Monday 7 March 2022

THE TRUE COST OF NET ZERO

 Here is a fascinating wake-up call for those who think we can get to net zero without any difficulty.

Delivering Net Zero: A report from a putative delivery agency (thegwpf.org) 

This report was written by Professor Michael Kelly, Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge. In it he takes us through the steps and scale needed to reach the goal in the UK by 2050. Given the enormous cost it becomes clear that this project is doomed to fail. However in the attempt we are all going to become a great deal worse off than we are now. The question is, at what point will it become obvious that we are falling far short of the objective? Or can the government continue to delude the people into thinking that they are on track?

6 comments:

  1. Derek, you seem to like the company of climate deniers. GWPF seems to want things both ways. Everyone has to be transparent to them and yet they don't have to be transparent to everyone else.





    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation#Funding_sources



    Bob Ward, the policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, commented:

    "These [FoI] documents expose once again the double standards promoted by ... the GWPF, who demand absolute transparency from everybody except themselves ... The GWPF was the most strident critic during the 'Climategate' row of the standards of transparency practised by the University of East Anglia, yet it simply refuses to disclose basic information about its own secretive operations, including the identity of its funders."[13]



    Charitable status
    In June 2013 Bob Ward filed a formal complaint to the Charity Commission, alleging that the GWPF had "persistently disseminated inaccurate and misleading information about climate change as part of its campaign against climate policies in the UK and overseas", and that this was an abuse of their charitable status.

    In 2014 the Charity Commission ruled that the GWPF had breached rules on impartiality in its climate change coverage, blurred fact and comment and demonstrated a clear bias.[19][20] In response, the GWPF agreed to establish a non-charitable organisation to do the lobbying, alongside the existing organisation, to be called the "Global Warming Policy Forum".[21] The GWP Forum is a wholly owned subsidiary of the GWP Foundation.

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  2. Same wiki link. It seems GWPF is less than honest about the information put out. Their temperature graph published showed a slight cooling, but if done accurately it would of shown warming.


    Temperature graph
    When the GWPF's website was launched in November 2009, a graph used in the logo graphic on each page of the website of '21st Century global mean temperatures' showed a slow decline over the selected period from 2001 to 2008. Hannah Devlin of The Times found an error for 2003 and noted that if the period from 2000 to 2009 had been chosen, then a rise in temperature would have been shown rather than a fall.[22] Bob Ward said that the graph was contrary to the true measurements, and that by leaving out the temperature trend during the 20th century, the graph obscured the fact that 8 of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred this century. The GWPF blamed a "small error by our graphic designer" for the mistake which would now be changed, but said that starting the graph earlier would be equally arbitrary.[14]

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  3. Doing nothing is the route to disaster on our living space on the climate. Foolishly pushing fossil fuels and no clean energy robs our future generations of living as good as we have it. The cost of climate mitigation is way cheaper than the future cost of no action on climate change.




    https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/11/fighting-climate-change-cheaper-than-business-as-usual-and-better-for-the-economy/



    JOBS & ECONOMY
    Fighting climate change: Cheaper than ‘business as usual’ and better for the economy
    Here’s why moving now to combat climate change is cheaper and better for the economy than postponing action.




    Aggressively deploying climate solutions requires large immediate investments for the sake of benefits that will mostly accrue only several decades in the future. Most of the avoided climate damages will be realized in the second half of the century. The health benefits of cleaner air and water will happen sooner, as fossil fuel infrastructure is phased out over the next few decades. The operational savings of many individual climate solutions will likewise accrue over a few decades: Home energy efficiency upgrades, for example, pay for themselves in about 10 to 30 years.

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  4. You should resist attacking the messenger, and instead look at the actual message. The cost of net zero is simply unaffordable. The calculations in the report show this quite clearly. No amount of wishful thinking can change these figures. Either the government will abandon the policy, or they will fiddle the figures. For too long people have been fooled into believing that we can get to net zero with just a few tweaks and hardly notice it, but now reality is beginning to break through.

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  5. I have a Flash-Card Web APP & I'm looking for somebody that is very knowledgeable about climate change to write some flash-card questions. It is my wish that I always present BOTH SIDES of an issue, so my users can gain BALANCED, in-depth knowledge of various issues.





    I'm gearing up to ask people the following question: Do you think that climate change is caused by human activity?




    I want to present facts that support BOTH sides of this question. I'm wondering if I could hire you for this task, or if there is somebody you could recommend? How much would you charge to write 30-50 questions that support either side of this question? It is for my Flash-Card Democracy project. You can learn more about it by clicking the link below.





    www.flashcarddemocracy.com





    Please don't hesitate to contact me through the website if you know somebody that would interested in doing some writing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Barry and thanks for getting in touch. I found your website most interesting and a lot of fun. I will get in touch with you via your website and see if I can put some questions together for you.

    ReplyDelete

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