Climate Denial vs Climate Realism

Amongst recent media coverage regarding the surge in popularity of so-called “far-right” parties across Europe, it is interesting to note that there are a number of commonalities in the policy positions of many of these parties. One that stands out is a commitment to scale back on the push for Net Zero.

Net Zero has become a mini-religion (or cult, as some people would view it), with Liberal politicians across Europe pushing a harder and faster carbon neutrality agenda in order to appease the swathes of virtue-signaling celebrities and the brainwashed masses of youngsters who have made Greta Thunburg the cultural icon of their generation. This has seen any semblance of common sense sacrificed at the altar of Net Zero.

Those of us who dare to challenge the ruinous Net Zero policies that are being woven into the fabric of our political discourse without being afforded any scope for debate, are immediately labelled “climate change deniers”, and put into the “dangerous” category of people who they claim would rather see the world burn than protect it for future generations.

So cult-like has Net Zero become, that to even encourage debate on the subject is seen as denial of “the science” (that same “science” that wheeled out ludicrous and unsubstantiated modelling predicting tens of thousands of deaths per day during COVID if increasingly draconian lockdown measures weren’t put in place and sustained indefinitely, that in the end were proven to be a million miles wide of the mark).

And yet, with Net Zero, we are talking about a hugely expensive commitment that was enshrined into UK law without the British public being given any say in the matter, without a vote from MPs… without even a debate in Parliament! Perhaps if those charged with the governance of our country had thought it reasonable to involve the public in the discussion before doing so, they would be seeing less push-back now.

But they weren’t prepared to do that, because they knew the outcome… the “facts” behind climate science are spurious and leave plenty of room for interpretation, the cost of achieving Net Zero will climb into the £trillions, and the politicians knew that people will never vote to be colder and poorer.

And yet the reality is, many of us who challenge the climate change narrative, those labelled as “climate change deniers”, are not ultimately in disagreement with the fact that climate change IS a thing and that global temperatures ARE rising. We simply would like some constructive conversation centred around three things:

1. What is a reasonable and proportionate approach to tackling climate change, that won’t bankrupt our economy?

2. What will reaching Net Zero achieve, in the global sense? and

3. When weighing up the costs vs the difference that achieving Net Zero in the UK will make, is it worth it?
   

These are three perfectly reasonable questions to ask, in the context of the massive cost, changes to our way of living, and sacrifices that we are almost certainly going to be asked to make.

You see, when the media talk about Net Zero, what they are really referring to is reducing man-made carbon emissions. They talk about global temperature rises, changes in sea levels, increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, and they frame this evidence of global warming/heating/boiling within a narrative that suggests that man is solely responsible.

What they don’t tell you is that, of all carbon emissions into Earth’s atmosphere in any given day, the vast majority come from natural sources, not man-made ones. Some sources estimate that man-made carbon emissions account for as little as 3% of all carbon deposited into the atmosphere globally.

And of the small proportion of CO2 deposits that are attributable to man-made sources, the UK accounts for less than 1% of global man-made (anthropogenic) carbon emissions (this used to be 2%, however the efforts that we have made over recent years have already reduced man-made emissions in the UK by 50%). Meanwhile, in China they are building more coal mines, and their carbon emissions increased by more in the first quarter of this year than the UK’s entire carbon output. This means that, even if the UK achieved Net Zero tomorrow, within 3 months the increase in China’s carbon output would have erased any benefit that we had created.

And even if every country achieved net zero, total global carbon emissions would still only be reduced by a small amount. It would make no difference whatsoever to natural carbon deposits, which would continue to contribute the vast majority of CO2 into our atmosphere.

To put it another way… climate change is happening, whether we like it or not. It is the natural order of things. Global ecosystems work in cycles, they are predictable and inevitable. No measures we take will be able to change the tide in the long run. That is the reality.

In that context, is it really unreasonable to want to challenge climate change narrative, and this insane push to Net Zero by 2050, an arbitrary date agreed by a bunch of politicians (not climate scientists) who flew into Davos on their private jets back in 2017 to discuss how they could utilise the climate emergency to further their own legacies?

In 2021, the National Grid modelled four scenarios by which decarbonisation of the grid in the UK could be achieved by 2050, utilising various alternative energy production sources such as wind and solar energy. The modelling also factored in various “efficiency gains” such as citizens travelling less etc. In each case it estimated the cost at around £3 trillion. And that only includes decarbonising energy. It excludes agriculture, rail, aviation, shipping, industrial processes and many other things. As for decarbonising everything, no one can put a price on it because a lot of the technology needed doesn’t yet exist.

At the time of writing, Labour have pledged to decarbonise the grid entirely by 2030, not by 2050 as modelled by the National Grid, meaning that they will need to find the £3 trillion needed to do so, not across the next 26 years, but across just 6 years!

Then there is the cost to individual households of the Net Zero policies that Keir Starmer has pledged should Labour win the next General Election. Labour want the number of heat pumps being installed in domestic households across Britain to rise from 38,000 in 2022 to 600,000 by 2028. However, they are not addressing the fact that they currently cost around £10,000 to install. This is a significant sum of money for ordinary people. Add to this the cost of converting the existing water pipes, radiator and heating infrastructure within a normal home, and the cost can more than double.

Moreover, because these pumps work at lower water temperatures than a traditional heating system, they don’t work well in badly insulated homes, such as the eight million homes in Britain with solid walls, many of them concentrated in former ‘red wall’ seats.

According to the government’s own energy advice quango, the Energy Savings Trust, solid wall insulation for a three-bedroom semi will typically cost £8,200, if fitted internally, and £10,000 if fitted externally — with additional costs if, as can easily happen, poorly executed insulation work exacerbates damp problems. Millions of homeowners, then, could face capital costs of around £20,000 to decarbonise their homes — before we even get round to thinking about the cost of generating the electricity entirely by zero-carbon means.

So with the true cost of delivering Net Zero in the UK still an unknown (albeit irrefutably the most expensive infrastructure project ever undertaken by any Government, whatever the final figure ends up being), and the subsequent environmental benefit being at best negligible, and at worst completely irrelevant, is it time to stop demonising the climate realists? Those completely rational, sensible people who have seriously legitimate questions that they want answered before they allow themselves to be forced to pledge allegiance to the Net Zero Gods.

These people, and if not already apparent from the tone of this article I include myself amongst them, are not science-deniers, they are not conspiracy-theorists, they are not tin-foil-hat loonies… they are logical people who have weighed up the evidence on both sides and do not believe that a sufficiently even-handed debate is being allowed that weighs up the socio-economic impact of Net Zero against the unsubstantiated environmental benefits that it might or might not deliver.

And, by the way, agreeing with anything in this article does not make you far-right either, it just means you are exercising your democratic right to question the establishment.