Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Mirage News; According to the author of a new study on European climate concern, “It seems there is a chance the current generation will be content to sell their great grandchildren down the river” when it comes to climate change.
Research reveals “climate-change complacency” across Europe
Most European citizens do not particularly care about climate change. That’s the striking finding from new research on the views of 70,000 randomly sampled European men and women. Only 5% described themselves as “extremely worried” about climate change. The climate and the environment ranked only fifth in people’s overall views about priorities. There was also scepticism that co-ordinated action, for example to cut personal energy use, would make much difference.
“It seems there is a chance the current generation will be content to sell their great grandchildren down the river,” said Andrew Oswald, Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at the University of Warwick, and senior author of the study – Do Europeans Care about Climate Change? An Illustration of the Importance of Data on Human Feelings.
He also pointed out that so-called desirability bias, which is the tendency for interviewees to feel compelled to shade their answers towards ‘politically correct’ ones, might mean the true level of worry about climate change is lower than indicated in the statistical surveys.
The study has implications for economists and policymakers, Oswald explains. “There is little point in designing sophisticated economic policies for combatting climate change until voters feel that climate change is a deeply disturbing problem. Currently, those voters do not feel that.”
Professor Oswald and Mr Adam Nowakowski of Bocconi University in Italy analysed data from two large-scale sources, the 2016 European Social Survey and the 2019 Eurobarometer survey. They found:-
- Europeans do not exhibit high levels of worry about climate change, with 1 in 20 describing themselves as ‘extremely worried’
- Europe’s citizens are more concerned with inward-looking issues seen as closer to home, such as inflation, the general economic situation, health and social security, and unemployment.
- Europeans do not have a strong belief that joint action by energy users will make a real difference to climate change.
- Women, young people, university graduates and city-dwellers show higher levels of concern about climate change.
- People living in warmer European countries had higher levels of concern than those in the cooler North of the continent.
On the way to move forward, Oswald and Nowakowsi suggest parallels with the original government campaigns to cut smoking. They argue that it will be necessary to change people’s feelings about the problem of rising global temperatures. Just as education about the risks of smoking went hand-in-hand with graphic warnings and tax increases, governments should consider doing more to educate and alter people’s perceived level of worry about climate change.
Adam Nowakowski commented: “We should not conclude that Europe does not care at all about climate change. However, our analysis of the data does suggest that European citizens are not ready for policies which would have strongly negative consequences on their day-to-day lives – not least because we have found a low level of confidence in the usefulness of joint action.”
- Do Europeans Care about Climate Change? An Illustration of the Importance of Data on Human Feelings. Adam Nowakowski, Bocconi University and Andrew J. Oswald, University of Warwick, CAGE and IZA. IZA Discussion Paper No. 13660
- Downloadable from www.iza.org or www.andrewoswald.com
14 September 2020
Press Release Source: https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/research_reveals_climate-change
Professor Oswald’s study is available here.
Convincing people to make lifestyle sacrifices will be a real uphill battle, after all the nonsense which has been published about solar energy and wind being the cheapest sources of energy. Why would anyone need to cut their personal energy consumption, in a world awash with inexhaustible renewable energy?
Even Extinction Rebellion doesn’t appear to believe in cutting personal energy use, at least if you are rich and famous. When challenged about fly in celebrities joining their anti air travel protests, Extinction Rebellion claimed celebrities couldn’t help their gigantic carbon footprints because “we are stuck in this fossil-fuel economy and without systemic change, our lifestyles will keep on causing climate and ecological harm.“.
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And yet socialist governments of the EU are quite prepared to sell future generations down the river by WASTING diminished funding on unreliable, intermittent, and/or environment destroying so-called “renewable” energy such as wind, solar and forests.
Agree completely fred250.
It also appears that the majority of academics are prepared to “sell their great grandchildren down the river”, for a few pieces of silver in grant money.
There’s going to be some serious “clean-up” problems as those wind-turbines and solar panels start to die and need replacing.
The companies that installed them will have mostly taken the money and scarpered. !
And finding landfill areas for those fibre and plastic wind turbine blades is going to be a huge problem.
There is already a serious clean up problem from the costs of dismantling old reactors and clearing up old coal mining sites…
The first offshore wind farm has been successfully dismantled after a 25 year life.
At what cost? Not included in the LCOE or they would look even more expensive when comparing with conventional. Who paid for it?
Griff you use fossil fuels every day, you typical leftist hypocrite.
And up pops griff with yet more lies.
The clean up costs of nuclear aren’t much higher than the clean up costs of any other form of fossil fuel power. Basically break it down and except for the reactor, sell it for scrap. Even the reactor only needs to be buried for 100 years or so until it becomes completely safe.
Old coal mines are already being “cleaned up” and have been for decades.
For both coal and nuclear, the cost has been built into the price charged for them for the last 50 years or so.
Old coal mines end often end up as beautiful lakes.
They support LIFE, just like CO2 does.
Try not to be ignorant ALL your feeble little life, griffool !
By cleared up Griff means swept under the carpet, and only the visible part of the structure removed.
(Spot the massive bulldozer for the scale of this atrocity.)
And the clear up costs after such a pathetically short life, after all that energy has been invested in gathering the materials and building them in the first place, only goes to exacerbate the economic and environmental futility of windmills.
And that after millions of birds and bats have been killed – Attenbollox says there’s an extinction crisis – it’s ignorant attitudes like Griff’s causing it.
Here are a couple of griff’s old coal mines in NSW Australia
Such a horrific sight, hey griff,
Wrong again, griff. The cost of decomissioning a nuclear reactor in the west is paid for up front – it’s included as a surcharge in the price of nuclear electricity and held in escrow to fund decommissioning. You’re just beclowning yourself when you push a demonstrably false narrative.
“beclowning” griffies pic is part of the definition for that verb.
MarkW
You said, “Old coal mines are already being ‘cleaned up’ and have been for decades.” There are instances where the reclaimed land is more useful because it is flat and can be turned into housing subdivisions, golf courses, airports, and shopping malls. Those would have all been impossible in the original state of the topography.
The regulations generally require the contour of the land to be returned to something close to what it was before the mine. I would hope that there is enough flexibility in the regulations to allow flattening when that is more desirable.
I remember reading an article in a European Cement Trade rag and they were shredding the blades and using them as a binder in concrete.
Mostly they just chop them into pieces and bury the toxic plastic/resin composite in some landfill, where the toxins can degrade and leach into the ground.
Even the ultra-left Bloomberg realises this
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills
Absolutely – I’m not going to squander my granchildren’s inheritance on a phantasm.
The EU being typically continental European, elitist, and inconsiderate of the lives of the populace, will welcome any new law if it means bigger government, more tax, and more oppression of the populace.
Anglo-Saxons, and their offspring around the world, have only ever been ruled by consent, and our rulers know that, to their cost. Our king was elected, if he got too despotic, he could be replaced, by anyone. We killed kings, put foreigners on the throne, the Yanks told our continental despotic imported king George to sling his hook!
Fred, woody biomass for energy is indeed a renewable resource. The forests are not destroyed by harvesting woody biomass as a byproduct of long term forest management. Woody biomass can provide base load power- so it doesn’t belong with phony renewable wind and energy.
California has… err had.. a lot of woody biomass that just got burned. Since it is a renewable resource, in another 30 years or so it will be available again.
Grown for 30-40 years. Burnt in 10 seconds….
Do the maths. !
It is only ever sustainable in small quantities.
Nonsense. If you manage a million acres and only a few thousand get trimmed for biomass- though you’re emitting CO2 when burning that wood in a biomass power plant- the rest of the acreage is adding carbon- so the forest in its entirely is a carbon sink. You don’t cut a tree- and look at the stump and say, “it’ll take decades to regrow”- you OPEN YOUR EYES and look at the entire forest. If enough of this is done- the forest won’t burn in wild fires- at least not as much- and you’ll have better forests by having retained the better trees. Personally, as a forester in Mass. for 47 years, I don’t care for clear cuts- but thinning the forest is fine- removing sawlogs, pulp, biomass, etc. Some clear cutting, however, is actually good forestry- depending on the type of forest, age, etc. I just don’t like the looks of it- if large. If only a few acres, it’s not so bad.
And, you don’t know the meaning of sustainable. It means you can keep doing it. What you’re trying to say is that burning wood in a power plant is not carbon neutral- but you’re wrong as I explained above.
If California had just managed its forests and kept a viable forestry industry, the biomass from just the waste of that industry could have supplied much of the same electricity as the solar/wind projects do, and be reliable base load electricity. And perhaps would have failed back these extensive wild fires now. Forestry is truly sustainable, as we see from the fires now burning up much of that resource. There will always be fires, but maybe much less if we manage our forests better.
Some of the new R&D to gasify biomass/garbage and burn it in CCGT turbines at twice the efficiency would also be a big gain for getting a better return. This forestry waste comes from a near 2 billion m3 annual global forest industry that has about 1/3 waste but it does self renew and will always be a source to play a small role in our energy mix. It’s too bad that Drax like policies have jaded some folk into rejecting all forms of biomass. This is a permanent resource that won’t go away, so we may as well utilize it as best we can.
(no reply buttons this deep so I’m replying to myself- actually replying to Earthling2)
So, Earthling2, what’s your problem with Drax? Just curious. It’s a great market for southern chips. I wish Massachusetts would start sending chips to Drax and other European markets- but this state is loaded with forestry hating fanatics.
Joesph…the problem with Drax is that it sits atop a perfectly good coal resource that was needlessly converted to run on 100% pellets for the burners/boilers they converted to pure pellets. I think that pissed off so many people (with higher electricity prices and stupid CO2 arguments) that it led to the anti wood pellet movement that we even see here now. The burners don’t know the difference, but it drove the anti biomass movement to make all biomass bad, and led to Greenpeace type arguments against cutting down trees, which a few of the old videos show them harvesting old dying or rotten forests to burn for thermal biomass or pellet production and insinuating that all wood pellets come from old growth pristine forests that are just cut down for 100% pellet production. Of course, most of that is all an outright lie, as the timber resource always makes the highest use out of a tree for plywood, lumber, OSB etc or they point to southern plantations that plant purpose grown hardwoods/softwoods for the pulp industry, some of which gets a better price for the pellet industry than the toilet paper market. It led directly to the anti wood pellet industry that we even see here at WUWT, which is very depressing because it isn’t truthful.
IMHO, I think a better approach is to mix ground up wood pellet into existing coal fired plants at maybe a 10%-15% mix, and keep all the coal plants plants operational. The west coast pellet industry processes almost 100% waste product of one type or another from the forest industry for the Asian coal buyers to mix in with coal, which justified keeping open all these coal plants open in Asia. Which is good, since we have tens of millions of tons of wood waste that has to be dealt with. There isn’t a peep of criticism here on the west coast or in Asia from anyone about utilizing wood pellets for their coal burners. It’s not only a non issue, but one that we all take great pride in, utilizing a resource that was historically burnt in giant beehive burners for many decades. All of central British Columbia (not Vancouver) ~about a million people, get their electricity from just burning the bark and rough slabs from the forest industry. The planer and chipper shavings get sold to the pellet industry and none of is so far is subsidized. Gasifying wood waste will even have better utilization.
Just think if Australia could have been convinced to to co-fire their coal plants with 10%-15% pellet material which has a BTU value equal to low grade brown lignite coal, and not blow up perfectly good coal generators before their useful life time was up. Instead they went whole hog on grid scale wind/solar, that isn’t even base load. We all need to give a little, since politics (especially in a democracy) is the art of compromise.
Denying that you are putting the sequestered CO2 of 30-40 years of growth, back into the atmosphere in a less than a minute doesn’t help your story.
Fred, sorry you don’t understand, but this is terrestrial carbon. Not fossil carbon. All those trees are going to recycle through the carbon cycle again in short order. What would you do with all the forestry waste? Landfill it? Or ignore it like in California, Oregon and Washington State and then let it burn uncontrolled. Your CO2 argument makes no sense, and is totally against the stupidity of Drax not burning the coal that is right under their own nose. That is a valid argument. But don’t mess the with the employment of millions of people in the forestry industry that have to deal with all this wood waste or practise forestry on private or Gov’t lands. Your argument reminds me of the Alarmists on CO2 having to do with climate change. Maybe even more ignorant because it doesn’t even make any sense.
Sorry, It is ALL terrestial carbon. Some just got buried a long time ago.
Pretense of wood burning being “carbon neutral” is just a non-scientific way of justifying the farce of wood pelleting US forests.
“look at the entire forest. ”
Yes, every tree is burnt in less than a minute.. and takes 30-40 years to grow back.
Your point is ?
Nothing to do with carbon neutral, or soaking up CO2 or adding more CO2. Let’s get CO2 to stabilize at 560 ppmv if we can be so lucky to double and maintain that level long term, which is only a modest increase. Doubling next to nothing is still next to nothing. Going from .032% in 1900 to .0416% today is still a very small number. If your concern is CO2, then get a bike and ride it to work, or something.
This about utilizing a resource that we have a lot of, which is forestry waste by the hundreds of millions of tons globally. We have tens of millions of dead pine trees alone in the Pacific North West (BC, Or & Wa) plus California. If we can make electricity out of it smartly and get a new commercial crop growing, then why not? Are you opposed to proper forest management and the forest industry? The argument that it takes 30-40 years to grow and burns in a minute is disingenuous. It is already forestry waste that has to be dealt with.
My point now is that you don’t really understand the issue which is evident by your limited understanding that you don’t even understand fossil carbon and present day terrestrial carbon that is or was just alive recently, not buried for tens of millions years. Not that I am opposed anyway to fossil fuels since I use more of it than most. I consider your type of comment to be slander against millions and millions of people that make their living in the forestry industry, which is even more people than is employed in the oil and gas sectors. It is one of the largest industries on the planet. And I don’t think it is the FF industry that is shilling against dealing with our wood waste stream. If your issue is with Drax, take that up with your elected local leaders. Don’t try and destroy my business on this side of the pond which is supplying high quality timber products to the world, of which about a 1/3 is forestry waste that has to be dealt with, one way or another.
Earthling- nice to see someone here who understands the forestry world. Unfortunately, forestry folks are often not great communicators so we lose too many political battles over important issues.
Apparently, Europeans – like Americans – have noticed that the climate isn’t changing all that much and the support for the so-called climate change catastrophe is somewhat sketchy.
Rhoda
The HISTORY channel has been ignored but lately it has re-entered the ratings.
An alternate message: If you don’t believe in climate change, you will go to hell.
It is as testable as any other climate change message.
“doing more to educate and alter people’s perceived level of worry about climate change”
??????
They do not want to alter the “level of worry”. They want to alter the perceived level of worry. I understand that the author is in behavioural science, but this still does not make any sense.
and this:
“it will be necessary to change people’s feelings about the problem” and “governments should consider doing more to educate and alter”.
Right out of George Orwell’s “1984”. This guy is openly advocating for governments to get more involved in controlling how people think and what they feel.
This stuff is getting way to creepy.
TonyL
The way the MSM addresses the issue is more along the lines of Joseph Goebbels.
“It seems there is a chance the current generation will be content to sell their great grandchildren down the river,”
And he says this like it is any amazing discovery?
Let us be pragmatic, few of us are going to know our grandchildren in any meaningful way, assuming they are even born within our own lifetimes. They will be, or maybe are, basically strangers.
For some of use the same may apply to their grandchildren. Some of us may never have any during our lifetimes. Some of us may have close emotional bonds with our children’s children, but some of us may go through their later years spitefully spending every last scrap of wealth least our greedy parasite offsprings get a piece of it.
Our Grandchildren may still be strangers, but are at least more likely to be around during our lifetimes.
Children? Should we end up having any, we will most likely relate to pretty directly, probably for the simple reason we would be the people raising and guiding them as they develop into adults and this is the important part of our discussion.
Children? Someone who probably lives with and relies on us.
Great Grandchildren? Abstract strangers that may not even be around in our lifetime.
So, if you were forced to spend your money on your children or your great grandchildren, which generation are you more likely to choose?
“Sorry Kids, you can’t have nice things, because otherwise your own grandchildren will be forced to use air conditioning more often.”
Your own children are people you are morally, ethically and – Your Country May Vary – legally required to provide for.
Your great grandchildren are abstract strangers who don’t even exist yet.
“Sorry Kids, you can’t have nice things, because…” the government have taken their cut of our wealth in Inheritance tax, or more probably, the care sector had drained our wallet dry in care home fees. (From a UK perspective anyway). Fixed it for you:-)
The whole “future generations” thing. Like if you don’t worry about this then you are a puppy kicker. I appreciate the previous inventors and developers that bought about the basis of our modern civilization. But I don’t think They were all that concerned about Me at the time.
Craig – +10 on your post.
The main purpose of this appeal to “think of” future generations (especially the hypothetical fruit of YOUR loins), is just cynical social manipulation and propaganda.
In a way, this reminds me of the mental midgets who once proclaimed that we need to leave oil in the ground, because if we don’t our great grandchildren won’t have any oil.
The problem with this logic is that results in nobody being able to use oil. Ever. (Which was probably the intent.)
After all, when it comes time for our great grandchildren to start using that oil, they’re told that they can’t use it, otherwise THEIR great grandchildren won’t have any oil.
The proper thing to do is to use that oil to create wealth, and then pass that wealth down to our great grandchildren.
The best part is our regular trolls Loydo, Griff and GhalFruts might have snowflake grandchildren there. The Australian government has just released plans to build a series of gas pipelines from various states to a Gas Hub in Queensland to cover baseload going forward, and so expect the greens and lefties to be out crying any day now.
Craig: Great post. I took the opposite approach when discussing this with a liberal friend. That is, how much were your great grand parents concerned about how their actions would affect you? What do you even know about them? Do you even know what your grand parents political views were? If you were very lucky maybe some ancestor of yours built a great family fortune and you inherited some of it (are you a Kennedy, Rockefeller, Getty, duPont, etc.?). But even if you were born rich doesn’t mean that your ancestor was thinking of anyone but themselves when they made their fortunes.
If these progressive/socialist/communist elitists had any real concern for future generations they might actually show some concern about a $25 trillion debt ($75,000 for ever single person in the US) which is on track to grow to 10 times that if the current crop of liberal politicians get their way. Talk about “selling future generations down the river”! (By the way, isn’t that a racist expression? Shouldn’t this guy be cancelled for using it?)
Someone once said to me that most kids grow up trying to avoid the mistakes that their parents made. Since their parents were probably trying to do the same thing, the kids just end up making the same mistakes as their grandparents. Hence the phrase ‘grandparents revenge’.
If we really cared about our great grandchildren, our grandchildren, or our children, we would not be running $10 Trillion deficits.
“we are stuck in this fossil-fuel economy and without systemic change, our lifestyles will keep on causing climate and ecological harm.“. (says XR… apparently)
Guess that goes to show you don’t have to be smart to glue yourself to stationary objects.
Under their logic we are removed from blame for using a fossil-fuel economy. XR state that without systemic change we are stuck, yet XR as an agent of change has clearly failed. XR has not delivered systemic change and by the extension of their same logic, we are stuck and unable to perform change by ourselves.
So… under XR logic… nothing we can do to change, so may as well enjoy it.
I wonder if the glue they are using is derived from fossil fuels..?
On the other hand, it does take a lot of skill to glue yourself to an automatic door.
https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/09/climate-activist-fails-glue-doors-keep-opening-9474332/
I am deeply worried about climate change activism. I read a prescient editorial In the ‘60s by the late great John Campbell in his pulp rag Analog, in which he predicted that three ‘green’ movements would become huge problems in the world. I know two of them were: radical extreme Islam, with its green flag, and radical extreme environmentalism. I wish I could find a copy of the editorial, because for the life of me, I cannot remember the third.
Pulp rag? Well, maybe so, but….
If it were the ’60s, I’d guess aliens.
Probably alliteratively (asteroids, space virus) rather than Little Green Men (RAY-CISS!) themselves.
Soylent Green?
It’s not that they don’t care. Rather, they don’t believe the hype.
AGW and the associated carbon tax is all about a new world order.
It was a real treat today to see President Trump being lectured in California about climate change being responsible for the fires, and Trump laughing/grinning and saying in reply “I don’t think Science knows”.
If President Trump is reelected, I think the world will quit whipping this dead horse for now, because without the USA participation, it is all for not and the EU and few other countries continuing to try and change the weather, is well, just preposterous. That just seems so funny to read that back. And anyone who legitimately believes that has to be stark raving mad. I guess they will be mad about losing all their climate grants and hedge funds losing out on cashing in on upfront fees for solar/wind renewable electricity contracts. #GoTrump and crush this socialistic/marxist curse that has reared its ugly head.
Before Trump said that, he said It’s going to get colder, and smiles when they think he’s crazy.
I hope he’s right – eventually it will. – get colder.
– JPP
“the true level of worry about climate change is lower than indicated in the statistical surveys.”
Imagine my shock.
Next thing you know, we’ll discover that there were fewer supporters of the National Socialist Party than we thought there were.
Would that be the dry river bed or flooded river for the great grandkiddies? Personally I understood with all the tipping points already tipped there wouldn’t be any grandkiddies let alone great grandkiddies so thankfully the dooming has its limits. Stay calm everyone and may your God go with you.
The Green political parties are radical and want radical changes in how society operates. Most people don’t like radical change.
My kids and grand-kids are going to laugh so much when the planet is cooling saying, ‘the ole b’strd was right after all’.
Oswald and Nowakowsi “argue that it will be necessary to change people’s feelings about the problem of rising global temperatures.”
So funny . . . they analyzed the data from the cited two large-scale sources, and apparently according to the above article never—for even a second—considered that the data might represent objectively reality and that THEY might be the ones that have the wrong conceptions.
Oh, no, the source data is not conforming to what we think it should be! . . . therefore, we must modify the data sources because we are the supreme holders of truth. Yeah, right.
Either a delusion on their part, as you suggest, or paid for advise for tuning government policy
Simple answer, we’ve seen nothing to cause alarm. Every time the UK’s seen the “Effects of climate change”, we’re either very happy ( Some warm weather!) or it’s shown to be due to mismanagement (Flooding due to not maintaining water courses & building on areas prone to flooding)
Another “claim” of more death “your baby’s will die”, Yet all it comes down to is money. No matter who it is, saving the planet can only be done, with “academics” being paid vast amounts, and people like me being taxed for simply breathing oxygen…
‘Convincing people to make lifestyle sacrifices will be a real uphill battle, after all the nonsense which has been published about solar energy and wind being the cheapest sources of energy. Why would anyone need to cut their personal energy consumption, in a world awash with inexhaustible renewable energy?’
Well let’s see: the UK cut its CO2 by 42% on 1990 levels and retired most of its coal power plants, 37.1% of the electricity generated in the UK in 2019 was renewable. And no impact, certainly no sacrifices, on the part of anyone in the UK. Nobody I know cutting consumption (except by energy efficient appliances and LED lighting!)
I remember living in the UK, heating the home in February got really expensive.
Lots of people on my street were likely in breach of clean air laws, feeding wood burners with cheap wood acquired from anyone who would sell it off the back of a truck, no questions asked, to try to keep their heating bills affordable. People who couldn’t even afford cheap wood, like pensioners, shivered and wrapped themselves in blankets, drinking hot drinks, trying to stave off hypothermia.
I’ll never forget one time after freezing rain we went to check on our neighbours. The husband was about to risk his life hobbling to the store over frozen pavements, so we dropped off some essentials. He couldn’t afford a cab – he had spent most of his money on heating, only had enough money left for food.
Trust you to misunderstand the quote, griff.
Though it does identify the problem the activists have got. They can only get away with their lies about how cheap wind and solar are because there is still genuinely cheap gas, nuclear and coal to keep the costs within reasonable bounds. They rely in the sheep not realising they have been fleeced until it’s too late.
And as usual there are some sheep happily lining up to be fleeced. Isn’t that right, griff. Baaaa!
Griff, according to your favourite newspaper The Guardian, Britain’s carbon footprint has not fallen at all. We have just exported all of our heavy industry to countries which don’t care about global warming. We have replaced domestic co2 production with imported co2 production.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/21/britain-is-g7s-biggest-net-importer-of-co2-emissions-per-capita-says-ons
Good point Bill, about exporting CO2 production. The state of Massachusetts loves to brag that it has the lowest or 2nd lowest CO2 emissions per capita. The reason of course is that this state now has almost no more industry- other than high tech, hospitals and universities. Almost every town has dozens of empty factory buildings- now rotting like ancient Roman ruins. Whenever I see a news article about the governor bragging about how energy efficient the state is- I fire off comments to many state politicians how wrong that is due to exporting the industries- but they don’t have the guts or brains to respond. This ultra green state is now in the process of paving over the landscape with solar “farms”. It still is green with trees but THAT green will soon be shiny metal and plastic solar panels. And of course, the state is planning some really big wind “farms” off the coast at immense expense.
I will dispute that… demand decrease has occurred every year from 1990 but it is attributable to improved energy efficiency, not to the flight of industry. In other words, the electricity we generate is less carbon intensive.
Griff, are you seriously claiming that the loss of all of Britain’s heavy industry has had no effect on energy demand in Britain? Are you denying that Britain is the biggest importer of co2 emissions per head among major economies? Your original comment was that Britain had hugely decreased its co2 emissions; I have shown that that is grossly misleading. Instead of admitting that you were wrong, you have blatantly tried to change the subject.
Well let’s see electricity production today in UK:
Wind 2% (wind speed over much of England in single digits km/h)
Solar 4% (only the very far East escaping medium to high cloud cover)
Biomass 5.5%
Gas 61%
Coal 7%
Nuclear 14.5%
There’s no impact because fossil fuels and nuclear are today providing over 80% of electricity needs.
Slightly o/t, but it’s reported (by Reuters) that Hitachi is pulling out of our latest nuclear project, as they cannot find investors.
I’m rather disappointed by that.
Can I claim a grant for enviro-mental damage?
Or, you could shut down the Gas, Coal, and Nuclear and run on Wind, Solar, and Biomass and everyone have electricity for 2 hours 45 minutes a day. Griff will be in heaven, as Wind would provide 17.4%, Solar 35%, and Biomass 47.6% of available electricity! Until sundown! Then watch the Wind and Biomass energy sources SOAR to even higher percentages! Just under 2 hours per day of renewable electricity for everyone. Wow.
Griff,
To say that, you have to have side by side economic studies of straight fossil fuel electricity costs (not in the current mode of breast feeding renewables) and renewables operating with whatever support costs like nuclear or fossil.
I know of no such comparison. Can you reference it for me, for I am tiring from searching? Thanks. Geoff S
Griff says:
“Well let’s see: the UK cut its CO2 by 42% on 1990 levels”
Yes – that was the “dash to gas” ie replaced coal fired power generation with gas fired. Still fossil fuels, not renewables.
Regarding electricity bills, average annual domestic electricity bill in the UK has increased from around £480 per year (2009) to £679 per year (2019). That’s an increase of around 40%. In the same period average annual gas bill went from £520 to about £615 – an 18% rise.
And of course we are paying an additional set of subsidies of the order of £10 billion a year through general taxation – about £360 per annum per household in the UK.
you are ignoring the fact that a sizeable proportion of that coal has been replaced by renewables.
Most of the increased cost in UK bills is due to natural gas prices…
I hope you will amend your post to be sure it covers fossil fuel subsidies.
Reduced production of energy means replaced now, griffie? That is funny.
Griff says “Most of the increased cost in UK bills is due to natural gas prices…”
Which is crock. Gas prices have wobbled up and down, but are currently down. And if gas prices are the cuase of electricity price rises, why have gas bills only risen 18% over the period and electricity 40%?
There are no fossil fuel subsidies in the UK, by the way. Its an an entirely fabricated meme by greens. If there are fossil fuel – please show us where the payments are listed in the government data! Even the Treasury disagrees with you.
UK wholsale gas prices at OfGem for the last 10 years.
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/wholesale-market-indicators
Look forward to Griff showing me how the increased cost in UK bills is due to natural gas prices:
Year average
2009 27.9 (Oct-Dec)
2010 42.4
2011 56.3
2012 59.7
2013 68.1
2014 50.1
2015 42.7
2016 34.7
2017 45.1
2018 60.4
2019 34.7
2020 19.9 (Jan-May)
Stick a trend line through and see which way it goes. The 6 year period 2009 – 2014 has an average price of 50.7 p/therm, the 6 year period 2014 – 2019 has an average price of 44.6 p/therm. No rise in gas prices there.
Still waiting for Griff to link me to the published UK Treasury table of “Fossil Fuel Subsidies”.
Just as a reminder for Griff about the UK taxes on petrol and diesel:
2019 taxes as a percentage of pump price – 60% (Source: RAC Foundation)
2019 Revenue from fuel duties now stands at £28 billion a year, which is 1.3% of national income. (Source: IFS)
So just the taxation on petrol and diesel alone in the UK is nearly 3x the ANNUAL SUBSIDIES given to renewables. And they are still uncompetitive.
Of course the 10’s of thousands who die every year because they can’t afford food and heat don’t count.
BTW, griff hasn’t paid any price because the heat in his mom’s basement is free.
My late mother didn’t have a basement, I’m sorry to tell you.
I am a little disappointed that debate here has apparently descended to the ‘your mother’ level….
Really? You took it there several years ago, griffie.
griff
You ignorantly said, “And no impact, certainly no sacrifices, on the part of anyone in the UK.” That’s what I call going around wearing blinders. See the remark by Worrall.
Like most progressives, griff uses itself to measure the world.
His life hasn’t been impacted, therefore there has been no impact on anyone.
Really? you can point to UK citizens being directly and adversely affected by the likes of closing coal plant and building offshore wind (etc)?
10 years of (say) govt austerity having no effect?
Just because you refuse to see what is all around you does not mean it does not exist, griffie.
It is because 95% of us realise it is complete crap.
And with the “desirability bias” mentioned, that’s probably a 97% consensus….
Mental health issues are becoming a real problem. Time to section the climate ‘emergency’ nutters.
I don’t know if USA has the same ratio. But us, as Europeans, get aware of propaganda from Fascism, Nazism an Communism, so we became “skeptics”. But, but, but, I’m not sure of the results of the study. It seem a scare picture to convince politicians to do something!
Sorry for my bad English. I hope you will understand it better than a AI translation.
If they had not been subjects to years of intense propaganda, no sane and rational person would had noticed anything unusual in the passing weather and climate over the last century. The Alarmists know this and continually urge governments to introduce fascist controls on how people think and act,
+10 this!
Ordinary folk are far more astute than Climate Alarmists think.
Ordinary fold are far more astute than Climate Alarmists.
I’m afraid it’s in Dutch and probably behind a paywall.
https://www.telegraaf.nl/nieuws/583152015/klimaatprof-begin-warmtetransitie-niet-met-de-oudste-huizen
It tells about the failure by a climate so-called professor Jan Rotmans to make his own house ‘climate ready’, that is running everything with electricity instead of on gas, which the Dutch politicians want to force through the throat of the population. He spent over 100 thousand Euros (clearly being paid too much) on the ‘transition’ of his own ‘old’ townhouse to the ‘Trias Energetica”: solar panels, insulation and heat pumps. He couldn’t get it to work, whatever he threw at it, to keep him comfortable. He laments, without a gas boiler it didn’t work. And this gentleman advises the government on its disastrous energy policies. Any humility and repenting? What do you think, the guy considers himself a hero because he tried.
Now let him try in Elfstedentocht weather, when the canals are all frozen over to allow thousands to skate the 11 city route.
Taxes, permanently increasing cost of life, utility bills, covid madness, erosion of freedom, security, to name a few.
Just how retarded are you Mr.Professor & al not to understand that we, your fellow citizens, have to apply stringent resource management just to survive?
Just go outside, run a grocery list, check the bills piling in the mail mail and try to figure how we got there, a three fold increase of our heating budget since 2015 ? It got that cold and we need to run our heating three times more ?
What attachment to reality can you claim when you and your peers, the “climate intelligentsia”, live on tenures & side revenues at least two times the paycheck of a training captain who faces weather with that many souls at his back on a daily basis ?
Is weather, and consequently climate, defined as an “integral of weather”, supposed to be always identical to the one of your office ? With a thermostat and hydrostat on the wall ?
Get real, earn yourself be it just a bit of decency, put a cork in it.
Say you I’m being disrespectful ? Spot on Mr. Professor, you can be proud of my achievements in the only subject you teach so well, don’t forget to give me an A+ grade for the effort.
I remember reading an article in a European Cement Trade rag and they were shredding the blades and using them as a binder in concrete.
Well, that will save some landfill and lock the fibreglass away forever. I was thinking they could be melted into solid bricks the size of no post cement guard rails, and used in highway construction of some sort. Expensive, but at last have some kind of good final use for all that waste. I don’t think we have to worry long term that these monstrosities getting replaced, because they won’t have any subsidy available in 10-15 years. There will undoubtedly be other much better and denser energy sources available in the future that will make big wind and solar PV not viable for grid scale. We should stop building these types of renewables now and let these current contracts just die a natural death when they wear out, or the contract expires. Phase them out by attrition.
Considering that we all go about our business these days wearing a face mask, it looks like all it takes is an executive order from the big kahuna and the sheep do as they’re told.
Sheeple are actually easier to herd than sheep with four legs. At least my sheep have their own mind.
Look up the term “mask-mouth” on google. !