Green journalism and the failure to question
By Paul Homewood
The passengers on the global warming bandwagon are worried. With the big climate conference in Glasgow at the end of the year getting ever closer, it now looks very much as if the big emitting nations are not going to sign up to a Net Zero agreement, and that the Prime Minister will be left with a humiliating failure on his hands.
It’s not just the conference that is in jeopardy. The government’s whole Net Zero agenda looks increasingly threatened, as Conservative MPs look nervously at the costs, and wonder what it might do to their chances of reelection.
If it goes all pear-shaped, the journalists and commentators who have been promoting the decarbonisation agenda for years have only themselves to blame. It has been clear to anyone who took the time to question the narrative that the aims were impractical, the figures presented were implausible, and that it was only a matter of time before there was a public backlash.
However, questioning things seems to nowadays be only a peripheral part of journalists’ job descriptions, particularly those on the climate and energy beat. Today’s Times’ leader, and James Kirkup’s recent article in the Spectator, both on the subject of net zero, are cases in point.
Both authors have clearly been briefed that the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) has estimated the cost of decarbonising the economy at £1.4 trillion. Unfortunately, that is wrong. The OBR has not prepared any estimate of the cost – it simply relays the figure prepared by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). Similarly, the Treasury, currently engaged on its review of the Net Zero project, is not actually assessing the bill to be paid either; it too accepts the CCC’s figures on trust.
This is a problem, because the CCC – beset as it is with extraordinary conflicts of interest – is the last organisation you’d entrust with coming up with reliable figures. And if you had any doubt, you only need to consider the tens of thousands of pounds it has spent on lawyers in order to keep the calculations underlying its estimate secret to realise that there really is a problem.
Even simple arithmetic shows the CCC estimate is entirely implausible. Twenty million homes needing heat pumps at £12,000 a time adds up to a cost of hundreds of billions of pounds. Most of them will need major insulation works too, at a cost running to tens of thousands of pounds each. That’s half of your £1.4 trillion gone already.
More arithmetic reveals further problems. The Times claims that electric cars will be cheaper than petrol and diesel by 2025. Really? To deliver that, you’d need to deliver price reductions of £2500 per year. But in recent years, the EV cost premium has hardly come down at all, and indeed looks as if it may even start to grow, because of upward pressure on battery prices.
Still, the Times does rather better than James Kirkup, who makes some wild and entirely unsubstantiated claims about the cost of renewables. Onshore wind down 40%? Reviews of the financial accounts of onshore windfarms reveals no such decline, nor indeed any decline at all. Offshore wind down a third? Even if that were true (it isn’t), that would still leave it several times more expensive than traditional power sources, leaving consumers facing sustained electricity price rises, and ultimately being priced off the roads and left unable to afford to heat their homes.
To be fair, there is a wrinkle with offshore windfarms, in that several have signed agreements to supply the grid at very low prices. But as the International Renewable Energy Agency notes, these kinds of deals may merely be part of a long-term pricing strategy, and should not be taken as representative of the underlying costs; in other words, that we will just end up paying more later. That suggestion is borne out by the financial accounts of the UK’s offshore windfarms, which show that costs remain very high, and are at best falling only slightly.
These issues are of vital importance to the UK economy, because if costs are not coming down then the CCC’s estimate of the cost of delivering net zero is understated, possibly by several trillion pounds. It’s a pity then, that journalists opining on net zero have mostly ignored them.
Before I finish, it’s worth raising one final example of a failure to question, this time from the Spectator article. In closing his piece, James Kirkup relays some official estimates of the financial disaster that potentially besets us: the OBR, he notes, has said that national debt could rise to 289 percent (presumably of GDP) if we do nothing about climate change. But here we see again that the pronouncements of officialdom can get you into trouble, or at least if you fail to question them. That’s because the choice is not between doing nothing and trying to change the weather by installing windfarms. There is a third choice: adapt.
Consider this: the biggest cost of global warming is supposed to come about through sea level rise, and here the cost of doing nothing will undoubtedly be very high – one study said we could face a bill of 11% of GDP every year.
But as the seas, rising 2–3 mm per year, started to overtop the sea walls, would we really do nothing, and let our homes be swamped and our children drown? Or would we improve our sea defences? The cost in that case has also been estimated, and is a thousand times smaller than doing nothing. Moreover, such a bill will be readily affordable in the future because of the world’s growing wealth.
The environmentalists and the renewables industry have done well to obscure the painful truth about the decarbonisation agenda from the public. The media have managed to turn a collective blind eye. But times have changed, and the costs can no longer be hidden. If, as seems likely, Net Zero crashes and burns, and all that money is wasted, they will have nobody to blame but themselves.
https://www.thegwpf.com/green-journalism-and-the-failure-to-question/
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
This article is linked from the latest GWPF newsletter and is a hood read, if long:
https://thegwpf.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=3f6f505254&e=6384b6057a
My understanding is the £1.4Tn is the cost to the country, i.e. the Taxpayer. The £75,000 – £100,000 cost of converting an average UK home to Net Zero standards (Professor of Engineering Michael Kelly) is a personal cost independent of the £1.4Tn.
I could be wrong but there are 27.8 million households in the UK. Multiply that by £75,000 and the number is £2,025,000,000,000.
Not even the CCC or the Treasury could be out by that much on a straightforward calculation like that.
PS. I did a costing exercise on my own house before Prof Kelly wrote his report. Allowing for ~£20k for a Ground Source Heat Pump (which can easily be £30,000) the cost of internal insulation to my solid masonry, Victorian end of terrace, three bedroom cottage amounted to £75,000 – £100,000. Astonishingly coincidental with Prof Kelly’s informed opinion.
My costings naturally included for the cost of whole house ventilation (essential if every source of escaping heat is to be plugged) but not for ripping out kitchens, bathrooms and the redecoration of the entire house.
Who needs lots of insulation when the Met Office ‘experts’ predict this?
Europe needs to prepare for temperatures of 50C in future
Posted on 12 August, 2021
Tucked aways is always the truth- “Contrast this situation to a greenhouse gas absorbing solely at 15 mm, in the CO2 absorption band ( Figure 7-8 ). At that wavelength the atmospheric column is already opaque ( Figure 7-13 ), and injecting an additional atmospheric absorber has no significant greenhouse effect” http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/djj/book/bookchap7.html?fbclid=IwAR0fvCDEmZSCiUeDzj7XrFlgsyOsazGyP_lWN9QDTpQ4E2kKULMDS6KVrCY
The cost of the negative emissions technology required to reach a net-zero goal has to be added. Capture and storage of just one ppm of CO2 will require 7,800 million metric tons. Do the arithmetic on any plausible per-ton cost and the cost of climate change mitigation goes through the roof. And, of course, a one ppm reduction would not even be noticed by the Earth’s climate. Time for some realism in this “crusade”.
What, if anything, is really abolishing the UK CCC, and repealing the Climate Change Acts and decarbonisation and,indeed, adopting a “wait and see” policy?
In my view, any such climate changes are essentially of natural occurrence and beyond human intervention
Great post. Thanks.
Fully agreed. Why not send it to Sir John Redwood and all the known parliamentary and journalistic net zero sceptics, asking them to circulate.
But it’s the hottest evah, I saw it on the BBC, ITV etc.
Why are they talking about expensive changes to domestic heating methods, when we obviously won’t need domestic heating?
However consulting my climate attribution model, the hottest evah correlates with 18 months of lockdown and lowest emissions for some years.
To restore the climate we need Ryanair badly.
Green: gullible, easily fooled, ignorant, too young to know any better etc.
‘But as the seas, rising 2–3 mm per year, started to overtop the sea walls, would we really do nothing, and let our homes be swamped and our children drown? Or would we improve our sea defences?’
We? Why would ‘we’ do anything? There is no collective responsibility for people’s ocean front property. Should sea level continue rising, as it encroached on their property – maybe in 200 years – they would move. Should sea level rise a meter, they should need only to move a meter up the bank.
There is another questionable assumption here: I have witnessed cases where environmentalists were successful in blocking remedial action on ocean front property. I have seen million dollar houses teetering at the end of Dune Road in West Hampton Dunes, waiting for their end. Years later, the CoE was allowed to take action.
And consider this: as I understand it (engineer, not a geologist) “rising sea levels” in South East UK are driven by the tectonic structure on which the UK sits. This pivots around a line roughly from the Wash to St Davids. So, England sinks as Scotland rises. Water levels rising at eg the Thames Barrier are therefore a result, primarily of this phenomenon.
Yep.
Is it the gullible journalist protecting their employment or the editors protecting the AGW narrative? Today the LA times letter to the paper editor patted himself on the back for the overwhelming support from readers for the latest IPCC report on CC. Perhaps this is because he openly said years ago he would not print anything he considered disinformation about CC. Self fulfilling prophecy? How many journalists would submit articles they know wouldn’t be accepted based on bias or politics?
“the Prime Minister will be left with a humiliating failure on his hands.”
No, … the Prime Minister IS a humiliating failure, on our hands.!
“Green journalism” …
Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on current events based on facts and supported with proof or evidence.
What we see is ‘Green Churnalism’ … Where someone with low to no knowledge of the subject generally copy’s & pastes unchecked text (often written by someone else with low to no knowledge of the subject ), it is then published as fact.
OK so people are waking up to costs. The next step will be waking up to futility. And the step after that is waking up to the fact that it doesn’t matter anyway. Here we go,
I don’t see why the government’s batshit insane green policies could possibly be an electoral liability when the only alternative is batshit insane plus.
I am promoting my paper written some years ago but still on the money, LITERALLY.
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3274611
Do read it if you think £1.4 Trillion is a lot. It’s just noise in the total cost of renewable electricity if gas is removed from the grid that depends on it to give the renewable intermittents something to justify their overpriced intermittent energy when they are working, “offsetting” the clean water and CO2 emissions … then you need batteries. Lots of batteries.
ABSTRACT: Forget £1.4Trillion. It must be well over £10 Trillion over 60 years just to buy batteries alone, at 50% renewables without gas backup. From your pockets to the elites, massive energy poverty for no actual effect on anything else. Except the standard of living and freedoms of the mass of people forced to pay by elite law. Physics and costed engineering 101.
The CCC has simply lied to Parliament and the people who pay for it. This cannot be a mistake. The facts and physics are known and don’t lie.
BASIS: If the full nonsense of the CCC’s deliberately deceitful mis-representation were pursued it would waste roughly £10Trillion pointlessly over 60 years, the life of a nuclear plant. for a 50/50 renewables and nuclear mix. On the cost of replacing batteries required for storage alone. Compare this to all new 24/7 net zero nuclear (45GW for £225Billion CAPEX/£5B/GW capacity)). These are rough numbers for scale. And what a scale.
This describes the technical options and how much they cost, much closer than just the scale of the avoidable and hence unnecessary cost, because there are better alternatives, ideally gas then nuclear, 24/7, that we know the costs of, with no lifetime subsidies.
Engineers and physicists with professional experience in the related subject ares are not welcome in this debate when they start checking the engineering numbers and costing the reality. Engineers helping dishonest capitalists harvest subsidies for what they must know is a expensively regressive “solution” imposed by law on people who could have better, cheaper, more relabel energy. are very welcome, however. Never mind the reality, follow the money, or you don’t work. Build and operate what the idiot politicians want, pocket theeasy guaranteed profits, give the corrupt politicians directorships after office, job done…
So truth is unwelcome in legalised renewable energy rackets, as I quickly found.
As well as blocking the paper above, My institute, the IET, declined to publish it in its Journal of Generation, Transmission and Distribution -because it said it was not relevant and added no value to the debate of the subject.
I suggest the problem was I did attribute values to the renewable racket.
The costs I calculate are of renewables without instant gas back up, currently most of the combined output of the gas/RE pairings, and not included in the costs of renewables as it should be – they would not incur it if the renewables were not there..
To charge these batteries to the level required to cover sustained periods of no wind and solar, will require excess wind generation to be built (by a factor of 2-3 times the rated output, and stored when available in batteries, to be put onto the grid when needed. The numbers are obviously daft to anyone with half a grasp of grid performance requirements. BUt to do the maths….
To keep the grid safe from black out for a week in darkest February with a 50% nuclear and 50% intermittent renewable energy supply, and no gas backup as described above, would cots c.£175Billion per annum in batteries, indefinitely. For 3.5TWh of supply in a week. These are real events and numbers
So thats £1.75Trillion every decade, for new batteries alone. Or, over the 60 year life of nuclear power stations…. £10Trillion. Ker-ching. No actual benefit to anyone except those getting a cut if the profits from this deliberate and planned malfeasance.
Building the nuclear power stations at £5B/GW to deliver 45GW for 60 years would cost £225B. Which to choose? The one that makes Trillions in easy money for insiders, of course.
So that’s roughly £10Trillion of our national wealth generation our government plans to make us waste by law over 6 decades, to no actual benefit versus nuclear power, the best answer to the supposed problem., Or we could just live with the regular blackouts and overpriced energy of a 3rd World Country. Great plan.
All avoidably, for no good reason, just because the government prefers this, as an ideology based in two obvious lies, as regard energy generation and the actual climate change that in no way can justify their “climate action”, Still not happening as UN modelled, changing as it has naturally for the last 8,000 years, up and down, as science knows. Not a guess. the observations of natural records of the many ice cores we now have..
Really it’s just our money these crooks are after, the climate won’t notice whatever we do., as CO2 is such a tiny effect amongst the much larger controls of climate, never mind the serious producers of C)2, which also has little effect, BTW. But that’s only the facts of the record, not the predictions of UN models that have been far more extreme than actual change for 40 years. Still not happening as advertised. Changing naturally.
Never mind the OPEX, just look at the CAPEX.
There is overtly no costed engineering or even basic reason in these policies.
Another angle. One year’s cost of batteries for the 50/50 mix at £175B pa would build 35 GW of new nuclear power CAPEX at £5B/GW capacity, with a very low OPEX, at global rates, almost the whole of our 45GW’ish max demand renewed in one year, until electric cars and heat pumps hit the grid and double or treble demand. These plants last 60 years.
The paper explains, in particular, on the data we know, the cost of providing battery backup to renewable energy supply when it is zero, on a dark, freezing February HIgh pressure night event across Europe for one week. That would cost c.£350Billion pounds per year in replacement batteries, before the excessive cost of the renewable energy. It just must.
If anyone can tell me where I have this wrong, do say. John Constable also read it and had a former Power Station exec engineer check it. While I assume lead acid with a life of 4 years, for the reasons of cost and recyclability given, Li-Ion with an 8 year assumed life, not recyclable with roughly 70 BILLION TONNES of batteries required every 8 years, at over twice the price per KWh so still MORE expensive, and the sheer physical mass of batteries is ridiculous.
POINT: For about £220Billion you can build all the nuclear power plants you need for 60 years supply of 330TWh pa. That’s just over the cost of batteries per year to support 50% renewable and 50% nuclear mix with no gas backup for 1 year, 165TWh from each. But because if the lifetime a minimum purchase of 4 years cover is required. So in reality the minimum cost is 4 x £175 Billion so £700 Billion for the first set of 4 year life lead acid batteries is the minimum outlay to support the 50/50 mix. THat’s 140 GW of nuclear power stations
OR, you can waste £10Trillion in 60 years on the 50/50 model. 5 years GDP. Why b not, The rich and privileged won’t notice so its OK. The majority of the UK population will be forced to choose between heating and eating, by net zero laws. This is why the pressure to switch to “active travel”. Because their plans are to return us to a 3rd World walking and cycling economy. Cars will be unaffordable to buy and/or charge. Fuel powered transport reserved for the rich and privileged, as they plan at DAVOS, COP, etc.
================
In haste, but carefully, corrections welcome. I am confident on the numbers of the paper, but feel free to roll yer own. Corrections of fact to the paper or the more hastily prepared above example above are most welcome.
This is so obviously wholly pointless and avoidable on all the facts. Energy suicide that the Tories and Labour elites are committing our economy to in our name, to no real benefit to those governed, or the actually tiny, stable and mostly natural in fact change in global climate anyone can check, but no one does, because it is simple fear mongering and false on the facts propaganda to justify the rackets imposed in its name.
TACTS of SCIENCE: It is, on the records science knows, far cooler now than at many times this interglacial, no more variable in range and rate than the pre-industrial past. Anyone numerate can check these facts in the published data of ice cores then and SST records now
The simple facts and laws of natural science, and costed engineering facts of energy, are simply not allowed to be published in the public domain by politicians or the media. Honest academics pointing this out are silenced by their Universities or no platformed, such as I was when I was invited to speak on the known facts of the related sciences by my own Institute, the IET. Not the predictions of models whose parameters are guessed by their programmers, rather observations if actual temperatures, and what science knows and uses as fact in everyday technological life. The proven science physics knows is largely ignored by the alternative climate “science”, and of course the facts and proven laws science does know are dangerous, as they expose the actual deceits. So telling the truth to the public is no longer allowed by these no longer scientific, rather political, bodies.
Because it conflicts with government propaganda and the easy money profits of their corporate members that will be taken from our pockets to enrich the elites behind the rackets, for doing the wrong thing at public expense.
You can’t make this shit up, because that’s their job. If it were done by private business in this way it would be a blatant mass fraud worthy of massive Jail sentences, Bernie Madoff scale fraud.
But done by government it’s legal, albeit a £10Trillion or more malfeasance, because it is a knowing fraud. Ministers have been told verbally and in writing by professionals they have ignored on the record. But money talks and the governed are simply where the elites get their money from, by whatever fraud they can engineer and sell as good for us..
Massive paydays are planned for the insider pigs in the subsidy troughs, directly or indirectly, like Gummer, Hendry, Huhne, Yeo, and no doubt new legalised criminals we don’t yet know about, after their period in office, in the Civil Service and elected branches..
Brian RL Catt CEng, CPhys, MBA
One item that is being totally ignored is the inflationary action of more expensive Electricty.
It will push up the price of every single item grown, manufactured and or delivered in the UK.
Because to stay in business the the costs have to be passed on to the customer.