Guest essay by Eric Worrall
You would think a country with rapidly worsening rates of child poverty would have other priorities than worrying about what the weather will be like in 50 years time.
Climate change: UK ‘can cut emissions to nearly zero’ by 2050
By Roger Harrabin BBC environment analystThe UK should lead the global fight against climate change by cutting greenhouse gases to nearly zero by 2050, a report says.
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) maintains this can be done at no added cost from previous estimates.
Its report says that if other countries follow the UK, there’s a 50-50 chance of staying below the recommended 1.5C temperature rise by 2100.
A 1.5C rise is considered the threshold for dangerous climate change.
…
Here are some of the report’s recommendations for individuals.
Home heating
We need to insulate our homes much better, probably with help from the Treasury. Some of us will use heat pumps, which are a sort of reverse refrigeration technology that sucks warmth from the ground.
…
The committee expects consumer bills to rise at first, then fall as a newer, cheaper electricity generators are introduced.
The report also has one controversial recommendation: to turn down the home thermostat to 19C [66F] in winter.
Flying
The aviation industry is trying to bring down the cost of making jet fuels from a variety of waste materials.
The CCC says this won’t be enough. It warns that the number of flights we take is increasing, and predicts that the government will have to find ways to constrain this.
…
Meat
The committee notes many people are already eating less red meat for the health of the planet and themselves.
It says that people can reduce their dietary emissions by 35% if they transition from a high-meat diet to a low-meat diet.
But it only predicts a 20% drop in meat consumption by 2050 – which it admits is a conservative assumption.
…
The report also says people can take the following steps to reduce their emissions:
- Choosing to walk, cycle or take public transport instead of a car
- Choosing LED light-bulbs and electric appliances with high energy efficiency ratings
- Setting the water temperature in their heating systems to no higher than 55C [131F]
- Eating a healthy diet, with less beef, lamb and dairy
- Eliminating food waste as far as possible
- Using only peat-free compost
- Choosing good quality products that last longer – and sharing rather than buying items, like power tools, that you use infrequently
- Checking your pension funds and ISAs to see if your investments support low-carbon industries
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48122911
The UK Government Backed Committee on Climate Change Report is available here.
When I lived in the UK, well outside the London bubble, I personally witnessed shocking levels of poverty.
The people who produced this report have absolutely no idea how ordinary people live. The 37% of families with children who are living in poverty don’t have any spare cash to pay higher consumer bills. Sharing power tools is an easy way to lose them. The last thing poor people need is even less access to meat, less access to high calorie high protein food; thanks to soaring fuel poverty caused by those climate action inflated consumer bills, meat is already a luxury for some families in Britain.
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So in other words, the UK returning to its natural state of poverty.
The discussion of this on BBC Newsnight programme last night took less than a minute to go from concern about the effects of climate change to recommending the end of capitalism as a realistic solution. It’s actually getting quite scary here.
Of course the BBC won’t have revealed the next stage after the ‘end of capitalism’ which is a neo-marxist-socialist form of anti-democratic government – in a progressive’s ideal world this will be unelected and simply appointed by the elites and eco-activists – can’t let the ‘little people’ (the voter) have a say in such important decisions. And if they do want to, that can be dismissed as misguided and ignorant ‘populism’.
All very akin to the underlying ethos of the EU and the UN. If, as is the case with Brexit, the people vote the ‘wrong’ way it can be strung out and manipulated to a point where it can either be abandoned or a second referendum forced with choices designed to ensure Brexit is reversed.
All of these things seem to be very dear to the hearts of the left-supporting BBC.
Socialism has proven to be a dismal failure that leaves people starving in the dark. So the socialists have decided that the way forward is to change The Narrative so starving in the dark is now something to aspire to, not fear.
Emigration of adventuresome people and those with the sense of hope for a better life who refusesd to accept their gray fate, removed a good deal of valuable personal traits from the population of UK and the rest of Europe. Big bad, gun loving progeny of these vibrant emigrés created the most powerful economic engine the world will ever know.
Americans are Europeans “behaving badly away from home” as a British philosopher (name?) I met on board ship a lifetime ago told me. He actually said British but I think the broader identity is correct. Instinctively, as the the most virulent néomarxiste virus has spread globally, Americans are hanging on tenaciously to their guns. They fear not invasion from outside, but a putsch from within! Their much reduced fellows behaving at home are vulnerable and helpless with no stomach for revolution. Their only hope is for their big bad cousins to save all their A55E5. This is why all international institutions are Anti-American. The bad guys have already begun the rescue. The climate and totalitarianism has already become just face saving theater.
Yes. Anyone who wants to know why Britain is in such a mess only has to look at the emigration statistics over the last century or two. They’ve had the largest Brain Drain in the world… and it shows.
Yep. Proud member of the Brain Drain here. It’s 31 years since I left the Dark Satanic Mills etc.
Very happy to be living in the Land of The (comparatively) Free(tm) as an American by Choice.
And it is madness too.
Valid comments – the global warming / climate change fraud was never about the environment – it is a false-front for totalitarian political control.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/14/hypothesis-radical-greens-are-the-great-killers-of-our-age/#comment-2690923
[excerpt]
This treatise is primarily about the homicidal nature of radical greens, who have killed tens of millions of innocents, especially children, through their deliberate actions. It is also about the overt and covert motives of these extremists: radical environmentalism is a false front for their far-left political objectives.
The actions of radical greens are clearly anti-human and anti-environmental. They have already done enormous harm to humanity and the environment.
Radical greens have perverted climate science as a means of stampeding the uneducated and the gullible. Every one of their scary predictions has failed to happen. They have perfectly negative scientific credibility. No rational person should believe them.
The scientific reality is that increasing atmospheric CO2 will cause increased plant and crop yields, and possibly some minor, beneficial global warming. There will be no catastrophic warming and no significant increase in chaotic weather resulting from rising CO2 concentrations.
Another important observation is the corruption of institutions. The green movement has been taken over by radicals, as described in 1994 by Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace. That takeover by radical greens has now extended to universities, scientific associations, professional societies, media and governments.
Whenever you see comments about global warming and climate change, you are listening to propaganda, not reality. The leaders of the radical greens generally know they are lying to you; their followers often believe the falsehoods, and do not have the education or the intellect to do otherwise.
This global warming / climate change mania will eventually cease, but not before more tens of millions of people, mostly children, are killed and trillions of dollars of scarce global resources are squandered on a false crisis.
Radical greens are the great killers of our age.
Regards, Allan
If they are talking CO2, it will never be cut to zero without the death of everything on the planet. The level of stupid has reached terminal velocity.
That about sums it up.
I would add–to its post WW II poverty levels.
The heavy hand of government constrained everything. Innovation, imports, foreign exchange controls, with labour unions right out of control, plus rationing.
Then with Thatcher much of the intrusion was reformed.
Another reform is needed.
Sounds like the UK likes life as described in a Charles Dickens book. Kids in threadbare clothes and no shoes begging on the street.
Globally, cold weather kills about 20 times as many people as warm and hot weather. Excess Winter Deaths in the USA average about 100,000 per year – that is two 9-11’s per week for 17 weeks EVERY YEAR.
Excess Winter Deaths are calculated as the difference between deaths in the four winter months (December through March in the Northern Hemisphere) less half the deaths in the eight non-winter months.
The radical greens could not be more wrong, and they know it. Contrary to green propaganda, atmospheric CO2 is far too low, and Earth is colder-than-optimum for humanity and the environment.
As I have discussed in detail elsewhere, atmospheric CO2 is not too high, it is far too low for optimal plant and crop growth, and far too low for the continued survival of terrestrial life on Earth. CO2 reduction and sequestration schemes are not just wrong, they are costly, destructive and imbecilic.
Excess Winter Deaths occur worldwide, even in warm countries like Thailand and Brazil (reference below) . A rough (probably low) estimate of Excess Winter Deaths is about 2 million souls per year worldwide.
A shocking fact:
More than 50,000 Excess Winter Deaths occurred in England and Wales during the winter of 2017-18 – an Excess Winter Death rate about THREE TIMES the per-capita average in the USA and Canada.
Proportionally, that is about 35,000 more deaths in the UK than the average rates of the USA and Canada. Excessively high energy costs in the UK due to false global warming hysteria are a major part of the cause of these Excess Winter Deaths – thanks to the global warming alarmists and their corrupted minions in government and institutions.
Regards, Allan
Reference:
COLD WEATHER KILLS 20 TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS HOT WEATHER
by Joseph d’Aleo and Allan MacRae, September 4, 2015
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
The recommendation of 55 deg C for hot water was also pushed in Norway a few years ago, with the result of outbreaks of Legionella after the bacteria survived at that temperature and typically infected people when they showered (bacteria spread by droplets that entered the lungs simply by breathing while taking a shower).
One of the reasons for reducing the temperature of hot water is to prevent people from scalding themselves. What’s coming out of your taps is supposed to be less than 120°F. The result is tempering valves at the water heater that mix hot and cold before sending the water to the rest of the house. That way the water in the tank can be hot enough to kill bacteria, and what’s coming out of the taps can be safely cool.
Like everything else that’s supposed to keep us safe, the tempering valves cause extra cost and more confusion. I can’t find the link quickly but there was a story about a home owner complaining about insufficiently hot water. Four plumbers from the gas company managed not to be aware of the tempering valve.
Shur nuff, …… kill the bacteria/microbes in the water that’s in the H2O heater ….. but mix in a new supply of live bacteria/microbes back into the water supply via the “tempering valves”.
It is at the tap or shower head end that the bacteria such as Legionella spp live. When you turn on the shower, you get an aerosol of bacteria which is how you get infected.
Do you have anything better than assertion to offer us on that?
I looked into this years ago and could find no recorded cases of Legionella outside large building, hotels etc with communal hot water. Mostly it is related not to water but to air con where it breeds in the warm damp air in the conduits.
According to this information from the CDC, it looks like it could happen the way Silversurfer describes. Whether or not it did, I don’t know.
https://www.cdc.gov/legionella/about/causes-transmission.html
https://www.dinside.no/bolig/hvor-varmt-skal-varmtvannet-vaere/61310529
https://www.fhi.no/sv/smittsomme-sykdommer/legionella/legionellasmitte-hjemme-kan-forebyg/
Last one is from the Norwegian Folkehelseinstituttet, or Norwegian Institute of Public Health, on prevention of Legionella in the home. For the home they recommend 70 deg C or more for the hot water tank.
There is also a page covering public institutions, cooling towers, scrubbers, dentists, jacuzzis etc. https://www.fhi.no/sv/smittsomme-sykdommer/legionella/
This one I think :
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16012542
UK advice is that cold water circuits are below 20C and Hot Water above 60C (above 50C within 1 minute of running)
http://www.pendred.com/wp-content/uploads/CIBSE-TM13-Minimising-the-Risk-of-Legionnaires-Disease-NEW-2013-3.pdf
When people have reached this elevated level of derangement of their mental processes, it is nearly futile to present factual information to them as their religious beliefs have welded Global Warming/Climate Change hysteria all over their inputs.
I tried pointing out how much difference to CO2 and global temp (if you believe they are linked) it would make to someone the other day they would not believe me that it would be as close to ZERO as makes no odds.
So why were they wanting to destroy the whole country to achieve this ridiculous goal? They could not actually explain it to me they just “felt” it was the right thing to do as everyone was saying it. Just follow the crowd what could possibly go wrong?
James Bull
Hardly going back to the stone age, is it?
Better insulated houses would surely mean you didn’t need to set your thermostat higher?
A lot of UK houses need more than a quick insulation spruce up Griff. One house we lived in, in the UK, the ground under the house was so damp we were advised not to insulate the walls (the roof was already insulated) because the insulation would wick up the damp, expand, and crack the walls. The damp was manageable, as long as we respected the original design and allowed plenty of airflow though the wall spaces.
More or better insulation is mostly bull.
Ignorant armchair tech-heads and politicians make this mistake with regular monotony.
Air ingress is the problem with most houses.
Gaps and cracks will render any insulation all but useless in a cold climate (not as much in a hot climate).
A house built to modern UK insulation and heat loss standards is pressure tested to ensure there are no (unintentional) leaks.
Ventilation then accounts for the majority of the heat loss. Hea recovery ventilation is avialable but is not yet a standard requirement.
You have to ask yourself why do very very old cottages, some 300 years old and more, do not suffer the same. I have lived in some really old properties with, flint stone walls, and an open fire and never suffered the problems I have experienced with newer buildings *WITHOUT* aircon.
Hence why in the UK new build houses and apartments must meet Air Tightness specifications to avoid that problem. In return there is now a resulting wide-spread problem with condensation leading to mould and spores that can trigger – or as some believe Cause – asthma and other respiratory problems / disease.
The ignorance isn’t limited to ‘armchair tech-heads and politicians. I had a lengthy discussion with the department that sets building regulations about 7 years ago. It was illuminating ….. firstly they want air tight houses which will require a system of mechanical air-exchange if they are to avoid condensation. But this is not a requirement, and to avoid energy use where this is installed they didn’t want to see air conditioning to actively cool incoming air when external summer temperatures were high, 30C or so – thus creating internal temperatures which would be far too high to live with.
They wanted trickle vents in otherwise air-tight windows to allow air exchange – and when pushed on the point had to admit that this replicated the old drafty windows that they insisted were not allowed in new build which must be air tight to meet air-tightness standards … but they must have trickle vents …. (ok you can close trickle vents – but the principle of comparison remains)
Going a stage further in the discussion they had to admit that trickle vents negated the air-tightness standards …… standards which were intended to reduce air flows (drafts) in and out of the building to reduce heating, and thus energy, requirements.
I think the biggest failing in so much of ‘government’ is the lack of joined up thinking and the propensity to take knee jerk action in response to the latest or loudest pressure group on the scene no matter how small or way-out there lobbying is – that in the UK is coupled to a civil service that is seemingly in thrall to left-wing political thinking.
Old England:
Good one! Well stated. Bit like ways of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.. sooner or later comes back to plants do it best!
Hate to give the French credit but they got it right with “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose’!
cheers
Mike
And that is why you now get very mouldy houses. No air circulation.
That is an incredibly stupid remark, even for you.
The temperature will reach whatever the thermostat is set to (assuming it can). Better insulation and setting the thermostat lower will just result in a lower temperature! Maybe you just want people to die of cold?
I suspect that more insulation might indeed allow you to set the thermostat lower. I find that, on very cold days, I have to turn up the thermostat to feel comfortable. That’s in spite of the fact that the air and walls are around 70°F. (I checked the walls and ceiling with an IR thermometer) The only explanation I can think of is the heat I radiate out the windows. My walls and ceiling are well insulated but the windows are ancient.
Based on the above, I suspect that a poorly insulated house would be uncomfortable unless you cranked the thermostat.
SURPRISE, SURPRISE, …… commieBob, …… that will happen noninfrequently ….. simply because “on very cold days” ……. the Relative Humidity inside of your home is also extremely low (dry air) …… and therefore the conduction of the thermal energy within the confines of your home is severely limited.
You need a “wintertime humidifier”, ….. or a boiling teakettle on your stove.
If the air conducts less then I should lose heat more slowly. yes/no
Humid air has greater specific heat than does dry air.
commieBob, your body temperature should be close to 98.6F and if your room’s air temperature is around 70°F then any “heat transfer” will always be from your body (skin) to the air that surrounds you.
And yes, …… humid air has greater specific heat than does dry air.
And with that greater specific heat your loss of body heat to the humid air will be lessened.
Which do you prefer, a 98F “hot” summer day ….. of low humidity or of high humidity?
Your body also cools by evaporation. link Humidity keeps you from cooling off by evaporation.
Now you got it. Now you got it.
And the reason ya need a little humidity in your home in the winter time ….. and the reason you don’t want lots of humidity in the hot outside air in the summertime. (unless ya prefer sweat dripping off your brow and/or running down your back to be trapped in your shorts )
commieBob – May 3, 2019 at 6:36 am
cBob, your above statement is true, … simply because the evaporation of a liquid from a surface, any surface, will cause said surface to cool (loses heat of evaporation).
So, if there is sweat (water), rain water, bath water, river water, etc., etc., on your epidermis (skin), and the air temperature is warm enough, then said water will evaporate causing a loss of body heat.
But, cBob, the total surface area of the epidermis (skin) of the human body DOES NOT contain “sweat glands” for the purpose of “cooling the body” via the evaporation of the “sweat” that they emit. That is a “junk science” claim.
The purpose of said “sweat glands” is to rid the body of excess salt (NaCl).
Too little or too much salt (NaCl) in the circulatory system of humans will kill them ….. dead as a door nail.
Humans could not have evolved on the hot, dry African savannahs iffen they were ”sweating out” copious amounts of their most valuable resources, …….. water and salt.
Ah. Griff demonstrates that he hasn’t a clue about how a thermostat or insulation works
We can add this to the very long list of things that griff doesn’t have a clue about.
Don’t be absurd. We could turn everyone in a doctor and so have a great health service, but then we would n’t have any policemen or firefighters or farmers. If you don;t understand the very basics of economics – it’s about scarce resources – then don’t comment unless you want to look utterly ignorant.
griff
Once again you demonstrate your profound ignorance.
Blithely stating “Better insulated houses….” is yet another illustration.
The vast majority of UK housing stock cannot be ‘retro’ fitted with insulation without including retro fit ventilation as well, almost by necessity, mechanical.
They tried the idiotic ploy of double glazing houses in the 70’s & 80’s. Innumerable people spent small fortunes on DG and reducing draughts by blocking up chimneys and sealing up doors etc.
The result? Warm, moist, centrally heated internal air condensing on solid masonry, cold exterior walls. A perfectly natural occurrence but one that causes considerable health issues with ‘damp’. And that’s before introducing humans into the mix with their desire to indulge in such luxuries as cooking and bathing, raising the internal moisture content of the house, with no where for it to go.
The health implications are appalling.
The enormous stock of Victorian buildings were unwittingly designed and built to allow and encourage cold, largely dry, external air to filter into the house through naturally ill fitting doors and windows where it helped burn coal on open fires, which then expelled fumes and moisture up the chimney. The process ensured dampness was virtually unknown. There was a constant air exchange.
Some bright spark then thought of cavity wall construction, to maintain an air gap between two courses of bricks thereby reducing the cold bridge between the cold outside air and the warm inside air. They topped that off with double glazing and felt very smug that they had solved the problem. Except they hadn’t because there was still no means of air exchange within the building. The result? Damp.
Another bright spark thought to fill the cavity between the brick courses with insulation, but that didn’t work either because there was still no adequate ventilation in the house.
Today, major house builders have turned to SIP panels for construction (Structurally Insulated Panels). Very efficient, very draught-proof, indeed a house can now be vacuum tested for air tightness they are so efficient. But still, no mainstream builder is including adequate ventilation in these houses which, by this time really needs to be of a mechanical type which takes electricity to run.
We can insulate every house in the UK if we wish but it will be an abject failure unless there is balanced provision of room by room mechanical ventilation as well.
The cost of this is simply mind boggling, were it even possible in many older houses. You are looking at tens of thousands of pounds per house in many cases.
How is that to be all paid for?
Eaxctly!
here in France they’re very keen on the ‘VMC’ or ventilation mécanique contrôlée, this is a silent, continually running air pump to ventilate houses. It’s included in the energy survey and you get marked down if you don’t have one.
griff
In answer to my own question, ‘how much would all this cost’?
with a housing stock of, very roughly 18m x £10,000 each (very conservative as a simple gas boiler replacement by British gas will cost £5,000) the amount is £250,000,000,000.
Even if the government were fairly stingy about helping householders by paying 10%, that would cost the taxpayer a bare minimum of £2,500,000,000.
We are supposed to be reducing the national debt, not adding to it in pursuit of a non problem!
No, Griff, “better insulated houses would surely mean you didn’t need to set your thermostat higher?” is wrong, better insulated houses means the furnace doesn’t need to work as hard to maintain the selected temperature.
Furnaces in the UK are used in Steel works. (Another example of us being separated by a common language).
Houses are heated using “boilers”. Usually gas (as in natural rather than petrol which YOU call gas). Until 2025 when we’re going all electric by directive from the Chancellor (and we haven’t built a coal fired power station since 1997).
It makes you weep (as in “get all emotional” rather than a “small leak at a joint in a water system”).
I have no words which can fully convey the insanity with which we are being governed at the moment. I pray for a Winter such as 1947 in the near future when an anti-cyclone settled over Iceland for 3 months and we had deep deep snow from January until March. No wind, no sun. Because of our dependence on renewables this disaster will kill the vast majority of old people (like me) through hypothermia and it might, just might, make the powers that be understand that they are going down the wrong path.
In the US, a boiler means you are using steam heat. Otherwise it’s a heater for electric or a furnace for gas.
When a system weeps, it’s condensation dripping off. If there’s a small leak at a joint, it’s called a leak, just like all the other types of leaks.
Not true. A “furnace” is for “hot air” heating systems only. Otherwise it’s a boiler, be it “steam” or “hot water.”
Now many confuse the two, including my wife who constantly refers to the BOILER as the “furnace.” In fairness, her last house had a hot air heating system and DID have a “furnace,” so she was used to referring to the heating equipment as such.
In any of the houses I’ve lived in, the heating systems were all hot water (radiators, convectors, and/or baseboard), so I’m well familiar with talking about the “boiler” as opposed to the “furnace.”
A “boiler” heats water, a “furnace” heats air. Even though, as someone once so eloquently put it, “We are two people divided by a common language.”
They will have achieved their goals.
Reduced the population. In this case, the useless, non productive elderly.
Reduced medical costs, usually much higher with those elderly.
Reduced the number of buildings requiring “energy”since many older people live alone.
So the powers that be will know they have followed the desired path. All those old people with their own ideas, having grown up in the pre-climate catastrophe brainwashing era, will be gone.
Truly a win-win for the political class.
So Griff is correct , you would need to touch the thermostat ( though I doubt that was what he meant ).
The way a thermostat works griff is it piles on the gas until the set temperature is reached… Insulating your house better (and more importantly reducing the number of air changes per hour) just reduce the Kilo-Joules expended to achieve each deg K increment.
The implication seems to be that we should spend on insulation and air change reduction, and still need to run at a lower ambient because our renewable energy sources will be struggling to keep up with demand.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/excesswintermortalityinenglandandwales/2017to2018provisionaland2016to2017final
Griff ….. and the UK Government Backed Committee on Climate Change should be FORCED to live for two years via the rules and recommendations that they have stipulated should be lived by the “average” individual.
So, ……. go for it Griffy, …….. and then report back.
Typical understatement based solely upon personal opinion.
The only reason they are not forced back to the stone age immediately is because they can live in houses constructed by free use of fuels. Fuels that include whale, walrus, woods, grain refuse and fossil sources.
g. wants all of that to end.
g. wants houses to be upgraded at major expense. Oddly, that is extremely oddly, g. makes claims for upgrades that are unavailable without fossil fuels.
A not unsurprising alarmist concept where people or their government are expected to undertake expensive renovations, even when made with fossil fuels that are unlikely to provide any significant levels of alarmist imagined benefits.
As many other commenters have pointed out, simplistic alarmist construction demands have been attempted before with dire consequences.
Those prior efforts benefited from unlimited fossil fuels.
“Hardly going back to the stone age”; is solely because fossil fuels are available.
Take away fossil fuels, as alarmists are trying to force on others, and this process inevitably results in a return stone age life.
Insulation does not affect the thermostat setting at all. It does affect how much energy you need to buy to attain the temperature you have set.
Why is the “controversial” ? If you are concerned about “saving the planet” or your heating costs, it makes total sense not to expect summer temperatures in winter. There is no reason to flounce around in a tee-shirt in the middle of winter. Dress for the season. In winter wear a good thick woolen pullover.
The human body has a remarkable capacity to vary its internal heat production but it needs to sense cold before that happens. It’s called acclimatisation. Molly-coddling the body prevents this from happening and leaves you feeling even colder.
I light the wood burner when it gets down to 10 deg C . I winter I feel too hot in a house where it is 16 deg. C.
Does anyone remember the 1960s adverts for gas central heating that showed what would be available in the 1970s?
The family are wandering round a room, dad in boxer shorts and mum in bikini with the curtains open and the snow stalling outside!
Greg – May 2, 2019 at 5:46 am
And when someone comes to visit you when it is 10 deg C in your home …. and they complain about it being too damn cold in your abode, ….. you just tell them to take their coat off and go outside and stand for bout 15 minutes …….. and then come back inside and they will fell how warm it really is.
Responders to griff’s simplistic observation surely are having fun, but folks, it’s time to stop feeding this troll. He’s not arguing counterpoint, he’s poking the bear from behind a safety wall. Admittedly, it inspires some good rebuttal, but merely pointing out griff’s silliness is pointless.
I don’t know Gary. Having a good laugh is rarely pointless IMO.
Going back to the Stone Age. React going back to the Stone Age means eating more meat, not less. And, we NEED to eat more meat, not less. Back in early times, we were 95% carnivore, running down animals and eating their organs first and red meat second (as it does not spoil as rapidly as the organs and organs have more nutrients). It was only in late summer and early fall that we had any available carbohydrates, as fruits and vegetables. Like bears, we would load up on sweet fruit and put on fat for the winter—we are predisposed to make fat from excess calories from carbohydrates (one caramel is enough to suppress fat metabolism for two hours).
We were never meant to have carbohydrates available all year round. Agriculture is a very recent development and we are still in a bear-like metabolic plan, which is why we have such an obesity epidemic and lots of diabetes. Also, the high circulating glucose from our carbohydrate intake causes the irritation of heart disease and atherosclerosis. Cholesterol helps ameliorate this.
Furthermore, the cholesterol in red meat is a healing chemical, which is why it rises in men as they age. The demonization of cholesterol and the elevation of carbohydrate intake are two of the worst dietary scams ever perpetrated against mankind.
At 80, I’ve gone through several societal reversals on coffee, animal fat, eggs, salt… I never heeded any of it.
A Sunday roast beef, selected for its “cracklin” (crispy fat) potential or a pork roast with nicely popped rind to crunch on are favorites as well as Yorkshire pudding (made with the fat in the roasting pan) and gravy. My grandmother cooked up such Sunday dinners into her 90s.
The cholesterol myth (and the alleged “goodness” of “low fat” eating) is a hydra with a thousand heads. When I went to the doctor for a physical, inevitably he told me that my cholesterol was “too high” (you know, based on some number somebody pulled out of his ass so pharmaceutical companies can sell you pills). I did need to lose some weight, but understood the “issues” there – stopped hitting the office candy dish and started taking the stairs instead of the elevator at my office building twice each morning (upon arrival and when I run to the cafeteria across the street to grab my breakfast).
I ignored the doctor’s “eat less fat and less red meat” tripe, understanding it is driven by the mis-education he received in medical school. It’s the sugar, carbs and soy-based crap that is killing people, not eating meat and (saturated) fat.
It’s also why I’ve long been cynical about the supposed “need” for what they laughingly call “preventive care,” because it’s not about any actual solutions to any actual problems for the most part – just a lot of “management” of fictitious “numbers” that don’t mean much and even the ones that do need actual “solutions,” not “pills to suppress symptoms,” which don’t improve one’s “health” one iota.
When somebody starts with the “cholesterol” bullshit, I always like to baffle them with this ACTUAL statistic – THREE QUARTERS of the people who die from heart attacks have so-called “low” or “normal” cholesterol.
So if they’re telling me mine is “high, ” that puts me in the LOW RISK group! 😀
I am pretty sure Griff has never had to live through energy poverty where ice builds up on the INSIDE of windows in winter.
I’m willing to bet he never had a ‘drift’ of snow INSIDE the house because it was so cold outside. Been there, done that. The temperature inside my bedroom was BELOW freezing.
Ignorance, they name be griff.
Cold is cold, regardless of your levels of insulation.
Insulation allows people to heat their houses with less energy so that the DON’T have to turn down the thermostat.
Griff you seem to be another armchair coach who tells others to slow down of the fossil fuels while you week on using it at the same rate. Your hypocrisy is palpable.
Verbally kicking Griff is fun, and he needs to be steered, but it won’t have any impact on him, because GRIFF HAS LEFT THE BUILDING.
Hi Griff. Perhaps you can explain the connection between insulation and thermostat settings. Silly me. I thought if I set the thermostat to 70, the heat or cooling will run until that temperature is reached, regardless of how long it takes to get there. I thought, whether a structure is well insulated or not, 70 degrees is 70 degrees. You seem to think temperature is related to insulation value. By your method, a well insulated house at 66 degrees is as warm as a poorly insulated house at 70 degress. Please explain.
Well, he believes the human-induced global warming myth, so “insulation” heats stuff, just like the atmospheric CO2 “blanket” does, right?! /sarc
But ‘better insulated houses’ in a British climate tend to grow moulds! And I can’t think that breathing mould spores is healthy!
ITS A THERMOSTAT
you can insulate as much as you want if the thermostat is set at 15deg thats the max before it turns off the heat
Well the Committee on Climate Change is chaired by that notorious trougher and denier of conflicts of interest, John Sewlyn Gummer, aka Lord Deben, so no surprises there. He’s alright Jack.
Given the diesel generator he has, should there be a power cut , and the total lack of solar od wind at his own rather nice house . I think it fair to suggest his committed to the cause is rather ‘limited’.
Why should we listen to one iota of what the Climate Change Committee’s advice when we know from past experience that the chairman, Lord Deben, presumably in league with Mr Gove the Environment Secretary is getting paid by suppliers to the wind farm industry and others, so far to the tune of £600,000 No doubt they see further backhanders from these latest proposals without fear of being challenged by their employers!
Remember Debens previous incarnation as Gummer, when contrary to today’s advice he was promoting increased meat consumption by thrusting burgers in little Cordelia’s face.
Also remember the day the report on BSE/CJD came out which knocked his ministerial position into a cocked hat. He was conveniently on holiday beyond reach of journo’s.
The Norwegian climate guy had him correctly weighed up years ago when he referred to Gummer as a Drittsekk
For those of you unfamiliar with modern Norse… Drittsekk would be “Dung Sack” or in the vulgate “Sh1t Bag”…
“A 1.5 C rise is considered the threshold for dangerous climate change”
Only a political eco-activist or someone with Nil knowledge of historic temperatures could make such a patently dishonest claim. For starters this refers to an increase from the temperatures at the end of the Little Ice Age – a multi-century period when temperatures fell as low as 2C and more below the long term levels
The Minoan, Roman and Medieval Warm Periods were All hotter than this 1.5C “limit”, by as much at 1.5C higher. The empirical evidence from those periods of benign temperatures proves that this IPCC claim is, and must be known by them, to be false.
But hey, this is all about politics, not our environment, and aimed at moving towards the end of industrial systems in the western world and ending capitalism.
👍
And yet ever year tens of million will deliberately seek out temperatures which have a far larger difference than 1.5 , from where they normally live , by going chosen to go on holiday to warm and sunny places . Odd that!
Some of us even go there permanently. I now live in the tropics, but still migrate to the Mediterranean summer during my winter because it gets too cold. Sometimes it’s below 20C in the day *shudder*
LOL I had the same problem when I lived on Guam! 78F (26C) was so “cold” we were putting on sweaters!!!
And during the age of the Dinosaurs the mean temperature of the Earth was 12deg C *warmer* than today and there was no temperate climate except at the very poles; it was all tropical and sub-tropical climate world wide. Funny, it seems that the Earth survived. When you point that out to the doomsdayers they say, ‘but it is different now.’
I read this on WUWT last year.
Neatly puts the alarmists’ dogma in perspective . . .
The temperature in most locations regularly warms 10 °C during the course of each morning (between sunrise and midday) and life continues. Daily maximums routinely increase 10 °C or more over a 3 month period (from the end of winter to summer) and life continues. The annual range of maximum and minimum temperatures at numerous locations on the earth’s surface can vary more than 40 °C (over a 6 month period) and life continues.
Despite these facts, we’re told a 1.5 °C rise in average temperature over 100+ years is an existential threat to life on earth.
We’re already 2/3 of the way to 1.5 °C and the biosphere, human population and food production have all increased significantly during the initial 1 °C warming. That means the real alarmist story is that a further 0.5 °C warming over the coming 30 to 50 years will significantly damage or destroy life on earth as we know it. And that includes the life that increased during the initial 1 °C warming.
Yes, this still leaves us in the lowest quartile of the global temperature range for the last 8,000 years.
Increased CO2 could just as likely be causing cooling.
The original 2° limit (vs some never calculated or stated “pre-industrial” figure) was invented by Schellnhuber to keep the politicians happy.
As he himself admitted. See here: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/climate-catastrophe-a-superstorm-for-global-warming-research-a-686697-8.html. The entire article is worth reading.
I’m no physicist but from what I am told by a couple of that breed, the 2° target is a con. There is no possibility of a climate “tipping point” at that temperature or any other and it’s a distortion of science to claim that any foreseeable atmospheric concentration of CO2 is capable of committing the actions it is being charged with.
Presumably sanity will prevail eventually, though probably not in my lifetime!
I always like to point out that 7,000ppm couldn’t cause any “runaway greenhouse effect,” and 4,000ppm couldn’t stop the Earth from plummeting into an ice age, so the validity of any assertion of climate “tipping points,” when we’re at a paltry 410ppm, is ZERO.
It used to be 2.0C was the threshold for dangerous climate change.
Then they started to worry that we wouldn’t reach 2.0C, so they dropped the danger point to 1.5C.
(Note: 2.0C still doesn’t get the world’s temperature up to the point it’s been at for most of the last 10,000 years.)
Before any of this nonsense is implemented what about mandating that all recreational/sport vehicles have to be changed from dirty, nasty ‘carbon’ guzzling engines to electric ones at the owners expense? That should get the population moving 🤯🤣
There are simply just sooooooo many degrees of wrongness going on here…
Lots of mileages will vary here but…..
a) Even in the picture at the top: Fat People are *not* “Well Fed”
(just a little something to bear in mind next time we hear about record & rising food calorie production)
b)They are illiterate or insane if they imagine that a heat pump will *ever* create water hotter than 55 degrees
c) Having been on the receiving end of a ‘Stroke From The Hand of God’ I have all the government info on how to remain alive -one of the primary ways to do it is to heat my home to *never lower* than 21 deg C
It is my (and many others out there) that a high carbohydrate diet leads to those sorts of Cardio Vascular problems
d) No we don’t *need* a high quality high protein meat diet. Yes we need animals and we need animal protein but the primary reason for killing and ‘eating’ animals was to get and eat the blood, liver, kidneys, brain, bone marrow and totally not least – fat.
We don’t *need* the flesh at all. Apart from being tough and hard to eat chew and digest, too much protein can and will make us very very ill.
We should eat like the Big Cats -we should be leaving the flesh/meat of our kills for the scavengers.
e) There is No Such Thing on this Entire Planet as ‘waste’ that will burn. Period.
f) Share power tools is where they give themselves away..
Selfishness and greed
It is patently obvious that their next-door-neighbour in Leafy Hampstead has just bought a very expensive ride-on garden tractor and *they* want the fat lazy backsides and grasping little fingers all over it
g) ISA
ISAs are low interest investment jokes, primarily created to enable the residents of Leafy Hampstead to buy massively expensive garden tractors.
h) Pensions. = Government mandated takes from your gross salary –
1) Devices to give workers in the Financial Services Sector the moolah to enable the purchase of expensive/expansive property with gardens in Leafy Hampstead
2) Management of which creates many lucrative jobs for retired/deselected/sacked/disgraced/fraudulent/scum-bag Government ministers, MPs and officials.
3) Devices from which Government can fund its lavish expenditure,upon itself & its cronies.
Pension funds are the only places left with ‘any money’. Thus Government can borrow the money at seemingly generous rates in long term loans (Gilt Edged Security)
But, the Government carefully manges inflation so that when the money has to be paid back, it is worth only a fraction of what was borrowed.
Meanwhile, the (previously) shiny & new garden tractor has hit the scrap heap, a new one is needed so Government mandates more pension contributions in order to buy a new one.
Nothing to go wrong there then……
The UK weather is miserable most of the time, so now just like the
workhouse committee, well fed and warmth of course, they want to make the rest of the UK miserable too.
What a bunch of workers they seem to be.
Time for the yellow vests, and perhaps the guileteen too.
MJE VK5ELL
This is a an exercise in good intentions (at least by the ordinary citizen) backed up by poor science and eco-smart ideology. The latter is a product of a mindset that is using climate change as another spoke in the wheel of controlling societies rather than freeing them.
We are sleep-walking into a kind of managed society that is remarkably similar to that which was outlined in Huxley’s a Brave New World. That might seem ridiculous to many but when you combine it with other memes and belief streams currently shaping the western world (suppression of proper climate science, globalism, weaponised immigration, erosion of free speech, the exacerbation of extremes on the left and right; gender ideology; equality of outcome and radical feminism; overreliance on technology, the move to automation, “sustainability” fused with 5g smart society, carbon tax, pushing vegetarianism/veganism…the list goes on and on.
Such social engineering is taking us further away from real conservation and community and into a very real technocratic eco-nightmare. Current capitalism – with all its obvious flaws – will seem like a dream compared to the world state system that’s in store for us. And judging by the younger generations who have been exposed to this brain-washing they’ll be welcoming it with open arms and downloading it from their i-phones and i-pads.
Poms happily handing it over to the ‘developing’ World.
What could possibly go wrong?
The discussion of this on BBC Newsnight programme last night took less than a minute to go from concern about the effects of climate change to recommending the end of capitalism as a realistic solution. It’s actually getting quite scary here.
“The last thing poor people need is even less access to meat”
A vegetarian diet is cheaper and healthier.
A vegetarian diet high in carbohydrates is asking for a diabetes epidemic to happen.
Humans are not cows, and we don’t have a digestive system to cope with such a diet.
Also, meat is an effective means of storing food / energy over the winter season in high latitudes where the growing season may be as short as 4-5 months at best.
“A vegetarian diet high in carbohydrates is asking for a diabetes epidemic to happen.”
Not even wrong. Any diet high in calories from any source contributes to weight gain and weight gain increases your risk for type 2 diabetes.
“Not even wrong. Any diet high in calories from any source contributes to weight gain and
weight gain increases your risk for type 2 diabetes.”
Not even wrong. Carbs cause the body to stop burning fat deposits as fuel until they are out of the system. Excess Carbs cause the body to become insensitive to the release of insulin.
Uh huh. That quote – “Any diet high in calories from any source contributes to weight gain and weight gain increases your risk for type 2 diabetes.” came from The American Diabetes Association, but a muppet like you knows better.
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/myths/
And (@ur momisugly Loydo), you are deluded enough to believe that the “American Diabetes Association” is there to find a “cure” or an (actual) “solution” to diabetes?!
Or that the “American Cancer Society” is there to find the “cure” for cancer?!
Or that the “American Heart Association” is there to find a “cure” for heart disease?!
If you believe that, you are a fool. “Diabetes” and “cancer” and “heart disease” “management” and “treatment” have become INDUSTRIES. Finding real solutions to any of them would end the existence of such supposedly “good minded” organizations and all of the massive incomes they support.
Unlike cows, sheep, geese and plenty of other meat animals, I can not eat grass. Only someone who doesn’t produce food would come up with such a facile idea as to suggest that not eating animals would produce more resources, more cheaply.
Where is all this lovely new lettuce going to be grown? It may come as a shock to some people, but the climate in the UK is pretty questionable, which is why so many sheep graze marginal land in Wales, Scotland etc.
I see this as a push by the vegan movement to try to force everyone into their narrow, virtue-signalling lifestyle.
Is it just an assumption that off-shoring food production, along with all manufacturing generally, is going to make for a long term sustainable economy? Apparently not only will need and dairy production need to be produced, but some farmland will need to be returned to forest.
Possibly but it is rather boring!
Not necessarily. Certainly cheaper and certainly healthier, best thing a poor person could do.
Feel free to follow your dietary prejudices with my blessings!
Just don’t tell me what to do.
I am pretty sure with that post you have never been poor and you certainly never have seen real poverty.
“Not necessarily. Certainly cheaper and certainly healthier, best thing a poor person could do.”
Not healthier. Not cheaper.
Not if you work for a living.
But I doubt you have experience with that.
Is that why they call you Snider?
‘best thing a poor person could do.’
I also get irritated as hell at stuck-up progressive elites – who speak of ‘a poor person’ in hypothetical third-person – sermonizing on what’s best for me.
Yeah, that’s right, “The last thing poor people needs…” is Eric sermonizing about them.
We became the dominant species on the planet because we started eating meat. Herbivores spend all their time eating.
It’s a shame that people want to revert to wasting time in such a fashion for some pretend benefits, but I’ve absolutely no problem with that as long as they don’t try to tell me what I should do.
Next, people will tell me that beer is bad for me. I’m sure it is, but I have fast more fun than those wowsers who want me to stop 🙂
Haven’t you seen the price of fruit these days?
Nuts!
A vegetarian diet is, for 99% of them, nothing more than virtue signalling for people who otherwise have done nothing of use in their lives.
Don’t get me wrong, eat what you want. I don’t care.
Just leave me the hell out of your misery.
Utter nonsense.
That is the kind of statement made by people who do not worry about the costs of foods or pay for their vegetables.
* Vegetables are low nutritive density requiring more vegetables to equal nutrition value of meats.
* The prices for store bought vegetables per pound is equivalent to or greater than the costs of meat per pound.
* Essential, that is, ‘essential for human health’ amino acids, minerals and vitamins are not provided in general vegetarian diets. There’s a scientific health issue why many vegetable products have a “Fortified” label.
* “healthier” is a false belief unproven by science.
* i) Indeed, many societies fail to reach their genetic capability for height, strength and overall body health until greater quantities of meat were added to their diets.
It is perfectly acceptable for an individual to believe and attempt to follow the “A vegetarian diet is cheaper and healthier.” mantra.
It is not all right for vegetable diet believers to force their dangerous beliefs upon others.
‘It is perfectly acceptable for an individual to believe and attempt to follow the “A vegetarian diet is cheaper and healthier.” mantra. It is not all right for vegetable diet believers to force their dangerous beliefs upon others’
I have been a vegetarian for 55 years. It is up to you what you eat, all that I ask is that it is ethically sourced. It is Vegans that will demand you change your entitre lifestyle five minutes after they convert to veganism. Vegetarians are generally more tolerant
tonyb
It is perfectly acceptable for an individual to believe and attempt to follow the “A vegetarian diet is cheaper and healthier.” mantra.
It is not all right for vegetable diet believers to force their dangerous beliefs upon others.
_______________________________________________
Yes.
https://www.google.com/search?q=workers+bio+products+underpaid+fluctuating&oq=workers+bio+products+underpaid+fluctuating&aqs=chrome.
So much profound dietary ignorance on display and guess what? I couldn’t care less what you eat.
But I can’t go past ATheoK’s post. I know its unlikely you will but if you research it you’ll find I’m right” cheaper and healthier.
Really crap advice from Eric.
But I can’t go past ATheoK’s post
And yet you very noticeably and completely failed to refute anything he had to say on the subject. Speaks volumes about how “right” you are.
There is ignorance here, but you are the one displaying it Loydo.
I just love how you liberals believe whatever your paymasters tell you to believe.
During the middle ages when more meat was available and therefore consumed, overall heath improved. A total vegetarian diet is dangerous to one’s health.
The potato was introduced into Europe in the late 1500’s ; it was already an Andean staple. I have recently read an assertion that it was the potato which improved the lot in life of so many European people that socio-economic changes accelerated (this is distinct from the Irish potato famine, which was a for a large part failure of agronomy).
There have been individuals who tested their ability to live on only potatoes successfully for a period of time. I think it should be easy to find a recent fellow’s report being blogged about, although I don’t recall dietary duration.
Back in the early 1900’s an experiment lasting 167 days was done with steam cooked unpeeled potatoes having 0.34% nitrogen content. Both the man & the woman subjects were determined to be in fine health at the end & at essentially their original weight.
Availability of meat at any one place and/or era is something I find hard to parse.
In general my impression is that outside of hunter/gatherer environments access to meat was stratified by economic clout – the populace had different experiences.
When I see “Middle Ages” my assumption is we are referring to Europe; which was socio-economically organized quite distinctly than at present. My point being the masses were essentially peasants & not entitled to the land owners’s wild game. In fact I’m inclined to think peasant livestock was largely reared for sale & not regular consumption – which is what my rural Gringolandia neighbors still practice.
They had pork and chickens and ducks.
Hi John Dilks, – The introduced potato sustenance allowed those with ducks, chickens, pork & cows to sell their limited animal products. The income was more important for ameliorating basic existence beyond subsistence.
The European Middle Ages were not noted for large segments of the population privately holding a lot of land. I’d generally refer to the Middle Ages country populace as tenants who had to come up with rents &, in some areas, also serfs who had to come up with produce . Poaching in some owner’s forests for meat was not without risk as Mel Brooks showed us in his film expose: “Men In Tights.”
Today in rural Gringolandia my neighbors rear hoofed animals for sale & not eating themselves (in due course butchers sell lung to the urban poor & other parts to better situated clientele). There are usually many heirs to land & large holdings now are uncommon unless from systematic buy-outs going on for decades.
Those with cows will sell the milk (often well in advance for cash from cheese makers). One pig is kept on human food scraps for annual Christmas roasting, those with more abundant scraps might rear a pig for sale & not for eating themselves. Chickens/ducks are for eggs (to sell & also flesh out a staple meal), as long as productive before slaughter & then not considered delicious fare (chicken feet are then the delectable part).
Poaching in some owner’s forests for meat was not without risk as Mel Brooks showed us in his film expose: “Men In Tights.”
You do realize, that particular Mel Brooks movie was a comedy based on the myth of Robin Hood. If you are getting your historical knowledge from comedy movies about myths you might want to rethink what you think you know. Just saying.
Oh Noooooe John E.! So I guess Mel Brooks misrepresented those cowboys as well sitting at the campfire eating beans tooting away in “Blazing Saddles.” I am going to have to rethink what I know.
Maybe even Robert Frost was wrong to say: “Whose woods these are I think I know/His house is in the village though ….”
“A total vegetarian diet is dangerous to one’s health”
Utter nonsense. Science says the opposite.
Utter nonsense
Yes, your post was. How nice of you to label it appropriately.
Loydo, “utter nonsense” – science says
https://www.google.com/search?q=vegetarian+diet+is+dangerous+to+health&oq=vegetarian+diet+is+dangerous+to++health&aqs=chrome.
Not true Loydo, but religious convictions can never be shaken by something as trivial as reality.
A vegetarian diet is NOT healthy. People cramming vegan BS down their kids’ throats end up with kids that have diseases that were eradicated a generation or two ago, like rickets.
I couldn’t care less what CHOICES people make FOR THEMSELVES based on whatever popular delusions suit them. When you start trying to force OTHERS to do what YOU think they should in pursuit of non-solutions to imaginary problems, THAT is just wrong.
@AGW is not Science.
Why should he listen to you? He has been taught all his life that there is no ultimate right and wrong (that would be religion) that it is up to the individual to determine right and wrong. So to defend his beliefs he automatically categorizes what you say as wrong. Most of the left is in that boat. “I’m right because I say I’m right and facts are just a cultural construct.” We will never change their minds, but possibly, just possibly we may convince the unconvinced.
The UK is generally a cold place and the biggest historical challenge for survival is finding ways to stay warm for at least 9 months of he year. Ironically, a warmer planet would improve living conditions in the UK as well as increasing crop yeilds and economic output. More ironically, the UK is now spending the wealth from the next few generations of Britons, even before they are born, in an attemp to avoid the benefits of climate change.
Go figure ….
Serge there was a fantastic documentary on Japan (I cant remember the name) that discussed how the Japanese culturally squander their wealth by tearing down “old” houses to build new ones. Newly married couples buy a house, demolish it and rebuild, because…that is what they do. Economists wonder how Japan might be different if that money went elsewhere 🤔
UK government is intentionally making itself poorer
Correction: the UK government is making US, not itself, poorer.
I saw that again and again in my neighborhood when I lived in Japan. It always blew my mind. From what I understand from those who lived outside the urban area it was a primarily an urban phenomenon. (they also never kept cars longer than 5 years-they sold them to foolish American service members)
The UK could achieve many things by 2050, if only the Woke would campaign for them, such as the end of illiteracy, fuel poverty and homelessness, but of course that won’t happen. What fun it would be if the UK did achieve zero emissions, in say 5 years time. What would happen to the UK branch line of the Great Green Gravy Train if that were to happen?
The authors of this study get paid very nicely thank you, and that is all you need to know. Put the report in the big to-do pile, but way down the list of priorities, that should keep everyone happy, not least the authors of the next study.
Sadly the UK is currently having a nervous breakdown. We need some adults in the room.
About 15 years ago, on a return visit to England, I proposed to cook a steak dinner for some relatives, having learned to cook steak properly in Australia. On visiting Sainsbury’s, we looked at the butchers. I selected my favourite cut of all, probably the most expensive, rib-eye. When I learned the price, I said that $70 (au) a kg was pretty damned steep, it being between $30 and $40 in Australia (depending on season & droughts). I was gently informed that this was £70 a kg, about $140 au!
I have no wonder that red meat is a luxury item in England, I wouldn’t have been able to afford it 2 or 3 times a week as I could in Australia, and I was quite wealthy at the time.
I buy sirloin, that is the whole sirloin, from catering butchers I have dealt with for around 20 years. Then we cut to the thickness we like and freeze. A fortnight ago I paid £5 a pound – around £11 a kilo for beautifully marbled, Irish produced sirloin that is far superior to the supermarket offerings at £17-£20 a kilo.
Their knowledge of meat is outstanding, 2 of the guys started as butchers apprentices aged 14 and were still working their trade 60++ years later.
I also buy lamb and pork from them as well as 3 rib fore-rib beef joints for around 50% – 60% of supermarket prices. Every Friday and Saturday they have a stall selling at those sort of prices to the public in Bracknell, Berkshire.
Those are high end restaurant prices where I live, prepared and served with side dishes, excluding wine. Of course our gasoline prices have risen recently from about US $0.5/L to $0.7/L, so I guess it evens out.
This will of course open the doors to ever more nonsensical legislation and taxation – what could be better for example than putting tax hikes on all cars which are ten years old or more? Let’s wait and see.
And – where’s all the cheap energy from renewables?
UK bills are going one way, and that’s up. What a surprise.
Howz come it’s always the well-fed, well-traveled, well-off people that insist everyone else suffers in order to make their fantasies come true?
Howz come we don’t see poor people rising up to demand more expensive food, heating, and transportation which will then put those luxuries out of their reach?
We all get somewhere around the biblical three score and ten years, plus or minus, on this planet. I’d like to muddle through my 70+/- years as best I can without some busybody ordering me how to go about it. If I need a little help or advice along the way I’ll ask for it. Otherwise, I’d appreciate it if everyone else would just stick to their knitting.
UK government ?
What government ?
UK isn’t governed by anyone at this moment in time and there are no signs of anything changing any time soon !
Dominic Lawson: A retort to the population control freaks
I’m not aware that anyone has rebutted Sir Crispin’s suggestion that there are three times more British people than is desirable, so perhaps I should do so here.
Snip
I was surprised to hear Sir Crispin Tickell citing 20 million as the appropriate number of residents for the UK; only four years ago, on BBC 2’s Newsnight, he spoke in support of a figure of 30 million. Numbers, numbers. In his earlier broadcast, Sir Crispin remarked: “Someone has said that constantly increasing growth is the doctrine of the cancer cell. You just get out of control.”
This metaphor, in effect describing the birth of children as like a metastasising tumour, is truly disgusting. Who, though, was that “someone” Sir Crispin airily quoted? His name is Paul Ehrlich and he is a patron, along with Tickell and Sir Jonathon Porritt, among others, of the Optimum Population Trust, an organisation that campaigns tirelessly for an organised reduction in human life.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-a-retort-to-the-population-control-freaks-399128.html
Indeed, the real threat is Malthusianism.
Green activists, climate alarmists, vegans, etc. are nothing but useful idiots (and sometimes dangerous too).
Brits here may well remember Jack Hargreaves, who in his programs on country life used to suggest that the optimum population for Britain was around the 30 million mark.
Pretty much the size it was when Britain hit its peak in the 1890’s, so he may have had a point. However the pension pyramid will ensure that no government could ever consider population reduction now. Pensions would also be an issue for the extinction crowd as most of them look like the sort of people who dont expect to be subsisting on just a state pension when they retire, it would be interesting to see their reaction to the fiscal consequences of some idyllic pastoral system.
You think that is bad? A state senator in Arkansas in opposing a bill restricting abortion said, “if you don’t kill them now you will have to kill them later.”
The cheapest way to reduce temperature rises to nil personally is to stand on a brick.
The altitude changes would account for an overall cooling greater than all the climate change measures so far implemented by the UK government.
But think of all the co2 released in making the brick!
The UK does not have increasing child poverty. No child in the UK is in absolute poverty. The only measure that shows any problem is relative poverty, which measures inequality rather than poverty. And that is heavily skewed towards showing child poverty because we earn most when we are older and children are adults. more to the point, the measure ignores what we do to reduce poverty – redistribution, free health care etc.
The UK has record levels of employment, record low levels of unemployment, rising real wages and real GDP growth. Unlike much of Europe, youth unemployment is not a significant issue. Inequality is falling and inflation is on target. You do not get rising levels of poverty in such a situation.
You do when you hit people at the bottom of the heap with regressive energy taxes.
Spot on – for years politicians have vowed to end “child poverty” and left wing think tanks like the Rowntree Foundation have claimed it is increasing.
Using the UK definition of child poverty it can Never be eradicated because it defines it as being below a percentage of the average wage and so regardless of how much earnings (or Benefits) Increase, or what that means in real terms and disposable income, there will always be a percentage that get defined as in “child poverty”.
Until there is a definition of “child poverty” that deals with the basic needs of shelter, heat, food and clothing the current definition will ensure it is seen as a “problem” in perpetuity.
Indeed, when you measure poverty on a relative basis (IE some percentage of the median income) you’ll always have poverty. Never mind that many of those labeled as being “in poverty” have luxuries that those in real poverty (no luxuries, barely able to keep themselves feed) could only dream of having.
The real problem is that all that effort will have no effect on climate because the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. The climate change that we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control The AGW conjecture is really nothing but science fiction. I would think that for the most part, the greater part of the British Isles would enjoy a bit warmer climate than a bit cooler climate. But even if they could stop the climate from changing, extreme weather events and sea level rise would continue unabated so there is no benefit to be gained. I would think that taking steps to improve the economy would be the way to go in terms of helping to improve life in the British Isles.
No, the reason it will have no effect is that regardless of the effect of CO2 on temperatures, Britain emits too little of it for any reductions to have any effect.
400 million tons out of 37 billion. Around 1%. Who would notice a quarter percent reduction?
This is why British Greens can only be classified as insane.