Tag Archives: no shipping

U.K. Could Lose 75% of its Energy Supply by 2050

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

The United Kingdom is likely to have barely a quarter of the energy in 2050 promised by the Government and its Climate Change Committee if all the legal obligations of Net Zero are followed. This shocking news is forecast by the latest energy review recently published by U.K. FIRES. Government-funded U.K FIRES writes that the “whole excitement” of its project has been to recognise that such a shortfall is close to a certain reality. Excitement is not perhaps a word that comes immediately to mind when contemplating Britain’s almost certain economic and societal collapse.

As we have noted before in the Daily Sceptic, UK FIRES bases its recommendations on the brutal, and many would argue, honest reality of Net Zero. It does not assume that technological processes still to be perfected, or even invented, will somehow lead to minimal disturbance in comfortable industrialised lifestyles. Speaking to architects in 2021 at a RIBA climate conference, UK FIRES leader, Cambridge-based Professor Julian Allwood, said the UK Net Zero strategy is as unrealistic as “magic beans fertilised by unicorn’s blood”.

It can be argued that the £5 million of taxpayer funding to UK FIRES is money well spent since its honest Net Zero appraisals contrast with the fanciful stories and deceit that surround many other claims by Net Zero promoters.

The above graph shows how UK FIRES expects only one quarter of electrical power to be available in 2050, compared with all other forecasts. By 2050, electrical power will be the primary source of all energy. It notes that all other scenarios depend on negative emissions technologies such as carbon capture to deal with ‘residual emissions’ – shown in the graph in orange. UK FIRES notes that it reflects the reality that to date no such technologies are operating in the UK, and therefore it states that by 2050, “we should continue to anticipate that they would not exist”.

Allwood, and his colleagues from a number of universities including Oxford and Imperial College, are dismissive of many of the proposed Net Zero mitigation technologies, noting, for instance, that biofuels are unsustainable since they threaten biodiversity. In 2021, Allwood observed that delivering Net Zero by 2050 “will require governments to utilise all available abatement opportunities, yet current policy largely ignores socially-driven mitigation in favour of technological innovation in the energy sector”

In plainer English, these government driven social “abatement opportunities” might reference the World Economic Forum’s advice that you will eat bugs, own nothing, and, it need hardly be added, be happy. As we have previously reported, UK FIRES promotes a world with no flying and shipping by 2050, drastic cuts in home heating, bans on beef and lamb consumption, and a ruthless purge on traditional building materials such as bricks, glass, steel and cement, to be replaced with materials such as “rammed earth”.

The UK Government is committed to reducing emissions by 68% from 1990 to 2030. Most of the easy cuts have been made with a switch from coal to gas, and the offshoring of a great deal of British manufacturing capacity. But the easy cuts, and the ubiquitous virtue signalling that goes with them, have ended. To comply with legal requirements going forward a massive ramp up of green energy is required, and there is little evidence that it is occurring.

The above graph from Atkins ‘Engineering Net Zero’ is referenced by the UK FIRES energy report. It analyses the build rates required to deliver the energy infrastructure predicted by the Climate Change Committee. There has, of course, been some building of renewable power sources in the last ten years, – wind and solar taxpayer subsidies of £12 billion a year for providing about 5% of total energy needs, attests to that – but nothing to suggest the build can ramp up to the required levels to even try to keep society functioning. Allwood notes that the correct interpretation of this graph is that it isn’t going to happen. “There is no possibility of this level of energy infrastructure being built by 2035, and if anything approaching this rate of construction is to happen beyond then, the public financing commitment needs to be made right now, before the next election.”

Mainstream media is very keen on horrific climate stories, but UK FIRES predictions are more or less ignored – presumably on the grounds they are the wrong type of Net Zero scares. But UK FIRES seems keen to scare the horses, noting that in articulating and promoting what it calls “opportunities”, it is aiming to open up “a more credible pathway to delivering zero emissions in reality”.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Net Zero is Being Mugged by Reality and the People Are Waking Up

From THE DAILY SCEPTIC

By BENNY PEISER AND ANDREW MONTFORD

The Net Zero bandwagon was always going to grind to a halt when it bumped up against hard realities. As Abraham Lincoln observed, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. To which the physicist Richard Feynman added the important rejoinder that you can’t fool nature either.

The eco-zealots in the think tanks, the civil service and the Green Blob have been trying to do both. Consider, for example, the oft-repeated claim that wind and solar power are cheap, which is demonstrably false, and carefully overlooks the fact that a renewables-dominated grid would require trillions of pounds of electricity storage to make it function without backup. As a result, we have seen gigawatts of wind and solar power installed, and the slow strangulation of investment in conventional energy sources. However, nature, refusing to be taken in by all the claims of ‘cheap renewables’, has responded with 20 years of relentless electricity price rises.

The silver lining to the very dark cloud of the Ukraine war and the energy cost crisis that followed is that most people now realise that a world with rising energy costs is not very pleasant at all. Others have been awakened, perhaps rather unexpectedly, by the Biden administration’s decision to launch its own Net Zero spending spree. It is rapidly becoming clear that this has the potential to turn into a disaster for the U.K.

Already unable to compete with the cheap energy and cheap labour of the Far East, many businesses are now having to face the reality that they will soon be unable to compete with the U.S. either, because of its abundance of cheap gas and its tidal wave of subsidies. Even companies that have been here for years are now thinking of upping sticks and crossing the Atlantic to take advantage of the green bonanza on offer. The U.K. and much of Europe are therefore facing an exodus of businesses, and a drying up of foreign direct investment. That could be catastrophic for the economy, and for Government finances already reeling from the pandemic.

The realities of Net Zero are also hitting home for the general public. The threat that the project represents to livelihoods and liberties is becoming more evident by the day. Recently, the mathematician Norman Fenton tweeted an excerpt from a Government-funded report that set out what Net Zero U.K. might look like: no airports, no shipping, no beef and lamb to eat, and most food imports eliminated. Sounds grim, doesn’t it? Lots of people thought so, and the tweet went viral, garnering over three million views.

The threat of being effectively locked into a 15-minute zone of a city has also concentrated minds. Anti-ULEZ protests are kicking off, and civil disobedience has followed in their wake, with cameras vandalised, bollards ripped out and barriers destroyed. Awareness of the threat of programmable digital currencies, which would allow the authorities to dictate your purchases (“No beef for you this week!”), is becoming more widespread too.

Seeing such policies alongside the restrictions on movement and lifestyle, and the ongoing censorship of criticism and opposition, many will conclude that climate catastrophism is simply the latest manifestation of mankind’s habitual tendency to totalitarianism. They are right to do so: green fanatics aspire to dictate every aspect of life, for you and everyone else in the world, just as the National Socialists and the Communist commissars tried to do.

So, as more and more of the impacts of Net Zero hit home, word of the economic and societal threat is spreading. Another surge in energy prices next winter or the winter after could prove the final straw for hundreds of thousands of businesses and the public alike. A small ray of hope is that in some parts of the world, the green cult is having to make compromises. The EU was recently forced by Germany to abandon its planned ban of combustion-engined cars. At the recent G7 meeting, ministers refused to set a date for the elimination of coal from the bloc’s energy systems, rolling back a pledge made at the Glasgow climate summit.

Yet most Western governments, including Mr. Sunak and his cabinet, remain almost entirely in thrall to green dogma. The reality is that far too many of them are Net Zero ideologues themselves, and far too many of the rest are cowed by the antics of the eco-zealots and the fulminations of their supporters in the mainstream media. We should expect no real change of direction under the current generation of ministers and MPs.

This inability to tackle the Net Zero cost crisis is almost certain to clear the way for Labour to sweep into power and to do… precisely nothing about the energy crisis. The damage being done to our economy and society will continue, and perhaps even accelerate.

But eventually a turning point will be reached, and the public, mugged by reality, will realise where the Establishment is taking them. They will look at the cold, dark, miserable Net Zero world that Norman Fenton described and will refuse to go any further. They will instead return to the path they have chosen in the past, the path to liberty and prosperity. The established political parties cannot see the inevitability of this reversal, but eventually they will have to accept it, and follow on behind, or face becoming irrelevant.

Benny Peiser and Andrew Montford are Director and Deputy Director of Net Zero Watch.

Absolute Zero plan means no new normal cars, most airports gone, and half the beef by 2030!

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

People are waking up to the dark side of the Absolute Zero plan

The totalitarian wet dreams of a UK government consortium of academics are lighting up the internet. As Benny Peiser and Andrew Montford from NetZeroWatch say — people are starting to pay attention in a big way:

The realities of Net Zero are also hitting home for the general public. The threat that the project represents to livelihoods and liberties is becoming more evident by the day. Recently, the mathematician Norman Fenton tweeted an excerpt from a Government-funded report that set out what Net Zero U.K. might look like: no airports, no shipping, no beef and lamb to eat, and most food imports eliminated. Sounds grim, doesn’t it? Lots of people thought so, and the tweet went viral, garnering over three million views.

The Prof Norman Fenton thread that got 3.4 million views on Twitter is, would you believe, about a 2019 UK Government funded research report. Who knew the masses could get that excited about a 31 page prehistoric report on energy policy, but holy-cajoley: it’s a wake up call of just how savage the Absolute Zero plan aims to be. And this matters more than you might think. Without magical new technologies the current Net Zero targets can only be achieved with Absolute Zero emissions.

The totalitarian wet dreams of a UK government consortium of academics are lighting up the internet. As Benny Peiser and Andrew Montford from NetZeroWatch say — people are starting to pay attention in a big way:

The realities of Net Zero are also hitting home for the general public. The threat that the project represents to livelihoods and liberties is becoming more evident by the day. Recently, the mathematician Norman Fenton tweeted an excerpt from a Government-funded report that set out what Net Zero U.K. might look like: no airports, no shipping,no shipping and lamb to eat, and most food imports eliminated. Sounds grim, doesn’t it? Lots of people thought so, and the tweet went viral, garnering over three million views.

The Prof Norman Fenton thread that got 3.4 million views on Twitter is, would you believe, about a 2019 UK Government funded research report. Who knew the masses could get that excited about a 31 page prehistoric report on energy policy, but holy-cajoley: it’s a wake up call of just how savage the Absolute Zero plan aims to be. And this matters more than you might think. Without magical new technologies the current Net Zero targets can only be achieved with Absolute Zero emissions.

With no new magical inventions this is “the Gap”

How much will the totalitarians end up getting — as much as we we let them

That report from the UK FIRES research programme is rather tamely called Absolute Zero: Delivering the UK’s climate change commitment with incremental changes to today’s technologies, as if we just need baby steps to get there.

But instead, as Fenton highlights, the key points are all mapped out in gruesome detail — just as if a well funded group of academic ideologues unleashed their fantasies with no constraints. The acceleration is breathtaking: all airports except Heathrow, Belfast & Glasgow need to close by 2030. There will be no flying at all by 2050. As far as cars go, there needs to be no new petrol/diesel cars by 2030; by 2050 road use is restricted to 60% of today’s level.

All the things you love like food, heating and energy will be restricted to 60% of today’s level by 2050. So life will be a lot colder and hungrier unless there’s a lot fewer people to share it with. And naturally the ’15 minute prisons‘, I mean ‘cities’ are key to all of this.

It is The Great Reset in glossy grand bureaucratic art:

Click to see the chart. Seriously…

Source: UK FIRES

It’s much closer to real policy than you might think

It’s only a research report, not an act of Parliament (yet), but as Norman Fenton points out, Net Zero is morphing into Absolute Zero, because Absolute Zero is what has to happen if the UK current Net Zero policy is going to achieve targets that are already set in legislation:

Fenton:  And for those who still think the absolute zero agenda is not baked in to Govt thinking, note that it only differs from the official net zero agenda in its 2030 objectives (i.e. the speed at which it must happen). The 2050 objectives are the same.

… In other words, the inhumane FIRES project strategy is simply a realistic statement of what is required to meet the UK Govt’s insane net zero 2050 target as enshrined in the 2019 Climate Change Act amendment (which every political party supported but nobody voted for).

Net Zero has to morph to Absolute Zero

Julian Allwood is one of the authors and a Cambridge University Engineering Professor and he’s scathing about the reality of the current “Net Zero” plans which rely on future discoveries. He said all this in 2021:

The government’s roadmap is based on a “fantastically religious belief”, Allwood said, that fledgling, future technologies can deliver the 68 per cent cut in emissions that needs to be made in the next nine years to keep the country’s COP26 pledge.

“Net-zero doesn’t mean anything”

As a result, he argued that we should be aiming for “absolute zero” rather than net-zero by 2050.

This sentiment was echoed by prominent philosopher Timothy Morton… The tub represents the atmosphere and the water atmospheric carbon … You’ve still got the bath full of water,” he said. “That’s the problem. We have to actually get the bath down lower.” “Net-zero doesn’t mean anything,” Morton continued. “One of the translations of net-zero by 2050 is: I support mass extinction.”

Absolute zero requires giving up cement and air travel

“…there’s huge potential for innovation. But it’s not the innovation of magic beans fertilised by unicorn’s blood, which is all that’s in the political climate today. It’s new businesses that are truly compatible with zero emissions.”

The same guys that complain about the religious faith of Net Zero fantasies are the ones who have a religious faith that CO2 is a problem in the first place, O’ Believers of Holy Climate Models!

Fenton was interviewed by Laura Ingraham a few weeks ago:

This is the same Professor Norman Fenton readers here might remember from the Dec 2021 vaccine study in the UK which had those incendiary graphs of excess deaths in the UK following the peak of vaccination in every age group. His graphs of mortality in the UK are still my first choice to show that the link between excess deaths and vaccination in a cause and effect sense.

Spread the word.