit net zero in 2050 … incur broadly the same costs as the scenario where we miss our net zero target.”
I found this paragraph to be contain one of the most bizarre lines of argument in the whole article. If a net zero energy system will cost around £3tn, then that represents a cost of well over £100,000 per UK household. To claim that this can be ignored because the costs would be broadly the same if the 2050 net zero target was missed is itself misleading by omission. The omission in question being what the cost would be if we didn’t have a net zero target.
It’s worth taking a look at the section of the website dealing with this on the part of National Grid ESO. I can find nothing in it that justifies a claim that not pursuing net zero (as opposed to pursuing it but failing to meet the 2050 target date) would be just as expensive. On the contrary, it contains a telling little sentence that Mr Evans didn’t share with his readers:
Importantly, our project doesn’t provide the total cost of meeting net zero to UK Plc and does not include costs related to energy demands from a number of areas such as aviation, shipping, rail, agriculture and industrial and commercial heat demand.
I still don’t know what are the 30 false or misleading statements contained in Reform’s manifesto relating to energy and environment, but I trust Mr Evans isn’t referring to this, because so far as I can see every word is true:
Net Zero sends our money abroad and damages critical industries like steel production. The government has turned Britain from being an exporter of oil and gas into a net importer. They have bet our future on unreliable wind and solar power and destroyed our energy security. It’s time for a common sense energy strategy.
As a postscript, I see that BBC Verify has weighed in with an article headed “Is Labour’s 2030 green energy goal realistic and how would it affect bills?”. It’s rather more even-handed than I’m used to seeing, possibly because the BBC top brass must be acutely aware that their every word will be scrutinised during the general election claim for any evidence of partiality. Sadly, although it is reasonably balanced, it also strikes me as being rather lightweight and lacking the in-depth analysis I would have preferred to see.
Still, at least the BBC is trying – for the duration of the election campaign – to avoid falling into one faction or the other so far as net zero and energy policy are concerned. Meanwhile, Mr Evans is in one faction and I am in the other. What is fact and what is fiction is, regrettably, in the eye of the beholder.
Climate Scepticism 
Firstly, apologies to Simon Evans. I believe I should have referred to him throughout as Dr, rather than Mr, Evans.
Secondly, his final paragraph illustrates better than anything else how different factions see things differently:
If the UK’s political consensus on climate change does indeed come to an end, Reform UK will be at least partly to blame.
I would re-phrase that:
If the UK’s political consensus on climate change does indeed come to an end, Reform UK will deserve at least some of the credit.
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Thanks Mark. I thought the BBC fact check was indeed even handed: but sometimes there is a right answer and a wrong answer. Labour’s plan is nonsense on stilts juggling lemon meringues while gargling TCP and the theme to Dambusters. They should be challenged on this until they crack on it, because quite simply, it is BS. They either know this and are lying, or believe it to be achievable, and are therefore incompetent.
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I think Jit is being too kind.
Thanks for this takedown of the lousy Guardian/Carbon Brief ‘fact check’ of Reform Mark.
There remain many things annoying about the BBC and one of them is how hard it is to find important video clips. But its Live Reporting page on Tuesday (28th May) does show (near the top towards the right) what I think is an important response from Sunak to Farage and Reform, with three prongs he claims in favour of the Tories:
I’ve been meaning to do a transcript of the net zero bit.
It’s not brilliant but it’s way better than Miliband. Fair?
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Camilla Tominey on Sir Patrick Vallance’s support for Labour’s plan.
Chief Scientific Adviser. Ex.
“If we choose to go slowly, we will end up with a safe product… but on the other hand, nah, eff it, let’s take the experimental treatment and see what happens.”
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Mark,
Regarding the BBC Verify piece:
Clearly the BBC is against false balance, except when it suits them. Yes, it was a pathetically shallow analysis, but how else could they feign impartiality? Any depth would risk unearthing inconvenient truths. I also note that they didn’t even bother asking whether the UK’s net zero efforts would make a sufficient enough difference to the global problem as to justify the economic risks being taken.
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Jit: Bravo. I’ll have more to say in response on the leopards who won’t change their spots, whatever it means for the less fortunate, when I’m back with a working computer. (Enjoying the sun on a North Somerset walk right now. The iPhone not too bad on a small thread.)
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sometimes it is good to find small pushbacks against the tide of consensus insanity
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/national-grid-propaganda-piece-withdrawn?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=4rn71
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Yeah, that is encouraging miab, thanks.
What you wrote about Vallance is still resonating with me Jit. Iatrogenic atocities in both areas. I don’t want to say more until there’s more clarity in my unartificial intelligence. But in the process of considering Vallance I did note Camilla Tominey’s opinion piece yesterday, which is rather thought-provoking: Whisper it, but Rishi Sunak is making an extraordinary comeback. Sorry to mention that on Mark’s thread!
And what a good name for the thread.
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As Jit put it in his recent piece (though I paraphrase), the problem with the factionalised climate/energy debate is that we all have opinions and seek to bolster them by all and any means available to us. Thus opinions become facts if they support the narrative, while facts become denialist talking points if they undermine it.
The “fact check” is a new method that has emerged as part of the fight. The BBC has been deploying it for some time, and on occasion has rightly been criticised here and elsewhere for the partisan way in which the methodology is deployed. As I have observed elsewhere at Cliscep, BBC Verify is a weapon deployed by the BBC to attack narratives of which it disapproves.
And now the Guardian seeks to use “fact checking” as a weapon. The problem is (as I alluded to in my sub-title) sorting facts from fiction is a tricky business. Many things claimed (on both sides of the debate) to be facts are in reality contentious opinions with varying levels of evidence to support the claim that they are facts. Because the IPCC (an increasingly politicised body) tells us that current warming is caused 100% by humans doesn’t make it a fact. Simon Evans dismisses the role of the sun and volcanoes with regard to climate change, but they undoubtedly have a role that varies over time. How significant that role is at any one time is a moot point.
Fact-checking is dangerous and potentially misleading. Attack opinions with which you disagree, by all means, but IMO nobody has the right to set themselves up as the ultimate arbiter as to what is and is not true. That is particularly relevant when these debates spill over into the arena of policy. Here is an example from today’s Observer:
“No need for countries to issue new oil, gas or coal licences, study finds
Researchers say world has enough fossil fuel projects planned to meet demand forecasts to 2050 if net zero is reached”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/30/no-need-for-countries-to-issue-new-oil-gas-or-coal-licences-study-finds
The world has enough fossil fuel projects planned to meet global energy demand forecasts to 2050 and governments should stop issuing new oil, gas and coal licences, according to a large study aimed at political leaders.
If governments deliver the changes promised in order to keep the world from breaching its climate targets no new fossil fuel projects will be needed, researchers at University College London and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) said on Thursday.
The data offered what they said was “a rigorous scientific basis” for global governments to ban new fossil fuel projects and begin a managed decline of the fossil fuel industry, while encouraging investment in clean energy alternatives.
By establishing a “clear and immediate demand” political leaders would be able to set a new norm around the future of fossil fuels, against which the industry could be held “immediately accountable”, the researchers said.
That is a classic example of politics being presented as science. It isn’t a rigorous scientific basis at all. Since the chances of renewables promises being met are slight at best, this study IMO is nonsense on stilts, political campaigning, not science.
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It’s notable of course the facts BBC Verify or any Guardian equivalent don’t check
The GDI, or factions like it, may well have been involved in much of the banning of Graham Linehan from Twitter in the last seven years, as he also tried to expose the dark side of transgenderism. But then of course the BBC is part of the TNI.
I mention those three-letter factions – GDI, BBC, TNI – in order to highlight the truly excellent interview of Linehan by Rod Liddle at, wait for it, the SDP conference in 2023. The best I saw after Graham published his book Tough Crowd. So good I’d almost vote for them this July.
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It’s true that the IPCC says it’s “unequivocal” that humanity’s emissions have caused 100% of recent warming, but that doesn’t make it a fact. It’s the considered opinion of a lot of scientists, and it’s not unreasonable to give due weight to their opinion.
I very much doubt that any scientist would (or could) claim that 100% of recent warming is anthropogenic, unless they have evidence that, without human activity, temperatures would have fallen. 90% (or even, perhaps, 99%) being the result of our sins against Gaia might at least be a supportable argument, but 100%? No, simply no.
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Chris Miller,
Incredible though it may seem, AR6 of the IPCC does say that 100% of recent temperature increases are down to man-made greenhouse gas emissions. I am not a scientist, and am therefore not in a position to argue with it, yet I find it hard to believe that circa 4.6 billion years of natural climate change has been entirely switched off by a couple of centuries of human activity.
They are more equivocal, and express greater doubts (to varying degrees) regarding the extent to which that supposedly 100% human -caused temperature increase is in turn responsible for other climatic effects, such as increased droughts, floods, storms etc.
My non-scientific brain accepts the idea of greenhouse gases causing temperatures to rise, but it does rebel against the idea that no natural factors could possibly be at play, when (self-evidently) all previous climate change (some of which was so dramatic that it makes the current era look very stable) was entirely natural.
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“Can Labour’s GB Energy plan future-proof UK’s power generation sector?
Party has put state-owned power company at centre of its plans for decarbonisation, security and energy bills”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/06/could-labour-gb-energy-plan-future-proof-power-generation-uk
A surprisingly balanced article (by Guardian standards) but it still says this:
The promise of lower energy bills could prove to be true, in time. GB Energy is considered a crucial plank in helping Labour to achieve another election promise: to create a virtually zero carbon electricity system by 2030, five years ahead of the government’s target.
If it achieves this it could save each household an average of £300 a year from their energy bill, according to analysis by the independent thinktank Ember. So although GB Energy cannot promise to cut bills this winter it could help create an energy system that relies more on homegrown renewables and is likely to be cheaper in the long run.
I would argue very strongly that the description of Ember as “independent” is extremely misleading. Independent of whom and of what? He who pays the piper usually calls the tune, and Ember is in effect a lobby group that constantly agitates in favour of renewables.
The claim that the planned GB Energy will reduce bills is, I would suggest, also undermined by this:
The Guardian understands that GB Energy would focus on the “riskier” areas of the energy industry – such as the nascent market for floating offshore windfarms, green hydrogen and tidal power – which could help to spur Britain’s green energy progress but where profits are less certain.
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It’s difficult to read the latest BBC Verify piece, which so far as I can see is intended to undermine Farage, without coming to the conclusion that broadly speaking the BBC has had to concede that Farage’s claims more or less stand up to scrutiny:
“Migration, voter fraud and climate change – Farage’s claims fact-checked”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2998klx2y0o
The section dealing with his claim that you won’t be prosecuted for shoplifting to the value of less than £200 is particularly amusing, as I distinctly remember listening to a Radio 4 programme (You and Yours?) not so long ago that made exactly that point, and at some length too.
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Speaking of fact-checking the Reform Party, here’s what passes for it at the BBC (under its other exalted label of “In Depth”):
“Reform UK election pledges: 11 key policies analysed”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqll1edxgw4o
Reform UK is pledging to make big savings from government spending on net zero – that’s the UK’s pledge to take as much of its greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere as it puts in by 2050. Reform claims that “scrapping net zero and related subsidies” would save £30bn per year.
The UK government is currently spending about £8bn per year on investment in emissions reduction, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). And the Climate Change Committee estimates economy-wide investment costs, including in households purchasing electric vehicles and domestic heat pumps, will be around £50bn per year in the coming decade.
However, there are also projected to be savings to households from these zero carbon forms of energy relative to relying on fossil fuels in the coming decades. Most economists judge that the costs of the UK failing to pursue net zero will ultimately be greater than the costs of achieving it. The OBR produced a scenario of “unmitigated global warming” in 2021 which showed UK public sector net debt rising to 300% of GDP by the end of the century due to economic shocks of a hotter climate.
I appreciate that the net zero section is one of only eleven policies being looked at by the BBC, but if those three paragraphs are in depth, I’d hate to see what the BBC would produce when it’s being superficial. The cost savings are, to say the least, highly dubious. As for the final sentence, that is really quite pathetic. It implies that if the UK achieves net zero then the economic shocks due to a hotter climate would be avoided, and wouldn’t be avoided if we don’t achieve net zero. This is, of course, nonsense on stilts. Quite apart from the failure of analysis in simply regurgitating a scenario produced by the OBR three years ago, it’s nonsense on stilts to make such a suggestion without accepting what would happen if the rest of the world doesn’t achieve net zero too. This really is the BBC at its worst.
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Another Guardian “fact check” that is dubious in the extreme:
“Is there truth in Rishi Sunak’s net zero attack on Labour?
The PM trumpeted ‘a recording … admitting that their plans will cost hundreds of billions’. Was it fair to do so?”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/28/is-there-truth-in-rishi-sunaks-net-zero-attack-on-labour
There’s one aspect of the Guardian’s “explainer” with which I have some sympathy:
While the government’s advisory Climate Change Committee (CCC) has estimated net investment needs of £321bn for the UK to reach net zero by 2050, it was a Conservative government that put this target into law in 2019. The Conservative election manifesto continues to back the 2050 target.
As such, it was a bit rich for Sunak to describe the 2050 target as Labour’s plan.
However, that’s where the agreement between us ends.
Sunak next misled viewers by omitting the wider economic benefits that would be delivered by taking action on climate change.
Although these benefits were not estimated by the CCC, a 2023 report for industry group Energy UK found that an accelerated shift towards net zero “could boost the UK’s economy by £240bn in 2050 more than current trajectories”. It said this accelerated shift could increase GDP in every part of the country, by between 5.4-7.5% in 2050 compared with the UK’s current path.
The problem is that the touted benefits are speculative, and certainly not “facts”. That they are dubious in the extreme is well evidenced by the fact that after spending hundreds of billions of pounds on net zero to date, its protagonists can’t point to any such benefits to the UK economy – if they could, they would, but they never do. It also ignores the inevitable cost and reduced reliability of UK energy that will follow, and the damage that will do to the economy, both by reducing consumers’ ability to spend more widely in the economy and by damaging what’s left of the UK’s manufacturing base.
Equally importantly, Sunak also omitted the costs of inaction on climate change, including the impacts of increasingly frequent extremes and of continued exposure to volatile fossil fuel prices.
Yes there has been volatility with regard to fossil fuel prices, but that volatility has reduced in the last year or so, and renewables are now much more expensive than fossil fuels. Furthermore, despite an increasing proportion of renewables in the UK energy system, I didn’t notice any reduction in the volatility of electricity prices.
And the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) concluded in 2023 that continuing to rely on gas could be more than twice as costly for the public finances as investing in net zero.
I followed the link to that OBR report, and this is what the OBR actually said:
Globally, the rise in gas prices has made renewable energy sources cheaper than gas for the first time. Despite significant falls in the cost of renewable energy sources over the past decade, gas-fired power remained cost competitive with other forms of electricity with an average lifecycle or ‘levelised’ cost of energy 58 per cent lower than offshore wind, 8 per cent lower than onshore wind, and 35 per cent lower than solar energy in 2020. However, estimates of the lifetime cost of generating electricity using gas in 2022 rose above the price of renewable energy, by between 3½ to 8 times depending on the choice of technology. But if global gas prices follow market expectations, gas is likely to return to being competitive with low-carbon technology in lifetime unit cost terms, at least for a period....Continuing our dependence on gas at the current level could, in an adverse scenario, be as expensive fiscally as completing the transition to net zero.
So the claim depends on using the very dubious “levelised cost” formula, and also depends on an assumption of an adverse scenario. Even then, the conclusion is that continuing to depend on gas could be as expensive as completing the transition to net zero. In other words, completing the transition to net zero is the risky scenario, because even on the OBR’s skewed levelised cost analysis, it’s only in an adverse scenario that net zero manages to break even with the cost of continuing to depend on gas. To achieve the Guardian’s claim, an almost uneblievable assumption has to be made by the OBR:
We consider a stylised scenario in which the UK’s reliance on gas remains unchanged and adverse shocks in global gas prices, of a similar magnitude to that experienced last year, recur every decade. If fiscal policy responds in a similar manner to protect households and businesses from equivalent rises in retail prices, these shocks could cost the Exchequer between 2 and 3 per cent of GDP per year. Taking account of additional debt interest costs and the impact on economic activity, such recurring gas price spikes would add around 13 per cent of GDP to public debt by 2050-51. This is about twice as much as the 6 per cent of GDP central estimate for the total cost of public investment to complete the transition to net zero by the middle of the century.
That’s so unlikely as not to be worth taking seriously. So much for fact-checking. It’s also worth noting that the OBR does actually share my reservations about the Levelised Cost calculation:
An estimate of the full cost of different energy sources to the power system would need to reflect more than just the construction and operating costs of energy generators that are captured in the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE). For example, the dispatchability of the energy source would need to be taken into account: gas-fired power is very responsive to demand and can be turned on only when a unit of electricity is most valuable, whereas many renewables are weather dependent. And, for a gas power plant, capacity at a given point in time is not correlated with the capacity of other generating technologies, whereas when the wind is not blowing or the sun not shining, all wind farms or solar plants in the same vicinity generate less energy, regardless of demand conditions. Where generation takes place further away, rather than closer to where it is needed, as is the case for offshore wind, this adds to the overall costs of delivering power to where it is used. And compared to gas-powered generators, where there are a few big stations to connect and integrate with the grid, many renewables (particularly solar and onshore wind) require many more smaller-scale generators to be connected and balanced on the grid, increasing the overall system costs.
What else does the Guardian “fact check” claim?
Specifically, these are: ignoring the costs of business as usual, highlighting costs but ignoring benefits, and ignoring the costs of inaction on climate change.
I think I’ve dealt with the first two. The third relies on the nonsensical idea that the costs of inaction (hypothetical damaging costs of climate change) will inevitably be avoided if we go down the net zero road. But if – as is the case to date, and there is little evidence of any change in attitude – the rest of the world doesn’t follow us over the net zero cliff, then the climate will do what it will do, regardless of our sacrifice in the UK. And in that case the supposed costs caused by climate change will be incurred anyway. It’s the Guardian fact-check that is ignoring the reality of the situation.
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This strikes me as being as full of hubris as legislating to say that Rwanda is safe or achieving net zero by 2050. The fact-checkers will have a field day, but how do we determine absolute truth?
“Welsh government commits to making lying in politics illegal
Labour administration says ‘globally pioneering’ legislation will be brought in before next Senedd elections in 2026″
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/02/welsh-government-commits-to-making-lying-in-politics
The Labour-led Welsh government has committed to introduce “globally pioneering” legislation that would in effect make lying in politics there illegal.
Members of the Senedd described it as a historic moment that would combat the “existential threat” that lying in politics poses to democracy.
After a passionate and dramatic debate in the Welsh parliament on Tuesday evening, the government’s counsel general, Mick Antoniw, said the legislation would be introduced before the next Welsh elections in two years’ time.
He said: “The Welsh government will bring forward legislation before 2026 for the disqualification of members and candidates found guilty of deliberate deception through an independent judicial process.”
Antoniw said the practical details of how a law to tackle lying would work would need to be worked out and he called for cross-party cooperation.
It’s as mad as the Scottish government’s hate-crime legislation. Lawfare will be endless and the police will be snowed under. And why do politicians always have to be “globally pioneering”? We all want honest politics (fat chance), but this is just daft.
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