As British Prime Minister Theresa May prepares to step down, Climate scientists are urging her to pass Zero Emissions laws before she leaves office.
Climate change: Zero emissions law should be PM’s legacy, scientists say
31 May 2019
Leading climate scientists have called for Theresa May to make her “legacy” a target to cut greenhouse gases to zero by 2050.
A group of experts have written to the prime minister calling for her to enshrine a target for “net zero” emissions in national law.
Experts claim the target is necessary to avoid dangerous climate change.
The government said the UK already leads the world in tackling global warming.In their letter, the scientists said the evidence was “unequivocal” that avoiding dangerous climate change means eliminating or offsetting all carbon emissions – not just reducing them.
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A government spokesman said: “We already lead the world in tackling climate change, being the first country to introduce long-term legally-binding carbon reduction targets and cutting emissions further than all other G20 countries.”
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Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48467462
The following is the full text of the letter (source)
This isn’t the first time climate scientists have urged political leaders leaving office to pass unpopular climate laws.
James Hansen expressed his fury that President Obama refused an “opportunity” to tie President Trump’s hands on climate policy – in the final days of his Presidency, President Obama placed respecting the wishes of the American people ahead of cementing his climate legacy.
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There is particular scorn for Barack Obama. Hansen says in a scathing upcoming book that the former president “failed miserably” on climate change and oversaw policies that were “late, ineffectual and partisan”.
Hansen even accuses Obama of passing up the opportunity to thwart Donald Trump’s destruction of US climate action, by declining to settle a lawsuit the scientist, his granddaughter and 20 other young people are waging against the government, accusing it of unconstitutionally causing peril to their living environment.“Near the end of his administration the US said it would reduce emissions 80% by 2050,” Hansen said.
“Our lawsuit demands a reduction of 6% a year so I thought, ‘That’s close enough, let’s settle the lawsuit.’ We got through to Obama’s office but he decided against it. It was a tremendous opportunity. This was after Trump’s election, so if we’d settled it quickly the US legally wouldn’t be able to do the absurd things Trump is doing now by opening up all sorts of fossil fuel sources.”
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Read More: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/19/james-hansen-nasa-scientist-climate-change-warning
Climate scientists are well aware that politicians who openly embrace their hideously damaging green ideas lose elections. This is why they target political leaders who are on the way out, leaders who no longer have to face the people who elected them.
Read Nordhaus, zero emission is killing economies.
https://klimaathype.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/nordhaus-en-de-energietransitie/
Zero emissions = Zero economy. It’s as simple as that.
NOTE:
The letter acknowledges Thatcher as the originator of the climate change scare.
Some on this website have trouble accepting that the Torie have always been the promotors of the need for crisis action against large industry and the working class.
But it was true.
And it still is.
May has already left a legacy.
The destruction of the Conservative Party.
Climate fanatics urge, “Push on a string. Just because it’s never worked before doesn’t mean it won’t work this time. You never outgrow your need for economically suicidal, futile gestures that put sane countries at an advantage.”
Zero emissions here, not there. Stay green.
‘That’s close enough, let’s settle the lawsuit.’ We got through to Obama’s office but he decided against it. It was a tremendous opportunity. This was after Trump’s election, so if we’d settled it quickly the US legally wouldn’t be able to do the absurd things Trump is doing now by opening up all sorts of fossil fuel sources.”
Hansen apparently isn’t a constitutional scholar or even understands much about the US constitution’s construction and framework. Article I of the US constitution empowers unto the legislative branch the exclusive power to make major US domestic laws. The Executive branch must faithfully execute those laws. The Judicial branch must faithfully uphold those laws. Neither the Executive nor the Judicial branch have the power to “legislate” such a major reshaping of US domestic energy policy as Hansen envisions, in order to bypass Congress’s unwillingness to do what Hansen wants.
Sue-and-settle in itself was also a clear violation of the Administrative Procedures Act whereby Executive Branch agency rule-making must follow clear procedures, assessing impact, and time schedules for comment and review.
It is one thing for an NGO like the Sierra Club or NRDC to sue the EPA to get a clean-up of a localized polluted site, it is entirely another matter altogether to attempt to get the EPA to issue a new Nation-wide emission requirements that reshape the entire energy infrastructure without any substantive backing by legislation passed by Congress and set into Law. And an Executive going along with such a “settlement” would clearly be in violation of his oath to protect the constitution and its requirement that he “take Care that Laws be faithfully executed.”
In that regard, Hansen’s desire for Sue-and-Settle would also violate clear black-letter law on Administrative Rule Making to shape a new major domestic energy policy out of thin air. It would have never gotten past an obvious Appeals challenge to the Supreme Court. Its appeal and certain precedent-making slap down would also have endangered any future minor “sue-and-settle” attempts by a future Democratic Administration in place (post-Trump).
The biggest reason Obama probably passed though was it would have severely further damaged Obama’s legacy, and thus further highlighting Obama as a lawless, rogue President who kept getting slapped down by the Supreme Court on all his major agenda items he tried to bypass Congress over.
On Hansen: James Hansen clearly was in favor of federal judge “legislating from the bench”, but only to the extent it was legislation that he favored. A judge using similar constructed powers that he didn’t favor he would no doubt protest. Hypocrisy is rich in partisans like Hansen. That Hansen could still be called a scientist by those who favor his advocacy is an insult to science.
IIRC A good number of those slap-downs were unanimous decisions. When even the liberal justices on the Court are going hell-no, you know you’re doing something wrong.
As far as I can tell the face of the guy in the photo of this blog post is the face of a guy who has committed fraud and deception knowingly and intentionally in front and towards a British Hose committee…very arrogantly, by relying in abuse of power and position of his given stand as a
computer modeler and as self proclaimed kinda of scientist in charge person, in the matters of
“The Ivory Tower” rules over all else in proposition.
A proper heartless and mindless ‘hyena’ with no soul left there…but trying to cover his ‘crime” by keep going in the same direction of fallacy… knowingly!
cheers
Those are harsh words, but in this case likely true. He is Oxford Prof. Myles Allen. Here is his vitae:
https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/people/412
Hard to tell what is degree is in. He teaches in the School of Geography and the Environment, so I’m guessing geography or computer modeling. He is also an expert in “climate dynamics”, which involves “quantifying climate impact”. So, looking at his papers and activities, it looks like his research and work centers around developing climate policies, activism and media personality. So, more of a “climate organizer” than a “climate scientist”.
It’s impossible to get to zero emissions no matter what you do. So when the time comes and the country breaks the law, who gets fined? Oh, and who pays the fine?
I’m guessing that if such a law were to be written, they’d have to apply it to specific items such as power generation. You could not do farming with zero emissions, or food processing, or industry, even transport is unlikely. Building any structure like a house, sky scraper or bridge requires concrete, resources and man hours.
Law or not, it’s not possible to do. Whoever signed that petition needs psychiatric help.
Is this an Open Letter?
The great thing about Open Letters is that no one needs to answer them!
The last time there was Zero Emissions was before mankind started to use fire .
Is it really a good idea to return to this?
I hope someone is recording names and their crimes for the docket for after the Trump domino effect pinches out the last of this misanthropic, Malthusian scourge. I saw no crime committed at the beginning when the scientific community seemed to believe all this stuff, but when the Eastside Highway in NYC didnt get inundated by a rise in sealevel of 10+ feet by 2000 and tempersture rise predictions segued into “projections” after being out by more than 300% measured against observations and they doubled down on the alarm and adjusted thermometric data to fit the failed theory, yeah, that was felonious.
When they tried to patch up this public relations disaster by pushing the starting date for anthropo warming from 1950 to 1850 to bankroll an extra 0.5C into the perilous warming ledger and then chopped the dangerous threshold to 1.5C measured from 1850 to 2100 (over 250 years!!!), yeah, you should be barred from practice like an engineer, doctor, accountant or lawyer would for malpractice. When the Dreaded Pause which lasted as long as the end of the millennium 2 decade warming stint that caused all the angst was Karlized out of existence, yeah that broke federal laws protecting the quality of data.
What is unequivocal about some science that, after 40 years, has failed to find the fundamental sensitivity figure relating temperature change to a doubling of CO2?
Honest scientists dismiss global warming because of this fail.
Why do the named scientists ignore this failure? Geoff
The “group of Britain’s leading climate scientists” are in fact just ivory tower types playing with computer models. Real world scientists who have proven track records dealing with complex uncertain situations such as putting man on the moon, have a completely different opinion:
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/nasa-scientists-dispute-climate-change-2012-4?r=US&IR=T
Oxford: A place oxen can cross water. That’s as far as it goes with me.
I’m pleased to see that they point out Margaret Thatcher’s responsibility for foisting this nonsense onto us.
But May could not get Parliament to agree on a biscuit with her tea.
Well it would absolute set the seal on her legacy as ‘Britain’s worst Prime Minister, ever’…
I get annoyed that commentators blithely quote Margaret Thatcher as a champion of the climate change cause but convieniently fail to mention that by the time that she died she had come around full circle to having a sceptical view expressing in her autobiography the concern that climate change was being used for implementing a socialist anti capitalist agenda. I think that her about face should be lauded as one of the most significant high profile defections that have come to the sceptical side of the argument. She must rate as one of the greatest political leaders of all time and her ability to change her mind on such a subject should be seen as condemnation of the exact policies that this desperate group of scientists are proposing. She would turn over in her grave if she was aware that her name was being used in such a dishonest way for a dishonest agenda.
I think you’ll find that Mrs Thatcher clung to Climate Change because she was battling the oil barrons in the Middle East & the Coal Miners at home (who brought down a democratically elected British government under Edward Heath!), & she misguidedly thought it was a convenient device in that conflict!
She changed her mind too late. She was out of power by then. The damage was done.
The UK emits 360 Mte of CO2 per YEAR.
China emits about 10,800 Mte of CO2 per year. That is 29.6 Mte of CO2 per DAY)
If we were able to make the UK carbon neutral TOMORROW.
China would put all that CO2 back into the atmosphere in just 12 DAYS!
In a way we should be pleased these “scientists” have turned to Theresa May for support. She has achieved something unique in British political history. She has knowingly and wantonly refused to enact the will of the people. For that her Party are in total collapse, her personal standing in society across the whole of Europe not just in the UK, is lower than any major political figure since the second world war.
The “scientists” from Oxford involved in activities associated with promoting climate change alarmism, regard her as an ally.
We can see why they would make the connection with such a failure.
I continue to be truly appalled by anyone having the arrogance to believe that mankind can have any significant effect on climate compared to the ongoing and frequent effects provided by natural causes which have been in existence far, far longer than mankind!
I trust the UK police will arrest and prosecute anyone overstepping the mark as regards legal protesting during Trump’s visit and that the courts severely punish them with custodial sentences and not a slap on the wrist!
The best environmental protest during this state visit should be someone stringing a very large banner between Big Ben and the main Houses of Parliament ith the message, “CO2 is NOT a pollutant!”
Since May ends in June, there is very little time to chat with visiting Trump – his priorities are the attempted shake-down of his presidency by the U.K. (as he repeatedly teeted) and sundry US “establishment” figures.
The perps must be loudly and publicly identified.
Oh, you are all missing the real point: Myles Allen refers to HUMAN emissions.
Taken literally, that means ceasing to breathe. And no flatulence, either. We aren’t cows. They are allowed flatulence. He’s proposing that mass executions be approved by May before she leaves office.
Mrs May Should take his advise ,
she should lead by example.
The lady should cease to emit Co2 immediately.
God bless her soul.
Follow the money. Who pays the scientists ?
I have just read the article, and have sent Professor Allen this letter’
“Dear Professor,
I note you are asking Mrs May to pass a ‘zero emissions’ law, in other words you are lobbying for the coercive power of the state to be used to deprive your fellows of their liberty, on the basis of a modelled hypothetical level of damage, which we all know must await positive proof before it can be elevated to a scientific truth.
However, in the meantime there is the troubling matter that the basis of the AGW model itself may be flawed.
I wonder if you could cast your eye over Monckton’s latest article on Anthony Watts’ WUWT website, and let me know where you think he is wrong. If you cannot, and persist in lobbying for a change in the law, then this must raise a profound question of ethics notably expressed by Eliot where he defined the greatest treason is to have done the right thing for the wrong reasons.
I look forward to your reply
Yours, etc. ”
I’ll let you know what he says, but won’t hold my breath as the house plants need that CO2 …