Essay by Eric Worrall
Perhaps Britain’s technically illiterate leaders may have noticed that households paying £3,000 per year for home heating is lowering their chances of surviving the next election.
I’m one of the UK’s official climate change advisers – our new report says the country is no longer a world leader
Published: June 29, 2023 1.17am AEST
Piers Forster
Professor of Physical Climate Change; Director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate, University of LeedsThe UK’s Climate Change Committee – the official independent advisory body of which I am interim chair – has spent the past three months poring over thousands of pages of government strategy documents to inform its latest annual progress report to parliament. And our confidence in the UK meeting its climate goals is now markedly less than it was in our previous assessment a year ago. Key opportunities have been missed.
…
The UK is not giving its industries the support they need to electrify and decarbonise and there is little sign of progress. The government has set a laudable ambition to decarbonise steel and develop carbon dioxide removal industries but there are few concrete plans in place.
While the US, EU and China invested billions in green industries to help the energy and cost of living crises, the UK has so far failed to do the same. This risks losing green jobs and industries to overseas competitors.
…
It has gone from leading the world with its net zero commitment back in 2019, to showing support for new oil and gas and consenting to a new coal mine. It’s gone from hosting one of the most successful UN climate conferences ever, to undermining that legacy by risking delivery of its own commitments. This government has taken its foot off the throttle and the world has noticed.
…
Our report isn’t all bad news. Glimmers of the net zero transition can be seen in growing sales of new electric cars and the continued deployment of renewable energy generation, but the scale up of action overall is worryingly slow. There seems to be a sense that this can wait until other crises have been dealt with. But many of the crises we are facing – such as the war in Ukraine, the cost of living here in the UK – are interconnected.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/im-one-of-the-uks-official-climate-change-advisers-our-new-report-says-the-country-is-no-longer-a-world-leader-208509
That new Cumbrian coal mine Professor Forster mentioned is a metallurgical coal mine – exactly the kind of coal you would need to say kickstart a British solar panel manufacturing industry. Refining silica into solar panels requires lots of high grade coal, the coal is used as a chemical input into the process, not just a source of heat.
Odd that a “professor of physical climate change” doesn’t seem to know this.
But with Britain’s sky high energy prices, there seems little hope of any kind of significant new energy intensive industry developing in Britain. The main reason Britain still has a substantial manufacturing industry is Britain is a centre of excellence in precision engineering. The high value add of such products mitigates the energy cost disadvantage.
I would have had more respect if Professor Forster had explained how the UK could lower energy bills without “taking its foot of the throttle” towards Net Zero. I mean immediate relief, as in next year, not pie in the sky visions of investments in new industries.
Failure to recognize “that sh!t don’t work” is Professor Forster’s failing. Net Zero is a fanatic dream, and never had any connection to reality.
And ‘professor’ is just a job title that doesn’t confirm knowledge.
I think it really means you get to profess something- that is, you get to preach.
Got it in one!
“…that shit don’t work…”
The prof of “Physical Climate Change” sound more like his colleagues in ‘Imaginary Climate Change”.
While the US, EU and China invested billions in green industries
Talk about going off half-cocked! Why not come clean, and take due notice of China investing billions in coal plants while they’re posing as greenies!
And US invested billions in LNG liquefaction and shipping terminals to supply Europe’s coal abandoners.
Our crazed government think it’s a success to be importing fracked LNG gas from across the Atlantic while deliberately preventing fracking here. Despite Sunak stating his support for fracking (albeit conditional on local support) when he tried, but failed, to be elected new Tory leader. He then did a complete U-turn when he finally weaselled his way into the top job. Starmer, likely our next PM, makes Sunak look intelligent and decisive. We really are scr*wed.
The Conversation is still using scary photoshopped images of cooling towers emitting steam against a torrid-looking sky as headers to set the tone of its climate change propaganda pieces.
Truth was never their strongpoint.
As the new Chair of the CCC he needs to start by claiming that Deben failed so that any “progress” made under his tenure he can claim for himself. Unfortunately there are a number of other blows to net zero policy that will be hitting soon. Failure of the AR5 auction to procure capacity will be one, increasing mechanical failures of wind farms another. Dispatchable capacity shortage may also show up. Consumer objection to pylons and wind and solar farms despoiling the country will grow. As will objection to remote control meters, 15 minute cities and LTNs, ULEZ and congestion charges, and attempts to change our diets
I suspect we have seen peak green, although it will take a while for enough of the public to wake up to the need to oust Labour greens as well as Tory greens.
The British public is rapidly waking up to the scam that is Net Zero. Unfortunately the politicians seem not to be taking any notice.
the politicians will notice when they see pitchforks
So if they don’t vote Conservative who do they vote for? Labour, who are even bigger idiots? Wouldn’t want to live in England, and I have Trudeau as a PM
No need to vote either Tory or Labour. In fact every need to not vote Tory Or Labour. Having the need to vote for a party which might win traps the voter in a party system. Democracy is about majorities and minorities not winners and losers. The minority is an essential part of democracy.
Democracy seems to be about NOT having strong leaders exept in dire emergencies. Dictatorships and monarchies prefer strong leaders all the time. They all have trade offs. Mussolini made the trains run on time. 🙂
Strong democracies don’t require strong leaders. Weak ones do. Political parties weaken democracy by creating a pathway for rubbish representatives.
George Washington spoke against America developing political parties.
Democracy only works if governments do what they promise to do when they get elected. The problem is politicians say anything to get elected end then do whatever they please (expecially if it makes them or their family/friends rich).
Election promises are just bribes for your vote. If you succumb to bribes from people who offer you them then then you get the sort of people you have for representatives.
I wouldn’t want to live m France and I have the whole of the UK parliament as my overlords
(Actually, I really would want to live in France – all that lovely cheese, wine, weather and French ladies)
“all that lovely cheese, wine, weather and French ladies”
I think your priorities are a bit off.
I saved the best for last
You have the option to vote for another party or an independent candidate if they are standing for election. Alas the sheep tendency is to vote on the viewpoint of which of the 2 main parties is the least shit but the gap will be very narrow on that next year, as opposed to abstaining in disgust. To vote the Tories back in will make them think that their years of incompetence has been approved. To vote in Labour is to vote in a bunch of woke idiots who will bankrupt the country, although the Tories have already nearly done that so it leaves them with little left to do except contend that many women have penises.
Unless there is a massive surge for smaller parties such as Reclaim, the best hope is for the worst turnout in history to leave whoever wins struggling to explain how they have a mandate. Note how the ecofascists won the Berlin vote on ecosuicide but nowhere near enough people voted in the poll so it was void. In the UK they have been concerned about turnout for a while so don’t think it would not worry them, although it would need the lame legacy media to highlight it. With 4 byelections due it will be interesting to see what happens. A recent one saw just 18% of the electorate vote for the winner but the media ignored it.
CONGRATULATIONS!
No longer leading the appeasement coalition is a good thing!
Politicians, both Left and Right, in the U.K. are making nonsensical and disastrous choices for our country. It is like watching a slow-motion car crash.
Nobody disagrees that gas-fired central heating is an efficient method of heating the home. It works – very well. But we are moving away from it and replacing it with inefficient and largely useless heat pumps. We are blessed with huge deposits of frackable natural gas – which, by law, we are banned from developing. We are blessed with huge deposits of offshore oil and gas – which politicians of every colour say is bad for our nation and we must grant no further licences.
Why do they say these things? Incredibly it is because gas central heating in the U.K. produces CO2 which equates to 0.000002% of the earth’s atmosphere.
It is as if these people deliberately want to damage our country. Even if they believe that manmade CO2 will lead to catastrophic global warming the amount produced by this activity is negligible (indeed, not even measurable). Meanwhile, China continues on its merry way building hundreds of new coal-fired power stations every year. Energy bills for many people in Britain are unaffordable. It’s all totally bonkers.
Re heat pumps in the UK and the Government’s plan for 600.000 to be installed per year from 2028. The innovation charity NESTA ( formerly the National Endowment for Science, Technology and Arts set up by the Government) has recently estimated that at least 27,000 engineers will be needed by 2028 to meet these installation targets.
They note that this would require more engineers to be trained every year than currently exist in the whole industry
I haven’t heard of any Right politicians in the UK. Are there any?
Let us all hope that Britain is finally waking up, leading in the rush to wind and solar is nothing to be proud of.
I hope that Britain is no longer a climate leader. This means that Britain will not be the first lemming over the cliff after all. Unless British politicians call a halt to the net zero nonsense, we might be the second lemming. I suppose that is progress of a sort. However, it is likely that the Labour party will form the next government and their policies threaten to make Britain a climate leader again. Then we can look forward to being the first lemming over the cliff again.
On the other hand Labour’s policies are so ridiculous that they have no chance of succeeding if they do come into power and will soon be discredited.
story tip.
Solar industrial estate… meet hail storm 🙂
Huge Nebraska Solar Park Completely Smashed To Pieces By One Single Hail Storm! (notrickszone.com)
The new research mentioned at notrickszone that shows sea levels were much higher as recently as 4000 years ago would also make a great story.
“The UK’s Climate Change Committee – the official independent advisory body …”
Sure …
“Odd that a “professor of physical climate change” doesn’t seem to know this.”
No surprise in a scientific field, where there still are a great number of unknowns, assumptions and errors …
Professor Piers Maxwell De Ferranti Forster, director of both the United Bank of Carbon and The United Bank of Carbon Trading.
Worthless companies at the moment, but good to see he has no conflicts of interest.
(Do I really need a /sarc tag?)
It is depressing to live in a country where voices like Professor Forster have traction, I frequently wonder if those like him know anything about the real world.
“develop carbon dioxide removal industries but there are few concrete plans in place.” What an unfortunate choice of words. 😉
Couldn’t we just go back to being a world leader in comedy? I’d rather see my tax money going to a Ministry of Silly Walks than the Department for Energy and Climate Change.
Story Tip
A very interesting piece in the Telegraph reports on the cost of the UK attempt to move to Net Zero.
Some quotes:
Households have already paid as much as £15,500 in green taxes on energy over the past 13 years, new analysis has revealed.
It comes as the Government is expected to add further costs on to households when it adds green levies worth £165 a year back on to energy bills.
Tory MPs are also calling for a “hidden tax” that adds up to £84 on energy bills to be cut to help struggling households.
Companies that produce energy by burning gas to create electricity are charged for every tonne they produce – a cost that they pass on to consumers.
The Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank, estimates that households have paid £15,540 from 2010 to 2022 through a combination of direct taxes and taxes that are passed on by businesses.
Since 2018, households have paid £6,411, the analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics found.
The piece goes on to point out the effects this has on policy. At the same time as the Government is seeking to move everyone to heat pumps and EVs they are also raising the cost of the electricity they are moving everyone to.
Mr Lesh said: “The Government is taking with one hand and giving with the other.
“On the one hand, there are subsidies for people to put in heat pumps over gas boilers, but on the other hand the Government are taking more in the form of those green levies. It speaks to a lot of confused and contradictory policies.”
Yes indeed. The whole policy is a total nonsense. And as for the claim that moving to wind and solar is going to reduce energy costs!
I am one of the many involuntary UK “investors” in this green madness.
In the UK the standard rate for electricity was 33p per kWh (reducing to 30p on 1st July) whereas gas is charged at 10p per kWh (reducing to 8p) and the gas standing charge is about half of that of electricity.
That tells you all you need to know about the added costs on electricity bills – and of course they will be adding the new green subsidies back in to help ramp the electricity price back up.
I’m wondering if I can build my own gas generator @ 8p per kWh and maybe get my electricity for 20p and no standing charge!
Lord Deben or plain old John Gummer as he will always be known, here in the UK was and remains a complete joke among the politically aware. His most famous act during the BSE ‘crisis’, ( he loves a crisis) was to force a burger into the face of his child to demonstrate that it is perfectly safe to eat beef saying “look I am happy to feed my own child this beef burger” The stunt went disastrously wrong on camera though, as the young child spat it out and ran away. The burger was too hot to eat apparently.
For such sterling good work ( BSE deaths in humans was as close to zero as it goes) he was elevated to the Lords becoming Lord Deben. He sought another ‘crisis’ to engage in and hey presto Climate crisis arrived in perfect time. he became head of
“The ‘official’ independent climate change advisor group.’ The climate change committee.
Get that ‘official’!!
The Professor taking over from the retiring Gummer, sorry I mean Lord Deben is about as far removed from reality as his predecessor. We should not be surprised by this professorial ignorance. The other famous Professor in Gummer’s political career was Professor Fergusson, he of recent apocalyptic pronouncements about Covid death projections and lock downs fame. That same Professor Fergusson declared back in the BSE period millions will die from brain infection prions causing Creutzfeldt Yakub disease.
It never happened.
I say that, but Gummers work as the head of the Climate Change Committee does make us wonder if maybe his brain was prion infected…..
Anyway, a new fear has been introduced to the world and makes itself known in the Telegraph today. Water extraction is moving the earths spin axis giving rise to all sorts of crisis issues yet to come.
It just gets barmier and barmier.
Whatever you think of the stunt, Gummer was at least correct (as you point out twice: “BSE deaths in humans was as close to zero as it goes” and “That same Professor Fergusson declared back in the BSE period millions will die from brain infection prions causing Creutzfeldt Yakub disease.
It never happened.”) that the risk from eating beef was minute. But he’s still a jerk. As is this Professor Forster.
Dave, I was not suggesting beef was a negative choice, I love a good steak and Beef Wellington is a favourite option at the restaurant.
I wanted the readers to understand, the title ‘Professor’ does not bestow anything beyond academic activity, on the holder of the title.
The Hockey Stick Mann, tells us all how damaging to knowledge a flawed Professor can be. Actually, probably second only to the damage a flawed politician can achieve. Biden, Merkel, Putin, Zuma, Arden….. the list is endless, Gummer.
Another deluded moron – an ideal replacement for Mad Cow Deben ( I wonder where he’ll get his back handers from now).
Poor old Piers seems to think that the green revolution wil help fight the energy and cost of living crisis
“While the US, EU and China invested billions in green industries to help the energy and cost of living crises, the UK has so far failed to do the same”
FFS! the “investments” are raising costs, the subsidies are raising costs and the green industries need the old reliable methods to back them up!
GREEN INDUSTRIES (and political dogma) have caused the “..energy and cost of living crises..” – continued “investment” only sustains and increases the effects of the crises.
The solution to every Climate problem is always “Please send more money”
Neither Professor Forster nor Gummer nor any of the other morons who sit on this stupid committee deserve any respect whatsoever.
Perhaps Britain’s technically illiterate leaders may have noticed that households paying £3,000 per year for home heating is lowering their chances of surviving the next election.
That might well be correct but why people would vote for Labour on that basis is a bit puzzling. All that Labour’s policies would do is to make the cost of generating electricity even higher. But that’s democracy for you.
Labour is suggesting they will get the green transition right, and tame greedy energy companies.
I have a friend in the UK who is completely convinced soaring bills are because of energy company greed.
Hahaha – such is ‘Friends in the Right Places‘ and Cronyism
I know Piers Forster. As an alumni of Leeds I was invited to/attended a Climate Presentation at Leeds.
I told you at the time.
Of course it was put together by Piers.
With me coming from a ‘little distance’ and it being 30+ years since I’d navigated Leeds City Centre, I contrived to arrive rather embarrassingly early.
No matter, Piers was also ’embarrassingly’ early – or – was he being a true and gracious host and making an effort to meet/engage with folks like me?
We chatted, about Leeds and how I came to be interested in Climate. Just general small talk until another early arriver turned up and he made his excuses to go chat him. Fair enough.
He’s nice. Bright, agile mind. he’s all there *apart from* The Most Hideous Stutter.
Aw man, it’s painful and as I saw during the event itself, when he gets stressed he’s almost paralysed. sigh. Lovely man otherwise
(Just like the film ‘Kings Speech’ that’s him.)
At that event, The Climate Royalty and reason we were all assembled was to see and hear from one ‘ Chris Stark‘ See attached.
(An obnoxious self important and over-confident little prik. I told you that too)
But but but, Piers has arranged more of those little seminars, me invited again, events and Chris Stark has headlined them all.
I didn’t go – once is enough of that little weasel.
C’mon people. Chris Stark is one very big wig inside UK Government Climate Change Committee Agency. yet seemingly he can drop everything to drive 200 miles from London to Leeds so as to give a one hour presentation to a rag-bag assemblage of activist students and randoms like me?
What is going on there but otherwise : Cosy innit
The greenidiots live in an upside down and backwards world. It is La-la land, plain and simple.
“…I’m one of the UK’s official climate change advisers – our new report says the country is no longer a world leader…”
They say that as if it is a *bad* thing.
When anyone asks me about renewable power sources, I give them this simple analogy
You have two fields, some miles apart – in field one, you install a 100Mn wind farm and a 100Mn solar farm, in field two, you install a 250Mn wind farm and a 250Mn solar farm, all financed via taxpayer funded contracts and subsidies
On any day when the wind is too low (less than 9mph), or too high (55mph or greater), at night, all that almost 1 billion pounds worth of kit, is producing zero, zilch power – in any given year, that happens a lot, more so during the dark, wind stilled winter months – you just need to check the generation graphs on the gridwatch website to see this is fact
These taxpayer subsidised renewable farms are replicated in their thousands, onshore & offshore and the same basic laws of physics apply as above
if someone asked me to voluntarily invest my hard earned cash, family home, pensions into these expensive, intermittent power sources, I would decline, as it is in reality, taxpayers cannot decline, these useless engineeringly incompetent power sources are just foisted on them
Indeed, if these renewable farms were simply left to market forces, no lucrative CfD contracts, no subsidies, no lucrative constraint payments etc, no one would invest in, or willingly subsidise them and they would simply fade into non existence
Intermittents will never replace coal, gas or nuclear power generation, it’s only a matter of time, probably after cold winters and power cuts, that our incompetent, ideologically compromised leaders cotton on, by then, society will have been plunged to new depths of poverty, starvation and cold related deaths
When anyone asks me about renewable power sources, I give them this simple analogy
You have two fields, some miles apart – in field one, you install a 100Mn wind farm and a 100Mn solar farm, in field two, you install a 250Mn wind farm and a 250Mn solar farm, all financed via taxpayer funded contracts and subsidies
On any day when the wind is too low (less than 9mph), or too high (55mph or greater), at night, all that almost 1 billion pounds worth of kit, is producing zero, zilch power – in any given year, that happens a lot, more so during the dark, wind stilled winter months – you just need to check the generation graphs on the gridwatch website to see this is fact
These taxpayer subsidised renewable farms are replicated in their thousands, onshore & offshore and the same basic laws of physics apply as above
if someone asked me to voluntarily invest my hard earned cash, family home, pensions into these expensive, intermittent power sources, I would decline, as it is in reality, taxpayers cannot decline, these useless engineeringly incompetent power sources are just foisted on them
Indeed, if these renewable farms were simply left to market forces, no lucrative CfD contracts, no subsidies, no lucrative constraint payments etc, no one would invest in, or willingly subsidise them and they would simply fade into non existence
Intermittents will never totally replace coal, gas or nuclear power generation, it’s only a matter of time, probably after cold winters and power cuts, that our incompetent, ideologically compromised leaders cotton on, by then, society will have been plunged to new depths of poverty, starvation and cold related deaths
I believe this is good news.
But, we are a leader in unaffordable, intermittent power, that counts for something, doesn’t it?
The UK is not giving its industries the support they need to electrify and decarbonise and there is little sign of progress. The government has set a laudable ambition to decarbonise steel and develop carbon dioxide removal industries but there are few concrete plans in place.
Well, there’s just about as big an admission that so-called “renewable energy” is not cheaper than fossil fuel energy as you could ask for.
When we moved from canals to railways it wasn’t done through “government support”. When we changed from horse-drawn vehicles to cars and lorries, it wasn’t done through “government support”. When people started travelling round the world by planes it wasn’t done through “government support”. How come all the changes that Prof. Forster wants to see all need “government support”?
“I would have had more respect if Professor Forster had explained how the UK could lower energy bills without “taking its foot of the throttle” towards Net Zero. “
Why would you expect such a thing? They’ve never had to say how we’re going to run our GROWING economy on Renewables. At least that clown in Stanford tried, wrong he was of course. But at least he tried. Everyone else though just says stuff without consequence.
What the hell is a ‘climate leader’? It’s a stupid meaningless made up name.