Ed Miliband would let a turbine farm destroy Brontë country. We need net zero, but at what cost?
Simon Jenkins
That is the question, isn’t it? What are we willing to give up in order to gain no climate change? The answer is we’re being asked to give up too much. As Stern and Nordhaus have shown. But then that’s the science of it rather than the politics, isn’t it?
Ha Jenkins you bloody fool.
You’re going to get Net Zero good and hard.
No one gets out alive ! Understand ?
Mwahahaha !
It’s struck me recently that CO2 seems to be a horrible, deadly pollutant which threatens all mankind when produced by Western countries but is of no apparent danger or interest to enviroloons when China and India pump it out it by the gigaton…
Stern is a bit ancient tablets of stone these days. Are his assumptions still valid in the light of later observations? His work is based on the fundamental assumption that the increase in CO2 is significant. Other work (Judith Curry et al) suggests its influence is much more minor than the IPCC would have it. CO2 makes the atmosphere almost completely opaque at the wavelengths it absorbs. That was true even at the old levels so the extra makes little difference.
That Stern is an economist doesn’t give him special insight if his assumptions are wrong.
The point about Stern – except for propaganda reasons – is what he says should be done assuming his assumptions are correct. Carbon tax then fuck off essentially. OK, mebbe a bit of money to eggheads to work on – but not deploy – solar cells sorta stuff. The thing is, whether Curry’s right, Stern is or the wilder dreams of MiliEd’s imagination. That’s always the solution. All that changes across the range is the $ value of the tax. All reasonable estimates (ie, not Greenpeace et al) have the correct rate at about what we all already pay anyway. The current total level of tax is just badly distributed.
Which is the point I really want to get across to people. Assume they’re right, the Stern, the IPCC lot. No, really, just for the sake of the argument. OK, to deal with it is trivially cheap. As long as we do it the right way of course. So, why not just get on with dealing with it the right way? Which does, hugely enjoyably, mean shooting down damn near everything the government is currently doing.
Jonathan, that’s one of the 21,984,367 things that make me disbelieve the whole religion. If we bribe China to do everything Ed’s forbidden us to do, that’s solved the problem of err, “global” warming…
@Tim
This is the Lomborg approach
It is fatally flawed as it assumes those assumptions become from rational human beings who are incorrect
When in fact they are anarchic zealots with a stone age fixation determined to destroy western civilization
That’s right, the politicians can be ignored because they’re not scientists but we have to accept what Stern and Nordhaus say because they’re economists. Economists who parrot what the high priests of the IPCC tell them . Scientists like Judith Curry, William Happer, Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer ( cont p94) can also be ignored.
The cunts in power love the extra moolah all these taxes give them so even if Stern is the right way to go, they’ll ignore it.
Tim, it doesn’t matter how many times you tell us two and two is five, you are wrong.
Yeah. Sorry Tim but you can’t fight a religion with facts.
The most recent figures on CO2 emissions.
China – 13,259 million tons CO2 in 2023 (up from 12,475 in 2022)
India 2,955 million tons in 2023 (up from 2,741 in 2022)
UK 371 million tons in 2024 – a 54% cut from 1990 and the lowest emissions since 1872.
The INCREASE in China’s emissions 2022 to 2023 is more than twice the TOTAL output from the UK in 2024.
If, somehow, miraculously, the UK got to zero, China would be belching out the equivalent every 10 days, 5 hours.
There are thousands of life-expired satellites orbiting the Earth. Scientists predict some or all of them are going to fall on our heads. For the sake of argument shouldn’t we avoid that risk by using armoured umbrellas just in case?
No, cos it’s a load of bollocks.
At the end of this month, a demonstration of about 500 protesters will re-enact Kate Bush’s ballad Wuthering Heights on Penistone Hill, immediately overlooking Haworth.
Wow. Unbelievable.
Andrew – The INCREASE in China’s emissions 2022 to 2023 is more than twice the TOTAL output from the UK in 2024.
Seems likely to me that Net Zero is responsible for increasing global CO2 emissions, as well as emissions of actual pollution.
It’s help shift industries away from places like the UK and Europe where environment standards are real and enforced, to countries like China and India where they have zero standards and just lie instead.
Where does the money extracted by the carbon tax actually go?
The reason China and India have exemptions is that they’re classified as “developing countries”, which are exempt.
China for one, won’t participate in any climate talks unless they keep that designation…
I propose Guardian Thunderdome. Sir Simon and someone who is pro windmill go into a cage, one comes out alive and we set policy based on that.
Sacrifice is for the plebs. We aesthetes are exempt.
if theres a cost beyond which we no longer “need” it, we only actually “want” it.
we want net zero provided the cost is acceptable.
acceptably low as far as im concerned, and much lower than the high price we are currently paying.
I don’t even want net zero. The compromises required will stuff up this country totally, the rest of my life totally, and the rest of the world to a large degree.
What Martin near the M25 said.
Won’t someone think of the vegetables?
Tim
Since I’ve got five sweaters on, have just wrapped myself in a couple of blankets, and are considering putting on my gown, which is a trifle too small when worn over all those sweaters, I’m perhaps a bit less concerned about ‘climate change’ than you Brits who’re enjoying a nice warm summer.
@ Andrew C
I’ve been saying that (or similar) for years. People choose not to listen.
It doesn’t suit the lefties to admit that the “star” problem that they blame on capitalism is actually 99% the fault of the communist regimes. China and the CIS (ex-soviet republics allied to Putin) contribute 34.2% of gross emissions: add in North Korea, Venezuela, Vietnam and the other pro-communist regimes that are too small to feature separately in the spreadsheet and you have nearly 40% of gross emissions and approaching 99% of net emissions.
‘Of course the climate crisis must be confronted’
What does that even mean?
Whatever it means, UK is IMPOTENT. You have power over 0.03%.
Knock yourself out. Destroy a once great civilization. Feel good about it. The French won’t care. The Irish won’t care. The Germans won’t care. The Spanish won’t care. Et cetera.
‘history, tranquility and beauty must also count for something’
It must count for EVERYTHING. The other side of the equation has double-ought zero value. Even if you accept outlandish climate mania, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.* It is self-evident that whatever you do to ‘confront climate change’ will have absolutely no effect.
*But Timmer says it’s an opportunity for the government to charge people an additional tax. Yeah!
What are we willing to give up in order to gain no climate change?
No-one knows how much of the luke-warming that has occurred is due to natural variation and how much to anthropogenic warming. Moreover, given that the global climate is a a dynamic system, no climate change is not an option.
Steve
Seems likely to me that Net Zero is responsible for increasing global CO2 emissions…
Yup. The green transition increases emissions of CO2 aka plant food in the short term.
Theo – Yup. The green transition increases emissions of CO2 aka plant food in the short term.
That’s a good idea.
Compost Ed Miliband.
The first half of July last year was the coldest in 20 years, 2 degrees C below average. Don’t remember too many Al Beeb headlines shouting about global warming then. Now all we hear is heatwave ‘conditions’, so not an actual ‘heatwave’ (your definition may vary), just a bit warmer than ‘usual’.
Like the headlines this year screaming ‘hottest first day of Wimbledon ever’, without reminding people that Wimbledon used to start during the last week of June and then they moved it to the first week of July some years ago. As far as I am aware, July is usually hotter than June but yet, the usual idiots buy it hook, line and sinker. Don’t you Tim.
“Which is the point I really want to get across to people. Assume they’re right, the Stern, the IPCC lot. No, really, just for the sake of the argument. OK, to deal with it is trivially cheap. As long as we do it the right way of course. So, why not just get on with dealing with it the right way? Which does, hugely enjoyably, mean shooting down damn near everything the government is currently doing.”
Whether the amount is right or wrong, it’s the right mechanism.
The problem is that the solutions become about bad ones. Ministers will spend money on Choo choos which are a very expensive way to reduce pollution. Coaches beat them. Rural trains are often worse than cars. Elsie and Doris having a carriage on a huge train. A taxi would be cheaper and greener.
Lefties and train spotters hate it though because they just want more Choo choos
Tim: “Assume they’re right, the Stern, the IPCC lot. OK. So the way to deal with it is a carbon tax.”
Ed, Spud et al.: “See! Even the far right now admits we are right. So the way to deal with it is for us to take charge.”
I’m afraid that that’s the way this argument will always play out. The way to deal with it is to point out always that global warming is a hoax, thus making carbon taxes, net zero, Climate Change Committees, Milibands, etc., instantly superfluous.
Setup:
Renewable energy takes over: Dutch fossil fuel use halved
Published on March 13, 2025
Punchline:
Netherlands rations electricity to ease power grid stresses
Published Jul 13 2025
Paul Somerset,
I think there’s something to global warming, but the models are far less reliable than they’re saying.
The problem is that as of now, a lot of science is a priesthood people believe in. Physicists are generally sound people. Half of all psychology papers can’t be replicated. And they’re not going to believe “is a hoax” because the reputation of official climate scientists still stands. It’s only when people eventually realise the models are shit that you can make that case. The best you can hope for now is that you disincentive commies from using it for their own ends. “Hey let’s do a carbon tax instead of that ridiculous Choo Choo you want”.
“The science” is irrelevant and there’s no point in arguing about it one way or another. It is empirically obvious that the climate is changing, because it always has and always will. At the moment it seems to be lurching into a warmer phase, being on the way out of a notably cold phase, but it is not yet as warm as the Roman or Medieval Warm Periods, to name but two.
So the question is of what to do about it. The “Scientific” view is to apportion all the blame for all the change onto a trace gas, a byproduct of industrialisation, and try to rewind its atmospheric concentration to what it was at some arbitrary point in the past.
The sane view is to figure out how to adapt to a climate which, in temperate regions, has been typical of that 200-300 miles south. From this perspective, all suggested mitigations including “carbon taxes” (whatever they are) are insane.
Note that during the Roman Warm Period, Rome itself was evidently not uninhabitable.
What are we willing to give up to get no climate change?
Unless the answer is “China”, it is quite irrelevant because it won’t give us “no climate change”.
There are various things we can do to mitigate the increase in “greenhouse gases” but switching off all CO2 production in the UK (including breathing) would *only partially* offset the increase in China’s CO2 production in a single year.
Why don’t Ed Millionaireband and Greta Thunberg stage a sit-down in Tiananmen Square?
J77, there is nothing we can give up to get no climate change for the simple reason that the climate changes all by itself whether or not humans exist.
It is insisted that we take control of the climate using completely untried methods to try to control our insignificant production of a trace gas, the atmospheric concentration of which geological records reveal lags average temperature change rather than correlates with it. This idea is so hubristically risible it’s worthy of Tommy Cooper.
Note that apart from reference to the geological record – an actual, empirical thing, not a model – I have had no need to refer to The Science™.
@ Norman
I did refer to “no climate change” as distinct from no change in the climate. The former *can* be influenced by humans.
Fair do’s, semantically, but it would be better to refer to no anthropogenic climate change.
@ Norman
You’re right but I find typing quite hard enough without words like anthropogenic
“It is empirically obvious that the climate is changing, because it always has and always will.”
Okey dokey, Norman, name one place on earth whose climate has changed in the last century.
I don’t have to, GC, because what has the last century got to do with anything? That said, weather patterns have evidently changed. In Japan, for example, the previously-reliable rainy season has definitely changed and summer in Japan is noticeably hotter than it was several decades ago, and this seems to be apart from increased urban heat island and airco effects.
The Roman And Medieval Warm Periods both lasted several centuries and the Little Ice Age lasted for more than a century. Towards the end of any of those periods you’d have been justified in asserting that the climate had changed, as you also would quite early on in the following periods. None of these apparent changes in climate had any industrial anthropogenic component.
“because what has the last century got to do with anything”
Because your assertion is that climate is changing. Active tense. So I ask where?
That climates have changed in the past is not an answer for where it is happening today, as you state, nor for the easier “last century.”
Moving on to your next fallacy:
“At the moment it seems to be lurching into a warmer phase”
It? What it? The earth has many climate zones. Plural. What definition of “climate” are you using? Merriam-Webster doesn’t seem to include it.
Calm down, dear. The climate – everywhere – is obviously changing slowly. We’re not very good with timescales that we can’t perceive. The one certainty is change, so the climate is changing, QED. Probably not enough, or quickly enough, to get alarmed about other than perhaps in one or two specific places but I can’t think of any.