Desire for net zero referendum growing among public, poll finds

Policies based on pseudo-official UN climate theories are now so politically significant, the public want a say, according to this poll. Voters never agreed to the draconian contents of the Climate Change Act (2008). Open debate has been marginalised for years now.
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More people than ever want a referendum on the Government’s net zero policy, a survey has found.

A poll by YouGov found that 44 per cent of adults in Britain supported “holding a national referendum to decide whether or not the UK pursues a net zero carbon policy”, with 27 per cent opposed, while 29 per cent said they did not know, reports The Telegraph.

When the “don’t knows” were excluded, 62 per cent wanted a referendum. A poll on the same question a year ago found that 58 per cent wanted a ballot on the issue.

Why the US climate bill ‘might’ struggle to deliver on carbon capture

CO2 is not pollution

In the end nature determines how much of the trace gas carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere, via the carbon cycle. Certain human activities may alter the numbers up or down temporarily. There’s vast expense, including lots of pipelines nobody wants, with no known finishing line in so-called ‘carbon capture’.
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Up to a fifth of emissions cuts from the Inflation Reduction Act are expected to come from carbon capture technologies, but there are major technical and political hurdles, says Climate Home News.

US president Joe Biden is expected to sign off a sweeping climate, energy and health care bill on Tuesday (16 August). It contains about $370 billion to foster clean energy development and combat climate change, constituting the largest federal climate investment in history.

Several studies project that its climate and energy provisions could enable the United States to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by around 40% below 2005 levels by 2030.

U.N. complains: Hard to tackle climate change without US, China co-operation

China isn’t expecting the world’s weather to change as a result of its Taiwan policy. If push comes to shove, it puts its perceived national interests ahead of UN or US climate obsessions.
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Tackling climate change has been a key area of co-operation between the two superpowers, says Yahoo News.

But China has suspended talks as part of its escalating retaliation over U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

Small company from Cornwall to oversee huge £70 billion Net Zero contract

Money down the drain?
[image credit: thisismoney.co.uk]

The government-backed buy-a-climate fantasy steamrollers on. No expense spared in the war on one of Earth’s most vital trace gases.
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A company based in Cornwall has been given the job of overseeing a £70 billion contract to help deliver the country’s transition to Net Zero – the target of completely negating the amount of greenhouse gases by reducing emissions, says Cornwall Live.

The Place Group – which is based at The Regent, Chapel Street, Penzance – has won the huge framework contract to “control, manage and deliver” the public sector transition to Net Zero.

It will oversee the framework for services, products, solutions and support for Everything Net Zero. The small company is a “specialist consulting, project management and research company with 18 years’ experience in the field of education”.

Fake Climate Emergency on Horizon

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No emergency in temperature trends, so where is it?

Science Matters

The editors of IBD explain at Issues and Insights Climate Emergency?  What a Crock.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Joe Biden did not declare a climate emergency last week, as many in his party urged him to do. One Democratic senator claimed that the changing climate required “bold, intense executive action” from the president. Another said Biden needed to move because “the climate crisis is a threat to national security.” But there’s no emergency. It’s a wholly manufactured charade.

Though he put off an executive action, Biden said last Wednesday that he has “a responsibility to act with urgency and resolve when our nation faces clear and present danger. And that’s what climate change is about. It is literally, not figuratively, a clear and present danger. The health of our citizens and our communities is literally at stake.”

His non-COVID fever continued:

“Climate change is…

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Keep Your Nose Out, Kerry

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We can rest assured that ‘Net Zero’ climate dogma will never lay a glove on this globetrotting finger wagger.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

John Kerry rebuked over intervention in Tory leadership election

Press Release

London, 25 July – John Kerry, the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, has been rebuked for interfering in the Conservative leadership election.
Asked by the BBC to comment on Liz Truss’s pledge to put a moratorium on the green levies on energy bills, Kerry warned the candidates not to touch the Net Zero plan.
While he claimed he did not want to interfere in the choice of the UK’s next prime minister, he said he would “pointedly and adamantly” advise against any move to water down the commitments to CO2 reductions that were confirmed at last year’s COP26 summit in Glasgow.

Benny Peiser, the director of Net Zero Watch, said:
“John Kerry’s intervention in the Conservative Party’s leadership election exposes the utter hypocrisy of the Biden administration. Only a year ago President Biden criticised Russia…

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Majority of Germans against banning combustion engine cars – survey

German Autobahn

Their Government has decided for them what cars they’re to be allowed to have, or not have. Climate obsession allows their leaders to do that apparently, by claiming their transport policies are ‘climate friendly’ or something. The motoring public find themselves backed into a corner.
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A majority of Germans oppose the EU’s planned 2035 ban of combustion engine cars, according to a survey by research institute forsa for UNITI, the German association of small and medium-sized mineral oil companies.

The survey found that 58 percent of respondents are against an outright ban, while 39 percent support it, says Clean Energy Wire.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents also reject a medium or long-term general ban on vehicles with diesel or petrol engines.

Green fuels adding almost £10 to the cost of filling up a family car

For how much longer?
[image credit: thecostaricanews.com]

One of the many costs of carbon dioxide paranoia. How long do people want to go on paying, and allowing themselves to be bludgeoned into believing suspect climate theories while struggling to afford to run their own lives?
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Green fuels are adding nearly £10 to the cost of filling up an average family car, according to new analysis that will add more pressure on the Government to scrap their use, says the Daily Telegraph.

Petrol and diesel contain between five and 10 per cent biofuels, made mostly from wheat, maize and used cooking oil, the price of which has shot up since the war in Ukraine, even more than the cost of regular fuel.

As part of the Government’s net zero drive, E10 petrol was made the standard last summer, while B7 diesel was introduced in 2019.

California emissions, carbon neutrality plan draws criticism

Los Angeles, CA

Desperately seeking ‘carbon’ capture. One of the obvious problems of course is that it’s energy-intensive, and that energy has to be generated by non-fossil sources to qualify as suitable for the job, in the eyes of climate obsessives. Ignoring other practical difficulties (storage etc.), where is all the extra power supposed to come from? If wealthy California can’t resolve such issues, most other climate-obsessed regions (excluding those with lots of hydro-power) will surely also struggle to do so, and it all has to be paid for. For ‘ambitious’ read ‘unworkable’?
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California air regulators are likely to hear a barrage of criticism Thursday on a plan to slash fossil fuel use and reach carbon neutrality by 2045, a proposal that would require a sweeping shift in how the state powers its massive economy in the face of climate change, says Phys.org.

It will be the California Air Resources Board’s first public discussion of this year’s draft scoping plan, which is updated every five years and lays out a roadmap for the state to reach its climate goals.

The 2045 goal is among the most ambitious in the nation, but the proposal has many critics beyond the oil industry, which says the strategy has too many bans and mandates.

Welsh family farms threatened by corporates pursuing ‘carbon offsetting’ schemes

Sheep farming in Wales [image credit: BBC]

Another example of unintended consequences caused by the irrational pursuit of climate obsessions by governments.
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A fifth of Welsh farms are running at a loss and there is a risk that farmers will be priced out of agriculture by big corporations buying up farmland for carbon offsetting schemes, according to a new report on family farms in Wales.

The findings of an inquiry by the Welsh Affairs Select Committee published today (7 April) paint a concerning picture for Welsh agriculture, an industry where the average farm size is just 48ha, compared to 87ha in England, says TW News.

From pressure on incomes and land availability to a lack of opportunity for new entrants, the report highlights some of the key concerns and sets out a series of recommendations to governments to address the issues.

Nicola Scafetta: Advanced Testing of Low, Medium, and High ECS CMIP6 GCM Simulations Versus ERA5-T2m

In this new research paper the leading climate models turn out to be either too inaccurate (higher sensitivity) or unalarming (lower sensitivity).
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Plain Language Summary

The last-generation Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIP6) global circulation models (GCMs) are used by scientists and policymakers to interpret past and future climatic changes and to determine appropriate (adaptation or mitigation) policies to optimally address scenario-related climate-change hazards. However, these models are affected by large uncertainties. For example, their equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) varies from 1.83°C to 5.67°C, which makes their 21st-century predicted warming levels very uncertain. This issue is here addressed by testing the GCMs’ global and local performance in predicting the 1980–2021 warming rates against the ERA5-T2m records and by grouping them into three equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) classes (low-ECS, 1.80–3.00°C; medium-ECS, 3.01–4.50°C; high-ECS, 4.51–6.00°C). We found that: (a) all models with ECS > 3.0°C overestimate the observed global surface warming; (b) Student t-tests show model failure over 60% (low-ECS) to 81% (high-ECS) of the Earth’s surface. Thus, the high and medium-ECS GCMs do not appear to be consistent with the observations and should not be used for implementing policies based on their scenario forecasts. The low-ECS GCMs perform better, although not optimally; however, they are also found unalarming because for the next decades they predict moderate warming: ΔTpreindustrial→2050 ≲ 2°C.

The great climate backslide: How governments are regressing worldwide

Wyoming coal trains [image credit: energycatalyzer3.com/

A cold blast of reality is upsetting the fragile dreams of climate obsessives, who like to think humans can make the weather cooler by spending fortunes on expensive and often inefficient technologies. Renewables will never get anywhere near meeting global energy demand, which always rises.
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At the conclusion of the UN climate summit in November, COP26 President Alok Sharma praised the “heroic efforts” of nations showing that they could rise above their differences and unite to tackle climate change, an outcome that “the world had come to doubt.”

It turns out that the world was right to be skeptical, says the Taipei Times / Bloomberg.

Three months later, political intransigence, an energy crisis and economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic have cast doubt on the progress made in Glasgow, Scotland.

If last year was marked by optimism that the biggest polluters were finally willing to set ambitious net-zero targets, this year threatens to be the year of global backsliding.

For many Europeans, the electric vehicle revolution is a mirage

Teslas in Norway [image credit: Norsk Elbilforening (Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association)]

Usual problems: high cost, range anxiety, lack of charging points, battery life, maybe resale value. Not much incentive for less well-off private buyers, even with subsidies. Corporate fleets seeking tax breaks more to the fore.
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The view from Brussels policymakers is clear: the electric vehicle revolution is firmly underway. But a EURACTIV investigation reveals serious barriers to electric vehicle acceptance across eastern and southern Europe.
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Listen to EU policymakers and you will come away convinced that the electric vehicle revolution is firmly underway, says EURACTIV.

“I think the move towards electric vehicles is moving much faster than anybody would have anticipated,” EU climate chief Frans Timmermans said earlier this year, expressing a widely held view in Brussels.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen similarly assured Europeans that “change is already happening” in her 2021 state of the union address, pointing to Germany’s registration of more electric vehicles than diesel cars in the first half of 2021.

Not only are sales of electric vehicles surging, but Tesla, perhaps the world’s best known electric vehicle manufacturer, is now the most valuable car company on Earth.

The shift to e-mobility, it seems, is happening at pace, inexorably changing the driving landscape.

But a EURACTIV investigation into electric vehicle uptake across the continent challenges this narrative, revealing serious barriers to EV acceptance across eastern and southern Europe.

A poorly developed second-hand market for electric vehicles, confusion over subscriptions for charging services, and concerns over the degradation of batteries continue to hamper electric vehicle adoption, compounding frequently mentioned issues such as high upfront costs and a lack of charging infrastructure.

What emerges from EURACTIV’s reporting is a picture of an electric vehicle revolution that is bypassing less well-off Europeans.

Continued here.

Punishing Climate Policies to Fix What’s Not Broken

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‘The higher global warming, the more rainfall’, say climate alarmists — then complain about droughts causing wildfires. Confused? Yes they are. Here, Ben Pile looks at the case of the UK .

Science Matters

Ben Pile writes at Spiked Climate policy, not climate change, poses the biggest risk to our daily lives.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Firstly, Ben provides evidence for a reasonable person to conclude the weather and climate is doing nothing out of the ordinary.  Drawing on this year’s UK State of the Climate report:

But how significant are these changes really? Take, for example, the claim that the UK’s temperatures have increased. Leaving aside the possibility that land-use change thanks to the UK’s economic development might influence temperatures, the report offers this chart depicting 140 years of anomalies in UK and global annual temperatures:

Though the chart clearly shows that UK temperatures have risen, there is substantial year-to-year variability – far greater in the UK than for the world as a whole – that might make us wonder how impactful this extra warmth really is.

The point is…

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Tory rebels vow to fight 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars

The GWPF has produced a 64-page Fair Fuel document. See the Chairman’s Summary on pages 56-58 for a flavour of the many present and future problems with the unplanned rush to EVs, which the ‘rebels’ fear is likely to be a disaster both for themselves and the motoring public. But they’re mixing up carbon dioxide emissions cuts with pollution, which is an entirely separate issue. Such confusion plays into the hands of the so-called ‘green’ activists.
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Tory rebels have vowed to fight the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars, reports The Sun (via The GWPF).

Thirteen MPs urged the Government to think again or face public fury.

The Fair Fuel all-party parliamentary group today calls on ministers to publish a full-cost analysis of what it will mean for the economy to go electric, and how they will slash emissions.

Net zero must be fair, say MPs – some hope

Let’s see if the public can find fairness in being forced to switch to electric cars and pay a small fortune to change their home heating systems, when the time comes – which it quite soon will. All in the name of so-called ‘decarbonisation’ which won’t achieve anything positive for the climate anyway, but suits the aims of the catastrophists.

Any fairness to be found here: ‘The extra demand for electricity will overwhelm most domestic fuses, thus requiring homeowners to install new ones, as well as circuit-breakers and new distribution boards. Most will also have to rewire between their main fuse and the distribution network. In urban areas, where most electrical cabling is underground, this will involve paying for a trench to be dug between the home and the feeder circuits in the street.’? [Source: The Hidden Cost of Net Zero: Rewiring the UK].
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The government is criticised over its ‘insufficient’ public engagement practices around net zero, reports Energy Live News.

Fairness should underpin the UK’s transition to net zero.

That’s one of the recommendations of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee which urges the government to prioritise the Net Zero Review and Net Zero Strategy to increase engagement with the public, businesses and industry.

In its report named ‘Climate Assembly UK: Where are we now’, the committee suggests the government’s public engagement practices are insufficient.

GWPF welcomes Boris Johnson’s last-minute delay of gas boiler ban

Domestic gas central heating boiler

Government getting cold feet? Looks like it, after MP Steve Baker warned ‘if ministers don’t obtain the consent of the public for Net Zero’ the result could be a public revolt leading to ‘utter political fiasco’. Climate fear isn’t the weapon they seem to think it is.
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The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) has welcomed the decision by Boris Johnson to delay the planned gas boiler ban which the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) planned to announce next week.

According to a report in today’s Times, BEIS had been due to publish its heat and building strategy next week “but this is now understood to have been delayed, possibly until the autumn. At a meeting last week Boris Johnson was said to be concerned that it did not do enough to protect consumers and wanted further safeguards….”

EU leaders brace for clash over astronomical cost of Net Zero plans

‘All pain for no gain’ springs to mind. Will voters accept this pointless self-harm to their economic welfare indefinitely, or turn against it?
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As the astronomical cost of Net Zero plans are becoming more evident by the day, EU leaders face the prospect of growing discontent and revolt over the relentless rise in energy prices and consumer pain, say The GWPF & FT.

After years of assuring voters that renewable energy will make energy cheaper and Europeans better off, EU leaders are now forced to concede that these plans will actually hurt consumers very badly.

The EU Commission is proposing a series of far-reaching measures that will drive up the cost of running a car and heating homes.

If it goes ahead, households will have to shoulder not only rising energy costs, but also the rising cost of Europe’s record carbon price in their heating bills and fuel pump prices.

John Kerry: US climate envoy criticised for optimism on clean tech

 

[image credit: latinoamericarenovable.com]

Wishful thinking is the new climate policy for fantasy planet savers. John Kerry told the BBC technologies that don’t yet exist will play a huge role in stabilising the climate. But ‘Craig Bennett from the UK Wildlife Trusts told BBC News Mr Kerry’s remarks were “frankly ridiculous”.’ How much more worthless baloney do we have to endure from hypocritical globe-trotting alarmists?
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America’s climate envoy John Kerry has been ridiculed for saying technologies that don’t yet exist will play a huge role in stabilising the climate.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, he said the US was leading the world on climate change – and rapidly phasing out coal-fired power stations.

But he rejected a suggestion that Americans need to change their consumption patterns by, say, eating less meat.

Electric cars may make driving too expensive for middle classes, warns Vauxhall chief

Vauxhall Corsa-E [image credit: carmagazine.co.uk]

Car makers are getting nervous about the high cost of electric cars compared to fuel burners. Sales figures for EVs aren’t impressive, and uncompetitive prices are just one of several negative factors. Being pushed around by climate-obsessed governments is causing problems, to say the least.
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Driving could become the preserve of the rich as Britain and other countries around the world impose bans on diesel and petrol cars and embrace electrification, the boss of Vauxhall owner Stellantis has warned. The Telegraph/Yahoo Finance reporting.

A global rush to go electric could make cars too expensive for the middle classes, said Carlos Tavares, chief executive of the world’s fifth-biggest car maker – and it may even fail to significantly reduce carbon emissions because the vehicles are so much heavier than petrol ones.

The comments are the most outspoken public criticism of electrification by any car boss and will likely cause consternation in Downing Street, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said new fossil fuel cars will be banned from 2030.