In October 2008, Parliament passed the Climate Change Act requiring the UK Government to ensure that by 2050 ‘the net UK carbon account’ was reduced to a level at least 80% lower than that of 1990. (‘carbon account’ refers to CO2 emissions and ‘other targeted greenhouse gas emissions’.) Only five MPs voted against it. Then in 2019, by secondary legislation and without serious debate, Parliament increased the 80% reduction requirement to 100% – thereby creating the Net Zero policy.i

Unfortunately, it’s a policy that’s unachievable, potentially disastrous and in any case pointless – and, importantly, that’s the case irrespective of whether or not human caused greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to a rise in global temperature.

1. It’s unachievable.

Many vehicles and machines (used for example in agriculture, mining, mineral processing, building, heavy transportation, commercial shipping and aviation, the military and emergency services) and products (for example cement (and concrete), high-grade steel, plastics – all needed incidentally for the construction of renewables – nitrogen fertilisers, insecticides, pharmaceuticals, anaesthetics, lubricants, solvents, paints, adhesives, insulation, tyres and asphalt) essential to life and wellbeing require the combustion of fossil fuels or are made from oil derivatives; there are no easily deployable, commercially viable alternatives. Our civilisation is based on fossil fuels; something that’s unlikely to change for a long time.ii

Wind is the most effective source of renewable electricity in the U.K. (because of its latitude, solar farms contribute only a small percentage of the UK’s electricity), but: (i) the substantial and increasing costs of building the huge numbers of turbines needed for Net Zero, (ii) the complex engineering and cost challenges of establishing a stable, reliable non-fossil fuel grid by 2030 as planned by the Government – not least the need to cope with a huge increase in high voltage grid capacity and local distribution, (iii) the vast scale of what’s involved (a multitude of enormous wind turbines, immense amounts of space iii and increasingly unavailable and expensive raw materials, such as so-called ‘rare earths’) required because, unlike fossil fuels, the ‘energy density’ of wind is so low and (iv) the intermittency of renewable energy (see 2 below) make it unlikely that the UK will be able to generate by 2030 sufficient electricity for current needs let alone for the mandated EVs (electric vehicles) and heat pumps and for the energy requirements of industry, rapidly expanding AI (artificial intelligence) and huge new data centres.iv

In any case, the UK doesn’t have enough skilled technical managers, electrical, heating and other engineers, electricians, plumbers, welders, mechanics and other skilled tradespeople required to do the multitude of tasks essential to achieve Net Zero – a problem worsened by the Government’s plans for massively increased house building.v

‘Net Zero’ means that there has to be a balance between the amount of any greenhouse gas emissions produced and the amount removed from the atmosphere. That there’s no detailed, costed (or indeed any) plan for such removal, threatens the credibility of the project.

2. It would be socially and economically disastrous.

The Government aims for 100% renewable electricity by 2030 but has yet to publish a fully costed engineering plan for the provision of comprehensive grid-scale back-up when there’s little or no wind or sun; a problem that’s exacerbated by the pending retirement of elderly fossil fuel and nuclear power plants. The Government has indicated that back-up may be provided by new gas-fired power plants vi but it hasn’t yet published any detail. This of course would not be a ‘clean’ solution and it seems the Government’s answer is to fit them with carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) systems (very expensive and commercially unproven at scale).vii This issue is desperately important: without full back-up, electricity blackouts would be inevitable – ruining many businesses and causing dreadful problems for millions of people, including health consequences threatening everyone and in particular the poor and vulnerable.viii

Even more serious is the fact that, because there’s no coherent plan for the project’s delivery, little attention has been given to its overall cost. All that’s clear is that it would almost certainly be unaffordable: for example, a recent Office for Budget Responsibility projection of £1.4 trillion ix is probably far too low and several trillion seems likely to be more accurate.x The borrowing and taxes required for costs at this scale would destroy Britain’s already weak credit standing and put an impossible burden onto millions of households and businesses.

Net Zero would have two other dire consequences:

(i) As China essentially controls the supply of key materials (for example, lithium, cobalt, aluminium, processed graphite, nickel, copper and so-called rare earths) without which renewables cannot be manufactured, the UK would greatly increase its already damaging dependence on it, putting its energy and overall national security at most serious risk.xi While impoverishing Britain, Net Zero is enriching China.

(ii) The vast mining and mineral processing operations required for renewables are already causing appalling environmental damage and dreadful human suffering throughout the world, affecting in particular fragile, unspoilt ecosystems and many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people; the continued pursuit of Net Zero would make all this far worse.xii

3. In any case it’s pointless.

For two reasons:

(i) It’s absurd to regard the closure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting plants in the UK and their ‘export’ mainly to SE Asian countries, commonly with poor environmental regulation and often powered by coal-fired electricity, as a positive step towards Net Zero; such action will increase global emissions. Yet efforts to ‘decarbonise’ the UK mean that’s what’s happening: it’s why we no longer produce key chemicals and, by closing our few remaining blast furnaces, will soon be unable to produce high quality steel.

(ii) Most major non-Western countries – the source of over 70% of GHG emissions and home to 84% of humanity – don’t regard emission reduction as a priority and, either exempt (by international agreement) from or ignoring any obligation to reduce their emissions, are focused instead on economic and social development, poverty eradication and energy security.xiii As a result, global emissions are increasing (by 62% since 1990) and are set to continue to increase for the foreseeable future. The UK is the source of less than 1% of global emissions – so any further emission reduction it may achieve cannot have any impact on the global position.xiv

In other words, Net Zero means the UK is legally obliged to pursue an unachievable, potentially disastrous and pointless policy – a policy that could well result in Britain’s economic destruction.

Robin Guenier September 2024

Guenier is a retired, writer, speaker and business consultant. He has a degree in law from Oxford, is qualified as a barrister and for twenty years was chief executive of various high-tech companies, including the Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency reporting to the UK Cabinet Office. A Freeman of the City of London, he was Executive Director of Taskforce 2000, founder chair of the medical online research company MedixGlobal and a regular contributor to TV and radio.

End notes:

i http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/27/part/1/crossheading/the-target-for-2050

ii See Vaclav Smil’s important book, How the World Really Works: https://time.com/6175734/reliance-on-fossil-fuels/

iii See Andrews & Jelley, “Energy Science”, 3rd ed., Oxford, page 16: http://tiny.cc/4jhezz

iv For a view of wind power’s many problems, see this: https://watt-logic.com/2023/06/14/wind-farm-costs/ This is also relevant: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/debunking-cheap-renewables-myth

v A detailed Government report: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65855506fc07f3000d8d46bd/Employer_skills_survey_2022_research_report.pdf See also pages 10 and 11 of the Royal Academy of Engineering report (Note vi below).

vi See this report by the Royal Academy of Engineering: https://nepc.raeng.org.uk/media/uoqclnri/electricity-decarbonisation-report.pdf (Go to section 2.4.3 on page 22.) This interesting report contains a lot of valuable information.

vii In this report the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis indicates serious uncertainties and shortcomings regarding CCS: https://ieefa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Gorgon-Carbon-Capture-and-Storage_The-Sting-in-the-Tail_April-2022.pdf And see the second and third paragraphs here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/12/fossil-fuel-companies-environment-greenwashing (the rest of the article is also interesting).

viii This article shows how more renewables could result in blackouts: http://tiny.cc/lnhezz

ix https://www.cityam.com/uk-fiscal-watchdog-puts-cost-of-reaching-net-zero-at-1-4trn/

x The National Grid ESO has said net zero will cost £3 trillion: https://www.current-news.co.uk/reaching-net-zero-to-cost-3bn-says-national-grid-eso/. And in this presentation Michael Kelly, Emeritus Professor of Technology at Cambridge, shows how the cost would amount to several trillion pounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkImqOxMqvU

xi https://www.dw.com/en/the-eus-risky-dependency-on-critical-chinese-metals/a-61462687

xii See this for example: http://tiny.cc/3lhezz. Arguably however the most compelling and harrowing evidence is found in Siddharth Kara’s book Cobalt Red – about the horrors of cobalt mining in the Congo: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250284297/cobaltred

xiii This essay shows how developing countries have taken control of climate negotiations: https://ipccreport.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/the-west-vs-the-rest-2.1.1.pdf (Nothing that’s happened since 2020 changes the conclusion: for example see the ‘Dubai Stocktake’ agreed at COP28 in 2023 of which item 38 unambiguously confirms developing countries’ exemption from any emission reduction obligation.)

xiv This comprehensive analysis, based on an EU Commission database, provides – re global greenhouse gas (GHG) and CO2 emissions – detailed information by country from 1990 to 2023: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2024?vis=ghgtot#emissions_table

246 Comments

  1. Although it’s barely a month since I posted the fourth update, I had to change this to take account of the just-published 2024 EDGAR data (see the last endnote). Whilst doing so, I deleted the Bjorn Lomborg link which didn’t seem to add very much and substituted a link to my ‘the West v. the Rest’ essay. Also I’ve made a few relatively minor changes to the text.

    Liked by 2 people

  2. Good to re-read but what’s with the “so-called”? “Rare Earths” isn’t a new coinage nor a euphemism to hide some worse reality. And they have many uses other than for renewables. Also, are their problems of extraction any more “appalling” or “dreadful” than with other extractive industries. I guess more a matter of will than intrinsic to the properties of the material, so technically fixable at a price (given the will to pay it).

    Like

  4. It’s not just the UK, of course…:

    “Europe’s new normal: High energy bills, fading industry and one chance to fix it

    German manufacturers are being strangled. The EU is feeling the pinch. Mario Draghi on Monday warned the EU may be staring at ‘slow agony.’”

    https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-energy-bills-germany-brussels-pipeline-prices/

    Unfortunately, the lie that renewable energy is cheap permeates both the EU and Politico, as it does the UK and its politicians and media:

    …But time is short. While cheaper renewable energy is coming, it will take years to create structural change….

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Mark – thanks for the link. Partial quotes from around yours –

    “This low-wattage economy has policymakers issuing existential warnings — if things don’t change, they say, European industry will shrink to irrelevance. On Monday, Mario Draghi, the EU economic guru and former European Central Bank chief, offered a similarly dire message, using elevated energy bills to make his case for a massive overhaul of how Europe does business. “The moment is really worrisome,” he said while presenting his report. “We cannot ignore it any longer.”

    It’s a diagnosis EU officials in Brussels, who ordered up Draghi’s assessment, fully endorse and are already infusing into their policy work. Ursula von der Leyen, the EU’s top executive, called Draghi’s pitch to accelerate Europe’s green industry “basically the same idea we’re pushing forward.”

    “In the meantime, Chinese overproduction is eating into Europe’s market share at home and abroad, and new, power-hungry technologies like electric vehicles and artificial intelligence will strain local power networks. 

    “For the first time since the Cold War,” Draghi said, “we must genuinely fear for our self-preservation.”

    Unless I missed something in the article titled “Europe’s new normal: High energy bills, fading industry and one chance to fix it”, doesn’t explain what the “one chance to fix it” is/entails?

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  6. PS – found this link – Mario Draghi’s EU competitiveness report sets a political test for the EU | Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank which links to EU competitiveness: Looking ahead – European Commission (europa.eu) which gives a download link to – “The future of European competitiveness” paper – partial quote –

    “The global decarbonisation drive is also a growth opportunity for EU industry. The EU is a world leader in clean technologies like wind turbines, electrolysers and low-carbon fuels, and more than one-fifth of clean and sustainable technologies worldwide are developed here. Yet it is not guaranteed that Europe will seize this opportunity. Chinese competition is becoming acute in industries like clean tech and electric vehicles, driven by a powerful combination of massive industrial policy and subsidises, rapid innovation, control of raw materials and ability to produce at continent-wide scale.
    The EU faces a possible trade-off. Increasing reliance on China may offer the cheapest and most efficient route to meeting our decarbonisation targets. But China’s state-sponsored competition also represents a threat to our productive clean tech and automotive industries.
    Decarbonisation must happen for the sake of our planet. But for it also to become a source of growth for Europe, we will need a joint plan spanning industries that produce energy and those that enable decarbonisation such as clean tech and automotives”

    Almost stopped reading after “The global decarbonisation drive” bit.

    Seems Mario’s “EU economic guru and former European Central Bank chief”.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. H’mm. Are the cracks showing? The Port Talbot disaster has, too late, awakened union opposition:

    Labour’s net zero quest will cost jobs, unions fear

    Gary Smith [GMB leader] told me [Iain Watson]: “We’re not reducing our consumption of oil and gas, we’ll still need lots of steel, we’ll just be producing this stuff elsewhere and importing it.

    “We’re going to be producing more steel from countries like China who burn coal to produce it. This is bad for communities, not great for national security and it makes no sense in terms of the environment.”

    Deindustrialisation is baked into the Net Zero pie.

    Liked by 4 people

  9. With regard to the need for an enormously increased supply of minerals to keep society somewhat civilised in a vainglorious attempt at Net Zero, Simon Michaux (GTK, Finland) has been plugging away at this issue for some years now. I’ve commented earlier on his developing analyses – not everyone agrees with the details to date, of course but there are no better forecasts to be had as of now. particularly when they are compared with current exploration/mining levels.

    A few weeks ago, he presented a webinar from Uni of Q’ld detailing where his ongoing analyses have reached. This can be found at
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfRlqxsu4aA

    He has also finally managed to have all of this published (actually, about to be) in a peer reviewed Journal. When that occurs shortly, I will list the link.

    Most people will look at these analyses and ignore, or even belittle, them. Yet they are Net Zero critical. In particular, the “buffers” required to insulate against the intermittency of wind/solar power grid supply have caused much angst. Viewing the mining and buffer requirements for Net Zero to avoid disastrous economic collapse (even if Michaux is only 50% right) has led me to the conclusion that it simply cannot be done with the current fashionable notions … Through the Looking Glass with Alice is appropriate.


    Liked by 2 people

  10. The lack of joined-up thinking never ceases to amaze me:

    “Data centres as vital as NHS and power grid, government says”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c23ljy4z05mo

    …But environmental concerns about data centres and their demand on resources remain – they are energy-hungry and can require large quantities of water for cooling.

    The chief executive of the National Grid said in March that data centre power use in the UK would increase six-fold in the next decade.…

    Liked by 2 people

  11. Mark – why have “Data centres” suddenly decided to set up in the UK, or have I missed something?

    ps – just read SF/fantasy novel “Hopeland by Ian McDonald” which touches on Data centres.

    in the novel they set up Data centres in Iceland powered by geothermal energy!!!

    Like

  12. dfhunter, “why have “Data centres” suddenly decided to set up in the UK?”. I don’t know, but money is usually behind these big business decisions. I wonder if there are promised UK government subsidies lurking somewhere? I shouldn’t be surprised.

    Like

  13. George Monbiot has an excellent piece in the Guardian in which he exposes the absurdity of ‘green solutions’ such as CCS, oil from algae and ‘sustainable’ aircraft fuel:

    Out of 1,500 global climate policies, only 63 have really worked. That’s where green spin has got us.

    Here for example is what he says about CCS:

    Take carbon capture and storage: catching and burying carbon dioxide emissions from power stations, oil and gas fields, and steel and cement plants. For 20 years, it has spectacularly failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, its only clear successes involve enhanced oil recovery: carbon dioxide is used to drive oil out of geological formations that are otherwise difficult to exploit. With astonishing chutzpah, some oil companies have claimed the small amount of carbon that remains trapped in the rocks as a climate benefit. Though it is greatly outweighed by the extra oil extracted, they have, as a result, received billions in government subsidies.

    The previous UK government pledged £20bn to “develop” carbon capture and storage: a technology that has been “developing” for 50 years. Astonishingly, Labour, despite cutting everything else, promised in its manifesto to sustain this investment.

    George would be aghast to learn that he’s contributing to the case against NZ. But he is.

    Worth reading in full.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Jo Nova has picked up on the Monbiot story, but taken it much further:

    96% of climate policies are a waste of money says Science paper

    Some extracts:

    … finally Monbiot sees the tip of the iceberg of grift and graft, but doesn’t realize his own role in it, doesn’t realize the same failures of journalists like him also failed the science world where 96% of papers have achieved nothing they set out to do as well — like predicting the climate. Climate science has been spinning its wheels, creating perceptionware and failing to figure out the climate for fifty years, but George hasn’t noticed.

    Could it be George, that the Greens were the dumb ones wrapped up in their own perceptionware game, pretending to care about CO2 to impress their friends at dinner parties but not actually giving a damn? Or worse, could it be that some Greens were bought off by industries and foreign countries that profit from the carbon grift?
    Who stood up for the poor, the workers, and the taxpayers who were being shafted? Only the skeptics.

    George still doesn’t realize the root of the problem is Big Government itself. In the crazy biofuel market, it was the government that “picked the winner” and decided we should burn food to save the world, not the free market. Who could have guessed that high energy plant matter would also be the same stuff people wanted to eat?

    Where were all our expert climate scientists, George, while 25 years of money and time was wasted? Did they or did they not want to save the world, or were they too stupid, or too scared to say the obvious?

    Powerful stuff

    Liked by 2 people

  15. Or worse, could it be that some Greens were bought off by industries and foreign countries that profit from the carbon grift?

    Hmm. That’s some pretty intense conspiracist ideation from Jo there!

    Like

  18. Robin,

    Jaime: hmm … I suggest individual greed rather than conspiracy.

    We shall probably never be able to figure out their true motivations, but in either case, it’s intentional and it’s malign. Not madness. Not delusion. Notwithstanding the fact that they might be mad, but they are definitely bad.

    Like

  20. On greed, Baroness Brown has her sticky fat fingers in so many Green pies, you could easily lose count. Reading of her financially lucrative exploits as a political climate activist actually makes me feel physically sick, when I think about the damage which her highly lucrative pet Green hobbyhorse is doing to people’s lives, the economy, the environment and wildlife.

    https://unherd.com/2024/09/the-baroness-making-a-fortune-from-net-zero/

    https://davidturver.substack.com/p/ar6-contracts-for-cronies

    Liked by 3 people

  21. From today’s Guardian :

    High court blocks Cumbria plan for UK’s first new deep coalmine in 30 years

    Well, there’s surprise. Here’s what Niall Toru, a senior lawyer at Friends of the Earth, said:

    “This is fantastic news and a huge victory for our environment and everyone who has fought against this climate-damaging and completely unnecessary coalmine. It is the first fossil fuel case to be decided after the landmark Supreme Court judgment on oil drilling at Horse Hill. That the ruling today has gone against the mining company could have ramifications internationally, as there are cases abroad where challenges are being made against fossil fuel projects on a very similar basis.

    “This mine should never have been given permission in the first place. The case against it is overwhelming: it would have huge climate impacts, its coal isn’t needed and it harms the UK’s international reputation on climate.”

    His last sentence in particular is utter nonsense.

    Liked by 1 person

  22. Robin,

    I suggest individual greed rather than conspiracy.

    I don’t see the two being in any real competition. That there has been conspiracy in the push for renewables is undeniable, the classic case being the way in which the EPA colluded with NGOs to ensure that the latter were well placed to sue the former into accepting CO2 as a pollutant subject to the 1970 Clean Air Act. The idea that the EPA contrived to enable others to sue it in a so-called ‘sue-and-settle’ strategy may seem bizarre until one realises that so many senior EPA officials started out in the NGOs and the NGOs were filled with the ranks of ex-EPA officials. It was all a revolving-door stitch up so that everyone would end up getting the same thing – exactly what they all wanted. And what has this got to do with greed? Nothing, I suppose, until one realises how so many of the individuals concerned were also personally and literally invested in the outcome – not necessarily the officials themselves, but certainly the wealthy benefactors who were financing the show behind the scenes. Then again, let us not forget that there is greed for money and also greed for power.

    Like

  23. John R: all Jo Nova suggested was that some ‘Greens’ might have been ‘bought off by industries and foreign countries that profit from the carbon grift‘. In other words, any individuals who may have done so, motivated by greed, cynically abandoned their ‘green’ claims. She didn’t suggest that they somehow conspired together to decide to so profit.

    Like

  24. Robin: while Monbiot’s criticism of CCS is welcome – and surprising – he is wide of the mark when he says:

    “With astonishing chutzpah, some oil companies have claimed the small amount of carbon that remains trapped in the rocks as a climate benefit. Though it is greatly outweighed by the extra oil extracted, they have, as a result, received billions in government subsidies.”

    Aiui, the amount of CO2 sequestered in these schemes is greater than that released in the production, refining and combustion of the oil produced. It is “carbon-negative” oil. An outfit called Denbury Oil was leading the charge on this, per their press release of a few years ago:

    “”Chris Kendall, Denbury’s President and CEO, commented, “We are thrilled to continue progress on our Cedar Creek Anticline EOR project in 2021. This will be one of the largest EOR projects ever undertaken in the United States, using 100% industrial-sourced CO2 to recover over 400 million barrels of oil. Additionally, the oil produced will be Scope 3 carbon negative, as the amount of industrial-sourced CO2 that will be permanently injected to produce each barrel of oil will be greater than the combined emissions associated with the development and operation of the field, including the refining and combustion of the finished petroleum products. We believe that this carbon negative oil, which we have labelled “blue oil,” will ultimately be a preferred commodity as it assists end users in reducing their own carbon footprint.””

    I need to get up to date with this: iirc correctly, Denbury has been bought out by Exxon which suggests it’s a viable approach.

    Like

  26. Robin,

    She didn’t suggest that they somehow conspired together to decide to so profit.

    I accept that. But one might argue that any buy-out of principles, whilst being enabled by personal greed, entails a degree of collusion that some might call taking part in a conspiracy. I guess it depends upon whether everyone who goes along with a plan has to have taken part in the hatching of the plan for them to be labelled conspirators.

    Anyway, the point is that I wasn’t as much commenting upon the Jo Nova allegation as making a wider observation that greed and conspiracy are natural bedfellows. Upon reflection, it might not have been as relevant a comment as it needed to be.

    Like

  27. And now there’s this:

    “The Baroness making a fortune from Net Zero”

    https://unherd.com/2024/09/the-baroness-making-a-fortune-from-net-zero/

    Nothing illegal here, everything above board. But I don’t think it looks great, and I am very concerned about the revolving doors between energy companies lobbying for renewable energy (and associated subsidies), outfits like the Climate Change Committee and House of Lords Committees, unelected members of both, and our elected politicians, plus their contacts with universities who agitate for the same things. It’s all far too cosy for my liking. If this was “big oil” in action, the Guardian would (quite rightly IMO) be crying “foul” and the lawfare mob would be working out how to challenge it all in Court. But of course the Guardian and the lawfare mob approve, so it’s an unchallenged fait accompli.

    Liked by 1 person

  29. Mark,

    It’s been referred to as the Climate Industrial Complex. The Guardian and lawfare mob will say nothing to challenge it because they are part of it — a complex, mutually supporting and synchronous conglomeration that embraces activist scientists, politicians, billionaire benefactors, NGOs, charities, academia, the media, the courts, rent-seeking Industrialists, the financial and insurance sector, the education system and a goodly crop of society’s useful idiots.

    I’d throw a lizard royal family and secret paedophile ring in there for good measure, but that would turn an astute observation into a conspiracy theory.

    Liked by 1 person

  31. Robin,

    To save the world of course!

    But why have you referred to it as an alleged conspiracy when I went out of my way to point out that I am making no such allegation? I referred only to mutually supporting and synchronous activity. Besides which, whilst the objectives of the complex may be important, even more so are its likely effects, which will be the deindustrialisation of the West accompanied by an erosion of democracy. Indeed, it has not gone unnoticed that many of the complex’s leading players have openly stated that such deindustrialisation will be necessary to save the world and that democracy is an impediment in that regard.

    And if a lot of people can become very rich in the process, what’s not to like?

    Liked by 1 person

  32. I was referring (at 7.00 PM yesterday) to your note to Mark (at 6.25 PM) which concluded:

    ‘I’d throw a lizard royal family and secret paedophile ring in there for good measure, but that would turn an astute observation into a conspiracy theory.’

    And you’ve answered my question. Thanks.

    Like

  33. It’s an interesting question: when does a confluence of vested interests condensing and constellating around a common nucleus become a full blown conspiracy? Does it ever? Though motivations and targeted ambitions – even the presence or absence of rational, sane, deliberative thought processes – may differ significantly across members comprising the group of vested interests, they share the same essential focus derived from the nucleus, namely ‘saving the planet’.

    Liked by 1 person

  34. And by happy, erm, coincidence, quite a lot of them do very nicely out of it too.

    Like

  35. Jaime,

    I don’t think that the complex can be referred to as a conspiracy, even though it is inevitable that from time to time certain factions will conspire. Also, as you suggest, there will be different agendas all framed within an ostensible desire to save the planet. Just how much the various espoused motivations can be taken at face value also remains an important question. I think it is relevant to remember that a lot of these folk were staunchly anti-capitalist long before they joined the environmental crew. And for those who can’t be accused of being ideologues, there is always the greed factor to be taken into account, whether it be for power or for money. People are complicated, and societies of people even more so.

    Like

  36. Jaime: I think John is right:

    I believe that to be a conspiracy an activity must contain each of the following: (1) an agreement made between two or more persons; (2) the agreement is made in secret; (3) it’s objective is something unlawful, harmful or evil. I suggest that what you have described fails on all three counts: (1) there’s hasn’t been an agreement; (2) what’s happening is overt – not secret and (3) you and I may believe the objective (‘saving the planet’) is harmful, but they (or most of them) regard it as beneficial.

    Like

  37. Robin,

    I think your definition may be a tad too tight. When you say the objective has to be “unlawful, harmful or evil” I think you don’t allow for the case when the objective is to the sole benefit of the colluders and they simply don’t want others to appreciate that. Also, the parties concerned may often profess one objective whilst knowingly but secretively pursuing another. This may be because they understand that their true intent would not find broader favour. Whatever the case, I stand by my judgement that the Climate Industrial Complex does not itself qualify as a conspiracy (too much is openly and sincerely pursed) whilst at the same time stinking of conspiracy (too much of the ‘required’ collusion qualifies as conspiracy, at least in the broader sense I suggest).

    Two things strike me as odd about the whole thing. The first is the extent to which the Climate Industrial Complex wears its heart on its sleeve, but as soon as anyone shouts ‘look at that sleeve’, they shout back ‘conspiracy theorist!’ The second is that a world that engages far too much in anti-democratic conspiracy can nevertheless persuade its inhabitants that the greatest threat to democracy is the conspiracy theorist. No matter how sincere the wish to save the world, there does seem to be an awful lot of nudging and gaslighting going on.

    Liked by 2 people

  38. John, it isn’t so much my definition as a generally accepted one.

    In any case, I know several people – intelligent, well educated, cultured people – who accept that action is necessary to protect the planet and for whom having that view confers no personal benefit. I think there are almost certainly hundreds of thousands of such people.

    Like

  39. Hello Robin, yes, that view may not confer personal benefit but, I wonder, does it confer any personal loss/cost? The former is relatively easy to do without, even for people on a modest income; the latter is much more difficult to support, especially if your income barely covers the essentials.

    I feel we may be returning to the Luxury Beliefs argument. Regards, John C.

    Liked by 1 person

  40. Good point John C. The people to whom I was referring are I suppose all members of what’s becoming known as ‘the elite’. So, yes, we’re returning to Luxury Beliefs. It’s interesting however that, according to opinion polls, most ordinary people (i.e. not members of ‘the elite’), people on modest incomes, also accept the need for climate action. And they of course, unlike ‘the elite’, will suffer considerable loss as soon as NZ policies really start to bite. One thing most of these people – elite and ordinary – have in common is that they haven’t given the matter much thought. Nor do I blame them: unlike those of us who are (rightly IMHO) obsessed by the issue, they believe they have more important things to do / worry about.

    Liked by 2 people

  41. I think we may be focusing too much on the evolution of the complex of vested interests which has developed around the core. Looking for evidence of an organised conspiracy within such a tangled web is probably not a worthwhile enterprise. However, let’s go back to basics. I enquired:

    When does a confluence of vested interests condensing and constellating around a common nucleus become a full blown conspiracy? Does it ever?

    What if the common nucleus (the observation of, and the theory of global warming) around which the complex of vested interests has developed was not, per se, the consequence of a random set of circumstances provoking innocent human enquiry as to the cause, but instead evolved as a result of intelligent design? What if a number of bad faith actors got together and decided that they were going to push the man-made global warming fraud upon an unsuspecting world? We need not concern ourselves with motivations, only with the possibility that a relatively few very influential people conspired to create the Settled Science of Man Made Global Warming and promote it as a ‘crisis’ which required a radical (political) solution. In that case the nucleus itself would constitute a bona fide conspiracy and if you look at the published literature relating to the Club of Rome, there is evidence that this may be a correct interpretation.

    The case is further bolstered in my opinion by evidence of the fact that the ‘science’ evolved to suit the observations of a (naturally) changing climate. When the world was cooling in the 1960s and 70s, there was much talk (and plenty of media scaremongering) of man-made aerosols causing a descent into a new ice age. The CIA even published a report on the possibility. Then the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1976 happened and the world started warming rapidly. The Settled Science rapidly switched focus to the supposed ‘catastrophic’ warming effects of CO2 and aerosol cooling was relegated to a secondary effect and tweaked to conveniently explain the lack of warming during the mid twentieth century and CO2 and diminishing aerosols the acceleration in warming post 1976. In either case – warming or cooling – the villain was the same: human industry/fossil fuel burning.

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  42. Robin,

    Good point. The dictionary definitions do indeed require the involvement of a covertly harmful or illegal act. My beef is not with you after all, but with the dictionary, because that is not how the term is always used in practice. For example, there is the conspiracy theory that Elvis is not dead. I don’t think those who believe this do so because they think he faked his death for nefarious purposes (unless, I suppose, he is still drawing benefits). There is even the concept of ‘benevolent conspiracy’ as in the idea that angelic forces are working behind the scenes to take care of things.

    I think we should bring back the word ‘conspiration’, the definition of which, on the face of it, does not seem to imply an intended harm or illegality:  

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conspiration

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  43. Jaime,

    I agree. When you look into these things there was certainly a lot of naughty stuff being done by people who had their own ‘truths’ to push. The only thing I would say is that I don’t think you would be able to persuade any of those involved to think of themselves as ‘bad faith actors’.

    Liked by 1 person

  45. John R: I think the established definition of conspiracy (a secret plan by two or more people to do something unlawful or harmful) is correct. The idea that Elvis is alive is therefore not a conspiracy – nor I think is it commonly described as such. It’s probably best regarded as a ‘myth’. Or perhaps a ‘belief’ akin to the belief that JC rose from the dead.

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  46. Jaime, you ask:

    ‘What if a number of bad faith actors got together and decided that they were going to push the man-made global warming fraud upon an unsuspecting world?’

    Well, that would certainly have been a conspiracy. But could it have happened? To establish that I suggest that four questions must be answered: (1) Who might these bad actors have been? (2) What was their (illegal or harmful) objective? (3) How might they have got together? (4) When did it happen?

    Re questions (3) and (4), as you indicate the dangerous global warming issue first emerged publicly nearly 40 years ago (with James Hansen and Margaret Thatcher as its most prominent advocates).

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  47. Robin, these are interesting questions. Regarding Q2, one needs also to distinguish between “those who are harmed” and “those who harm” in order start answering Q1.

    Regarding Q3 and Q4, one possibility is that good-faith actors (who, unfortunately, eventually develop into bad actors) coalesced around the world’s largest organisations (e.g. UN and satellites) having the largest reach (soft power, media influence) and their current pet ideas Other large organisations (e.g. large swathes of academia and potential rent-seekers) which could form a commensal relationship with these largest organisations then joined in the fun and games.

    This leads us to the international version of the Iron Triangle model as described by, for example, Endress which I have mentioned previously. That is a closed loop of self-serving organisations develop around an idea (almost any idea) to solve a problem (ideally a planet-critical one such as the climate emergency or Covid-19) and to offer up, for a price!, any number of planet saving solutions.

    As Endress noted, such a closed loop of self-serving troughers is very hard to disrupt.

    Sorry if I have explained this rather crudely but time is short this morning. Regards, John C.

    Liked by 1 person

  48. Robin, as I have indicated already, you will find possible, even probable answers to your questions by an examination of the history of Club of Rome and by reading carefully through Club of Rome publications.

    The Club of Rome is a nonprofit, informal organization of intellectuals and business leaders whose goal is a critical discussion of pressing global issues. The Club of Rome was founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy. It consists[clarification needed] of one hundred full members selected from current and former heads of state and government, UN administrators, high-level politicians and government officials, diplomats, scientists, economists, and business leaders from around the globe.[1] It stimulated considerable public attention in 1972 with the first report to the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth. Since 1 July 2008, the organization has been based in Winterthur, Switzerland.[citation needed]

    I suggest also reading the published works and public statements made by Stephen Schneider:

    Back in the 1970s, when only a handful of scientists were working on global climate change at all, Steve was the first to recognise the importance of the balance between greenhouse warming and cooling due to other forms of atmospheric pollution. The most extreme pollution-induced cooling was, of course, the nuclear winter – “more like a nuclear autumn”, as he put it.

    Although that scenario seems remote today, the magnitude of cooling by aerosols – tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere – and how fast the world might warm as China cleans up its power stations remain among the most important uncertainties in climate projections. As late as 1977, Steve wrote: “We just don’t know enough to choose definitely at this stage whether we are in for warming or cooling – or when.“

    As the world warmed through the ensuing three decades, he readily accepted that the balance of evidence pointed towards further warming.

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/jul/21/stephen-schneider-obituary

    Stephen Schneider is listed as a prominent member of the Club of Rome, which itself is quite clearly an ideological thinktank.

    Unraveling the Club of Rome (part 1)

    Liked by 1 person

  49. Robin,

    The idea that Elvis is alive is therefore not a conspiracy – nor I think is it commonly described as such.

    “The conspiracy theory that Elvis did not die and instead went into hiding was popularized by Gail Brewer-Giorgio and other authors.”

    Elvis sightings – Wikipedia

    I think we have reached the Monty Python moment when someone enters the room and says ‘Stop this sketch, it has become far too silly”. I really don’t care whether or not the term ‘conspiracy’ is the best one to describe some of what has gone on. It is, however, important that you should have enough understanding of the history behind the politicisation of climate change science to be able to answer the questions you posed to Jaime. I could spend an awful lot of this Sunday trying to furnish you with the answers but it would be far more efficient from my perspective if you were to read Rupert Darwall’s book, ‘Green Tyranny’, in which fulsome details are supplied that answer all of your questions.

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  50. A few words should be added here on the undervalued significance of energy in human transactions. Energy is, after all, the only absolute. Through the Einstein equation, matter and energy are equivalent. Energy assessment we now see as an essential tool in evaluating new technologies and hence the nature of societies. Energy accounting is becoming increasingly necessary in measuring, for example, the carrying capacity of countries for human and animal populations, or the viability of human and other systems. The belief that monetary management or even manipulation can lead to a proper accounting and evaluation of growth and development needs to be eradicated. Energy, on the other hand is the driving force in the economy; money is simply its surrogate. There is surely a strong argument at this stage of human development to devise a new economics based on the flow of energy. We hear many proposals for energy taxation suggested by present difficulties. These demand consideration. Also interesting proposals have been made for energy to be used as the basis for general taxation, both national and local. Many possibilities are opening up in this new field, and the Club of Rome has proposed study on the various suggestions for energy taxation for the purpose of controlling the energy in the North and of insuring that in the South development should be on the basis of clean energy.

    The First Global Revolution – A Report by the Council of The Club of Rome
    ALEXANDER KING & BERTRAND SCHNEIDER, 1991 [p.155]

    Today’s Telegraph:

    Energy secretary Ed Miliband has announced a £630m deal that will see the Government take control of the organisation behind Britain’s power systems, with the cost clawed back from households through their energy bills.

    The Government has acquired the National Grid’s electricity system operations unit, which is the division tasked with keeping the country’s lights on and balancing supply with demand. Mr Miliband said public ownership of Neso would help “build a network that is fit for the future”.

    He added: “The new National Energy System Operator has a huge role to play in delivering our mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower.  

    “We need to move Britain off expensive, insecure fossil fuel markets, and onto clean, cheap homegrown power that we control. This is how we reduce bills in the long term, strengthen our energy independence and support skilled jobs across the country.”

    Neso will become part of a web of new organisations overseeing UK energy planning, including GB Energy and a so-called Mission Control unit. 

    All three will work with Great British Nuclear, another new body within the Energy Department responsible for driving the delivery of new nuclear projects.

    A government spokesman said: “Currently, there is no single body responsible for overseeing the strategic planning and design of the country’s electricity and gas networks. 

    “Neso will fill this gap – breaking down the silos which currently exist between the planning of electricity and gas systems, with independent oversight for the design of all Great Britain’s energy networks.  

    “The move will enable investors to build out new energy infrastructure with confidence in how their project will fit into the country’s wider clean energy plan.”

    Neso has been established through powers under the Energy Act 2023, making it responsible for maintaining UK energy supplies, protecting consumers and planning a future low-carbon energy system.

    This means it covers not just electricity and gas but also hydrogen, renewable generation, energy storage and emerging technologies like carbon capture and storage.

    Mr Slye said: “We are excited to optimise our national approach to energy.”

    33 years separate the aspiration of the objective to the imminent achievement of the objective. Interesting that ‘clean energy’ was a term used by the Club of Rome in 1991, in particular with respect to a plan to devise control of the flow of energy (the energy economy).

    No evidence of a conspiracy?

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  51. Jaime, thanks for mentioning the Government ‘s £630 million purchase of NESO. I had spotted this, and was surprised by how little media attention it has generated. I am toying with the idea of writing something about it, but will happily defer to others if they have an interest in it. Any takers?

    Liked by 1 person

  52. Jaime: like John R, I think this discussion has run its course. I don’t think the Club of Rome can realistically be described as a conspiracy, but will leave it at that.

    John R: I have read Rupert Darwall’s excellent book, ‘Green Tyranny’ (I have a copy on my desk now) and in my view, although it’s a first rate exposé of the undoubtedly nefarious actions of climate alarmists, I don’t think that at any point he describes their actions as a conspiracy – more, I suggest, as an overt anti-capitalist crusade.

    I like to think that this essay, published in 2020, shows that I have a reasonable grasp of the history behind the politicisation of climate change science (although I accept that my interest is more in international than in Western politics): https://ipccreport.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/the-west-vs-the-rest-2.1.1.pdf.

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  53. Robin,

    Somehow I’m not at all surprised that you have read the Darwall book; you have always struck me as a very well-informed debater. On the other hand, I am surprised because, by asking your questions, you gave every impression of someone who hadn’t. I, like yourself, came away with the impression that we are basically dealing with an overt anti-capitalist crusade (that is why we are agreed that the Climate Industrial Complex is not a conspiracy). But I also came away with the impression that the crusade has entailed a good deal of conspiratorial activity over the years, much of which is documented in Darwall’s book (with or without using the ‘c’ word). Examples from the book that spring immediately to mind include Palme’s duplicity, the role of the KGB in conspiring to promote the nuclear winter theory within western academia, the deliberate burying of science that had disproved the acid rain theory, the secret collusion between the EPA and the NGO’s to get CO2 included in the 1970 Clean Air Act, various dubious editorialising of the IPCC reports, and the fortnight meeting held behind closed doors in the lead up to the formation of the IPCC, in which the strategy of using an ostensibly scientific argument to further a pre-existent political aim was established. I’m sure there are many more examples I could recall if I put my mind to it. You may say this is all just nefarious rather than conspiratorial but I remain unconvinced that the distinction is so important.

    To summarise: I’m not anxious to summarise. I’m quite comfortable living with the oxymoron that the Climate Industrial Complex has to be one of the most conspiratorial non-conspiracies in modern history.

    Liked by 2 people

  54. John R, it seems we essentially agree about all this and that our problem, if we have one, is a matter of semantics: I dislike referring to nefarious activity as conspiratorial whereas you’re happy to do so. Perhaps you’re right and the difference is unimportant.

    Have you had an opportunity to read my essay? If so, you may have noted that, in Endnote 2, I refer inter alia to the Club of Rome and that Endnotes 3 and 5 are also relevant.

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  55. Robin, I’m afraid this discussion will run and run, if not here, then somewhere else, because the issues under discussion are patently not resolved. The Climate-Industrial Complex which is wrecking our lives and economy is a vast spreading oak tree, but it sprang from an acorn buried by a squirrel in fertile ground. It is imperative that we identify the squirrel and the acorn.

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  56. Perhaps so Jaime – but not if doing so detracts from the increasingly urgent task of stopping Net Zero.

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  57. This Liam Halligan article in today’s Telegraph highlights the utter absurdity of the pointless Net Zero policy:

    Britain is sleepwalking into a mighty industrial battle
    Pushing through net zero is bound to create greater trade union and popular resistance

    Some extracts:

    Labour’s green policies are “hollowing out working-class communities”, said Gary Smith, the leader of GMB, Britain’s third-biggest union. The Government, he said, must stop “decarbonisation through deindustrialisation”.

    At last week’s Trades Union Congress conference, Unite and GMB highlighted union concerns about the route to “net zero” – a journey Labour is determined to pursue more doggedly than the Tories.

    [Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite] evoked the coal mine closures of the 1980s. “Unite will not stand by and watch those workers becoming the miners of our generation,” she said, one of Britain’s most powerful union barons raising the spectre of Thatcher-era industrial relations, marred by chaos and violence, barely two months into the first Labour Government for 14 years.

    … there are signs of a much more substantial, long-term conflict, as the existential industrial cost of the UK’s bid to hit legally binding “net zero carbon emissions” target by 2050 comes into sharper focus.

    Unless net zero starts delivering soon for ordinary people, instead of just adding to their financial burden, the consensus to pursue the 2050 targets – taken for granted by much of our political and media class – could come under serious pressure.

    And as trade unions fight for tens of thousands of blue-collar jobs during Sir Keir Starmer’s “first term”, the resulting environmental-industrial conflicts could tear the Labour movement apart.

    Governments in the UK and across Europe face a mighty industrial battle over the coming years to push through net zero policies, in the teeth of trade union and popular resistance which is certain to grow.

    PS: Paul Homewood has Liam’s article HERE .

    Liked by 1 person

  58. Robin,

    Yes, I agree that this debate can become mired in semantics and that is why I was keen to beat a hasty retreat. I suspect we share a similar understanding yet choose to express ourselves differently.

    I only skim-read your article, just enough to be able to accept the point you were making regarding your credentials. I will do the courtesy of reading it properly when I get more time.

    Jaime,

    It is imperative that we identify the squirrel and the acorn.

    I can only re-iterate that the best account I have read regarding the genesis of the Climate Industrial Complex is the one provided by Darwall’s book. I don’t think that taking the time to identify the squirrel and the acorn will detract from the essential task of stopping net zero. There again, it might not help either. Still, a thorough root cause analysis is often a good start.

    Liked by 3 people

  59. Everybody, while I agree that we should not obsess about the semantics of the word “conspiracy”, we should note that:-

    (i) the Establishment is very fond of labelling as “conspiratorial” anything which, from its perspective, is off-message;

    (ii) resulting from (i), there are very many more conspiracies per unit time appearing now than there were even a decade ago. I find the terminology rather wearing.

    (iii) conspiracy is the last of the four horsemen of the fascist apocalypse, about which I hope to say more in due course.

    Several of us have mentioned that we are “dealing with an overt anti-capitalist crusade”. I am not convinced that this is correct terminology, because capitalism is doing very well out East by selling we Westerners lots of their expensive, non-dispatchable, EROEI-incompetent wind turbines and solar panels. Hence I think better terminology may be “an overt anti-Western crusade”. And because of the latter I think we should follow Jaime’s advice and not just discover the squirrel(s) at the heart of our problems, but speak very sternly so that it/they cease and desist forthwith with their acorn games. Regards, John C.

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  60. John C,

    Yes, you are quite right. To be precise it is an anti Western capitalist crusade — or maybe just an anti Western one. Some of the squirrels are to be found in the Frankfurt School of left-wing intellectuals.

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  62. Mark, thanks for the link to the David Turver piece. Having read the comments, I wanted to respond to one, and found myself creating an account at Substack. However, I’ve no idea what is going on: at no stage was I asked to create a password!

    Like

  63. Interesting developments in British Columbia (potentilla, are you out there, and able to comment, please?):

    “What on earth just happened with B.C.’s carbon tax?

    Premier David Eby suddenly says he’s prepared to ditch the consumer carbon tax, as the B.C. election fast approaches. BC Conservative leader John Rustad is claiming victory. How did we get here?”

    https://thenarwhal.ca/bc-carbon-tax-drama/

    The net zero agenda seems slowly but surely to be in retreat all over the developed world, except the UK. Let’s hope Miliband represents its last hurrah, and that we will soon follow everybody else.

    Liked by 1 person

  64. “Data center emissions probably 662% higher than big tech claims. Can it keep up the ruse?

    Emissions from in-house data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple may be 7.62 times higher than official tally”

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/15/data-center-gas-emissions-tech

    …As energy demands for these data centers grow, many are worried that carbon emissions will, too. The International Energy Agency stated that data centers already accounted for 1% to 1.5% of global electricity consumption in 2022 – and that was before the AI boom began with ChatGPT’s launch at the end of that year.

    AI is far more energy-intensive on data centers than typical cloud-based applications. According to Goldman Sachs, a ChatGPT query needs nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search, and data center power demand will grow 160% by 2030. Goldman competitor Morgan Stanley’s research has made similar findings, projecting data center emissions globally to accumulate to 2.5bn metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2030….

    Liked by 1 person

  65. Back in 2015 Christina Figueras spelt out the aims of the UNFCC (which formed the IPCC, aiui):

    “At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.

    “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.

    Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.””

    I have read that there have been similar quotes from other senior players in the IPCC and related groups.

    Liked by 2 people

  66. Thanks Mark for providing a link to that remarkable and revealing Guardian article. An extract:

    The trend in those emissions is worrying. If these five companies were one country, the sum of their “location-based” emissions in 2022 would rank them as the 33rd highest-emitting country, behind the Philippines and above Algeria.

    But a lot has happened since 2022, not least the AI boom. And data centre emissions are predicted to continue their massive increase.

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  67. MikeH,

    ...there have been similar quotes…

    Indeed, and this is what Edenhofer, former co-chair of IPCC working group III has said:

    “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy”.

    Straight from the horse’s mouth!

    Liked by 1 person

  68. Ahh, they’re telling us what they’re up to, not trying to hide it, so it’s not a conspiracy; that’s that sorted then. Just one problem: 99% of them are telling us 99% of the time that it is environmental policy.

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  69. Mark – thanks for that Turver link, says what we already know, but with more info – liked this no brainer quote –

    “At the time of writing, UK and EU gas prices are five times more expensive than gas at the Henry Hub in the US. It is clear the reason the UK and much of the EU is deindustrialising is because of high energy costs. It is simply much cheaper to make things abroad. Of course, making things abroad probably makes global CO2 emissions worse than if we made them at home.”

    Like

  70. Hi Mark: Yes I’m out here in British Columbia. The developing situation with the carbon tax in Canada is quite amusing. The article you linked to sums it up well.

    There was general acceptance of the carbon tax when it was first introduced in BC in 2008 as the amount was small and it was offset by reductions in income tax so it was revenue neutral. But for a carbon tax to be effective and change behaviour (eg switch from gas central heating to a heat pump) it has to be significant so it was gradually increased every year. Not surprisingly the revenue neutral concept was ditched along the way. Fairly recently the federal Conservatives have latched onto the cost of the carbon tax as a potential vote winner (“Axe the Tax!) and they have gained a significant poll lead over the Trudeau Liberals. Robin might like the federal Conservative leader talking about increases in the carbon tax causing a “nuclear winter”.

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-poilievre-to-meet-with-caucus-ahead-of-parliaments-return-this-week/

    …………..”Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre signalled the Liberals’ carbon price and the economy will remain his prime target when Parliament resumes this week.

    He painted a dystopian picture during a Sunday morning speech to his caucus, saying the Liberal government’s plans to increase the price would cause a “nuclear winter” for the economy.

    “There would be mass hunger and malnutrition with a tax this high our seniors would have to turn the heat down to 14 or 13 C just to make it through the winter,” Poilievre said.“Inflation would run rampant and people would not be able to leave their homes or drive anywhere.”

    With the cost of living being uppermost in the minds of voters, not only the federal Conservatives but also the left leaning federal NDP say they no longer support a carbon tax. Now the left leaning NDP in BC are also indicating they will ditch it to counter the resurgence of the BC Conservatives. So the chickens are indeed coming home to roost. Once people figure out that the Net Zero ideology will cost them a significant amount, they want no part of it and the politicians are catching on. It is quite likely that the next Canada Federal election will be won by the Conservatives so it looks like the carbon tax days are numbered. How long before Net Zero starts to collapse in the UK?

    Liked by 1 person

  71. Thanks for the helpful summary, potentilla. I think we in the UK are 2-3 years behind you. We also have to feel the serious pain before it crashes and burns, regrettably.

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  73. “Labour’s energy policy is an act of serious self-harm”

    “Labour’s energy policy is an act of industrial and economic sabotage”

    There, fixed it for you Telegraph.

    The government’s policy of not challenging lawfare suits launched by Green activists targeting fossil fuel-based industries should be seen for what it is, i.e. encouraging domestic eco-terrorists to do their worst.

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  74. I saw Kwarteng’s Telegraph article yesterday Mark but when I read the following paragraph I decided there was no serious point in providing a link here:

    As energy minister, I was committed to hitting our net zero targets. Though these goals seemed ambitious, I genuinely believed that Britain could reach a net zero carbon emissions economy within the time frame we had set ourselves.

    As you say, he doesn’t understand the absurdity of the policy he was so keen on pursuing.

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  75. Mention of the “Climate Industrial Complex” brings to mind some of President Eisenhower’s comments in his valedictory speech:

    “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

    Yet in holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

    In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocation, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

    Yet in holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

    Liked by 2 people

  76. Ben Pile has a good piece in the Daily Sceptic today. It’s epitomised by this observation about Miliband’s statement of regret about the closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery:

    This absurdly histrionic and wholly vapid rejoinder to concerns about jobs, industry and the economy highlights the broader Labour movement’s metamorphosis from representing the industrial working class to performative middle-class public-sector virtue-signalling. And it likely signals extremely serious tensions within the Labour movement caused by the Net Zero policy that have not been visible before now. As Unite’s executive council member Cliff Bowen told the BBC, the green agenda has been advanced with “false promises of green jobs which never seem to materialise”.

    Ben’s conclusion:

    Can we take Ed Miliband’s claim, made in the wake of the Grangemouth news, that “this is a Government that stands with workers, trade unions, and businesses to fight for jobs and investment”, seriously? Even if he meant it, does he or the Labour Government have a clue about how to reconcile the manifest contradictions between commitments to green ideology and the interests of working people? Given that Miliband and his cronies lack any obvious capacity for thought, I very much doubt it.

    Well said.

    Liked by 2 people

  77. Jaime,

    Ahh, they’re telling us what they’re up to, not trying to hide it, so it’s not a conspiracy; that’s that sorted then.

    The key word in the Edenhofer quote was ‘illusion’, and the key question is to what extent was deception required to create the illusion. Darwall comes closest to summing up the required cocktail when he talks about the acid rain scandal as being a precursor of global warming activism:

    Acid rain was not only a precursor of global warming; it was the prototype. Both mobilised the same constituencies – alarmist scientists, NGOs, credulous politicians – amplified by sensationalist media reporting.

    There is no explicit recognition of conspiracy in the above. However, one has to wonder what it was that the alarmist scientists and NGOs were getting up to to exploit the credulity of politicians. Later in his book Darwell points an accusatory finger:

    To get legislation to cut power station emissions through Congress, the EPA knowingly supressed evidence. It then trashed the reputation of a scientist whose only crime was concern for the truth…Collectively, the academies [of five countries] stand guilty of collusion in scientific malpractice. Their authors presumed to know too much and downplayed uncertainty and lack of knowledge in furtherance of a political agenda.

    I’m presuming this is the sort of thing you have in mind when you refer to conspiracy.

    Liked by 1 person

  78. Union leader: the green agenda has been advanced with “false promises of green jobs which never seem to materialise”

    What was false was the idea that such jobs would be in the UK.

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  79. MikeH,

    The pertinence of the Eisenhower quote to our discussion of the Climate Industrial Complex is not, of course, coincidental. The military industrial complex was the first example of its type, and since then a number of other, conceptually similar industrial complexes have been conceived, of which the Climate Industrial Complex is one. Naturally, all such complexes share the attributes of the military version and carry the same generic risks. It is interesting, however, that if you look up the concept of the industrial complex on Wikipedia, it cannot bring itself to include the Climate Industrial Complex on its list of examples.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_complex

    Liked by 1 person

  80. Yes John, in simple terms, a group of academics from different countries conspired to knowingly promote dodgy science to the public and to policy makers with the aim of scaring the pants off us all in order to advance a political agenda. Darwall uses the term collude, but in essence the two words mean the same. One can attempt to peel back further onion layers and ask what motivated these scientists to do what they did, were their shadowy forces offering them incentives, bribes, or even blackmailing them to do what they did, but the elements of a conspiracy to defraud the public are all there, in the actions themselves of this group of scientists. Case proven as far as I’m concerned.

    Liked by 1 person

  81. Jaime, I am interested in their motivation as that may help society to be more on its guard in order to prevent future attacks and to repair damage already done.

    I am also interested in asking/answering the question, “Could society have protected itself from these Industrial Complexes in the first place?” I think the answer is “yes”, but only in favourable circumstances. Regards, John C.

    Liked by 1 person

  82. Jaime,

    I may be reading far too much into this, but it is interesting that Darwall uses the word ‘collude’ rather than ‘conspire’. In fact, I think that Robin may be right in saying that Darwall doesn’t refer to ‘conspiracy’ anywhere within his book. Could it be that, by avoiding that toxic word, he is trying to avoid the accusation of being a conspiracy theorist, with all of the automatic connotations of cognitive failing that goes with it? For you see, there is a half-baked idea that is twice-baked into the soufflé of climate change logic, and that is that it is inconceivable that, say, five national academies could conspire to corrupt the science. That surely would involve too many scientists knowingly engaging in either harmful or illegal activities. But, of course, that’s not how these corruptions go down. The vast majority of the participants involved collude in the corruption without ever having to conspire or knowingly do anything wrong. A kernel of bad faith is all that is required to ensure the complex serves up the ‘right’ dish.

    Liked by 1 person

  83. John C,

    Could society have protected itself from these Industrial Complexes in the first place?

    That’s quite a difficult question to answer because these complexes are social constructs — they naturally emerge within society and are part of how it works. I guess the point is that they should be recognised as such, but this may be difficult because they entail features designed to cover up their tracks, such as the way that Wikipedia has become too much a part of the Climate Industrial Complex to be prepared to acknowledge the complex’s existence.

    Like

  84. Jaime: I find it difficult to understand why it seems to be so important to you to establish that the nefarious actions of many climate alarmists amount to conspiracy.

    Like

  85. John,

    Collude and conspire are synonymous to a very large degree. I definitely think Rupert chose collude in order to avoid being labelled a ‘conspiracy theorist’. Conspiracy has become a dirty word, but personally I refuse to be intimidated by the language Nazis.

    Robin,

    Actually, I’m not that obsessed by proving per se that a conspiracy lies at the heart of the global warming bandwagon. I am very keen to demonstrate that, in large measure, it is not ‘madness’ or ‘delusion’ which primarily drives the actions of those deeply embedded in the climate industrial complex, but malign intent, a knowledge that their actions will cause harm and the knowledge that their actions are dishonestly justified on the basis of fraudulent or highly uncertain science – motivated by financial or political gain, career advancement or simply the narcissistic pursuit of personal prestige. I am very keen to reveal the deeply flawed scientific basis of ‘catastrophic anthropogenic global warming’ theory and in that respect, if it can be demonstrated that a number of bad faith actors got together very early on to knowingly promote this flawed scientific doctrine for political and/or financial purposes, then that is further proof that the science itself is flawed and compromised by politics/greed.

    Like

  87. Jaime,

    You’re quite right; ‘collude’ is a lot closer to ‘conspire’ than I had acknowledged. I should have written “engage in the corruption”.

    Whatever word we choose to use, there is no escaping the conspiratorial nature of some of the stuff they got up to, albeit motivated by an overtly anti-industrial, anti-West and anti-capitalist crusade.

    Liked by 2 people

  88. John R and Jaime: I’m a great admirer of Rupert Darwall – both his books, The Age of Global Warming and Green Tyranny, are on my office bookshelves and several of his articles are saved on my computer – and I don’t believe that he has ever said or implied that malign intent lies at the heart of the global warming bandwagon.

    Like

  89. Malign intent and/or malign effect? And where were the checks and balances that society should have (already) set up in order that the latter does not naturally evolve from the former? Regards, John C.

    Like

  90. Robin

    In the comments above, I wrote:

    “hmm … I suggest individual greed rather than conspiracy.”

    We shall probably never be able to figure out their true motivations, but in either case, it’s intentional and it’s malign. Not madness. Not delusion. Notwithstanding the fact that they might be mad, but they are definitely bad.

    You replied:

    I agree: greed is bad.

      Correct me if I’m wrong but I took this to mean that you agree that, regardless of motivations, the actions of those people embedded within the climate industrial complex are ‘bad’, and purposefully malign. For example, opportunistically enriching oneself whilst knowingly causing harm to others and to the environment, whilst pretending that one’s actions will make a significant difference to the global climate and weather, is acting with malign intent.

      Like

    1. Robin,

      I don’t think he has ever said or implied that malign intent lies at the heart of the global warming bandwagon.

      Nor have I, but there has certainly been some malign stuff done in its name, and I think Darwall would agree.

      Like

    2. Jaime: no – you’ve read far too much into five words.

      John R: yes – you may be right.

      I suggest we leave it at that.

      Like

    3. Robin,

      ‘No’ to my suggestion that “the actions of those people embedded within the climate industrial complex are ‘bad’, and purposefully malign.”

      ‘Yes, maybe’ to John’s suggestion that “there has certainly been some malign stuff done in its [the global warming bandwagon’s] name.”

      Please feel free to be less economical with your responses any time in the interests of clarity!

      Like

    5. Now Lammy is getting in on the act:

      Climate change poses a “more fundamental” threat to the world than terrorism or autocratic leaders, the Foreign Secretary will say on Tuesday.

      In his first speech on the environment since taking the role, David Lammy will launch what the Government has described as the Global Clean Power Alliance.

      Other countries will be invited to sign up to the body, which is being likened to the Opec grouping of oil-producing nations but focused on tackling global warming.

      “I am committing to you that, while I am Foreign Secretary, action on the climate and nature crisis will be central to all the Foreign Office does. This is critical given the scale of the threat, but also the scale of the opportunity.”

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/16/climate-change-more-fundamental-threat-than-terrorism-lammy/

      Lammy is of course as thick as mince, but given that ‘Clean Power’ and Net Zero targets are domestic eco-terrorism and given that the British government is taking a leading role in coordinating global censorship efforts also, it occurs to me that there is something rather sinister and malign regarding this latest speech by our incompetent Foreign Secretary.

      Like

    6. I see Lammy has fallen for the incorrect link between a “climate crisis” and a “nature crisis”. There is no climate crisis, and the climate is not causing a nature crisis. However, misguided attempts to “tackle the climate crisis” most certainly are causing a nature crisis.

      Like

    7. Where “you” see malignity “I” see:-

      (i) my nice-little-earner that …

      (ii) aligns with government energy policy and which …

      (iii) supports the “global fight against climate change”.

      So “I” am feeling very virtuous right now. Was “I” ever malign. If so, how and when did “I” become malign … or are “you” just indulging in the latest conspiracy theory?

      It seems from the above that perspective is central to the malignity/virtue argument. If we really wish to nail the malignity label on somebody or something then I think we are going to have to a long, hard battle. Hence it may be better, as hinted at earlier, to concentrate our efforts on correcting malign effects (which are a clear and ever-present danger to the West) rather than naming and shaming/collaring the guilty. Regards, John C.

      Like

    8. John C,

      If we cannot accommodate our thinking to accept the plausible, likely even, conclusion that our governments intend to knowingly do us great harm in the pursuit of their agenda, then we will be forever chasing shadows. Governments have become the enemy of the people; they have, in a very real sense, declared war upon us. It is vital in my opinion that we acknowledge this fact, or at least be ready and willing to admit to ourselves that it is a likely fact, which then allows us to put into context their behaviour across the policy board.

      Like

    9. Jaime, I do not disagree with you. However, admitting to ourselves that the government’s agenda is harmful is simply a mental act or state of mind which is easy for us here at Cliscep to accept but difficult for many others (cf. Covid compliance). I therefore suggest that while in the heat of the battle (which is likely to get hotter still) we concentrate our efforts upon opposing and ultimately defeating the various Industrial Complexes (of which the Green Industrial Complex is but one strand).

      I suspect that a major part of the battle will be to wrest control of the governance of the West back from the captured policy machinery that currently passes for representative democracy. Regards, John C.

      Liked by 1 person

    10. John C,

      You are quite right to point out the distinction between intent and effect when discussing questions of malignancy. Also, it is very true to say that value judgments are involved, rendering the question of malignance highly subjective and requiring that different perspectives be considered. For example, deliberate de-industrialisation of society seems to me to be quite a malign act when one considers the collateral damage involved, particularly for the poor. But it’s not to someone who fails to appreciate the societal benefits that come with industrialisation; and certainly not to someone who sees industrialisation as an unsustainable evil. Similarly, the advocating of deliberately anti-democratic strategies seems malign to me, but not to someone who thinks them necessary to save the world from supposedly destructive forces that come with democracy. Deliberately trashing a scientist’s career just because they offered a minority-held view is certainly malign in my mind, but not to someone who presupposes that minority-held scientific views are invariably supported by ‘bad actors’. Employing behavioural insights to psychologically manipulate people into making decisions that are not necessarily in their best interests but are certainly in yours, is malign – unless you happen to believe that your interests are virtuous and you are just protecting these people from falling for cognitive bias. Professing one motivation whilst secretly having another isn’t a good look either, if the intent is to fool the world into following your own ideologies. But it’s just a clever strategy to those who value their ideologies above all others.

      I think the important point, and the one that I think Jamie makes, is to understand that most of what is going on is by design and not by accident. As Darwall put it when looking at the effects of the various policy errors made in the Energiewende project:

      In principle, wise policy-makers not in hock to green interests would avoid all these mistakes. That would miss the big picture. The Greens and their Far Left allies in the SPD wanted renewable energy to bring about the deindustrialisation of Germany, a vision articulated by Wilhelm Ostwald in the first decade of the last century and subsequently revived by Hermann Scheer. In that sense, Energiewende is working to plan.

      Liked by 2 people

    11. John R, what a coincidence! I reached your quote (from pages 153-154 of Darwall’s “Green Tyranny” book) in the early hours of this morning.

      You wrote, “I think the important point, and the one that I think Jamie makes, is to understand that most of what is going on is by design and not by accident.” I agree that what is going on NOW is by design. But what is happening NOW is built upon what went BEFORE.

      However, it is far from clear to me that what went BEFORE was ab initio malign in all cases, since, as Helm wrote, “But it would be too great a compliment to the green political movement to give them all the credit for the Renewables Directive. They have been aided and abetted by industrial interests for whom renewables represent a very large pork barrel. Subsidies attract industry, and with guaranteed contracts and political support, major European companies began to sing the greens’ tune … The renewables lobby groups grew in size and influence, and the lobbying became overt, loud and very effective, funded by the companies that stand to gain most from the subsidies.” [Ref. 1]

      It is clear from this last paragraph that, as Jaime says, the current situation is by design; and it is NOW evident (to those who have eyes to see) that it is harmful to individuals, industry and even national economies. But that was not the case at the outset, or these firms (many now suffering from high energy prices) would not have jumped on the bandwagon to sing the greens’ tune.

      In short, is this not a lesson for society as a whole? Namely, do not let subsidies come to dominate a major sector of the economy, far less the most fundamental one that is energy. So what safeguards should we now put in place? And why were the existing checks and balances not sufficient to stop us being pushed over the EROEI cliff?

      Part of the answer to the latter question is, I feel, that the academy in the West did not do a complete, fully rounded job. Individual researchers and university departments accepted contracts to investigate aspects of human-induced global warming/climate change and undertook the necessary MOTIVATED REASONING to support that narrative. Unfortunately, the academy as a whole did not undertake the vitally important research on the alternative reason for climate change i.e. natural variation.

      The upshot was that Western politicians were left with a totally one-sided argument that supported the original hypothesis which was being promoted by the likes of the IPCC (and others within the Iron Triangle) as the one and only reason for the observed changes. Thus we are now suffering from having jumped to a conclusion and then having let our best (or at least our most “credentialled”) academics loose to “prove” that prejudice. There is much to be said for a red-v-blue team review before society further abandons over 300 years of development based upon abundant fossil fuels. Newcomen and Watt will be turning in their graves.

      Reference 1. Dieter Helm, “The Carbon Crunch”, revised & up-dated, Yale, 2015, pages 102 -103.

      Regards, John C.

      Liked by 1 person

    12. John C,

      My, that is a coincidence! I’ve been sitting on that quote for days now, waiting for the best time to use it. 🙂

      Looking into the ‘mind’ of the Climate Industrial Complex will require a much better psychoanalyst than me, not least because of the schizophrenic and mutually-justifying nature of the beast we are dealing with. As far as motives are concerned, we are surely confronted with the full range, going from the good to the ugly via the bad. I think there are also some weird paradoxes to deal with. The seemingly bottomless pit of insights that are to be found in The Green Tyranny includes the revelation that back in 1940 the philosopher Joseph Schumpeter foresaw the destruction of capitalism by its own hand. On page 43, Darwall writes:

      It was in America that Schumpeter wrote Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Best known for its description of capitalism as a “perennial gale of creative destruction”, this was a prelude to the book’s most audacious claim: Capitalism would decay into socialism not, as Marx believed, because it would fail economically but through its very success.

      The process may have started with the capitalist funding of renegades from the Frankfurt School to spread their New Left views in American universities. And it carries on today in the guise of billionaire technocrats funding the various NGOs and charities that lobby so effectively for the green bandwagon. But most of all, it can be seen in the rent-seeking capitalism that is turbo-driving disastrous energy transition projects such as Energiewende which, as we have seen, are actually the brainchildren of the New Left’s anti-capitalist intellectuals (yes you know who I am talking about, Schellnhuber). The Club of Rome is, after all, an anti-capitalist venture funded from the successes of capitalism. The same can be said for Schellnhuber’s Potsdam Institute.

      So yes, seen from the perspective of certain elements of the Climate Industrial Complex, we are certainly dealing with unintended consequences – maybe.

      Liked by 2 people

    13. John R, I am glad you mentioned the “billionaire technocrats funding the various NGOs and charities that lobby so effectively for the green bandwagon.” I imagine these people do not want to destroy capitalism so much as extract value from it in perpetuity such that, for them, the green industrial complex is a particularly lucrative profit centre (which I call a predation centre).

      So for these billionaires the status quo is financial heaven. But for the rest of us, the sooner we turn the page on this renewables nonsense (as described in great detail by Darwall) the better in so many ways. Regards, John C.

      Liked by 1 person

    14. Britain and the US colluded to censor online Covid ‘misinformation and disinformation’. That is a malign conspiracy.

      BRITAIN was once the envy of the world for our legal right to free speech. However, the tide has turned, and the government’s Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU), set up in 2019 and instructed in March 2020 to combat the spread of ‘false coronavirus information online’, has helped the United States establish a dedicated team to crush what it sees as dissent.

      In the name of ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’, the CDU focused on coercing social media giants to execute ‘government-wide censorship efforts’. It has now exported its blueprint to the US, despite the fact that America’s prized First Amendment specifically protects citizens’ right to express themselves freely.

      Documents obtained under freedom of information (FOI) by the sovereignty organisation America First Legal (AFL), show that in August 2021 the Biden White House hosted a team from the CDU. They taught the Biden-Harris National Security Council (NSC), an interagency policy committee (IPC), everything they knew about silencing government critics on social media.

      The CDU came under the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and was run by civil servant Sarah Connolly. (The NSOIT operates within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.) They used a 155-page PowerPoint presentation to explain to the US how they had instructed British social media to censor users posting content they deemed harmful. They shared their censorship playbook and advised the US to create a dedicated hub to lead government censorship efforts, backed with legislation to enable them to coerce social media companies. The result was, and still is, an all-out assault on free speech, done in the name of our ‘safety’.

      The CDU taught White House teams how to bully social media platforms to ensure government censorship demands were not ignored. A duty-of-care principle was established in the UK in 1932, and it is this anti-harm legislation the British government used to demand censorship of social media content, since reinforced by the Online Safety Act passed in October 2023.

      The online censorship campaign is being intensified both sides of the Pond and in Europe and Australia. It is also being targeted at ‘climate misinformers’:

      Had social media not censored concerns – Facebook famously deleted accounts with thousands of vaccine-injured sharing their experiences – awareness of covid vaccine harms could have been addressed before many more were injured. The Hunter Biden laptop story and anti-climate change opinion are two other subjects on governments’ censorship radar.

      Censorship violates Article 10 of the UK’s 1998 Human Rights Act. It states: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.’

      https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/how-the-uk-government-helped-the-us-to-crush-free-speech/

      People have died and been seriously injured because of this censorship. Now they are going to be pushing hard to censor all dissent re. the Net Zero policies which are laying waste to western economies plus questioning of the ‘science’ upon which those policies are based. If Kamala Harris steals the 2024 election, or Trump is murdered beforehand, I seriously think it’s going to be lights out for the West. There won’t be much debate about whether the establishment’s policies are malign or not after November 2024.

      Liked by 1 person

    15. Britain and the US colluded to censor online Covid ‘misinformation and disinformation’. That is a malign conspiracy.

      BRITAIN was once the envy of the world for our legal right to free speech. However, the tide has turned, and the government’s Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU), set up in 2019 and instructed in March 2020 to combat the spread of ‘false coronavirus information online’, has helped the United States establish a dedicated team to crush what it sees as dissent.

      In the name of ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’, the CDU focused on coercing social media giants to execute ‘government-wide censorship efforts’. It has now exported its blueprint to the US, despite the fact that America’s prized First Amendment specifically protects citizens’ right to express themselves freely.

      Documents obtained under freedom of information (FOI) by the sovereignty organisation America First Legal (AFL), show that in August 2021 the Biden White House hosted a team from the CDU. They taught the Biden-Harris National Security Council (NSC), an interagency policy committee (IPC), everything they knew about silencing government critics on social media.

      The CDU came under the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and was run by civil servant Sarah Connolly. (The NSOIT operates within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.) They used a 155-page PowerPoint presentation to explain to the US how they had instructed British social media to censor users posting content they deemed harmful. They shared their censorship playbook and advised the US to create a dedicated hub to lead government censorship efforts, backed with legislation to enable them to coerce social media companies. The result was, and still is, an all-out assault on free speech, done in the name of our ‘safety’.

      The CDU taught White House teams how to bully social media platforms to ensure government censorship demands were not ignored. A duty-of-care principle was established in the UK in 1932, and it is this anti-harm legislation the British government used to demand censorship of social media content, since reinforced by the Online Safety Act passed in October 2023.

      The online censorship campaign is being intensified both sides of the Pond and in Europe and Australia. It is also being targeted at ‘climate misinformers’:

      Had social media not censored concerns – Facebook famously deleted accounts with thousands of vaccine-injured sharing their experiences – awareness of covid vaccine harms could have been addressed before many more were injured. The Hunter Biden laptop story and anti-climate change opinion are two other subjects on governments’ censorship radar.

      Censorship violates Article 10 of the UK’s 1998 Human Rights Act. It states: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.’

      https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/how-the-uk-government-helped-the-us-to-crush-free-speech/

      People have died and been seriously injured because of this censorship. Now they’re going to be pushing hard to censor all dissent re. the Net Zero policies which are laying waste to western economies plus questioning of the ‘science’ upon which those policies are based. If Kamala Harris steals the 2024 election, or Trump is murdered beforehand, I seriously think it’s going to be lights out for the West. There won’t be much debate about whether the establishment’s policies are malign or not after November 2024.

      Liked by 1 person

    16. More on the carbon tax in Canada. A supportive editorial from the Toronto Globe and Mail:

      https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-mr-singh-meet-your-big-polluters-all-of-us/

      A wave of magical thinking is sweeping over Canadian politics, with politicians on the right and now the left fantasizing that there is such a thing as a pain-free way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions…….

      Meeting Canada’s greenhouse-gas targets requires collective action, and will result in collective pain. This space has consistently argued that an escalating levy on fossil fuels is the least painful option, since it allows individuals and businesses to decide how to reduce carbon emissions

      It seems to me that Canada has come to the realization that there has to be “collective pain” with Net Zero targets. We will get to vote at the next elections whether we consider this worth it. Your Ed Milliband is promising the opposite; lower energy bills with more renewables and no pain at all. Eventually the people of the UK will catch on as energy costs continue to increase.

      Liked by 1 person

    17. I’ve been out all day so, as well as the interesting Jaime / John R / John C exchange, I missed this amusing article by Ross Clark:

      The problem with Labour’s green energy plan

      He opens with this:

      Ed Miliband told the EnergyUK conference this morning that he wants to take on the ‘blockers, delayers and obstructionists’ who stand in the way of Britain’s energy security. Oh good, does that mean that finally he appreciates that the North Sea needs some encouragement? And that a UK fracking industry will finally be allowed to commence, after years of being blocked in the courts by environmentalists spinning false stories about how it will cause your water taps to burst into flames and cause devastating earthquakes (including those actually felt at the Earth’s surface)?

      Er, sadly not. Miliband, of course, rather likes blockers and delayers when they are on his side. Indeed, the entire government does …

      And then we have this:

      Miliband isn’t alone in taking up this theme of national security to try to defend Labour’s green policy. Foreign secretary David Lammy is at it too this morning, telling us that climate change presents a ‘more fundamental’ threat to national security than terrorism does.

      Is Lammy’s mind really on his job? …does he seriously think that climate change deserves more of his attention as foreign secretary than the threat from terrorism?

      Amusing yes. But also very serious.

      Like

    20. Jaime,

      That wouldn’t happen to be anything to do with the Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum that the BBC secretly attended, with none other than Jessica Cecil, founder of the Trusted News Initiative as its representative? The BBC crows that transparency fosters trust, but they somehow forgot that principle when it came to secretly taking on the role of government media propaganda machine during the Covid-19 pandemic.

      https://cliscep.com/2024/01/10/trust-me-im-from-the-bbc/

      Liked by 1 person

    23. The really depressing thing is that the likes of the BBC and Guardian are so embedded within the Climate Industrial Complex that when the political element declares its agenda it will always find an agency of propaganda willing to act on its behalf. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the threat to democracy is never greater than when the journalists and politicians are in lockstep.

      Liked by 2 people

    24. The message is clear: by portraying climate change as a global and national security threat even more dangerous than terrorism, what Milibrain and Lammy are saying is that any threat or delay to climate action in that respect is itself a national security threat akin to terrorism. The Guardian spells it out:

      This is what we’re up against
      Bad actors who choose to spread disinformation online to fuel intolerance.

      It would not surprise me at all if, in the next year or two, we witness the government’s Starmtroopers film themselves kicking down the doors of prominent or even not so prominent climate and Net Zero sceptics to question them under anti-terrorist legislation, and I’m not being sarcastic here. The Department of Energy Insecurity and Year Zero will brook no dissent to the continued expansion of the killing fields of solar panels and wind turbines.

      Liked by 1 person

    25. Jaime,

      I didn’t think you were being sarcastic. Once a statement has been branded as ‘harmful’ it can be viewed as a safety issue to be addressed by the same ‘robust’ legislation that was intended to protect children from online abuse. A moral equivalence has been established, and it’s a worrying development.

      Liked by 1 person

    26. Bad actors who choose to spread disinformation online to fuel intolerance.

      That’s what we’re up against too. Pity the Guardian can’t see that.

      The announcement [that they are trying to get rid of the Observer] came as The Guardian revealed that it burned through tens of millions of pounds in cash as the newspaper grapples with an advertising slump.

      Oh well.

      Telegraph link, if you are able to read it. The same page quotes part of Miliband’s speech thus:

      Speaking as Labour colleagues launched a “smash the nimbys” pressure group, Mr Miliband told delegates: “Every wind turbine we block, every solar farm we reject, every piece of grid we fail to build makes us less secure and more exposed. 

      “Previous governments have ducked, dithered and delayed these difficult decisions. And here’s the thing, it’s the poorest in our society who have paid the price. 

      “My message today is that we will take on the blockers, the delayers, the obstructionists, because clean energy is the economic justice, energy security and national security fight of our time. 

      “That’s why one of the prime minister’s five driving missions is to make Britain a clean energy superpower, delivering clean power by 2030 and accelerating to net zero across the economy.”

      If this was a football match, we’d be 3-0 down at half time, and the fans would be chanting “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

      Regarding Lammy (same page again):

      Britain will next month provide a guarantee for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to help unlock $1.2bn (£908m) of climate finance for developing countries, Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said.

      And that’s without mentioning that Lammy thinks climate change is more of a threat than all the resurgent dictators.

      Liked by 3 people

    27. The Mail quotes Claire Coutinho:

      Conservative energy spokesman Claire Coutinho said: ‘Ed Miliband’s rush to net-zero for the sake of ideology will leave us in the worst of all worlds – with higher bills, jobs sent abroad and ever more reliance on China.

      ‘He must set out a full systems costs immediately so that British billpayers know how much all of this will cost them.

      Like

    28. OMG, I hadn’t even read Milibrain’s fanatical, unhinged rant against the Nimbys, the delayers and the disinformers. Every bit as concerning as Weird Stalin’s fanatical ranting against ‘far right thugs’ – who are now languishing in prison cells vacated by violent criminals, paedophiles and rapists.

      Like

    29. Sorry, I think the cat sent that comment. I was planning to add that it is a bit rich for Coutinho to say such things, when her policy differed from Miliband’s by the width of a Rizla.

      Mail link.

      Liked by 3 people

    30. I wanted to pick up on Jaime’s comment from yesterday (https://cliscep.com/2024/09/09/the-case-against-net-zero-a-fifth-update/#comment-155055), “… our governments intend to knowingly do us great harm in the pursuit of their agenda … Governments have become the enemy of the people; they have, in a very real sense, declared war upon us.”

      It is interesting to compare our current situation to that early in the First World War when young men were being recruited on the false narrative that it will be a jolly jape, a walk in the park and, besides, it will all be over by Christmas. And so they signed up in their thousands only to be devoured in the industrial slaughter of the trenches. Meanwhile, back in Blighty, the monstrous anger of the guns could be heard in south-east England, and the casualty lists covered the front pages every day.

      But despite the ever-lengthy casualty lists and the distant boom of the guns, the elite political classes of the belligerent nations sustained the carnage for over four years. It is as though, then as now, the politicians are utterly disconnected from the ordinary people.

      Fortunately, today, we are not being slaughtered like cattle by our Western political caste. However, we are being deindustrialised and forced to pay exorbitant prices for energy all in the name of Net Zero. Our suffering is as naught compared to our forebears of WWI, but it is not trivial either. And unlike the Great War which ended at precisely “the eleventh hour of the eleventh day”, our Net Zero burden is without end under the policies of the Uniparty.

      Now compare our current situation to that which developed immediately after the Second World War and into at least the late 1960s; it is a period from which I benefited hugely. The troops returning from WWII voted in a (real) Labour government on a radical agenda in which the Welfare State provided health and education at minimal cost at the point of delivery. In short, I grew up under a providential regime.

      History thus shows that the British state can be both predatory and providential towards ordinary people; it seems to move in waves that are decades long. Currently we are not in a good place. How can we move to safer ground? Regards, John C.

      Liked by 3 people

    31. I didn’t bother to read what he (Lammy) actually said:

      Branding the previous Conservative government ‘climate dinosaurs’, he said they had relied too much on fossil fuels rather than renewables. Mr Lammy said tackling climate change would be his major focus, adding: ‘I’m committing to you that, while I am Foreign Secretary, action on the climate and nature crisis will be central to all the Foreign Office does.’

      Well, let’s hope his tenure is brief. And ‘climate dinosaurs’? I would love to know what he would call me, had I been setting policy!

      However:

      Mr Lammy also appeared to row back on the Tories £12billion fund to tackle global climate change, saying: ‘Ahead of the spending review, they’re carefully reviewing our plans to do so.’

      This, juxtaposed with freezing pensioners, could perhaps have been the worst PR move in recent history. So perhaps they will tone it down after all.

      Mail link.

      Liked by 1 person

    32. Lammy probably thinks that fossil fuels are the remains of dinosaurs, so I guess it would be quite natural to label fossil fuel enabling politicians (which the Tories definitely weren’t) as climate wrecking dinosaurs.

      Like

    33. Darwall has a piece on Net Zero at WUWT, originally from elsewhere, but I don’t think it has been linked to here.

      The essay points out that the US is following the UK on the path to destruction, while China is not allowing green fantasies to impact on its decision making. There is nothing to surprise the sceptic, but it’s worth a read for all that.

      Liked by 1 person

    34. Thanks for the Darwall link Jit – he’s always worth reading and this is no exception. Well worth a read.

      His closing paragraph makes the point well:

      The current architecture of the UN climate process was designed around China’s demands. Its veto of a climate treaty with a legally binding emissions target at the Copenhagen climate conference led the Obama administration to enshrine the Sinatra doctrine of climate action in the 2015 Paris climate agreement: the signatories would do it their way. China’s nationally determined commitment under the agreement has the goal of achieving “carbon neutrality” before 2060. The evidence to date shows that China does whatever advances China’s economic and ultimately its geopolitical interests. That is a lesson for America’s political leaders: if the United States wants to prevail in the geopolitical contest with China, it, too, needs to drop the Biden-Harris goal of net zero and embrace energy realism.

      This confirms my long-held view that Copenhagen 2009 (COP15) was the key step in the UN climate process. Here’s how Darwall described its outcome:

      ‘There was a clear victor. Equally clearly, there was a side that lost more comprehensively than at any international conference in modern history where the outcome had not been decided beforehand by force of arms.’

      Few people in the West understand – not least Miliband with his absurd global ‘leadership’ pretentious – that since COP15, fifteen years ago, China has been in charge of international climate negotiations.

      (I think this item should really be in the COP29 thread.)

      Liked by 1 person

    35. By Ben Pile, once of this parish. Behind the Daily Sceptic paywall, unfortunately:

      “Climate Change Isn’t the Greatest Threat to Mankind, David Lammy. The Biggest Threat to our Security is Climate Policy”

      https://dailysceptic.org/2024/09/19/climate-change-isnt-the-greatest-threat-to-mankind-david-lammy-the-biggest-threat-to-our-security-is-climate-policy/

      The first couple of paragraphs are visible. Here’s the first one:

      In a somewhat awkward, rambling and weird speech on Tuesday, Foreign Secretary David Lammy set out his vision of “restoring our international credibility”, by putting the “climate and nature crisis” at the heart of foreign policy. “This issue has been on the agenda for nearly every meeting that I’ve had with another minister in my early weeks,” he explained in his opening remarks. And what green weeks they have been, with his colleagues throwing Britain’s pensioners under the bus, energy price caps rising, the Grangemouth refinery and Port Talbot steelworks closing, shedding thousands of jobs. Lammy spoke of a “reset”, but even that word now seems like a boring cliché. He is no exception to the tin-eared, dead from the neck-up politicians, whose agendas are expressed in cascades of woke-green piety, wrapped in banal slogans. That was all his talk was.…

      Like

    36. I’ve made a minor change to the header article. I’ve deleted the reference to a Telegraph item in endnote vii and replaced it by a piece by Monbiot in the Guardian. I’ve done so because the Telegraph is paywalled and the Guardian is not. But, in any case, Monbiot makes his point (about the unproven nature of CCS) particularly well.

      Like

    38. In the Telegraph, Fraser Nelson’s piece about Farage says this on a different topic:

      Next week, I’m hosting a discussion at the Labour conference asking if Ed Miliband’s 2030 grid decarbonisation target is realistic. A dangerous topic, it seems. Gary Smith, who runs the GMB union, has agreed to speak: he thinks this key pledge is laughably unworkable. An important point for discussion, surely? Not a single Labour MP is willing to debate him or defend the policy. Sponsors don’t seem wildly keen, either. It’s a shame. Party conferences should be a festival of political debate, not a domestic Davos.

      We all know the 2030 goal is impossible. Does Miliband? Where are the journalists?

      Telegraph link. [Secret handshake required.]

      Liked by 2 people

    39. Further to the Frazer Nelson piece about Farage …

      The other day I wrote, “History thus shows that the British state can be both predatory and providential towards ordinary people; it seems to move in waves that are decades long. Currently we are not in a good place. How can we move to safer ground?”

      https://cliscep.com/2024/09/09/the-case-against-net-zero-a-fifth-update/#comment-155087

      What I did not mention there was that the Labour Party was a relatively new political party which moved the Overton Window of the day (1945) thereby modernising the British state and making it more user-friendly for ordinary people. I wonder whether Farage/Reform will position itself to perform a similar up-dating for today’s citizens. Or has the Establishment just too strong a stranglehold on perceptions? Regards, John C.

      Like

    40. David Turver has a note this morning (Fintan Slyly Moves the Goalposts) about Fintan Sly’s (National Grid ESO) reply to the Miliband/Stark letter asking for advice about how to deliver a ‘clean’ electricity grid by 2030. They asked Sly to set out a range of possible pathways, for key requirements an assessment of costs, benefits, risks etc. and key actions.

      Sly’s reply (not to Miliband or Stark but to the energy industry) says that all pathways will ‘meet clean power in 2030 against a definition to be agreed with UK Government.’ In other words, as Turver says, there isn’t an agree definition of what a ‘clean electricity grid by 2030’ actually means. And, as the Miliband/Stark letter revealed that they don’t know how to get there, we have what is in effect ‘the blind leading the blind to an unknown destination’.

      That’s bad enough. But, even worse, Sly’s letter, focused on ‘opportunity’ doesn’t even mention costs, benefits or risks. As Turver concludes:

      ‘This is now the blind leading the blind to an unknown destination without knowing the price of the ticket. Fintan Slye is ducking his responsibility and we are going to be short-changed again.’

      Liked by 2 people

    41. I can provide Sly with a definition of ‘clean power in 2030’: energy supplied by taking bill and tax payers to the cleaners, their money laundered via the renewables industrial machine.

      Liked by 2 people

    42. This is completely off-topic but I felt I had to share one comment made on a Speccie article about Starmer’s current difficulties:

      Two Tier Kier’s Free Gear From Queer Peer.

      Liked by 3 people

    44. Or to put it another way:

      Two Tier Kier’s Free Gear From Queer Peer brings Tear

      Like

    45. ‘This is now the blind leading the blind to an unknown destination without knowing the price of the ticket.’

      That’s how David Turver’s excellent piece this morning concludes – see my post above. So there we have one massive unresolved problem regarding the Government’s ‘zero emission electricity by 2030’ plan. And now Francis Menton (the Manhattan Contrarian) has spelled out another: Why There Will Never Be A Zero Emissions Electricity System Powered Mainly By Wind And Sun (Note: ‘Never’ – not ‘by 2030’).

      His argument is familiar:

      ‘The reason is that the intermittency of wind and solar generators means that they require full back-up from some other source. But the back-up source will by hypothesis be woefully underused and idle most of the time so long as most of the electricity comes from wind and sun. No back-up source can possibly be economical under these conditions, and therefore nobody will develop and deploy such a source.’

      Obvious enough you might think. But, as Menton points out, for most people it isn’t. And our Government seems to be full of such people.

      If it’s to be both compliant with Government policy and effective, the back-up must be both zero-emissions and dispatchable – as regulators call it in New York a ‘Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource’ or DEFR. Their principal candidates are nuclear, hydrogen, and batteries. Menton deals with the deficiencies of each of these.

      But what’s Miliband’s DEFR plan?

      It’s not clear that he thinks he needs one. But, to the extent that something’s been at least mentioned, it seems to be a ‘strategic reserve’ of gas-fired power stations. Dispatchable yes, but obviously not emissions-free. Indeed the whole point of Miliband’s policy is to replace gas-fired power stations for that very reason. The solution it seems (there’s nothing clear about this) is to fit them with carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) systems. But, as George Monbiot pointed out recently, it’s a technology that for 20 years ‘has spectacularly failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions’. About the only thing that obvious about CCS is that, if it ever worked, it would be absurdly expensive.

      In other words, Miliband doesn’t have a viable DEFR plan. Yet without one (and it’s hard to see how there can ever be one), ‘zero emission electricity by 2030’ is impossible i.e. here’s another massive unresolved problem.

      Liked by 2 people

    46. Yes, Robin, I entirely agree. A few days ago I made a submission to the National Grid (in response to their intention to up-grade the network from Chesterfield to Willington) in which I pointed out that, although they were doing the up-grade because of more ‘renewables’ coming on to the grid, they should concentrate first on dispatchable generators in order to ensure grid security and reliability.

      The people in charge (politicians & civil servants) do not know what they do not know. This is frightening incompetence. We really do live in dangerous times … and all because our elites swallowed the destructive CO2-means-dangerous-climate-change meme without adequate cost-benefit and due diligence. They would rather ingratiate themselves with the IPCC than look after the basic interests of the British people. It makes me shudder. Regards, John C.

      Liked by 2 people

    48. Mark: it will be interesting to see how these clever people go about fixing the problems identified by Turver and Menton (see above). Not including Gary Smith of course who, very sensibly, considers the project to be impossible.

      Liked by 2 people

    49. Fraser Myers deputy editor of Spiked has published a most interesting article this morning:

      The death pains of the European Union
      Even arch-Eurocrats are admitting that Brussels is leading Europe to ruin.

      It’s about a massive and exceptionally gloomy report by Mario Draghi, former head of the European Central Bank, in which he states that the EU, suffering serious economic trouble for some time, can only avoid an even worse future by adopting a programme of massive economic reform. Worth reading in full but I want to focus here on Draghi’s demand for an EU funded investment plan of €800 billion per year and especially on this paragraph:

      Even if Draghi’s plan were to somehow come to fruition, it would not address the EU’s critical failures. As his report notes, alongside low investment, another leading cause of Europe’s industrial stagnation is high energy prices. On average, EU firms pay 158 per cent more for electricity and 345 per cent more for natural gas than their US counterparts. But Draghi chooses to ignore the key reason for this. The US has abundant, cheap and secure supplies of energy because it has embraced fossil fuels. The EU, on the other hand, generates energy expensively – and has to import much of it from outside the continent – because it has shunned domestic fossil-fuel production and embraced unreliable renewable energy to meet Net Zero targets. Yet Draghi’s proposed ‘solution’ is to combine the push for ‘competitiveness’ with ‘decarbonisation’. Of the €800 billion being demanded in his proposed investment plan, €450 billion would be spent on Net Zero projects. This would mean doubling down on a failed strategy, potentially accelerating Europe’s decline.

      Perhaps this should be drawn to Mad Ed’s attention.

      Liked by 2 people

    50. Some extracts from Miliband’s speech to the faithful at the Labour Party conference:

      We must build a country which puts working people first once again, and just look at what your Labour government has been able to do in energy policy along in a few short weeks.

      The onshore wind ban in place for nine years under the Tories – swept away in 72 hours under Labour. Cheap, clean solar power, blocked for years under the Tories, unlocked in the first week of a Labour government for 100s of 1000s of homes. Offshore wind, trashed under the Tories, roaring back under Labour with the most successful renewable auction in history. That’s the difference a Labour government makes.

      And I’ll tell you something else that has changed . Now this may surprise you. But, you know, the last Tory government, they believed in public ownership of our energy infrastructure, but only if it was by foreign governments. We believe that British people have the right to own and benefit from our natural resources and, friends, we’re making it happen. Great British Energy,, demanded by this conference, at the heart of our manifesto, overwhelmingly backed by the public, and now being delivered by your Labour government – that’s the difference a Labour government makes.

      And, friends, my message today is this – we’ve only just started. You know, of course, the country faces hard times. There is no doubt the Tories have left Britain in a complete mess, but hear me when I say this – because we are Labour, tough times mean we don’t lower our sights – we raise them. Why? Because for every family in fuel poverty, for every young person denied opportunity, every community locked out of prosperity, the challenges they face after 14 years of the Tories, demand more ambition from us, not less. So our inheritance is a call to greater action and a decade of national renewal.

      And at the election there was an argument about our country’s future. The Tories and their friends on the right said we should turn away from climate action and clean energy. We said no and we won the argument. And I’ll tell you why. Because the British people know our mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower is the way to put energy policy back in the service of working people.

      Social justice, economic justice, climate justice – that’s the mission of this Labour government. Now, as Charlie said, the Tory energy failure has left us exposed as a country with the British people paying the price, at the mercy of global fossil fuel markets – that is why energy prices will rise once again on October 1st.

      And there is only one way to fix the Tory mess – our mission for clean power by 2030. Onshore wind, solar power, offshore wind, nuclear, tidal, hydrogen, carbon capture – an armoury of clean power, and I’ll tell you this – while the Tories left us weak and vulnerable, this Labour government will break the power of the petrostates and dictators over our energy policy. And we will bring this opportunity to your area with our local power plan for local neighbourhoods. Solar panels on your local schools, your local housing estate, your community centre – turbines, batteries, thousands of projects across Britain tackling fuel poverty, led by Labour local authorities – that’s the difference a Labour government makes. And we’ve only just started.

      We all know that the poorest people in our country often live in cold, draughty homes; many rent from private landlords, below decent standards. Friends, I say it’s a Tory legacy – it’s a Tory scandal – it’s a Tory outrage. This Labour government will not tolerate it. So I can tell you today we will end this injustice. Decent standards for private rented homes, warmer homes, lower bills. That’s the difference a Labour government makes and because being Labour means in tough times we raise our sights, we don’t lower them, I can today announce that we will go further. With Angela Rayner, we will ensure that families living in council homes, families living in all types of social housing, have these standards due – over 1 million families lifted out of fuel poverty. That is the difference a Labour government makes.

      And our mission – our energy policy – is about delivering economic justice too. You know, clean energy is the biggest economic opportunity of our time. But for years our country has been failed by the Tories’ fly by night, short term, free market nonsense that failed Britain’s workers. But, friends, no more. Under this Labour government, as Rachel Reeves so brilliant6ly said this morning, industrial policy is back. We care about what we make, where things are made and who makes them. And I promise you this – I will use every lever we have to win jobs and build new industries for Britain. Great British Energy – the National Wealth Fund, the British jobs bonus and let’s spell out what this future means.

      Jobs building carbon capture and storage, jobs manufacturing electrolysers for hydrogen, jobs constructing the next generation of nuclear power stations, jobs manufacturing for floating wind, using the skills of our North Sea workers in oil and gas, and to decarbonise our country. A plan to reindustrialise Britain. That’s the difference a Labour government makes…

      …You know, the Tories used to say that because Britain was just 1% of global emissions, that was somehow an excuse for inaction. And under them, Britain shrank and deserted the global stage, We say never again. We can only keep future generations safe if we show global climate leadership, using the power of our example at home to demand that others act too. That’s why, later this week, Keir and I will be representing you, on behalf of the British government, at the United Nations, with one clear message. Britain is back in the business of climate leadership, getting serious about shifting away from fossil fuels. Every major company with proper climate plans, the first major country in the world to set the goal of clean power by 2030. That is what we mean by climate leadership. That’s the difference a Labour government can make and will make….

      …Friends, Labour is back, Britain is back and we have, indeed, only just started.

      [It’s utterly delusional, but perhaps the final sentence is the most worrying of all].

      Like

    51. Mark, thanks most interesting. And, as you say, utterly delusional. Have you got a link to this speech?

      Like

    53. Just when you thought Milibean couldn’t get even more barking, he hangs upside down in his bat cave and starts howling at the moon. Jesus, we need to get him out, somehow, anyhow.

      Like

    56. Mark: following your providing us with Facebook’s extracts from the Miliband speech (thanks), I searched diligently for a copy of it on the MSM. And couldn’t find one anywhere. It’s as if no one was interested. Surely not?

      And now the Labour Party has published it. And, although, as you say, it’s not for the faint-hearted, I was in fact amused by the absurdity of so much of it.

      As for Starmer’s ‘sausage’ speech – groan.

      Like

    58. Jaime,

      It’s not just the sausages that we should be concerned with. In the interest of balance we should also be calling for a free plasticine.

      Liked by 1 person

    59. John,

      This is what St Greta of Aspergers has been calling for: official government recognition of the Pleistocene, and the return of the Pleistocene, so we can all live once again in low CO2 glacial bliss. Only then can the sausages be freed.

      Liked by 1 person

    60. We were told the adults were back in the room and had taken control. From where I am sitting, it feels more like watching an episode of the Young Ones (mixed with a sprinkling of Animal Farm). I have identified one particular Cabinet Minister for the role of Neil.

      Like

    61. Meanwhile, David Turver hits the nail on the head again:

      “Miliband Doubles Down on Expensive Energy

      All the technologies he is pushing are more expensive than gas, so will lead to deindustrialisation”

      https://davidturver.substack.com/p/miliband-doubles-down-expensive-energy

      ...It is interesting then that his ideas for more jobs and prosperity centre around more expensive intermittent energy that will be the inevitable consequence of his mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower by 2030. It is interesting that he recommitted to the 2030 net zero grid target, because only last month that he and his sidekick Chris Stark sent out an SOS to the NG ESO asking how to deliver it.

      Miliband eschewed the free market and instead called for massive spending on what he termed an armoury of clean power. These technologies include onshore wind, solar power, offshore wind, nuclear, tidal, hydrogen and, carbon capture. He said he wants to break the power of the petro-states.

      The trouble is that the only technology on his list that can deliver firm power is nuclear. The others are either expensive, unreliable intermittent sources or expensive technologies to try and mitigate intermittency or emissions. Every single contract awarded in AR6 was awarded at a higher price than the market rate so far this financial year. No wonder he doesn’t want the free market anywhere near electricity generation. Carbon capture applied to a gas power station will increase the demand for gas to produce the same amount of electricity. With Miliband’s ban on offshore drilling and the continuing fracking moratorium, carbon capture will increase the power of the petro-states and increase energy prices....

      Like

    62. “Ed Miliband is Britain’s minister for good vibes

      Amid much Labour doom and gloom, the energy secretary appeared to be having the time of his life.”

      https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-energy-secretary-ed-miliband-good-vibes-labour-party-conference/

      ...it’s evidence of just how much agency Miliband has been given within the wider Starmer-Reeves political project.

      One energy industry executive who has spoken with Starmer about the government’s clean energy plans came away struck by the free rein Miliband has been given by the PM. “He’s empowered Ed Miliband. He trusts his team to go and do it,” the executive said.

      And if the going gets tougher in the months ahead, Miliband insists he’s braced for those battles.

      “There’s this phrase in the tech world, ‘move fast and break things’,” he told a group of green activists at a Labour conference drinks reception on Sunday evening….”

      I have to admit to failing to include the full quote, because it’s so much more appropriate to leave it at that point (read the article to see how it ended). The whole article offers up a worrying picture of Miliband being fully supported by the Cabinet and PM in what I regard as his one-man mission to wreck what’s left of UK industry, to destroy the countryside, and to inflict expensive and intermittent energy and blackouts on the British people. Terrifying.

      Liked by 3 people

    64. Oh no – according to the Guardian ‘leading climate scientists’ are criticising Mad Ed’s policies now:

      Climate scientists call on Labour to pause £1bn plans for carbon capture
      Letter says technologies to produce blue hydrogen and capture CO2 are unproven and could hinder net zero efforts

      Like

    65. From the Telegraph:

      Britain paying highest electricity prices in the world
      Cost of power for industrial businesses now four times more expensive than in US

      But don’t worry Mad Ed has the answer: get rid of fossil fuel generation and invest billions in wind turbines. Easy peasey.

      Like

    66. I read today (regrettably I can’t find it now) that whereas domestic customers in UK pay 4 times as much for electricity as they do for gas, businesses in the UK pay 6 times more for electricity than they do for gas. Does anyone know if this is correct?

      Like

    68. “NI on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2032”

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9dygpwv899o

      Northern Ireland is on track to significantly reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with a new report forecasting a 33% decrease by 2032.

      The change has mostly been driven by a move away from coal in the energy sector.

      But it falls well short of the “at least 48%” reduction required by the Climate Change Act 2022.…[my emphasis].

      The report tells us all about the areas that aren’t coming up to snuff, the difficulties of hitting the target, and the fact that what has been achieved to date really represents the low-hanging fruit of ditching coal. It doesn’t tell us what it’s cost to date, how much it will cost going forward, how the target is to be achieved or what the point is (given the minuscule nature of Northern Ireland’s emissions in the global scheme of things). Finally, it’s another example of egregious BBC spin in the headline. Given the fact that the province is well off its target, one might have expected a negative headline, but no we get an upbeat one, which even includes the words “on track”, when it’s clearly off track.

      Liked by 2 people

    69. Tom Slater, Spike’s editor, has a piece this morning headed:

      Led by pygmies
      If Starmer, Lammy and Miliband are the best our elites can produce, Britain is surely ripe for revolution.

      Here’s what he says about Mad Ed:

      That this man is our Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero is a bad joke. That we even have a Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (thank you, Conservative Party) is a bad joke, given you can have energy security or Net Zero, but you certainly can’t have both. Government figures released this week revealed that British companies are paying the highest electricity prices of anywhere in the developed world. And in Miliband we have an eco-zealot keen to double down on all the policies that got us to this point – who genuinely thinks we can ‘decarbonise’ the electricity grid by 2030 and wants us to shun our own fossil-fuel reserves at a time of sky-high energy bills and global instability.

      Miliband is more culpable than most for the green immiseration of the UK. He was one of the custodians of the 2008 Climate Change Act, which committed the British government to punishing, legally binding decarbonisation targets for the first time. It mandated swingeing CO2-emissions cuts of 80 per cent, despite there being no pain-free way to get there. And it established the unelected, ‘expert’ Climate Change Committee to preside over UK climate policy, over the heads of the public. The Tories, who were both just as given to the environmentalist orthodoxy and ever-desperate to appeal to people who will never vote for them, took this demented agenda to its logical conclusion, mandating Net Zero emissions by 2050.

      It’s not just that our leaders are personally unimpressive, piss-weak, lacking in any authority – although all that is very true. They are also clinging to failed elite ideologies – extreme environmentalism chief among them …

      Worth reading in full.

      Liked by 2 people

    70. Robin,

      I have just finished reading it. It sums up exactly how I feel. I realise that getting older doesn’t simply mean that the police are starting to look young – there’s also a tendency to think that things were better in the past. In all seriousness, though, I genuinely cannot remember a time when the quality of our political leaders was so low. They seem bereft of intelligence, ability, even of common sense, and there’s an awful lot of greed and hypocrisy about. Of course, there have been such times before – the eighteenth century saw politics riddled with corruption, the inter-war years seem to have produced a particularly dim and self-entitled crop of politicians – but I think it’s as bad it’s been since the end of the Second World War. I’m not just talking about Labour either – I’m talking about all of them.

      Liked by 2 people

    72. Chris Morrison has an excellent takedown this morning in the Daily Sceptic of the latest attempt by the Office for National Statistics to show us the substantial number of ‘green’ jobs that are being created in the UK.

      An extract:

      As we can see, the ONS survey is full of these make-work schemes providing jobs that can only exist by rigging free markets and providing eye-watering subsidies from consumers and taxpayers. As the more concerned trade unionists can see, much of the cost of these fantasy ventures falls on the poorest members of society forced to pay higher prices for many of the basic essentials of life.

      Worth reading.

      Liked by 4 people

    74. Touching tribute on a black day in British history:

      DOLE NOT COAL

      A truly sad day for the UK & esp Nottinghamshire as Ratcliffe-on-soar shuts down

      I grew up with the iconic, starkly beautiful chimneys visible from our garden. It burned coal my dad dug up at Cotgrave In the name of Net Zero zealotry we’ve outsourced our carbon footprint & destroyed jobs (see also Port Talbot today)

      Where are these 1000s of “clean, green jobs” we’ve been promised for years? A few blokes manning windmills will not bring a fraction of the prosperity, pride that Ratcliffe did. It’s economic self-harm on a truly stupid level. Rest in peace, old girl

      https://x.com/MartinDaubney/status/1840677865064398875

      Liked by 3 people

    75. Many years ago I was Commercial Director of a company that inter alia made underground control equipment that aided remote working in coal mines. As a result I visited pits throughout the UK. In many ways they were unpleasant places and not somewhere where I would liked to have worked. Nonetheless it’s sad that they’ve all gone. And absurd that we have all this energy beneath our feet (oil, gas and coal) all of which can be safely, cleanly and economically extracted, yet we’re forced to purchase all three from overseas sources.

      Liked by 3 people

    76. Robin,

      I am the son, grandson, great grandson, great grandson (and so on almost ad infinitum) of men who laboured underground in coal mines. As an articled clerk, and subsequently as a newly-qualified solicitor, I also spent a significant amount of time interviewing miners and former miners with regard to industrial deafness claims.

      Consequently, I am well aware of how utterly dreadful life underground could be, and of the suffering of generations of literally millions of UK coal miners. I am also acutely conscious of the environmental degradation caused by opencast mining.

      Having said all that modern mining methods, while never capable of eliminating danger and unpleasantness entirely certainly mean that coal-mining is capable of being safer and less awful than it was in the past. We have our own coal (and, as you point out, gas and oil also) and in my opinion it’s close to treason to refuse to allow us to use our own resources while we still need them and import them from abroad. If people want to work in those industries, they should be allowed to do so. It’s common sense that energy security is enhanced by having access to such resources and is reduced by forcing us to rely on foreigners for them.

      Liked by 2 people

    78. Net Zero 2030 is now officially Net Five(%). Soon it will be Net 10, then Net 20. Remember, this is just for the decarbonisation of electricity generation – the ‘easy’ bit. The clowns are in charge.

      “There’s no established definition of clean power,” says Slye. “So what does it realistically mean? One of the key pieces of work from the Committee on Climate Change found that the cost [of decarbonisation] really begins to escalate when you reach those last percentage points towards 100% clean power.

      “So at the moment, the working definition that we’re using for this analysis is to reach 95% clean power. That means that, by 2030, 95% of the generation in Great Britain over the period of a year will be from clean power sources. And that means that the remaining 5% will come from unabated gas. That’s our definition.”

      https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/01/the-man-in-charge-of-labours-green-energy-dream-its-at-the-limit-of-whats-achievable

      Liked by 1 person

    79. I expect we will see lots of smoke and mirrors with this. The plans call for massive over-building of renewables, especially wind so there will probably be many occasions when we have to export the excess – at lousy prices, no doubt. So that might get them closer to “95% of the generation in Great Britain over the period of a year will be from clean power sources” even if they don’t meet that much of demand. I think Scotland already claims to produce enough green electricity to meet its demand but fails to mention that’s in aggregate, not covering demand all the time.

      Liked by 1 person

    81. Allison Pearson in the Telegraph has lots to say on Net Zero in her piece today. This is from the finale:

      In his immensely readable memoir, Unleashed, Boris rather gives the game away. “Contrary to the belief of many of my Tory friends,” he writes, “there just aren’t enough votes in being anti-net zero. Look at the polls!”

      Well, I reckon the polls could change drastically if the British people were only allowed to wake up to the fact that their country is being martyred on the altar of net zero. What an ignoble, impoverished fate awaits us. We are well on the way to ending up as Theme Park Britain. All our heavy industry gone, our proud history of manufacturing gone, our steel, our coal, our skilled workers sold out, our prosperity castrated, the stuff we buy made and brought in from overseas. The one thing we are left shipping abroad is our CO2 emissions.

      This is one of the most disastrous mistakes in our history. I mean that.

      Telegraph link, behind the magic curtain.

      Liked by 4 people

    82. A Derek Smith has posted this interesting comment on the Allison Pearson article:

      I am a retired senior power industry engineer with 40 years experience in the electricity industry. The general public along with seemingly the political elite generally do not appreciate that electricity supply has to be balanced almost precisely with the demand in real time.

      There can be no doubt that National grid has and is using clever techniques such as demand side controls that provides payments to heavy consumers to switch off, even nibbling back supply from EV batteries and domestic batteries. They have also installed huge amounts of Lithium battery packs sometimes hundreds of mega Watts.

      The problem is all these demand type controls are only rated to help over the darkness peak which is a few hours especially so in the winter months. This was the primary reason smart meters were introduced to enable spot market pricing to be passed directly onto the consumer and frighten the bejesus out of people using electricity in peak times, I know because I was at meetings where this was discussed.

      The problem with all these clever or sinister measures depending on your view is that they are designed for hours of high demand not days or even weeks when there is little in the way of sun or wind. A base load consisting of a fleet of modern Nuclear plant is currently the only way to offer secure electricity supplies, at least then we would not have families waiting for the price to drop before feeding their children.

      I can tell you with absolute certainty we are walking into disaster, civilised society is but a very thin veneer, imagine the recent riots taking place within the backdrop of a prolonged power outage, these can often take days to re-establish supply.

      Is his commentary valid and are his fears justified?

      Like

    83. “Is his commentary valid and are his fears justified?”

      Yes. That’s why we’re here, banging on about it!

      Like

    84. Well OK Mark. But I’d like someone who’s technically qualified to do so (John Cullen?) to confirm (or otherwise) that Derek Smith is right about how the NG is dealing with demand. For example have they really ‘installed huge amounts of Lithium battery packs sometimes hundreds of mega Watts‘? And is a fleet of Nuclear plants ‘the only way to offer secure electricity‘?

      I certainly share his fears about the dire consequences of a prolonged blackout – even without a recurrence of recent riots.

      Like

    85. Copyright be damned, Alison’s article is too good and far too important not to be available to all:

      Breaking news: a fire at a giant solar farm in East Anglia is raging out of control after a lithium-ion battery is believed to have failed, causing an explosion. Two nearby villages were evacuated last night as toxic gases, vapours and particulates filled the air. Fire chiefs warned residents who had not been evacuated to stay indoors. There was particular concern today for children at a local primary school and residents of a care home. Two boys, both asthmatic, were hospitalised after parents said they had suffered breathing difficulties.

      One of the major hazards of lithium fires is the formation of “smokes” of nanoparticles of lithium oxide and lithium hydroxide, an extremely hazardous lung irritant. Lithium battery fires also emit hazardous pollutants like hydrogen fluoride which causes serious burns. The explosion at the solar farm, which was bitterly opposed by local residents but went ahead after gaining approval from Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, is believed to have damaged the integrity of neighbouring containers. This led to an alarming chain reaction known as “thermal runway.” Witnesses reported that trees and vegetation around the solar facility had set alight over a wide area causing a stampede of hundreds of pigs at one of Suffolk’s major pork producers.   

      Scientists say there is virtually no way to put out a lithium-battery fire. The advice is to “let it burn” or to try and use huge volumes of water to cool the surrounding modules. Fire officers, who had objected to the 2,500-acre solar farm on safety grounds, indicated that the latter course was extremely problematic because they did not have access to that much water on site. Even if they did, it could pose a major environmental risk as water containing many harmful carcinogenic chemicals would run onto farmland and contaminate protected habitats, a reservoir and springs supplying water for human consumption.

      When Mr Miliband rushed through the approval of the solar farm last year, boasting that it took him just three days to approve three of these giant solar farms across the UK, West Suffolk’s Conservative MP, Nick Timothy, said he thought the decision was “quite disgraceful and quite arrogant”. However, Mr Miliband said: “Solar power is crucial to achieving net zero, providing an abundant source of cleaner, cheaper energy… This is the speed we’re working at to achieve energy independence, cut bills for families and kickstart green economic growth.”

      One angry local campaigner said yesterday that the dangers of lithium-ion batteries had failed to be communicated to the public. “Building solar farms on actual farms, depriving us of agricultural land to grow food, in the race to net zero is crazy. If you ask me, Ed Miliband is a dangerous nutter.”

      The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero refused to comment.

      Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and a very cold welcome to Lemming Britain. I expect the sharp-eyed among you deduced that the catastrophic scenario outlined above has not happened. Well, not yet anyway. It may sound as far-fetched as that ludicrous BBC One drama about a runaway sleeper train (the train works perfectly and passengers are not subjected to the three worst words in the English language: Rail Replacement Bus. Er, hello?), but I didn’t make this story up. Peter Edwards, emeritus professor of inorganic chemistry at Oxford University, and other senior scientists who know about this technology, provided me with precise details of what could happen if a lithium-ion battery exploded on a solar farm. Prof Edwards says it’s not a question of if such a disaster occurs in the UK, but when. (A few days ago in Montreal, 15,000 kg of lithium batteries inside a shipping container caught fire sending toxic gas over the city. San Diego is contemplating a temporary pause on applications for new battery energy storage systems – BESS – until more stringent building and safety codes are in place.) 

      The British Safety Council recently reported that lithium-ion batteries are “a growing fire risk” with British fire services attending 46 per cent more blazes linked to BESS in the past year.

      But this is not about lithium-ion batteries, hazardous though they are. Nor is it about the carpeting of this green and pleasant land with a billion ghastly Chinese baking trays. They are simply two examples of the way Ed Miliband is endangering the UK. The man is a menace, frankly. If it were ever in any doubt, shocking events this week have proved that the job title Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, is an oxymoron. Net zero is the enemy of energy security.

      Try talking about energy security in Port Talbot, in my part of South Wales, where the Tata Steel works just shut down with the loss of 2,800 jobs. Good jobs that provided a decent wage for breadwinners and kept that proud community alive. With the closure of Port Talbot, we are no longer able to make high-calibre steel, the basic material for our own defence. India, where entirely by coincidence Tata (checks notes), just opened a blast furnace of the type they closed in Wales, and, of course, China (3,092 coal-fired power stations), will be selling us all our steel in future. Because importing steel from thousands of miles away is not environmentally unfriendly in the slightest.   

      The Port Talbot plant’s fate was sealed by the soaring cost of UK electricity, the most expensive in the developed world, according to government figures. The price of power for industrial businesses has jumped a staggering 124 per cent in five years, repelling international investors. Thanks to Ed and his sanctimonious, middle-class, knit-your-own-orgasm chums, the country that gave the world its Industrial Revolution due to our coal and steel now no longer produces either.

      It’s unbelievable. On Monday, in a “landmark moment for clean energy,” the last coal-fired power station in Britain, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, in Nottinghamshire, closed. (Compare and contrast, if you will, with Germany where the government has just announced that it will not pull forward the country’s coal power phase-out to 2030 from the officially agreed exit date of 2038. Something to do with not being criminally insane or indifferent to their country’s competitiveness, I guess).

      The closure of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station is an historic moment in our energy history.

      Today we pay tribute to the workers who powered our country, and recognise the critical role they can play in our energy future. pic.twitter.com/NqRP4gRXXd— Ed Miliband (@Ed_Miliband) October 1, 2024

      The Nottinghamshire power station had been held in reserve in recent years in case of “generational challenges,” such as a cold winter. Never fear! Mad Miliband has banished cold winters through a simple expedient. A vast bonfire will be created of clothes donated to senior Labour figures by Lord Waheed Alli. Any pensioners who freeze to death because they lost their winter fuel allowance will be thrown on the national bonfire, an environmentally friendly way to dispose of pesky Conservative voters. 

      But what about the emissions, I hear you cry. Good question! Ed will be able to deal with those through a Carbon Offsetting Scheme specially designed for green multi-millionaires and climate hypocrites who currently enjoy hefty bungs from the unsuspecting British taxpayer in order to make renewables look viable.

      Closing our last coal-fired power station was just ideological posturing. It enables Miliband to boast at international summits that we are taking a “global lead on climate action” and “winning the race to net zero.” Hmmm. Can you actually be described as winning a race which no other country is stupid enough to enter? 

      I bet you’re as relieved as I am that we turned off our ability to make our own electricity with coal and we can now pay extortionate prices for gas to generate electricity. Particularly in the light of the Labour Government’s pledge to block new licences to explore oil and gas fields in the North Sea. Offshore firms and the GMB trade union said this week that this risks North Sea job losses on “a scale similar to closing the Grangemouth oil refinery nearly every week for five years”. The oil and gas sector, which, not incidentally, generates a huge slice of our tax revenue, is “facing a cliff-edge” for investment, production and jobs.

      Oh, yes, it’s all going brilliantly in Milibandland. Our energy security is now totally dependent on imported gas, our construction industry is entirely dependent on imported steel. Now, take an educated guess at who has the solar panel, wind turbine and electric vehicle market stitched up? The best bit, I think, is that, were we ever to go to war with China, most of the kit we need to fight China will have to be provided by – oh, dear – China. (Perhaps South Wales manufacturing world-class steel was not such a bad idea after all).

      It’s a joke alright, but it’s not funny. Thanks to the net zero obsession of Ed and an elite green class who are creaming off vast fortunes (an investigation published this week by the website Unherd even suggested that David Miliband was profiting from green energy policies introduced by his brother) as a nation we are now uniquely vulnerable to turbulent international conditions. And at the mercy of our neighbours to keep the lights on. (Yesterday, 13 per cent of our electricity came from Norway, Denmark, France, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands – so much for energy security).

      One consolation in Lemming Britain is that Mad Miliband’s green revolution promises to drive down energy bills for families. Which is quite surprising when they leapt up by £149 today after the new price cap from Ofgem came into force. (A typical home will now pay £1,717 on energy bills a year, up from £1,568). 

      Wasn’t there something Sir Keir Starmer and Ed said during the general election campaign about cutting £300 off our energy bills? While other countries reduce theirs ours go up and up as we try to hit the net zero target as fast as possible.

      In this epic farce, the greatest absurdity of all is that, even if we got to net zero, it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to the atmosphere. In The Periodic Table, Primo Levi called CO2 “the aerial form of carbon”. It simply doesn’t respect national boundaries.

      I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a strong sense of déjà vu. As figures like Sir Chris Whitty and Boris Johnson begin cautiously to admit to doubts about the wisdom of lockdowns, net zero looks a lot like the Covid fiasco. Ignorant politicians push blatant scientific absurdities onto a population scared witless by hyped-up propaganda without paying any heed to the long-term cost to the country.

      In his immensely readable memoir, Unleashed, Boris rather gives the game away. “Contrary to the belief of many of my Tory friends,” he writes, “there just aren’t enough votes in being anti-net zero. Look at the polls!”

      Well, I reckon the polls could change drastically if the British people were only allowed to wake up to the fact that their country is being martyred on the altar of net zero. What an ignoble, impoverished fate awaits us. We are well on the way to ending up as Theme Park Britain. All our heavy industry gone, our proud history of manufacturing gone, our steel, our coal, our skilled workers sold out, our prosperity castrated, the stuff we buy made and brought in from overseas. The one thing we are left shipping abroad is our CO2 emissions.

      This is one of the most disastrous mistakes in our history. I mean that. 

      If the Government continues to follow Mad Ed down this reckless, destructive path it will serve them right when net zero blows up like lithium batteries in Labour’s face.

      Liked by 1 person

    86. Robin, depends upon what you mean by secure. Nuclear fuel lasts for a very long time before replenishment and so gives you a long period of stability (barring accidents). By contrast conventional fossil fuel generators also give grid stability (by instantaneously matching, albeit through some human interaction, load to demand) but require more frequent refuelling (as per the coal trains that used to arrive at Ratcliffe to keep it running).

      I too was surprised by the “hundreds of megawatts” remark. It seemed to be rather large. However, as the commentator says, the batteries will last only a short time before requiring refilling and so are no use in dunkelflauten.

      There is also the problem I have not yet had an answer to from any source. That is, what happens in a “black start” situation (i.e. where a large part (or all!) of the grid has ceased functioning)? In the old days there were lots of rotating generators to provide the necessary AC (sinusoidal) waveform to get the grid synchronised again; start one generator and then you can start the others to bootstrap the whole grid back to rude health. However, today with so many renewable generators feeding the grid through DC (not AC) lines there is no longer much AC kit around (apart from the short-duration pumped storage facilities). So the margin of safety today is, I think, much reduced in this regard. Are any of our international interconnectors AC rather than DC? if so then they could help with the reboot. Worrying times, especially with so many people who are not technically competent in charge.

      In haste, John C.

      Liked by 3 people

    87. Thanks John. I was surprised by Derek Smith’s nuclear power plant security claim as I thought FF generators would be adequate – after all we seem to have had little difficulty refuelling them in the past. Your comment on how these days we would be likely to find it difficult to deal with a ‘black start’ is very worrying.

      Like

    88. Here you can see all the grid-connected batteries so far, totalling up to 4.5 GW and ~ 1 hour flat out when fully charged.

      It was disconcerting to see the expert refer to “mega Watts.” I appreciate that getting units right is trivial, but one would expect a 40-year seller of onions to know how to spell the word onion.

      Liked by 1 person

    89. Note:

      Total: 4,544 MW, 6,111 MWh

      This means that the batteries, when fully charged, can supply 4.5 GW power to the grid for 6111/4544=1.3 hours=80 minutes. At what huge cost, financially and environmentally? Pathetic!

      Like

    90. John C/Robin: we still have a lot of gas-fired plants, at least 20 GW, aiui. Surely those would be enough to provide inertia, frequency stabilisation, etc and even restart the grid, if required?

      Like

    91. “Microsoft ‘Buys’ Nuclear Power Plant to Run AI – and it’s Showing Us the Future”

      https://dailysceptic.org/2024/10/02/microsoft-buys-nuclear-power-plant-to-run-ai-and-its-showing-us-the-future/

      …There are two highly significant things about this announcement. The first is that the company operates a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island, the site of one of the world’s biggest nuclear accidents. The reactor was due to be decommissioned in the next few years and the plant shut down completely, but it now has been given a new lease of life with this deal. If Constellation gains approval from its local authorities to go ahead with the project, it will truly be a turning point for the future of nuclear energy.

      The second significant fact is that the purchaser of the entire output of this reactor for the next 20 years is Microsoft. The technology giant will build a new plant to develop AI nearby, and it will need the output of a nuclear reactor to guarantee the energy requirements of the project.…

      Liked by 1 person

    92. Problem solved! According to the Telegraph –

      Ed Miliband reveals plan to prevent net zero blackouts
      Giant metal ‘flywheels’ to be installed across Britain to help stabilise electricity grid

      An extract:

      The flywheels, some weighing hundreds of tonnes and spinning up to thousands of revolutions per minute, will store energy that can then be converted back into electricity within fractions of a second. This is designed to help the grid counter the fluctuations caused by renewables.

      They will be installed at key points around the electricity grid to stabilise the net zero electricity transmission systems and minimise the risk of blackouts.

      Any chance of this working by 2030? And, even if it does (unlikely IMHO) it won’t provide the comprehensive grid scale back-up needed when there’s little or no wind or sun.

      Liked by 1 person

    97. A few questions re the Miliband flywheel ‘solution’ (which remember doesn’t solve the little or no wind or sun problem):

      1. ‘To avoid energy losses, the wheels are kept in a frictionless vacuum’. How on earth is that supposed to be achieved?
      2. Has the technology been tested at scale and shown to work?
      3. Does this ‘solution’ solve the ‘black-start’ problem?
      4. Have we got the skilled engineers and labour needed to build the required number of flywheels?
      5. Do we know what is the required number?
      6. Has the government got a fully-costed engineering plan for this project?
      7. Has it carried out a detailed cost/benefit analysis?
      8. As we don’t make primary steel any more, where are these huge wheels going to come from?
      9. Does Miliband have the faintest idea of what’s involved?

      Liked by 2 people

    98. MikeH, while you are correct in principle regarding the existence of gas-fired generators, I think the key words in your comment are, “still have them.” Much of the plant is ageing and, as the Civil Service noted during the general election period, the Grid needs some 30 to 50GW of CCGT plant in short order. Will the new generators be ordered promptly, in slower time, or not at all during the new government’s watch? I am not full of confidence, especially as, according to Turver, the bosses have no technical knowledge.

      Robin, I will come back to start answering (some of) your flywheel questions, I hope in the next few hours.

      In haste again, John C.

      Like

    100. John C, apologies. I think WordPress is testing the patience of us all at the moment, with several perfectly decent comments being trapped in spam. I check it fairly regularly, but I’m a bit busy, and am also frustrated to find things there every or two when I am able to get back to it!

      Like

    101. Thank you, Mark. My comments have appeared, but I can’t LIKE comments any longer – bizarre! Regards, John C.

      Like

    102. Robin, electromagnetic bearings (EMB) can be used to suspend an object using the magnetic force; there is a (vacuum or air) gap between the electromagnet and the suspended object. EMBs are used in, for example, the pharmaceutical industry where contamination by the lubricant of a conventional (e.g. roller) bearing would be unacceptable.

      An EMB uses a DC current to provide the bulk of the suspension force. However, because steady magnetic forces by themselves are unstable (Earnshaw’s Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnshaw%27s_theorem) a small ripple current is superimposed on the DC current; the ripple current is continuously adjusted by an automatic electronic control system so as to control the magnitude of the magnetic force which in its turn keeps the suspended object within the gap tolerance (e.g. 1.0 +/- 0.1 mm). An electronic sensor measures the gap length and feeds that measurement to the control system which injets the correct ripple current.

      Thus electricity is unavoidable in an EMB system. So back-up bearings are required in the case of either electricity failure (blackout) or loss of control by the EMB system. Such back-up bearings are a science in their own right.

      If the suspended object is rotating then running in a vacuum greatly reduces viscous drag. However, the vacuum impedes convection cooling of the rotating object or rotor; only radiative cooling is then possible. Hence, if the rotor is not to become too hot there must be very low losses (e.g. eddy-current or hysteresis losses) induced in the rotor. Regards, John C.

      Liked by 1 person

    103. John C; I share your doubts over this govt’s grasp of the issues.

      I have a 2021 list of our gas plants: 12 of them came on stream since 2000 so should be good for another 20 – 30 years. I would expect them to be running more than at present as demand is predicted to increase since, in the same timeframe, all but one of our nukes will shut down, many of the gas plants will retire and I expect renewables will fall well short much of the time.

      Liked by 1 person

    104. Robin, the JET fusion facility at Culham used two very large flywheel generators as seen here:-

      https://web.archive.org/web/20160105221442/https://www.euro-fusion.org/fusion/jet-tech/jets-flywheels/ Each generator is 9 metres in diameter and weighs 775 tons. The running speed is 225rpm (compared to 3,000 rpm for a 2-pole generator on a 50Hz system, or 3,600 rpm for a 60Hz system).

      These flywheel generators were, I understood, built to avoid overloading the Grid around Culham. This is confirmed by Wiki thus, “JET’s power requirements during the plasma pulse are around 500 MW[51] with peak in excess of 1000 MW.[52] Because power draw from the main grid is limited to 575 MW, two large flywheel generators were constructed to provide this necessary power.[52] Each 775-ton flywheel can spin up to 225 rpm and store 3.75 GJ,[53] roughly the same amount of kinetic energy as a train weighing 5,000 tons traveling at 140 kilometres per hour (87 mph). Each flywheel uses 8.8 MW to spin up and can generate 400 MW (briefly)”

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus

      So large flywheel generators can be built, but they are not production line items. Regards, John C.

      Liked by 1 person

    106. MikeH, what will all this stop-go intermittent running do to the (economic) life-cycle of the GT plants? Shorten it, certainly, but by how much I have no idea, although I note that military aircraft using GTs seem to spend a lot of time in (expensive) maintenance. Regards, John C.

      [I can LIKE again now. Thank you, O God of WordPress.]

      Like

    107. Mark – “Microsoft ‘Buys’ Nuclear Power Plant to Run AI – and it’s Showing Us the Future”

      Up till now I thought data centres/AI were S/Fantasy, seems I’m behind the times.

      Like

    108. John C: stop-start and intermittent operation are certainly hard on equipment so higher maintenance and shorter operating lives would seem likely, as you say. However it’s my guess that power shortages are going to increase as we plunge deeper into the renewables morass while boosting demand with heat pumps, EVs, etc.. So I would expect the declining number of gas plants to have more running time than at present.

      On the flywheels, spinning in a vacuum shouldn’t be a problem in terms of heat as they won’t be energised. As for the associated generators, I understand that they are often enclosed in a hydrogen atmosphere to provide heat transfer while minimising windage. Can’t say I like the sound of that, given hydrogen’s explosive range and the risks of air ingress, sparks and so on!

      Liked by 1 person

    109. The Telegraph article re. Ed’s flywheels is not very educative or enlightening in my opinion. There are two main stability issues with respect to the AC grid – frequency stability and voltage stability. Synchronous generators such as gas and coal powered turbines are very effective in maintaining both frequency and voltage (nominally 50Hz, 240V) within tolerable limits, thus preventing for example, blackouts.

      Frequency is stabilised via the provision of inertia which is a physical property of the large rotating mass of the turbine itself and basically amounts to the tendency for that large mass to keep rotating even when the power/force driving it is cut off – rather like a ship or a heavy goods train keep moving even if the engines cut out. Wind turbines and solar panels don’t supply any inertia to the grid, so when they are dominating power generation and traditional synchronous generators are powered down, the inertia of the system decreases and it has to be replaced to prevent damaging frequency fluctuations which would lead to blackouts and generators tripping.

      Voltage is controlled by something called reactive power which basically is electrical power in the circuit (grid) which, unlike active power (used to power your lights), is not consumed; it just goes back and forth in the circuit and in so doing serves the very useful purpose of maintaining voltage stability during variations in supply and demand. When there’s too much power being generated, reactive power is absorbed, and a potential damaging spike in voltage is avoided. When there is not enough power to meet demand, resulting in a drop in voltage, the stored reactive power compensates by being released into the circuit.

      Synchronous generators, as well as providing active power generation, also provide reactive power and inertia. The national grid was engineered specifically to accommodate such generators and hence was extremely reliable and stable – until ‘renewables’ came along.

      So now national grid engineers are building synchronous condensers (so named because their rotational speed is synchronised to the frequency of the AC grid and they also act like a capacitor to store electrical energy in the circuit) to provide ‘stability services’ to a grid made unstable by the penetration of unreliables. Alternatively, they are modifying decommissioned existing gas or coal fired synchronous generators to perform the same function. Synchronous generators are spun up using surplus electricity from the grid and they run with no load, meaning they don’t generate, but they do provide reactive power and inertia. The latter is where Mad Ed’s spinning flywheels come in: they are basically a very heavy wheel attached to the rotor arm of the spinning turbine, which provides additional mechanical inertia. It’s that simple. The Telegraph gives the impression that these flywheels are going to be installed as standalone contraptions, but it is most likely that they will be add-ons to synchronous generators.

      Liked by 1 person

    110. MikeH, yes, it is standard practice to use H2 in large generators (e.g. 500MW) to both aid rotor cooling (as the synchronous generator’s rotor has a DC excited winding) and reduce windage loss. IIRC there is a slight H2 over pressure to ensure any leak is out of the generator rather than air leak into the generator.

      There is plenty of experience of such H2 operation going back decades. However, will the experienced engineers be retained in our brave new world?

      In haste, John C.

      Like

    111. “Net Zero: Only fanatics fail to see the hopelessness of the ruinous policy

      Every Wednesday in this weekly series, Waste Watch will expose the shocking ways in which taxpayer money is abused”

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/02/net-zero-only-fanatics-fail-to-see-the-hopelessness-of-the/

      Lots of good stuff here, but a snippet will suffice:

      …The former Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee accused Miliband of “trying to destroy this country”.

      “[Miliband] is going to make us economically weaker, energy Security is going to be undermined, agricultural security is going to be undermined, and our national security is going to be undermined.” 

      “Not only is he going to close down important industries in Aberdeen and Teesside [oil, iron and steel] but he’s actually going to destroy the opportunity for growth and employment in this country and send jobs to China,” warned Tugendhat.

      And that is surely the fundamental problem with the concept of Net Zero: no matter how many British jobs are sacrificed as we destroy our coal, gas, oil industries or shut down our steel plants, the environmental impact globally will remain unaffected as those jobs simply move elsewhere in the world….

      …British taxpayers and consumers are endlessly sermonised by politicians of all colours that accepting higher tax bills and energy bills is the price we must pay in order to protect the planet. But it is abundantly clear that setting arbitrary, unrealistic targets really only serves to threaten our national and economic security, no matter how morally superior it makes our policy-makers feel.

      Liked by 3 people

    113. JaimeJ/JohnC: thanks for those explanations and clarifications. I confess I do not understand reactive power so am very happy that there are folk who do – and that it works!

      Wrt synchronous generators, could gas plants serve that purpose, running with no load – or very little – while being available to ramp up when more power is needed?

      Like

    114. …The former Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee accused Miliband of “trying to destroy this country”.

      Tugendhat is a conspiracy theorist!

      Mike, as I’ve said on the Retard thread, I think synchronous generators have to be modified to run as condensers and hence it’s not possible to just switch them on and off between generator and condenser mode, though I could be wrong about that. Certainly, decommissioned generators are now being run as condensers, providing both reactive power and inertia to the grid.

      Like

    115. Chris Morrison has an important article in the Daily Sceptic this morning:

      Massive Electricity Price Rises Expected as National Grid Confirms Gas is the Only Back-Up for Intermittent Renewables

      There’s nothing in this article that should come as a surprise to anyone here. We’ve known about Labour’s plan for a ‘strategic reserve’ of gas fired power stations since well before the election. But now Slye has confirmed that. Here’s Morrison’s opening paragraph:

      The cat is finally out of the bag. It is planned that Britain by 2030 will produce 95% of its electricity from so-called green sources with 5% coming from gas. The pretence that electricity can be stored at scale to support unreliable renewables is nowhere to be seen in a recent Guardian interview with Fintan Slye, the head of National Energy System Operator (NESO). “There will continue to be a significant amount of power plants in reserve for the cold, dull, windless weeks of winter, but they will run for only limited periods,” observes Slye, whose operation was recently nationalised and is responsible for balancing supply and demand across the National Grid.

      Morrison goes on to spell out the inevitable consequence:

      … keeping an entire fleet of gas turbines on standby will cost a huge amount of money, causing electricity prices to soar. The planned destruction of Britain’s own gas and oil industry will hardly help future sourcing and pricing, let alone national security.

      Well worth reading in full. Although as I’ve said there’s nothing here with which we’re not familiar, Morrison puts it well.

      The referenced Guardian interview can be accessed HERE.

      One thing that’s not mentioned is Miliband’s reported plan to fit all these gas turbines with carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) systems. I wonder why.

      Liked by 3 people

    116. Despair not. Ed ‘Baldrick’ Miliband has a cunning plan. As a tweet from his department revealed last week, the government plans to repeal a couple of laws, making electricity cheaper at a stroke. Which laws? Why, the first and second laws of thermodynamics of course. The tweet read: ‘Did you know a heat pump is 3x more efficient than a gas boiler? Meaning it generates 3 times more energy than it consumes.’

      Blow up the cooling towers at Ratcliffe-on-Soar: the windmills and flywheels are going to save us; it’s time to celebrate!

      Liked by 3 people

    118. Further to the last paragraph of my note on the Morrison article, perhaps there’s a solution in the offing. From today’s FT:

      UK to pledge £22bn funding for carbon capture and storage projects
      Latest efforts to develop nascent technology comes after years of delay

      Or perhaps this will be yet another highly expensive (more than that dreadful ‘black hole’) waste of money.

      Liked by 1 person

    119. Further to the FT article the BBC has got the story:

      Nearly £22bn pledged for carbon capture projects

      The government said:

      …the funding for two “carbon capture clusters” on Merseyside and Teesside, promised over the next 25 years, would create thousands of jobs, attract private investment and help the UK meet climate goals.

      Other extracts:

      But some green campaigners have said the investment would “extend the life of planet-heating oil and gas production”.

      It is seen by the likes of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Climate Change Committee as a key element in meeting targets to cut the greenhouse gases driving dangerous climate change.

      Up to £21.7bn will subsidise three projects on Teesside and Merseyside to support the development of the clusters, including the infrastructure to transport and store carbon.

      It will also support two transport and storage networks carrying captured carbon to deep geological storage in Liverpool Bay and the North Sea.

      The projects are expected to start storing captured carbon from 2028.

      Just in time to get rid of the CO2 from all those gas-burning power stations by 2030? (See the Chris Morrison item above.) Hmm…

      Like

    120. Robin, the BBC has it now (front page news on its website) and I’ve put up a link on my carbon capture thread, but for ease of reference, this is it:

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4301n3771o

      I loved this paragraph:

      …Despite Miliband first announcing plans to develop carbon capture projects for power plants in 2009 during the last Labour government, little progress has been made since in the UK….

      Or globally, they might have added.

      Like

    122. On 13th September I referenced an article by George Monbiot in the Guardian in which he said this about CCS:

      Take carbon capture and storage: catching and burying carbon dioxide emissions from power stations, oil and gas fields, and steel and cement plants. For 20 years, it has spectacularly failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, its only clear successes involve enhanced oil recovery: carbon dioxide is used to drive oil out of geological formations that are otherwise difficult to exploit. With astonishing chutzpah, some oil companies have claimed the small amount of carbon that remains trapped in the rocks as a climate benefit. Though it is greatly outweighed by the extra oil extracted, they have, as a result, received billions in government subsidies.

      The previous UK government pledged £20bn to “develop” carbon capture and storage: a technology that has been “developing” for 50 years. Astonishingly, Labour, despite cutting everything else, promised in its manifesto to sustain this investment.

      Liked by 1 person

    123. “How Ed Miliband plans to conjure electricity out of nothing”

      https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-ed-miliband-plans-to-conjure-electricity-out-of-nothing/

      ...We found out last week that Britain has now for the first time achieved top spot, among 25 nations, in terms of the price we pay for this supernatural ichor, for both domestic and industrial use.

      This is a disaster. Electricity prices have doubled in Britain since 2019. They are 46 per cent above the International Energy Agency’s median for industrial and 80 per cent above the median for domestic electricity. As the independent energy analyst David Turver points out, British business pays almost four times as much as American business for each unit of power and British consumers pay almost three times as much as Americans. And that is last year’s data, before Ed Miliband has even started on his policies to accelerate decarbonisation: all the technologies he champions are more expensive than gas.…

      …Despair not. Ed ‘Baldrick’ Miliband has a cunning plan. As a tweet from his department revealed last week, the government plans to repeal a couple of laws, making electricity cheaper at a stroke. Which laws? Why, the first and second laws of thermodynamics of course. The tweet read: ‘Did you know a heat pump is 3x more efficient than a gas boiler? Meaning it generates 3 times more energy than it consumes.’

      Apart from the fact that the second sentence definitely does not mean the same as the first, it implies that you can conjure energy out of nothing, breaking the first law of thermodynamics, and that entropy-eating perpetual-motion machines are possible, breaking the second. Hooray!

      Liked by 1 person

    124. Jaime, regarding “converting” synchronous generators to synchronous condensers, is it not simply a matter of changing the level of excitation (i.e. the DC field current on the rotor of the synchronous generator) in order to change the amount of reactive power and thereby change the generator’s power factor? [But you must not over-excite or the rotor will overheat.]

      Changing excitation current is what synchronous machines do all the time; it is one of the beauties of such machines and why they are used so much in large electrical systems – controllability!

      By changing the excitation you can make the generator export or import the reactive power as the Grid requires. When there is essentially no real power (i.e. watts) then the “generator” is operating at zero power factor (ZPF) as either an inductor or a capacitor (i.e. a synchronous condenser).

      Reactive power is measures in “vars” or “volt-amps reactive” (symbol VAr). VAr can be +ve or -ve depending up Grid requirements. For larger quantities of vars the units are kVAr and MVAr. For more details see, for example, the “Power Systems” book by Weedy et al. In haste, John C.

      Liked by 1 person

    125. OMG. Now Willis Eschenbach is a conspiracy theorist! I’m beginning to lose count of the number of ‘conversions’:

      If you think the climate debate is about the climate, you’ve been fooled. Here’s Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitting in 2015 that the goal of climate activists is not to change the climate, but to DESTROY CAPITALISM. “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.” Sometimes they accidentally tell the truth, and there you have it, straight from the horse’s … … … mouth. w.

      https://x.com/WEschenbach/status/1841885030915944849

      It was always in plain sight of course, but it’s taken actions to confirm the validity of the words and wake people up to the stark reality of what’s going on.

      Liked by 1 person

    126. John, thanks for the technical info. I’m still uncertain as to whether synchronous generators, when not being used as generators, can still supply reactive power and inertia to the grid and then, when required, simply be switched over to provide active power. I suspect its not that simple though.

      Like

    128. Ben Pile has an interesting article in today’s Daily Sceptic:

      The New Net Zero Resistance is Doomed to Fail

      He argues that the unions’ opposition to Net Zero cannot possibly succeed so long as they continue to accept that climate change is an existential threat and the UK has to do something to counter it. I’m sure he’s right. Worth reading.

      Liked by 1 person

    129. Pity it’s behind a paywall. Is Ben saying what I’ve been saying for ages now: there is no point arguing against Net Zero if you still accept the necessity argument, which is based on dodgy science?

      Like

    130. Jaime: that’s not what he’s saying – nothing for example about ‘dodgy science’. It’s hard to find extracts that summarise a long article, but I’ll try.

      He quotes Unite’s motion at the TUC conference:

      ‘The world of energy is changing, but with it we also have the greatest of opportunities. We can show the world what a just transition should look like, taking the 200,000 skilled workers who support oil and gas production and their communities across the country with us, and in the process revitalise U.K. manufacturing. A just transition with them, not one that is done to them.’

      But, as Ben points out:

      The “world of energy” is not changing. The politics of energy are changing. The rest of the world is increasing its use of hydrocarbon energy, and besides a few outliers in developing economies, only Western countries are destroying their industrial capacity (as Smith observes) by making energy expensive and increasing their import dependencies. This is another reason that there can be no “just transition”, because the transition requires that ordinary people are excluded from politics, whether through unions or any other form of democratic engagement.

      Ben notes, re Gary Smith, General Secretary of the GMB union:

      … though he makes devastating observations about the 2030 target from a position of experience and authority, merely echoes Unite’s underlying acceptance of the ‘climate emergency’ to shoot himself in the foot. “Climate change is an existential threat to humanity,” he explains, citing a 2004 Pentagon report produced under the Bush administration. However, had Smith maintained a more sceptical view, he would by now have worked out how utterly ridiculous the report was. According to the Observer at the time, “the secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war” and predicts that “Britain will be ‘Siberian’ in less than 20 years” – and that was more than 20 years ago.

      He also notes that

      … a recent film produced by the GMB and Brindex, the Association of British Independent Oil Exploration Companies, makes an emotional appeal for the protection of jobs and vital British industries. A Town Called Bruce features interviews with offshore workers and explores their place in their communities and the benefits of their work to wider society. But it falls over itself by reproducing green ideology. “It’s very evident that oil and gas isn’t the future,” says Rhys, a young Instrument Technician on the offshore platform. Mechanical Technician Brian, at the other end of his career, says “the oil and gas industry are making huge reductions in their CO2 emissions”. Why the apology? Why not confront the green agenda for what it is?

      His conclusion:

      In the end, Unite, which is campaigning for the nationalisation of energy, is not offering a real alternative on the fundamentals to the Labour Government and its predecessor. It is calling for a kind of eco-socialism while leaving green ideology intact. The only difference is that, in its vision, it will be cabals of green socialists that dismantle democracy and living standards, rather than green oligarchs. Oh, such choice.

      I believe that my summary of Ben’s position – that the unions’ opposition to Net Zero cannot possibly succeed so long as they continue to accept that climate change is an existential threat and that the UK has to do something to counter it – was accurate.

      Like

    131. Thanks for that Robin. Ben might not mention dodgy science, but rejecting the concept of a ‘climate emergency’, rejecting the concept of climate change as an existential threat, happening now or imminently, necessarily involves rejecting ‘dodgy science’ and hence green ideology concerning the supposed need to eliminate planet destroying GHG emissions pronto. Ben talks scathingly of the Pentagon report which predicted that Britain would be Siberian by now due to the shutdown of AMOC – that is dodgy science. Even if you accept, with very little merit, that GHG emissions are warming the planet significantly, but not sufficiently to declare a climate emergency and impoverish and immiserate ourselves by tripping over to decarbonise completely in the next few decades, this still dismantles the ‘necessity’ argument, which is the fundamental basis of the “green ideology” which Ben identifies as remaining intact under proposals from the unions.

      Liked by 1 person

    132. I suggest Jaime that it’s simple enough: it perfectly possible to believe that carbon dioxide emissions contribute to global warming which, if excessive, could be dangerous without believing we face an existential threat. Indeed, I understand many climate scientists believe exactly that. Ben’s position that the unions cannot possibly succeed if they they continue to accept that (a) climate change is an existential threat and (b) the UK has to do something to counter it seems to me to be correct.

      Liked by 2 people

    133. Hello Jaime, I am looking at the operating chart of a 60MW generator from Ref. 1. It is essentially a rectangle going from 0 to 60 MW of real power and from about -40 MVAr (leading power factor or absorbing VArs) to about +70 MVAr (lagging power factor or generating VArs). All points of this rectangle are reached by changing the the rotor excitation or DC field current.

      For completeness, there are 3 parts of the rectangle that are out of bounds: (i) excess field current (as mentioned earlier), (ii) excess stator current leading to overheating of the stator, (iii) a region of potential instability at leading power factor where the load angle approaches 90 degrees. [I have not thus far discussed this stability issue.]

      Since the generator and turbine losses (primarily windage, friction, copper and iron) have to be supplied from somewhere, and given that the turbine is not providing any rotational power in our scenario, the losses have to be provided by the Grid. So the real power at the generator terminals is small (compared to the 60MW rating) but it is not zero. Hence generator operation is not entirely that of synchronous generation i.e. the generator has -ve real power and so is motoring!

      During synchronous condenser operation the whole of the drivetrain (i.e generator plus turbine) stands ready to provide inertia to the Grid for fault ride through. However, if the turbine is not under power then the turbine governor cannot play its part in controlling the required response to an electrical disturbance (e.g. lightning strike) that affects the instantaneous torque in the generator. Is this, perhaps, the heart of your concern? If not, please could you be more specific?

      In the description above I have not considered any maintenance issues associated with running a turbine which is not providing any rotational power. However, it is not unusual during non-operational periods to bar the turbine (i.e. keep it rotating slowly) so as to avoid shaft sag leading to touching of some turbine blades on the casing. Thus operating the turbine at rated speed (i.e. when the generator is operating as a synchronous condenser) would obviate the need for barring.

      Reference 1. B.M. Weedy et al., “Electric Power Systems”, 5th ed., Wiley, Fig. 3.12, page 98.

      Regards, John C.

      Like

    134. Mark / Jaime, your “low carbon flywheels made of stone . . . . . Flintstones style!” are not as daft as you may think …

      Near room temperature permanent magnet (PM) electrical machines are the most power dense of all electrical machines. The PMs are usually made from SmCo or NdFeB rare earths i.e. rock! For More Electric technology which must be rugged we used to favour SmCo as it tends to be more robust with regard to heat and chemical attack (although it is slightly less magnetic energy dense than NdFeB).

      One problem with the PMs is how to attach them to the rotor. Either you bury them in the rotor and thereby risk a magnetic field short-circuit in the rotor which means less of the precious magnet field from those PMs crosses the air-gap to reach the stator where, during shaft rotation, it will induce a voltage in the stator winding thereby generating current in the generator’s external circuit (i.e. the load).

      Alternatively, you use (as my team did) a surface-mounted topology with the PMs on the outer surface of the rotor cylinder. Now you have to keep the PMs attached to the rotor in all conditions but specifically against both centrifugal forces and torque from the interaction of stator and PM magnetic fields. To do this and yet keep the air-gap radially short (in order to keep the magnetic flux density from the PMs as high as possible at the stator winding) you need a radially thin banding such as either glass fibre or carbon fibre can provide. The skill is to apply the banding with a high pre-tension so that, even at overspeed, the PMs do not lose contact with the rotor; this requirement favours carbon fibre banding. Regards, John C.

      Liked by 1 person

    135. The Daily Sceptic has this morning published the article Paul Homewood posted on his website yesterday:

      Govt To Waste £22bn On Unproven Carbon Capture
      and
      £22 Billion on Carbon Capture? It’s Hard to Think of a More Stupid Waste of Public Money

      Yesterday’s version can be accessed HERE and today’s HERE . Worth reading.

      The Telegraph also has a CCS article this morning:

      Untested £22bn carbon capture scheme really will work this time, insists Starmer
      Doubts remain about financial viability of fourth major carbon capture and storage project to be tried in UK

      It doesn’t add much – except to confirm politicians’ foolishness. For example, Starmer apparently insisted:

      …this time would ‘absolutely’ be different, saying the technology was crucial for industries that were difficult to electrify, such as glass and cement.

      In other words, it will be different (i.e. it will work this time) because it must be different – the logic of the nursery.

      One thing is certain, apart from the fact that it probably won’t work, is that like all major Government projects it will cost a lot more and take a lot longer than initially planned. See Blair’s NHS National Programme for IT and today’s HS2.

      Liked by 3 people

    136. David Turver has published an extraordinarily hard hitting item this morning:

      UK Electricity Prices Highest in the World
      New data from the Government shows the UK has the highest industrial and domestic electricity prices of the 28 countries tracked by the IEA.

      He concludes:

      Having the highest electricity prices in the world ought to trigger a national emergency response. The Government’s primary mission should be to cut energy prices because cheap energy is the key to unlocking growth.

      We can but hope that reality dawns on the Government before the economy collapses under the weight of Net Zero.

      But the prospects of that happening are, to put it mildly, remote.

      This is an absolutely ‘must read’.

      PS: this means another update to my header article is needed.

      Liked by 1 person

    137. Yes, Robin, the UK’s electricity prices are rocketing into the stratosphere. However, looking at Turver’s graphs suggests that the launch date was in about 2021, although Mission Control will have been preparing for many years beforehand. Regards, John C.

      Liked by 1 person

    138. You’re right John. The Tories launched this disaster. Now Labour are determined to make it far worse.

      This is an extraordinarily serious issue – described by Turver as ‘an existential threat to the economy‘.

      Liked by 1 person

    139. The Cons, a residue of Con voters and Labour voters handed Starmer, Reeves, Miliband et al the weapon with which to kill us. They even handed them the bullets. Labour are locking and loading. We shouldn’t be surprised, or even horrified.

      Like

    140. Perhaps I’m over-egging it, it but it seems to me that David Turver’s conclusion that ‘having the highest electricity prices in the world ought to trigger a national emergency response’ is extraordinarily important. And true. Yet, so far as I can see, it’s not been mentioned in the MSM. Nor I suspect is it likely to be mentioned.

      PS: I suggest Jaime that your analogy is not helpful.

      Like

    141. Robin,

      Helpful or not, an existential threat to the economy is life threatening because poverty is life threatening, as also is the removal of access to cheap abundant energy for domestic consumption. Whoever voted Labour gave Mad Miliband the alleged ‘democratic mandate’ he needed to impose this catastrophically harmful energy policy.

      Liked by 1 person

    142. Robin, regarding your imminent up-date, I wonder whether any of the following would aid your message:-

      1. There is currently much use of brackets for lists etc for subordinate data. Hence I wonder whether legibility would be improved by use of indents, different font size, etc.
      2. Do you wish to add to the pointlessness argument by including explicit mention of EROEI (as per Turver and Weissbach)? This parameter shows that current renewables are worse than fossil fuels when the renewables’ back-up systems are included in the energy accounts.
      3. I have also long been concerned by the hypocrisy of the ‘green’ protestors; their clothing seems modern and hence probably made from fossil fuel derivatives. The glues they use to stick themselves to roads etc. are the best that hydrocarbon derivatives can provide. And their placards and advertising methods also reek of modernity. Where are the renewables’ equivalents of sackcloth and ashes? Or is theirs the hypocrites’ doctrine of “Do as I say and not as I do”?
      4. In short, the whole current renewables s**t show is just a charade of ‘virtue signalling’ that is NOT even virtuous because it fails the British people on all counts; its one ‘virtue’ is that it shovels money from poorer people to the already wealthy. Is this what policy capture looks like in the modern age? Regards, John C.

      Like

    143. The international price comparison was mentioned at the Telegraph, but I’m not sure about elsewhere.

      Curious that the data on the “transition” is relentlessly bad, but our leaders press on relentlessly. But I do not believe that there is nefariousness at the heart of this. I’m sure that they really believe it will work. It won’t work, that much is obvious – but our leaders have to be made to believe this emotionally as well as logically. When doubt in the project finally arises, bravery will be necessary. For no doubt the first to break ranks will be cast aside.

      Also curious is that the people of the UK have swallowed all the gaslighting that blames fossil fuels for our woes. I would have thought that eventually a head of steam would have built up, demanding action of some sort to lower bills, regardless of the cause of their rise. Yet folk seem apathetic.

      Liked by 3 people

    144. Yes Jaime, I agree with your analysis. Mad Ed’s energy policy is catastrophically harmful. But that’s because Ed – like so many of his fellow green cultists – doesn’t begin to understand the reality of the issues with which he’s dealing. Not because – as your analogy suggests – he’s evil and wishes to do us harm.

      Like

    146. “The green deindustrialisation of Britain

      The end of the era of coal is nothing to celebrate.”

      https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/06/the-green-deindustrialisation-of-britain/

      Concluding paragraphs:

      Yet today, the Industrial Revolution and the fuels that powered it are looked on by the political class with fear and loathing. Britain’s industrial prowess helped ‘derange the natural order’, said Boris Johnson at COP26. Ludicrously, the new foreign secretary, David Lammy, considers the continued use of fossil fuels to be a more ‘pervasive’ and ‘fundamental’ threat than terrorism. This is why our politicians take a perverse pride in the UK becoming the first nation to set legally binding climate targets, to pledge Net Zero carbon emissions and to abandon the use of coal. It’s why the loss of vital strategic industries and assets is greeted with a mere shrug.

      The green deindustrialisation of the UK shows how environmentalism has turned normal politics on its head. It invites us to view prosperity as wicked and penury as progress. The British people will pay a heavy price for the green designs of their leaders.

      Liked by 3 people

    147. Thank you John C. I think the point you make in your para.1 is spot on. I’m particularly worried about the legibility of the first two paragraphs of my item 1. I’ll see what I can do to resolve that and any other examples.

      However I don’t think I’ll expand the pointlessness argument. Not because I disagree with you but because I’m trying to keep this comprehensive, accessible to anyone with limited knowledge of the subject and reasonably succinct: under 1,500 words and extending to no more than 4 pages of A4. And of course I do mention the back-up problem in item 2.

      Although I very much agree with your paragraph 3 and 4 comments, I don’t think they’re relevant to my essay.

      Thanks again.

      Liked by 1 person

    148. Inviting us to view prosperity as wicked seems wicked enough in itself to me.

      Robin,

      Ed is deluded and unhinged I have no doubt, but he’s got two ‘A’ levels in Maths and one in Physics. He knew enough previously to realise that nuclear power was the ideal solution to zero emissions and abundant and reliable electricity – enough to run a modern society. He was very vocal in his support right up until he was reappointed Energy Secretary. From the Daily Mail:

      At which point an odd thing happened. Labour won, and Miliband was reappointed Energy Secretary. And almost overnight his long-standing passion for nuclear cooled. His officials were told plans for nuclear were to be ‘placed under review’. 

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13927687/DAN-HODGES-British-people-taken-fools-Starmer-wont-drain-swamp.html

      What happened? It looks like Dale Vince and his £5m donation happened. Now we’re going all out for solar and wind power, poverty and deindustrialisation (just what the Marxist eco-loons and Industrial Revolution shamers wanted) . . . . and certain renewables investors are going to do very nicely as well thank you. Maybe Ed’s not evil, but he’s certainly not Mr Goody Two Shoes.

      Like

    149. Jaime, I don’t think that’s quite correct. Labour’s climate policy – widely promulgated by Mad Ed long before the election – was heavily focused on wind and solar. It may have the effect of heralding poverty and deindustrialisation, but I’m sure that wasn’t its intention – as I said, the people behind it don’t begin to understand the reality of the issues with which they’re dealing.

      ‘… he’s certainly not Mr Goody Two Shoes.’

      True. But how many politicians are?

      Like

    150. This story seems to be about special pleading by the usual suspects:

      “Charging customers for energy based on location ‘could harm UK industry’

      Trade groups warn against government’s idea that those further from power projects should pay more”

      https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/07/zonal-energy-pricing-plan-uk-industry-trade-groups-ed-miliband

      …Manufacturing groups including UK Steel and Make UK have joined RenewableUK and Scottish Renewables to warn that the plans would “undermine investment in low-carbon energy” by creating “new risks for clean energy developers”, which would raise the costs of meeting the UK’s clean energy targets.

      Under the plans, which were put forward for consultation earlier this year, energy consumers would pay less for electricity if they were based close to electricity projects but more if they were based farther away.

      The plans would also affect energy generators, who would earn less for the electricity if they were based far away from homes and businesses but more if they were sited close to areas of higher demand….

      Mind you, energy charging based on location isn’t as harmful as higher energy prices across the board.

      Like

    151. Not being able to make the right kind of steel at all might also be considered to be something of a problem when fighting imports from China….

      “UK steel industry calls for protectionist measures over glut driven by China

      Lobby group UK Steel said country faces ‘cliff edge’ in 2026 when current protections run out”

      https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/07/uk-steel-industry-calls-for-protectionist-measures-over-glut-driven-by-china

      The UK steel industry has called for the government to consider further protectionist trade measures as it braces for a flood of imported steel amid a global glut driven by China.

      UK Steel, a lobby group, said the global industry has 543m tonnes of excess steel, 70 times more than the UK uses each year, in analysis published on Monday. It said the UK faces a “cliff edge” in 2026 when current protections run out….

      Like

    152. Jit:

      ‘The international price comparison was mentioned at the Telegraph...’

      Yes, but in view of its potential to destroy the economy and immiserate the population, it should – in a normal world – be making headlines throughout the media. But of course it’s not.

      ‘… folk seem apathetic.’

      They do. I think it’s partly because they expect and are getting used to unrelenting bad news. But I suspect it’s mainly because the media, part of an establishment (the ‘elite’ as some have it) that’s totally in thrall to the climate disaster cult, has for years carefully avoided saying anything that might undermine the need for ‘urgent action’. So, busy with their day-to-day concerns and interests, ordinary folk know very little about energy realities.

      Liked by 2 people

    153. Robin/Jit – as Robin says above re – folk seem apathetic, that’s my feeling also.

      most are to busy making a living then enjoying some down time.

      Like

    154. We here have chosen to take an interest in questions surrounding climate change and energy policy. We might be right or wrong, we might make some good points and some bad ones. But we have a good idea of what is going on.

      Most people haven’t a clue, regarding climate change, the reality of COPs or the implications of energy policy. If they did, I like to think we would see a very different political dynamic. It’s in the interests of the net zero lobby to keep the public ignorant and to dupe them with platitudes. However, at some point the industrialisation of the countryside will extend so far that it can’t be ignored, and people will be unhappy about it; rising energy costs will be an obvious contrast to Miliband’s claims that more renewables will reduce bills; and the lights will start to go out.

      At that point, people will engage with the policy and the process. I just hope it won’t be too late.

      Liked by 2 people

    155. Mark,

      Perhaps when we get to the point where we have the highest energy costs in the world the public will finally wake up.

      Oh no, wait…

      I fear there may never be a point of realisation and we are destined to boil to death, like the proverbial frog that fails to jump out of the saucepan.

      Liked by 1 person

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