Turning airy-fairy wishes into legal requirements, with little or no analysis of the likely consequences, is a very strange way to run a country – to say the least. The government’s former ‘fracking tsar’ is not impressed, and neither is the House of Lords. It appears that most members of Parliament neither know nor care what the implications might be for the national economy, but just expect people to pay a heck of a lot for very little without question.
As Theresa May takes to the G20 stage in Japan to urge her fellow leaders to follow the UK’s moral leadership on climate change, she should hope that their parting gift is, politely, to ignore her (from The Times via the GWPF).
As impressive as the target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 sounds, other countries will recognise the capacity it has to destroy UK plc for generations to come.
The lack of scrutiny of what would be the most expensive and socially disruptive public policy since the Second World War is truly remarkable.
The announcement and cross-party self-congratulations last week were short on any ideas about how we get there and who picks up the tab. The chancellor has estimated that the cost would be more than £1 trillion. That’s £1,000 every second for the next 30 years.
That may please our international competitors but it’s unlikely to be a domestic vote winner. Given that the UK contributes just 1 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, it’s also unlikely to have any effect on climate change.
The problem with putting targets into law is that no amount of legislating can make magic happen. In fact, we have seen too often how setting a target distracts us from what we are trying to achieve and results only in the time-honoured massaging of statistics.
Continued here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
‘urge her fellow leaders to follow the UK’s moral leadership’
Moral? She ratifies ‘climate change’ (sic) as the common cause to unite the world under a single socialist government. It couldn’t be more IMMORAL.
Gamecock, it is more like her last ditch attempt to get an in to the EU unelected politburo and a put down for all those that voted to get out from under the EU communist diktat.
if you eliminated ALL human life and influence on the planet’s atmospheric carbon you would, by their own numbers, reduce warming by some hundredth of a degree or less.
CO2 is about 3.5% to 4% of so-called GHG’s (water vapor is about 60%). Humans are scientifically determined to contribute about 3% of new atmospheric CO2 (Nature does the rest). BS temperature predictions reckon about 3 to 4 degrees of rise in the next 100 years due to CO2 rising.
So then, 4% of 3% of 4 degrees is 0.04 x 0.03 x 4 = 0.0048 degrees rise averted by killing off all humans.
Even if you attributed ALL the rise to just CO2 (impossibly stupid and naive) then it would be 0.03 x 4 = 0.12 degrees of rise averted. I don’t really see that as crucial to saving the planet. Yet the cry for eliminating CO2 goes on (and on and on, ad nauseam).
Assuming 50 million taxpayers that is £631 p.a. or £18,922 for the next 30 years EACH.
For 40 million taxpayers it is £23,652 over 30 years or £788 p.a.
Or a total of £31,536 billion p.a. or £946,080 billion for the 30 years (if you use your taxpayers figure.)
This might not appeal to the average taxpayer at the next election.
Climate change: May urges G20 to follow UK lead on CO2
The prime minister called on the G20 countries to set targets for net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Instead, 19 pledged to meet their targets set in the 2015 Paris agreement. The US did not sign up.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48810060
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Sorry folks but CO2 is just a harmless trace gas essential to life.
So our brave and principled Chancellor is willing to make all sorts of threats about a No Deal Brexit but keeps his mouth firmly shut about this. We only know about his forecasts because a private letter was leaked.
I thought “nobody voted to be poorer” Phil?
And where are the others who claim to be so concerned about our economy? Just liars, nothing more, unable to justify their stance on Brexit except through scaremongering but wholly willing to change ourban entire society and economy becausemail a very small number of activists has persuaded enough important people to act.
Oldbrew you are correct about CO2. Stpaulchuck, you have the proportions way out. You must still believe the lie about methane. Look at this https://cementafriend.wordpress.com/2011/10/ and prove it is wrong – no one else has in the last eight years. Measurement from passing space probes have indicated that on the moon Titan methane acts somewhat similar to water on Earth ie evaporates from lakes and condenses in the atmosphere as rain. NASA is planning a new probe to examine Titan some more and looking for life forming molecules. However, conditions on Titan are not applicable to Earth.
When will people realise that any CO2 reduction policy should also be seen in a longer-term context:
· The modern short pulse of beneficial Global warming stopped 20 years ago and recent global temperatures are now stable or declining.
· According to reliable Ice Core records the last millennium 1000 – 2000 AD was the coldest of our current Holocene interglacial and the world had already been cooling quite rapidly since before Roman times, in fact since ~1000 BC.
· At 11,000 years old, our Holocene interglacial, responsible for all man-kind’s advances, from living in caves to microprocessors, is coming to its end.
· The weather gets worse in colder times.
· The world will very soon, (on a geological time scale), revert to a true glaciation, again eventually resulting in mile high ice sheets over New York.
The prospect of even moving in a cooling direction is something to be truly scared about, both for the biosphere and for man-kind.
Spending any effort, let alone GDP scale costs, trying to stop the UK’s 1% of something that has not been happening for 3 millennia seems monumentally stupid.
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/global-man-made-co2-emissions-1965-2018-bp-data/
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/holocene-context-for-catastrophic-anthropogenic-global-warming/
Phoenix44, the difference is, a crash-out Brexit, will hit us with huge job losses & spiralling costs, within a matter of a few months, along with pictures of lorries queuing to be stacked onto Manston airfield & along the M20. That’s a can that can’t be kicked much further down the road.
Decades before the unreality & costs of these targets are realised, all the politicians in Parliament now, will be long retired, with lovely, secure pensions & a few non-exec directorships, to swell their bank balances too.
The German car industry can also look forward to heavy job losses if the EU refuses or delays negotiations with post-Brexit Britain. Mrs Merkel might have something to say to the EU about that.
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.