From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
This really is hilarious!
Manchester will blow its carbon budget for the rest of this century within the next five years if urgent action is not taken, councillors have been warned. If the city continues on the current trajectory, it would exceed its carbon budget of 15 MtCO2 set for a 82-year period up to 2100 by around 2027.
Manchester council declared a climate emergency three years ago and the city now has a target of becoming net zero carbon by no later than 2038. The town hall is on track to halve its own carbon emissions by 2025, having already reduced the amount of carbon it directly emits by 30 pc since 2020.
A refreshed action plan, which was endorsed by the council’s executive this week, recognises the progress made in retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient, installing LED street lights and using electric bin lorries. But the council only accounts for around 3 pc of the city’s carbon emissions.
Councillors were warned about the challenges ahead as an updated climate change framework for the city was approved on Wednesday (September 14). They were told the city would use up its carbon budget by 2027 if it continues to reduce its emissions by around 5 pc a year, as it did before the pandemic.
Labour councillor Tracey Rawlins, who is the executive member for environment and transport, said the framework is a ‘call to action’. She said: “The city as a whole is not progressing as fast as we should be.
“The emissions that we’re responsible for as an organisation are quite small. We’re doing what we can, but it’s really important we continue to drive that.”
It does no take a genius to work out that while councils might save a bit of energy here and there, introduce a few electric trucks and so on, whatever they do on their own is pure virtue signalling.
As the report notes, the council only accounts for 3% of the city’s emissions, most of which are totally out of the council’s control, and indeed the city’s.
The electricity Manchester uses comes from the grid, so they can do absolutely nothing about them. The vast majority of Manchester’s drivers own petrol/diesel cars, and its goods and passengers are ferried around on good, old diesel lorries and buses.
And how do Mancunians heat their homes? (I note, by the way, that the City Council has not decided to spend hundreds of millions of its budget on insulating all homes, not just council houses, fitting heat pumps and solar panels. I wonder why?)
Just as with every local council that has gone down the same route, Manchester’s councillors doubtlessly preened themselves when they declared their climate emergency. But they were not prepared to put their (ie taxpayers’) money where their mouth is.
The stupidity hurts and we are paying them for it.
Realistically, go governments ever stay within a budget?
who will watch the watchmen?
In general there are no enforceable criteria for what those “in charge” can do. there almost always are ways for them to wiggle around any established legal limits; there are few way to hold them accountable.
Hence fourth every Manchester United football match will be played unlit and will not be televised.
Can that include Manchester City, Salford City and Stockport County as well? Please?
Fans may bring candles into the stadium to illuminate the proceedings.
Not allowed! Lit candles produce CO2…
They can still bring them, they just can’t light them
They could ban spectators as look at the emissions they would save.
All of these councils around the world that have declared Carbon Zero or a Climate Emergency are living in fantasy land .
It is virtue signalling and it does not apply to them as they are important or should that be impotent .
The people pushing these ridiculous concepts expect all of us to stop using fossil fuel but somehow they think that it doe’s not apply to them .
Here is one example from NZ .James Shaw is the leader of the Green party and Climate Change Minister likes to preach to us commoners .
He took a plane load of officials and party members to Glasgow to COP26.
When questioned he said they needed to be there .
Do as I say not as I do .
A lot of it is not just stupidity . The heads of the UN IPCC admitted a long time ago that the aim of the Global Warming / Climate change scam was to destroy western economies / capitalism , so that they can bring about a One World Socialist government .
The UKs total CO2 emissions make up just 0.00001% , [ or 1 part in 10 million parts , ] of the atmosphere , and anyone who says that can have any measureable effect on the climate is lying . But the whole thing is just to take maximum money from everybody to destroy the economy .
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/
it’s really disgusting when one thinks about all of the positive things they could be doing to
actually be helping & improving their peoples lives today, but yet they waste shiploads of time & money on stupid shit like this.They set their goal on 2027 yet they have no idea of what kind of conditions or problems they will be facing next year let alone 2027.
Not only does the stupidity hurt, but it is contagious & it burns too.
People will go hungry because of these wasteful policies.
City Councils used to be about Roads,Rates and Rubbish.
Now they want to displace the Department of Foreign Affairs and save the planet.
Manchester City Council should return to what the ratepayers pay them to do, but little chance when they can prance about like this on the world stage.
It appears they are only about rubbish now, just not the kind you place at the curb.
Now they’re just rubbish.
Two big users, Old Trafford and Maine Road
Will they floodlight with LEDs? Unlikely
It’s easy to signal virtue and impossible to deliver
Scientists have discovered that LED lighting is very bad for you and offers very few advantages over the old, but quite efficient, sodium bulbs. Empty virtue signalling strikes again!
Maine Road was demolished in 2003. 🙂
This seems appropriate:
At least Walsall trialled electric bin wagons before going completely down the path of madness:
Manchester? Not so much
Never underestimate the lunacy of Manchester’s political leaders.
It is worth noting the Mayor of Manchester is none other than Andy Burnham. He was a Labour Cabinet Minister in the Gordon Brown government back in the 2008-2010 period.
It was he who presided over the Liverpool Care Pathway. That was a protocol developed by and administered by the NHS to accelerate the deaths of thousands of old people. This was done, by denying them the essentials of life such as water among other things, when old people were on the wards of NHS hospitals having ‘care and none treatment’…
If he and people like him were prepared to oversee that not to mention The South Staffs NHS crimes before they got found out and stopped by public outcry, what aren’t they prepared to do?
Denying warmth and heat to the citizens of Manchester during a winter period seems like a small sacrifice when such a lofty ambition as influencing Climate Change has to be advanced.
I would not put Soylent Green policies off the menu when considering Andy Burnham and his ilk.
Andy Burnham is almost as deranged as Paul Mason. They’re as thick as Bolsheviks – and selling identity politics dressed up as class war. But Marxists aren’t convinced.
An article by our British comrades at Socialist Appeal (‘Storytelling, “culture wars” and the Left’) has drawn the ire of ‘left-wing’ journalist Paul Mason. He said that our “mouldering” organisation needs to abandon its outdated worldview. Alan Woods explains that the thin gruel of Mason’s post-modernism is no substitute for the science of Marxism.
https://www.marxist.com/the-sad-case-of-paul-mason-a-victim-of-post-modernism-a-reply-by-alan-woods.htm
Andy Burnham spoke the language of class struggle – Labour must follow
The Greater Manchester mayor has demonstrated passion and authority at a moment of emergency.
By Paul Mason
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2020/10/andy-burnham-spoke-language-class-struggle-labour-must-follow
What do others think of Mason?
“If this is ‘anti-fascism’, count me out
Paul Mason’s new book is batshit crazy.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/27/if-this-is-anti-fascism-count-me-out/
Mason is a product of the BBC. The fact he is still allowed to walk about in public without a mental health worker holding his hand is the most surprising thing about him.
Marx gave dietary advice, too!
Not sure about the rest but they could save about half of their budget just by not paying Andy Burnham’s expenses!
Let’s see if I follow the argument.
I assume for estimation purposes that the emissions rate has been constant from 2000 through 2022 to date, call it 22.7 years. And “by 2027” is interpreted conservatively as by the end of 2027, so about 5.3 years. The budget is given as 15Mt.
22.7/28 of the budget has already been spent, leaving 5.3/28 to be spread over 77.3 years.
5.3/28×15 = 2.84Mt left for 77.3 years, or 36.7kt/yr
Since 15Mt would have been used up in 28 years, the recent rate has been 536kt/yr
It’s necessary to reduce to 36.7/536 = 6.9% of the average usage so far in this century. Easy peasy!
Alternatively k!ll off 93% of the population and let the 7% remaining elite population keep using energy as before.
Bit extreme when you can just forcibly relocate the 97% 🙂
i don’t think that relocation has much weight in the WEF desire to reduce the world’s population by about 90%. Pay attention to what they (WEF and satellites) say since tyrants have always been up front about their ultimate goals.
Some in Germany are saying that a blackout will lead to trapped elevator riders dying because it will take 5 days to free them. Therefore, the recommendation is to avoid elevators and take the stairs.
In Manchester, the same warning applies to escalators.
Anyone who gets trapped on an escalator for 5 days is probably Darwin material. Oh, never mind, Manchester, got it!
Darwin’s alive & well Stateside!
This reminds me, I’d like to see a remake of ‘West Side Story’ with AOC and DJT playing Maria and Tony, respectively.
Leftists do not understand and/or acknowledge basic economic concepts such as ‘specialization’, ‘division of labor’, i.e., how an extended economy works. Hence, if the elites ever do realize their depopulation wet dream, they’ll be in for a rude shock when they descend into a subsistence existence.
Oh, Frank there will certainly still be division of labor after the Great Cull. The 7% will consist of 6 serfs for every 1 elite. And the elite will consist of 1 ultra-elite and 9 ordinary elite responsible for enslaving the serfs.
Spartacus would likely have a few choice words about having your serfs outnumber the elites 6:1.
After the crazy years it’s hard to say who’ll be survivors.
Anyone thinking of initiating a ‘Great Cull’ should well consider Solzhenitsyn’s advice re. what he and his fellow inmates should have done when the State’s goons came for them.
The Great Cull would (and I use the subjunctive in a moment of hopefulness), WOULD surely be carried out through treachery and deceit, enlisting the victims to help enforce the “treatment”.
For example, through a designer virus that k!lls those who have previously accepted a “vaccine”. A kind of two-part poison. Or a therapy that has the “unanticipated”, “unintended” “side-effect” of rendering the patient sterile except through extraordinary procedures, where natural pregnancy is blocked and only the elite are permitted to have a child. Anyone able to pay a million dollars out of pocket perhaps.
Such a crime against humanity would necessarily first require the elimination of free and fair elections and free expression. But the formal elimination of elections and free speech would never be accepted, so what will be slowly built up is a fascist one-party state with sham parties and sham elections. Also massive amounts of communication giving the impression of free speech, but with effective communication of disapproved messages being systematically blocked and suppressed.
Thank goodness we don’t see any signs of any of these things as of yet /sarc
I think the leftists intend on eliminating the old, weak, infirm, and poor.
They probably think that the rest of us will comply like they did with the Wuhan flu shots. I think that would include the majority of the populace so they might not be wrong. Not wrong numerically, wrong morally. They are amoral so it doesn’t effect them.
They probably believe they can control the masses of people pissed off about the deaths of relatives and other citizens, with superior arms and crowd control methods. That’s why they are desperate to disarm us, the serfs.
Old, weak, infirm and poor? If you fit in all 4 categories do they come after you twice as fast?
They’ll pick up your body first for recycling.
Gotta make fertilizer somehow.
They do not come after you, Richard. They simply ignore the fact that you are freezing and starving in the dark without treatment of any illness, while they blame a foreign bogeyman and make you feel proud for your noble sacrifice.
Curious why you down-voting this?
Perhaps if it were expressed as a 93.1% reduction from current usage rather than a reduction TO 6.9%? I did NOT say it was a mere reduction OF 6.9%
However I will own that a failure to communicate falls on the communicator.
It takes only a small bit of technical knowledge to fully understand the follies of near-term “Net Zero” goals. Take the simple act of home temperature control, for instance. Almost everyone in the world lives between the tropics and the arctic. In this zone, there’s generally more than enough excess warmth in the summer to provide comfort in the winter, and more than enough excess cool in the winter to provide comfort in the summer. The problem is that the quantity of energy to provide this comfort is very high, and the technology to economically store and deliver that energy between seasons SIMPLY DOESN’T EXIST. Windmills, solar panels, and batteries just ain’t gonna hack it.
There’s no amount of law making that will alter this fact. Nor is there any alternative beyond fossil fuels. It is simply folly to think there is.
There might be a glimmer of hope for intermediate term (several decades) success, whether it’s necessary, or not. This would involve rapid expansion of KNOWN EXISTING TECHNOLOGY, including rapid increases in nuclear power, electrical grids, hydro power, geo-thermal energy, autonomous vehicles, and more. This doesn’t even address many other issues, such as personal transportation, air and space travel, mining and processing of required metals, waste disposal, and more.
To do achieve limited home heating success, nearly ALL government money spent on “climate research” will have to end. It’s a total waste, and only muddles the waters.
I like your idea. Maybe we could just build large warehouses with a movable partition. Open the doors on one end to let the winter cold air or summer hot air in and on the other side of the partition use the stored air to heat or cool the city. I’m really surprised the greenies haven’t figured out this simple solution to the Klimate Krisis. Yes Griff, this is sarcasm.
Be careful; Griff may recommend to someone in Parliament that ice be harvested in winter for use in summer … partial /s
That’s what was done in the 19th century.
https://www.wlfarm.org/ice-harvesting/
The green loonies are heavily invested in windmills,11th century technology, so this is their idea of getting modern.
It is very labor intensive but they need something keep their serfs busy – idle hands can gather in mobs.
re: “That’s what was done in the 19th century.”
I know; why do you think I mentioned it, and labeled it as being “partial /sarcasm”
“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
I was pointing out that the green loonies are looking in the past for their solutions to today’s imaginary problems to address the non-sarcastic portion of your post.
Grasp the meaning of “partial sarcasm”. Some of us *are* students of history, grew up in a clime where we ice fished, referred to the fridge as an “ice box’, etc etc etc. and are aware of the absolute LOONS running some govts. I go so far back I still remember as a kid having the illustrated informational leaflet Consumers Power (now known as Consumers Energy) handed out on the Big Rock Nuclear plant, now long since decommissioned.
Perfect! We could also store green hydrogen in these facilities!
Tom,
You do realise the error in your thinking don’t you? You are using rational thoughts, in a world where Greens/Socialists currently in charge of the institutions that control us, use irrational thought processes.
The ever so virtuous Green/Socialists decision makers have no concept of being wrong. For them, they are always right and simply ignore anyone who holds a different opinion or asks them to explain their reasoning.
This winter is going to be a turning point for many of them. They will have to watch as their loved ones suffer in the cold and dark and still try to come back and tell us, it is worth it.
Even the IPCC has projected the outcome of all the world adopting net zero will make barely a fraction of one degree centigrade difference to the global average atmospheric temperature come 2100.
This guy, or his facsimile needs to be a member of every leftist committee. Needs to attend every Zoom meeting.
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/warmington-halton-school-board-prepares-for-backlash-over-trans-high-school-teacher
When I first heard about this trans story, I thought it was an over blown/over inflated piece….clearly I was wrong 🙂
I read about this in another article that said that the school could punish kids who don’t use the “preferred pronouns”. But no word as to what, if anything, the school or teacher could/might do if the just bust out laughing….
When I was in high school, that’s exactly what would have happened – that teacher would have been the laughing stock of the school!
“if they bust out laughing”…
Screams “Look at me, look at me”
All this extreme navel-gazing over ‘carbon’ (CO2 to be specific WHERE OTHERS ARE NOT) emissions by city councils and such is just so much Dunning-Kruger-ism based meddling by those that have trouble balancing a simple cheque book … this can only result in ‘wrack and ruin’.
‘Wrack and ruin’ may very well be the ultimate goal.
Whatever they like to say, levelling down has always been a hallmark of socialism.
I originally came to WUWT for the science (scientific debate) . But more and more I come here to ascertain and try to predict just how close our society will come to destroying itself over a false paradigm (s).
And maybe figure out how to prepare for the consequences.
“And maybe figure out how to prepare for the consequences.”
Teach every one of your acquaintances of what the green loonies are doing and the consequences that will ensue.
Get politically active for representatives that are rational.
Volunteer to be an election official or observer to ensure fair elections.
Prepare deep storage of food and water.
Learn how to protect yourself and those closest to you.
Learn how to hunt and gather.
Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
Declare your towns goal for net zero is no different than declaring it a sanctuary city. It is all empty moral preening by the privileged who don’t have a clue & expect the cost of their goal to fall in others.
So, Manchester councilors, when are you going to ban private planes? Until then you are frauds.
It can’t be about the climate/ CO2 because they completely ignore China and India.
Climate has always been the excuse not the reason. They want total centralized control and climate is tool. Pandemics are another. Anything that can be used for mass fear mongering.
And the City Council Washington of D. C. just declared the city will be CO2 free by 2032. But about 98% of the cities electricity comes from surrounding States. If they choose not to buy it, fine. Many think the country could do quite well without Washington, D. C.
All the grid connections should simply be cut post haste to show the depth of their stupidity.
What’s producing their electricity for their trucks?
Other locations. CO2 emissions are always pure if they are generated somewhere else. Australia burning coal for their own use is BAD, but shipping it off to China for them to burn it makes it non-climate endangering pure.
In the US we call bin lorries garbage trucks.
Manchester isn’t in the US though, so bin lorries it is!
There a magnet that drags people like that to the council. It should be looked into.
What needs to be looked into is the reason so many people vote for these idiots.
Most people don’t pay attention to local politics – not until something really bad happens. And even then many will still vote for the same people again.
We need to put that magnet in the middle of the sea.
Wouldn’t work unfortunately. That magnet is power – even the small amount exercised in local government draws these power-hungry morons to it.
Of course voters will never agree to drastic reductions in energy consumption, any more than they are willing to accept the vastly inflated costs they’re being hit with now.
The silly libs never ever get it that pocketbook issues and markets control the world, not them.
First destroy democracy then there’s no need for the useless eaters who vote in the fascist/socialists.
Libs aren’t all that silly. People DO continue to vote for the same grifters that cause their energy prices to go up and their homes to go cold. For some reason libs can get away with severing the cause an effect impact of their actions. Just look at NYC or Chicago or Portland or ….
It seems pretty unbelievable, so I presume they managed to reduce their carbon footprint by 30% by offshoring them – fitting solar panels, buying in electric and hydrogen vehicles, and not taking any account of carbon budget of manufacture. Or changing electricity supplier to one who claims 100% recycled energy, yet magically still offers full availability in the middle of the night when the wind is not blowing. And of course taking advantage of the pandemic lockdowns which have bankrupted the nation – hardly an enviable strategy.
I cannot believe people have genuinely cut back that much on heating, lighting and driving, other than what was prescribed by mandates.
I wonder how many have cut off their hot water? As for saving energy (b/c of the expense) I myself have downsized to an office-sized compact refrigerator, drawing about 1/3 what a full-sized fridge draws …
Why would people assume they can keep reducing their emissions in a linear fashion (5%/year)? The people inflicting this on us are only politicians, but I’m sure even they have gone for the low-hanging fruit first. Further reductions won’t be so easy.
It would be worth researching who the Mayor of Manchester is and thereafter checking out some of his thinking, words and deeds.
Lets just say ‘He’s an enigma’
He’s certainly something but ‘enigma’ wouldn’t have been my first choice.
I should think not.
It would do no good even if Manchester achieved NetZero. Manchester does not emit enough to make any difference on its own. And it cannot influence China in any realistic way. Our example did not keep Hong Kong free, for instance. So doing nothing is exactly the right policy.
On the other hand, you might think that Manchester should not have declared a climate emergency if they had too much sense to act as though they believed in it.
If you think that you do not understand UK politics.
There is a strong media pulpit calling for climate repentance. Any politician who does not say the right words is unelectable. Indeed, there is a significant minority (about 5%) who only vote on Green issues. No-one can get elected to do anything that they want to do without saying the approved Eco-Creed.
In Summary: Manchester is well run and has the correct approach to Net Zero.
Paul Homewood says:
“But they were not prepared to put their (ie taxpayers’) money where their mouth is.”
I don’t have any faith in the ability of politicians to do something rational. They will empty the treasury and borrow money to fufill their green lunacy, I have no doubt.
Civilization requires energy.
Civilization requires energy to transport food to cities.
Civilization requires energy to manufacture.
Requires.
Don’t remove an energy source without a tested replacement. That’s just silly.
— Captain Obvious
I think that fundamentally the problem is arbitrary government. If harms are decided without the check that harms must be to actual identifiable people or their property and found to be so by a court of law with all the safe guards that courts have to offer such as the need for actual provable evidence of harm to actual human beings or their property and brought by parties with actual real legal standing then we have arbitrary government.
This is a separation of powers issue. There was a reason for the separation of the judicial system from the legislative and executive. Those two branches are not to decide if something has done a harm or not and. This is arbitrary government and arbitrary government is a tyranny. It doesn’t lead to safety it leads to the destruction of actual government and the consequent social chaos that ensues.
/rant
I think it is a Manchester thing, my home town.
It is believed that in the town hall in Albert Square, the Coriolis Effect works in both clockwise and anti-clockwise directions depending on the football results from Manchester United and Manchester City.
It is not inconceivable that this can also happen to town councillors’ brains. A perpetual twisting of grey matter.
How do I know this?
A town councillor told me so.
Solar panels on homes in Manchester might help keep rain and damp out, but will not be otherwise usable for energy.
More useless virtue signaling for a fake problem, this is really stupid.
Some might view Manchester’s demise as a positive event.
I the brain trusts running the city want to be voted out of office or possibly lynched, just let them start cutting heat and light supplies to the cities and forcing people to abandon their gas/diesel vehicles.
They’re three percent? Well, they COULD get that down to one percent, or even lower, by emptying the majority of their bureaucratic offices. Of course, that just dumps all of those breathers out on the street, but it won’t be their responsibility any longer.
(There is a solution to that, too, but it would be rather messy.)
If you thought this was funny, try the piece on the Grimsby Live’ (that’s Grimsby UK) website with maps to show how rising sea levels are forecast to swamp low-lying areas of North Lincolnshire by 2090, all because carbon monoxide.
That’s right, carbon monoxide.
The reporter has naturally overlooked the facts that the ‘threatened’ areas have only been dry land for a couple of millennia, and that the sea has swept away several coastal settlements on this coast, even in recorded history. Sadder still, no-one seems to have noticed his chemistry fail.