UK spending far more on polluting policies than green ones, says WWF
No.
The UK government is spending many times more on measures that will increase greenhouse gas emissions than on policies to tackle the climate crisis, according to an analysis of the spring budget.
Only £145m in the March 2021 budget was devoted to environmental spending, most of it on the post-Brexit emissions trading scheme for industry, according to an analysis by the conservation charity WWF. But the cost of tax breaks to companies to encourage investment came to more than £34bn, while maintaining the fuel duty freeze – for an 11th consecutive year – is costing about £4.5bn in lost revenues.
Even the claim is only that new measures in the budget were, not total spending…..
Fuel duty freeze isn’t even a reduction in taxation — which is usually counted as “spending” by the Left (as opposed to spending, which they call “investment”) — it’s maintaining the current level of taxation. By this measure, any arbitrary taxes of arbitrary amounts that _weren’t_ imposed on stuff the WWF likes could therefore be counted as “environmental spending” Look, we didn’t implement a £1trn windmill tax, that’s a huuuuuuuuuge amount of spending on the greenies.
How does the WWF work out that CO2 is a pollutant – heck it seems that pollution when used by people who would be nice rulers is another word that has changed meaning over the last ten years, so why not go all in and call gaseous H2O a pollutant. Do my nut these people.
Are they including the amount WE (remember, it’s not the governments money, it’s our money)are paying in subsidies for wind and solar?
And I would far rather live on a planet where CO2 was at 1000ppm than 100ppm. Ask these morons how low they want CO2 to go.
. . . why not go all in and call gaseous H2O a pollutant.
Effectively they already do. The Underpants Gnome science of climate change can be expressed as:
Add a little CO2 —>   ?   —> lots and lots of water vapour runaway greenhouse boiling death
If we overcame the laws of physics and were able to have hydrogen cars, planes, boilers, power stations, etc, they’d be jumping up and own and shouting about the water vapour pouring into the atmosphere.
PJF
And any tentative support for some nuclear/fusion based electricity generation will die suddenly when they realise that the generators are pumping enormous amounts of heat into the atmosphere, causing temperature rise all by itself.
Had a brain fart a while back and did back of envelope estimate of total heat energy dumped into atmosphere over time. Closely tracks the extra CO2 dumped into atmosphere (duh) but does truly add energy and at a level which might be detectable.
There was somebody on the radio yesterday saying “we know how many greenhouse gases are in the atmosphere…”
Yes. Three: CO2, methane and water vapour.
“….millions of tonnes…”
That’s not how many, that’s how much.
Water vapour doesn’t stay as water vapour in the atmosphere for long, it condenses and forms clouds which have a cooling effect. The notion that water vapour will cause a loop that leads to a runaway warming cycle is absurd. The climate is relatively stable over periods of thousands of years, if the water vapour loop was real it would be erratic and unstable and would have gone into thermaggeddon long ago. The cooling effect of clouds leads to temperatures being self correcting and therefore long term stable, which is exactly what is observed.
@Stonyground
Correct. And further, when the dinos ruled the earth 60-odd million years ago, there was ~10x the current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. OK sea level was much higher, and there were crocodilians and cycads living at the poles, but the planet didn’t go into meltdown. OTOH, we know there have been (in the distant past) several occasions when the earth cooled drastically and icefields covered its entire surface, reflecting sunlight away and causing further cooling. Each time, it took massive episodes of vulcanism to bring CO2 levels back up and escape from this feedback loop.
“And any tentative support for some nuclear/fusion based electricity generation will die suddenly when they realise that the generators are pumping enormous amounts of heat into the atmosphere, causing temperature rise all by itself.”
Won’t be nearly as much as windfarms do. The efficiency of turning heat to electricity is very good. The efficiency of turning wind into electricity is way, way lower. Most of the wind energy ends up as turbulence. And turbulence is heat. Air loses velocity & that’s where the energy goes. And then you get the friction heat from all the moving parts & the resistance heat in the windings & conductors. So any windfarm is a great big thermal radiator.
@bloke in spain
And the blades need power for deicing, the rather large nacelle usually dehumidifying. There is a high pressure oil system as well, and the things need to turn into the wind, or be feathered now and then.
And when there is no wind the blades, weighing tons, can’t be left idle for too long for the same reason that a ship has to turn the prop every so often, to stop it distorting the bearings.
A windmill is a very expensive, high maintenance piece of machinery. Triply so when at sea, in locations specifically chosen for the prevalence of salt laden wind.
Take all this away from the gross and I suspect many don’t actually make any nett contribution of power. And I’ve not even mentioned the 24/8/366 need for back up to be available at (at most) a few hours notice.
I despair.