James Delingpole12 Jul 2019
The Prince of Wales has warned global leaders that if we don’t tackle climate change in 18 months the human race will go extinct.
No, really. Here are his actual words, in a speech in London yesterday to foreign ministers from the Commonwealth.
I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival.
OK. So assuming, for a moment, that the Prince of Wales isn’t just spouting gibberish, what kind of measures might we need to adopt in the next 18 months to “keep climate change to survivable levels”?
Happily, we have a good idea courtesy of Lord Deben, chairman of the government’s Climate Change Committee. Writing in the Prince of Wales’s favourite magazine Country Life, he says:
It simply demands that we live more sustainably – that we stop wasting water, become really energy efficient, cut food waste, eat 20 percent less meat, take all our energy from renewable sources and ensure our homes are properly insulated and ventilated.
That word “simply” is doing a lot of work there.
If you’re a carnivore like me, for example, you might not take too kindly to the notion that some dodgy peer who has made at least part of his fortune by promulgating green hysteria has the right to issue directives on how many bacon sarnies or burgers you can reasonably consume per week.
But I have an even bigger red flag waving over that glib suggestion that we should “take all our energy from renewable sources”.
All of it? Really??
The late Professor David Mackay, a Cambridge engineer and chief scientist at the UK government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change once looked at what decarbonising the economy by going 100 per cent renewable might look like for the British landscape. Needless to say, it wasn’t pretty.
It would involve:
Building 61,000 wind turbines.
Covering 5 per cent of the UK landmass — the equivalent of Cambridgeshire, Gloucestershire, Lancashire, and Staffordshire combined — with solar arrays. (That would be 100 x more solar PV than his been installed in the whole world to date.)
Damming most of the rivers in the West Highlands of Scotland to generate hydropower.
Building huge barrages across rivers such as the Severn, destroying intertidal mud flats and devastating bird and fish species.
Using the entirety of Britain’s agricultural land to grow biofuels.
David Mackay was by no means a climate change sceptic. But he was honest enough a scientist to be able to tell his government employers what they didn’t want to hear: that the idea that the UK could power itself by 100 per cent renewable energy was an “appalling delusion”.
Though it’s claimed that 14 per cent of the world’s energy is renewable, this is misleading. The majority of this — three quarters — comes from burning what is euphemistically called ‘biomass” — most of it what you and I call wood.
In other words the environmental movement is claiming as a triumph something that actually is a disaster: millions of people in the Third World are still reliant on the same inefficient, environmentally destructive, health-damaging energy technology that was used by cavemen.
As for wind turbines — ugly and seemingly ubiquitous a nuisance though they are — these currently provide less than one per cent of global energy.
Global energy demand, meanwhile, has been growing at about two per cent per year for the last 40 years. So, just to provide sufficient wind power to cover that increase in demand, how many wind turbines would need to be built?
Matt Ridley answers that question here:
If wind turbines were to supply all of that growth but no more, how many would need to be built each year? The answer is nearly 350,000, since a two-megawatt turbine can produce about 0.005 terawatt-hours per annum. That’s one-and-a-half times as many as have been built in the world since governments started pouring consumer funds into this so-called industry in the early 2000s.
At a density of, very roughly, 50 acres per megawatt, typical for wind farms, that many turbines would require a land area [half the size of] the British Isles, including Ireland. Every year. If we kept this up for 50 years, we would have covered every square mile of a land area [half] the size of Russia with wind farms. Remember, this would be just to fulfil the new demand for energy, not to displace the vast existing supply of energy from fossil fuels, which currently supply 80 per cent of global energy needs.
Apart from the obvious visual blight, the environmental cost of building so many wind turbines would be enormous.
As Andrew Montford notes in a report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation called Green Killing Machines, nothing damages the environment quite like a wind farm.
The impact on bats is thought to be particularly serious, with turbines causing pressure waves that make their lungs implode. One recent study raised the possibility that whole populations of some bat species might be threatened. Birds, and particularly raptors, may collide with turbines: direct collision might cause 20 avian fatalities per turbine per year although considerably higher numbers have been mooted.
By coincidence, yesterday I found myself driving past the Prince of Wales’s country house near Tetbury in the Cotswolds, a strong competitor for the most beautiful area of England.
I drove through valley after valley of idyllic, unspoiled countryside, interrupted only by the occasional chocolate box village of honey-coloured stone with ducks and moorhens being photographed by Chinese tourists who clearly couldn’t believe somewhere quite so perfect-looking could actually exist.
This is the kind of place where you choose to live if, like the Prince of Wales, you are very, very rich. His net worth has been estimated at around $400 million — not unusual for a climate change alarmist.
From multimillionaire Leo Di Caprio to multimillionaire Al Gore, multimillionaire Sir David Attenborough to multimillionaire Tom Steyer, from multimillionaire Sir Richard Branson to multimillionaire Emma Thompson, environmentalism is a hugely attractive religion which enables you to achieve two perfectly wonderful things simultaneously.
First, it enables you to parade your moral virtue by showing that even though you are disgustingly rich you are still in fact an incredibly caring person.
Second, it means you can lecture the revolting lower orders on how they should live their lives and you can campaign to make everything more expensive and miserable for them, as Sir David Attenborough did earlier this week when he urged that air tickets should be hiked up. Obviously, people like Attenborough will go on flying regardless because they’ll still be able to afford it whatever environmental levies are imposed. But stopping other people from doing it will mean that airports and holiday destinations will be less crowded, just as Mother Gaia intended.
…and yet, somehow, these twits are the ones running the world
I wouldn’t trade places with any of the kings of yore because, compared with me, they lived miserable short uncomfortable lives.
What allows a billionaire to actually live like a billionaire is modern technology. If CAGW hysteria insanity borks the economy badly enough, the very complex networks supporting our modern technology will collapse. Then those billionaires will be reduced to living like the kings of yore with whom I would not trade places.
The goal was for the ‘elite’ to loot the wealth of the West and then move on and loot somewhere else.
The problem is that the only place left to ‘move on’ to is China, and the Chinese have no desire to be looted the way the West is being looted.
…in the mean time an entire nation, nay, an entire world prays that the Queen out lives the Prince.
I recall in the beginning of this century Dumbo had predicted another edge-of-the cliff time frame that he was terribly wrong and he crawled in a hole for a while. Anyone remember his prediction??
Try this:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/prince-charles/10214662/Thrifty-Prince-Charles-dons-patched-up-suit…-again.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/0/prince-charles-ten-things-one-can-learn-from-the-heir-to-the-thr/
The very fact that we can build wind turbines and solar cells, etc. is itself proof that we do not need them; because to build/maintain/replace them requires lots of fossil fuels. If we really needed them we could not make them – de facto.
Absolutely brilliant take…
The Prince is just facing reality – We need to destroy the environment to save it!
Why would I take advice from a blue blood elite who dreamed of becoming a tampon so he could be closer to Camilla … whilst still married to Princess Diana. A “man” who does that has sh*t fer brains.
This is funnnnneeee.
Big-ears is not really very technically competent. He has demonstrated this repeatedly in recent years. As Clint Eastwood said, He and the Pope should both understand their limitations.
Frankly, he’s a supreme idiot; and that’s in a family not renowned for its brains.
Kenji,
My feelings about Charlie Big Ears are less endearing than yours.
Absolutely spot on! The man is a barking idiot!
The object is not The climate or The environment. They are just The means. Their neomarxist object is a radical change of the Western World. Would it not be better if They change instead?
Brilliant Dellers.
None of these green loonies ever face the facts of the vast acreage required of renewables, to power just the western world.
What is also almost universally forgotten is that the world needs to lift the developing world from poverty, vast numbers of Africa and and Indians who don’t even fall into the equations Matt Ridley and David Mackay calculated.
What amuses me is that if renewable energy is as cheap as the green nutters claim, why aren’t the plains of Africa and the sea’s around it and India teeming with them?
Nor is their any mention of Matt’s calculation on the astonishing, vast amount of materials, and energy, required to build wind turbines alone, even without precious metals.
Matt’s excellent article is available here; short, sharp and to the point but with sufficient detail to make it credible. http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/wind-still-making-zero-energy/
And an excellent TED talk from the Late David Mackay (by his own admission a committed green) demonstrating the futility of the exercise. https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables
Both are very worth while taking time to view, 5 minutes for Matt’s article and 20 minutes for David’s.
They should both be required viewing for every schoolchild in the world, including Greta!
Even with David Mackay. United Kingdom converted coal power plants to wood pellets. Wood pellets imported from the US. How absurd.
Brilliant presentation by Mackay. Futile on Greta!
I envision a day … when the public comes to its senses … when public policy will fund a program to REMOVE the environmental blight of every wind tower ever constructed. Much as the Superfund cleanup of toxic waste sites … society will uproot and cleanup the horrific despoiling of our environment.
Well said HS and James.
Here in Oz the activists are determined to deny coal as a fuel for second- and third-world countries, in which some use animal dung for cooking fires. No word yet whether our luvvies would allow the export of Australian cattle dung to said countries! Stay tuned!
HotScot, I’m not sure where you live, but if like me you have the misfortune to live in South Lanarkshire you would wish you lived in the unspoilt Cotswalds. When I moved there 20 years ago it was an area of unspoiled rolling uplands, with large areas of managed forestry. Now much of the forestry has been replaced with endless seas of wind turbines, and if I take a 10 minute walk from the small town I live in there is no direction of the compass in which the hilltops haven’t been vandalised by these pointless monstrosities. I’m sure if the Home Counties and Jug Lugs estates were overrun with these things he’s sing a different tune. It’s ok to dump these things in Scotland where our looney government has declared a climate emergency but never in England’s Green and Pleasant Land
Even if it were a real problem, which it’s not, there’s absolutely nothing anyone in Britain or America could do about it, no matter how many bats and raptors they sacrifice to Gaia.
Too much in-breeding.
By a long furlong.
Shame Charles is not a hemophiliac
Easy there Kenji,
That’s the heir you’re wishing ill upon.
You wouldn’t hear an Englishman bad mouthing your head of state.
Oh – wait…
ex. The shamed ex- British Ambassador ?
Nature never was and never will be in an equilibrum
It’s always a battle around an imaginated equilibrum.
“all our energy from renewable resources”…
Technically fossil fuels are renewable resources. The process just takes a while longer. But what are fossil fuels other than solar energy converted by the biosphere?
Fast breeder reactors are renewable..
Eat the Prince of Wales? Are you kidding.?
I have got a life to live. But a hypocrite he is.
I suspect the author is (cleverly) kidding.
See “”A Modest Proposal”; Swift, J.”
Greens behave like the way the ancient Romans felt towards chastity, a virtue admired in others.
In your last sentence you alluded to what I believe the situation to be; the elites want to make the world a better place for THEM. Going to airports without having to tolerate hordes of the unwashed would be great! Make driving too expensive for Joe Sixpack by requiring EVs, added taxes, and high electric prices, would end traffic problems. Fantastic! And ending the use of oil and all of its derived products would literally reduce the world’s population, leaving plenty of everything for them. Outstanding!
So, “the idea that the UK could power itself by 100 per cent renewable energy was an “appalling delusion”.” Is not a delusion, but an achievable goal if you have no intention of providing electricity to the majority of the population.
per my reply to Latitude above.
Most people, billionaires included, have no clue how complicated are the networks required to develop and build modern technology. We are all exceptionally interdependent. If you ruin the economy by trying to mandate green energy, the result will be a rather nasty feedback loop that will result in even the billionaires having to devolve to a middle ages lifestyle.
Even if technology re-evolves quickly to a middle 1800s level, a little research should demonstrate to even the stupidest billionaire that they wouldn’t like to live like that.
No disagreement, but I fear their clueessness will result in their creating an irreversible spiral to a new age of ignorance and deprivation.
Heinlein put it well:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
Dead on, commieBob. Development of our UHD TVs happened because the market was large enough to recoup those research and development costs. Ditto for our cell phones, high speed internet, GPS receivers (and satellites, as large populations require large militaries), computers, connected/safe/reliable cars, etc. Market shrinks/population shrinks, and demand withers.
As you said above, I’d rather be me today than a king of yore.
Here’s a good recap of the subject.
http://lukemuehlhauser.com/three-wild-speculations-from-amateur-quantitative-macrohistory/
If you want to know how the elites think of the prols, one only had to fly in and out of SFO in the late 1990s. During the construction you parked on the roof of the parking garage, then wheeled your luggage to a stairs ( that’s right, a stairs) 10 steps up to the light rail which whisked you to the terminal.
It was clear that anyone with any pull at all had a limo and driver to put them right before the express check-in line. Those of us who are not so fortunate risked a serious hernia trying to get checked luggage up and down the steps.
Wondering why Prince Charles deserves to be in the news or his opinion be of any interest. Shouldn’t Bozo the Clown get equal attention?
Bozo is 10 orders of magnitude more ethical and intelligent than Charles!
Honk Honk
I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival.
On the other hand: I am firmly of the view that in the next 18 months or 18 years or even 18 decades with our ability to do nothing we will keep climate change to survivable levels and nature will always be in the equilibrium we need for our survival.
Let’s hope the Queen outlives the village idiot.
She’s announced plans to step down between 1 and 3 years.
James, I trust you were wringing your cap, whilst addressing your betters?
I am firmly of the view that the Prince of Wales is severely mentally challenged.
Was Prince Charles talking to his plants about this?
I don’t believe we should take seriously, anyone, who has admitted that he talks to his plants, or has encouraged the NHS to waste millions of pounds on Homeopathy. Also, doesn’t he have investments in renewable energy schemes (like many of the climate change committee) and receive millions from solar farms and wind turbines on his land – the subsidies, feed in tariffs and carbon tax for which the public and industry are paying for in their energy bills. Yes, we are paying for his crazy schemes and eccentricity and no, the human race will not go extinct due to ‘climate change’, not for billions of years at least.
When I become Prime Minister, no one claiming there is drastic man made climate change will be permitted to holiday in countries warmer than their own, or fly, or drive, or use electricity from fossil fuel, or buy imported water in plastic bottles or imported food out of season.
tonyb
“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff makes stunning admission about the Green New Deal”
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6058612249001/#sp=show-clips
The game is up !
I found that video very interesting for several reasons: AOC’s “chief of staff” stated that the GND is NOT about replacing energy sources at all. It’s about replacing the government with a socialist state, and the interviewee denies that statement. He also ignores the fact that the so-called “green energy” platforms currently in place are not working as sole resources for electricity and are being replaced by fossil fuel platforms, e.g., Germany returning to burning coal.
I see some conflict or disconnect there, and it isn’t with Carlson’s side of the fence.
Robert Hockett is a complete fucking idiot as all Cornell enriro-wack jobs,
Eating Prince Charles would prove most damaging to any person’s digestive system. The kilogrammes of hypocrisy ingested would probably prove fatal. The layers of fatuous stupidity would defeat the digestive system totally.
Conversely, one could find out what a dimwitted, lumbering brontosaurus tastes like….
FWIW, a search of the BBC website right now for Prince Charles doesn’t return anything about this latest idiocy.
Save the World!
Save the Wales!
There is an interesting article on ludens dot cl/philo/electric website, “The truth about electric cars” which points out that electric cars have higher mass than comparable size dinosaur fueled car. The article was mostly written in 2006 with an added ending from 2018. A google search showed an electric car battery can weigh 500 Kg. Would anyone like to hazard a guess at the added total mass of all cars in U.K if they were all electric ? Maybe not as much as double but would require even more energy than present to move around.
I copy and paste the start of his article: Much has been said and written about the fabulous future awaiting electric cars. Some manufacturers are actively offering some electrical vehicles, others are selling hybrid cars, and a lot of talk goes around about hydrogen cars, fuel cells, and so on. Prompted by the ever increasing prices for fossil fuels, many people are giving serious thought to the idea of replacing their present, expensive-to-operate conventional car by a modern electrical, hybrid or hydrogen-powered “environmentally correct” car. The companies making them are aggressively promoting their products, promising much reduced operational costs, almost complete environmental friendliness, and so on.
It’s interesting to note that electric cars hit the roads well before gasoline driven cars did. But they fell out of favor, and gasoline won over batteries and all else as the energy carrier of choice. Why? Pure greed and power of the oil companies? Hardly…
I have kept silent for a long time, but I feel I must now contribute a little bit to public knowledge and clear up some myths and misconceptions surrounding these issues, and de-base the outrageous claims made by manufacturers of electric vehicles! To avoid any misunderstandings, I would like to state that I’m in no way connected to any fossil fuel interests, and that I would like most dearly to see the present cars replaced by something better and more ecological. But I hate seeing ignorant people misled by other, more clever people, who don’t see anything wrong in misrepresenting some facts and in obscuring others, in order to sell their products.
First myth: Electric cars have lower operational cost than gasoline cars.
Several companies that offer electric cars praise their lower operational cost. A typical calculation goes like this:
Your present car needs 10 liters of gasoline to go 100 kilometers. At 1.3 Euro per liter, that makes 13 cents per kilometer. Our super duper electrical car needs only 15 kWh of electricity for those 100 kilometers. At 8 cents per kWh (night time rate), that’s only 1.2 cents per kilometer! Look how much money you will be saving!
The calculation in itself might be correct, but it colors some facts, and completely omits other, very important ones! For starters, the 10 liters per 100 kilometers stated there are valid for a large, heavy car, which can take five passengers and a significant amount of load, has air conditioning, and is being driven fast. The 15kWh per 100 kilometers instead are for a tiny minimal electric car that seats two people, with no cargo, and goes at half the speed of the gasoline car. Talk about comparing apples to oranges.
Will you come home in your electric car, park it, then wait until midnight or whenever the electricity rate drops (if it does at all!), and then plug it in? Most people won’t have the discipline to do that, nor the technical inclination to use a timer, even if the latter is easy to do. Also, there will be many cases when you will be forced to recharge your car during the day, at high electricity cost. So the 8 cents per kWh might turn into 20 or more.
But electricity is not nearly the most important factor in operational cost! What the electric car manufacturers try to hide from the clients is the huge operational cost caused by battery replacement! Unfortunately the batteries don’t last very long, and they are expensive. A typical lead acid battery used for an electric car might store 1kWh for 200 times before its lifetime is over, and might cost 80 Euro. You need several of those batteries for a small electric car, of course. Anyway, with 80 Euro worth of battery storing a total of 200kWh over its lifetime, you have 40 cents per kWh of stored energy, in battery replacement cost alone!!! So, the battery replacement cost for a tiny electric car is about the same as the gasoline cost for a big conventional car! How’s that for an important fact hidden by the seller?
And that’s considering lead-acid batteries, which are the least expensive of all available options! They are heavy, use nasty sulfuric acid, and so some electric car makers are tempted to use better battery technology, such as one of several nickel chemistries, or even lithium. Nickel lasts longer than lead, lithium lasts about the same or less than lead, but both are more expensive than lead. As a result, nickel batteries cost more per kWh stored over their lifetime, and lithium batteries cost very much more!
So, the very simple fact is that for an electric car, battery replacement cost alone is higher than the entire operational cost of a similarly sized gasoline car!
It comes as a minor, insignificant addition that the electric car makers don’t mention the losses due to charge efficiency of a battery not being 100%. The battery needs more charge (amperehours) put into it, then it will give back, and it needs to be charged at a higher voltage than what it will give back. The two things compound to make a battery about 70 to 80% efficient, at most. Also the chargers have some losses, even if these are small. As a result, if the manufacturer states that his car will go 100 km with a charge of 15kWh in the batteries, you will need to buy about 20kWh of electricity to recharge the car after that.
The bottom line is that the total operational cost of an electric car is easily 30% higher than that of a gasoline powered car of the same size and weight, AND that the electric car can take only half as many passengers, because the rest of its room and loading capacity are used up by the batteries!
Second myth: Electric cars don’t pollute
It’s true that a properly built and maintained electrical car doesn’t cause any detectable pollution as it moves along. It generates no exhaust, and almost no motor noise. But where did its electricity come from? Was it a coal burning plant, which churns out massive amounts of greenhouse gas? Was it a nuclear plant, which uses a scarce resource not unlike fossil fuel (uranium) and generates small amounts of extremely dangerous and long lasting waste? Was it a hydro plant, which dramatically changed the environment of a large valley, and usually not for the best? Or a wind turbine, which causes lots of noise and kills birds by the thousands? Or a solar plant, which took more energy to make than it will ever generate in its lifetime? Seen that way, the ecological advantage of electrical cars seems quite a bit diminished! The only real environmental advantage they have is that they avoid polluting the crowded city areas where they are mostly used, instead producing the pollution at less crowded places where the immediate impact is less severe. That is certainly a plus point compared to any car that burns fuel, but it’s not nearly as good as being non-polluting, which is what electric car makes love to make you think.
Now add the need for large batteries. These are mostly made from toxic materials. The most common battery technology is based on lead and sulfuric acid. Both of them are pretty nasty. Sure, in a properly managed system, the worn batteries will be returned to the factory and recycled to a high degree. Let’s hope this cycle will work…
Third myth: electrical cars are sustainable
I’m sorry that I have to let my dear readers know that electricity doesn’t grow on trees. Today, electricity is generated mostly from non-renewable sources: Coal, oil, natural gas, uranium. The only really significant renewable contribution comes from hydroelectricity, but this form of generation also has severe ecological impact and is strictly limited. Tidal, wind and sun power are rather plentiful, but expensive to harvest, and in many cases the installations required to harvest this power require a lot of energy (usually fossil!) to be made in the first place! It doesn’t look like humanity could satisfy its present energy needs from renewable sources alone, even if cost was basically no issue!
So, electric cars will mostly be using electricity generated from non-renewable sources. Their advantage might rest in better overall efficiency. It’s possible that burning a fossil fuel in a modern, highly efficient combined cycle plant, making electricity, charging batteries, and then using the electricity in efficient motors, will end up being just slightly more efficient than burning the fossil fuel directly in a conventional car engine. In any case, the gain isn’t much: Maybe 35% overall efficiency instead of 32%.
.Will you come home in your electric car, park it, then wait until midnight or whenever the electricity rate drops (if it does at all!), and then plug it in? Most people won’t have the discipline to do that, nor the technical inclination to use a timer, even if the latter is easy to do. Also, there will be many cases when you will be forced to recharge your car during the day, at high electricity cost. So the 8 cents per kWh might turn into 20 or more.’
No, because at least in the UK half of all homes don’t have their own driveway therefore could not come home and plug in. Most would have to trail a lead over the pavement assuming their car is parked directly outside-by no means certain.
So charging will be done at public or work points presumably at the most expensive time for electric.
Until electric cars can be treated as first rather than second cars they will struggle to make huge inroads.
Electric bikes are a different matter, can be readily charged from a small solar panel , can readily take you on the typical commute or to the shops. I suspect the future of transport are hybrid cars and electric bikes/scooters and for at least the medium term, fossil fuel cars.
Thank you Alex, but why not put the full URL? Manfred Mornhinweg has put it out there for us public after all.
http://ludens.cl/philo/electric.html
It’s one of the best demolitions I’ve read of electric cars, and the rest of the article concerning hybrids was worth a read IMO as well.
Alex, great post. But you have neglected to cover one important aspect and that is the ethical aspect. Children are being used in Africa to mine the materials for these batteries, in disgusting conditions. In China it is reported there are great lakes of toxic material as a result of the mining. It really just goes to show that anybody who buys an EV is a hypocrite as they ignore the contribution they are making to these problems.
And as regards Prince Charles, he is a huge hypocrite with his carbon foot print with both he and his wife using helicopters when they could use trains and he is driven around in a big diesel car.
“direct collision might cause 20 avian fatalities per turbine per year”
Somewhere there is a U tube 9f a bird flying through the turbine blades, circling and repassing until it was hit! Thet ate attracted to the blades. They like the air current effects. Multiply your 20 birds by at least three.
Why 18 months? That marks the ascendancy of the next President of America. 18 months to replace Trump and get an eco-alarmist in office.
The Paris Agreement is seen as the new control knob of global climate (actually, “weather”: “climate” never harmed anyone, but on good downpour ruined many a party dress). Get Trump out, a green loon in to revive the non-observed agreement, and, voila! the planet is 1885 again. Because, you know, the world follows the US example … except for those who don’t.
It is not the USA example that is wanted.
Cheap cold beer and hot dogs!
The US$$$ are wanted.
While Prince Charles babbles his nonsense, there is 17 times more deaths from cold snaps than from heat waves in the World, according to The Lancet (2015) :
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.htm
The article you cite is nonsense, just like Prince Charles babbles.
Then, show why The Lancet article is wrong :
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62114-0/fulltext
I must be missing something. The only objection I have to that article is that it is telling us something we’ve known for years. Cold is more life-threatening than warmth.
Nothing but bloviations from people that don’t know what they’re talking about. Even if they were successful in massive cutting back of fossil fuels in a short period of time it wouldn’t take long to figure out the mistake. Take something as ‘simple’ as everyone going vegetarian. How long before they realize there isn’t enough productive farmland, what it would take energy wise to convert to that productive farmland, grow and harvest the food, get it to the market, in order to feed everyone. Typical shoot, read, aim spouting.
An excellent article once again by Mr Delingpole. What concerns me is the manner in which The Prince Charles promotes his outrageously stupid ideas, and expects the world to take him seriously simply because he was born into the royal family. He is not a climate scientist, he has not had a scientific upbringing, but he still thinks himself as a world authority on a subject on which half or more of the worlds population do not agree, and which he himself does not have a grasp. Who puts these ideas into his head, and why does he not have a balanced view on such a subjective subject rather than come out with groundless statements that have no foundation in fact? He will live in time to reflect with great embarrassment on his scaremongering, but I worry about the damage he can do to the world in the meantime. Where is the press reporting to take him to task as indeed the Daily Telegraph did last week on the recent, equally stupid, Attenborough outpourings?
It’s the politics of populism, the Royals are detested by the left, so suck up to them. Hence the tremendous heart-felt ignorant baloney continually issuing from Prince Wacko.
I’m right wing and I abhor the royals, always have.
A well written, well thought out article. There are a couple of things I would like to add:
1) If it is possible to blanket the UK with these monstrosities (which I very much doubt, that have to be manufactured by emitting huge amounts of CO2 anyway). What is going to be the result on the environment? The Law of Conservation of Energy (basic physics) is being ignored, surely the weather and climate will both change if energy is removed from the atmosphere? Sticking my neck out, I think the results would be unpredictable, but most definitely negative both to humans and other species.
2) Are there enough raw materials in the Earth’s crust to build them? I doubt that very much!
Wasn’t it March 2009 when Prince Charles predicted that we had “less than 100 months to alter our behavior before we risk catastrophic climate change?” What ever happened to that countdown? Does he have a reason for this latest extension? Maybe we could get him to give us all another extension? And another? I would of course feel so much better to know we had that extension.
Prince Charles ought to go on a world-wide speaking tour (fly private jet, a big one) and lecture us little people to stop using fossil fuels. The hypocrite.
HRH won’t allow a bird mincer on his property. Says it all, really.
What are the connections between Charles and Epstein? Prince Andrew is involved in the Epstein atrocities? Is Charles manufacturing distractions?
While acknowledging the good points of the author and many commenters, here’s a question:
Has anyone calculated the area of the UK occupied by:
– sun-facing rooves?
– sun-facing walls on office towers & buildings (south, west & east)?
– carparks?
– railway stations?
– …?
Do they equal 5% of the area of the British Isles? How much Solar electricity could be generated by covering that area with Solar panels?
Let’s leave aside the important issue of economic, aesthetic & environmental costs for the moment.
Let’s also leave aside the development of both Storage technologies (which have risen from ~5 to ~50+ as reported by USA Dept of Energy), and Conservation, the cheapest form of new electricity.
This is just an exercise in calculating how much Solar electricity could be installed & generated in/on the existing urban heat island.
The Province of Ontario has some interesting problems in the next few decades as we either
Refurbish the 3 CANDU Nuclear plants’ zirconium boiler tubes which generate 60% of our electricity at great cost
OR
Retire them and somehow store the radioactive waste for 10,000 years (steel & concrete) and 300,000 years (spent fuel) at great cost.
(New Nuclear technologies are touted but not available until at least 2035, and current new Nuclear builds are unable to compete -often bankrupt- in most markets worldwide.)
Here’s a picture of Ontario on 2019-07-13:
http://www.gridwatch.ca at noon hour EDT:
Generated 18.5GW Demand 17.0GW
60% Nuclear
21% Hydro
10% Wind
8% Gas
1.5% Solar
0% Biofuel
Lorne
I live in the sunniest part of the uk and we only get some 1700 hours of sun per year. Many areas get much less. We need energy the most during the coldest period roughly November to march when we get the least sun because of cloud, sheer number of hours in a day and not of course at night.
David McKay referred to in the article wrote a book alled ‘hot air’ where all the calculations are made. It is a non starter and you don’t save the environment by trashing the countryside or our heritage do you?
In the unlikely event that the silly Prince has either a spine or a brain, I would strongly recommend against eating either one.
Chuckie’s Mum has more smarts in her little finger than he’s ever had.
He’s less useful than a gum wrapper. I sincerely hope that when the times comes, he abdicates and lets one of his sons, who are miles ahead of him in the World of Reality, take his place. He can then go back to talking to plants and doing watercolors.
A modest proposal if ever there was one;-)
Their ideas of building windmills everywhere reminds me of the Easter Island heads sitting all over the place — monuments to a failed civilization.
Strikes me the good Prince is in desperate need of what the old-timers called “a physic.”
A case of Ex-Lax might do the trick.
Despite all the claims of these rich people they never include any evidence.
These rich people wanting to tax everybody and change their lifestyles, then it’s them that should mainly pay for it. The normal working person can’t afford these ridiculously radical changes that these rich want to occur, but don’t themselves do as they say.
If the UK could cut CO2 emissions tomorrow down to zero, nobody would notice in future any difference in climate with this change.
I always knew that this climate change religion was about controlling people life’s and nothing else because they don’t care if the evidence is true or false. They also seem to take the media’s point of view and not the scientists.
Well they would care more towards evidence if to pay for this they had to contribute millions towards it every year themselves and do away with most luxuries they rely on now.
How would they like it if climate was changing and southern England’s climate become like northern England’s and northern England’s climate become like southern Scotland’s?
Colder is lot more scarier than the beneficial little warming the planet has had over recent decades. The climate zones of the planet are more friendly to humans over recent decades then had been for a very long time.
The elitist are becoming an hinderance to society on the whole.
Comments on Prince Chuck:
1) What must it be like to wake up every day of your 70+ year life wondering if you’ve been promoted to king…
2) Didn’t prince Chuck already fall on his sword 10-15 years ago with a prediction giving the world 6 months to save itself?
3) Does this fool even know how to count to 18?
I don’t want mad cow disease
” … The impact on bats is thought to be particularly serious, with turbines causing pressure waves that make their lungs implode. … ”
>>
This seems really over the top to me, “lungs implode”? It’s a mere pressure wave, not a shock wave. I thought these wind turbines made noise, and the bats had keen ears and innate pressure change sensitivity? They can’t hear and avoid with experience?
As for the useless bloviating big-ears … /eye-roll
More clear evidence Australia should become independent and ditch the royal dead-wood, they are playing politics because they know the left detest the royals. And now the Center and Right detest them too. Good job!
“The majority of this — three quarters — comes from burning what is euphemistically called ‘biomass” — most of it what you and I call wood.”
I recently heard a CBC radio environmental expert suggest that every household should have a ‘biomass conversion unit’ installed in the basement. It took me a few mintes to realize that he was merely referring to a fireplace.
It is even worse than Matt Ridley predicts. He has forgotten to add in the energy required to build these renewable energy resources. Considering that a solar panel takes more energy to produce than it generates through its working life, in the short term all we would see is a massive spike in emissions from fossil fuel generators to produce the renewables. However that would shortly come to an end as the world known reserves of cadmium, indium, neodymium and other rare earth minerals are depleted, bringing the whole scam crashing down. Then in a decade or so as these “renewable” come to their effective end of life we would be back to square one, but unable to any longer produce any future technology that might have depended on those rare earth elements.
Queen Elizabeth is a very smart and pragmatic leader/ figurehead of the British Isles. To think that in the very near future she will be replaced by this dolt is very disturbing.
“I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival.”
Does this mean 18 months from now the Alarmists will finally give up? When we all completely ignore Prince Charles for the next year and a half it’s going to be too late anyway.
Eat Prince Charles? No thank you, he looks like he’d be stringy and bitter tasting.
Seems like a perfect candidate claim for a wager. Put up or shut-up. Unless the maker of these claims is willing to lose something of value (not sure reputation has much value at this point), so that it hurts at least a little with the wager loss (and OH My, anyone making that claim Will lose), why would anyone care about such a claim? Wolf!
Exactly. Go off grid and stay there within 18 months Charles. – or do you want someone else to do it first?
Empty words from an empty head along with your buddy Attenborough. So easy for the ”elites” to look down and shake their fingers at everyone demanding this and that. George Clooless, Emma Toxin, Leonardo Di-craprio, and all you other virtue signalling bastards.
Delingpole has a wonderful way of misinterpretation! He’s truly brilliant in that regard, if in nothing else.
Just defund the royal parasites.
My Solution to Climate Change? Eat Prince Charles
Paint me disappointed, I was hoping for a recipe.
Oreilles de Cochon Prince Charles Dauphinoise wrapped in super-puffy pastry, served with Hubris sauce, garlanded in self-satisfied vegetables vocalese. All served with a Red Whine.
Side order of semi-recycled landmines recommended for a real show-stopper end to the party.
James has a wonderful way with words and I love his podcast – where’s it gone, by the way?
However, he is totally wrong with respect to anthropogenic global warming. A great shame because we could do with his entertaining and incisive voice urging immediate action, especially as it is big business, the military and government organizations (not the greens or the left) who have the national and global resources to prevent the worst damage to global coastal infrastructure. I would refer any continued sceptics to formal reports by the CIA, Department of Defence and major insurers such as AXA – hardly sandal- wearing, lettuce-chewing loonie lefties.
Bon chance mes amis!
“. I would refer any continued sceptics to formal reports by the CIA, Department of Defence and major insurers such as AXA – hardly sandal- wearing, lettuce-chewing loonie lefties.”
Oh yea, you can trust the Deep State 101%.
You have to understand where Charles is coming from. He represents an aristocracy that are just sick of seeing the peasants all driving around in cars and living in heated homes!
Why is that royal Clown even given a platform.
He should try living the next 18 months living within the carbon footprint of a British pensioner on basic state pension.
Try paying the needlessly inflated fuel bills on the pensioners income.
That unemployable royal Simpleton is the product of the best education money can buy, it begs the question of what the raw material was like.
Borderline cabbage. Royals need to expand their gene pool.
“That unemployable royal Simpleton is the product of the best education money can buy, ….”
It also questions the value of Western education. It seems to me that they system has been hijacked for political purposes and indoctrination takes precedence over education.
Absolutely, education should be rescued from the left and de-politicised.
Charlie is a complete idiot and has been spouting all this nonsense for years now. This article at climatedepot tracks his continuing changes and extensions of the deadline
https://www.climatedepot.com/2015/07/28/prince-charles-gives-world-reprieve-on-global-warming-extends-100-month-tipping-point-to-35-more-years/
Good thing Chuck and Barb didn’t hook up . They would would have had kids with noses the size of the Falkland islands and created their own weather .