By Paul Homewood

 

While I was away last week, the Committee on Climate Change were stamping their tiny collective feet, complaining that nobody was listening to them.

 

The UK has been dealt a "brutal reality check" on its climate change ambitions, environmentalists have said.

The government’s official climate change advisers warn ministers are failing to cut emissions fast enough, and adapt to rising temperatures.

Committee on Climate Change chair John Gummer likened them to the hapless characters in 1970s comedy Dad’s Army.

The government said it would soon set out plans to tackle emissions from aviation, heat, energy and transport.

The prime minister recently announced that the UK would lead the world by cutting almost all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – so-called net zero.

Theresa May also aspired to the UK hosting a hugely important global climate summit next year.

But the CCC said that the UK was already stumbling over measures needed to achieve the previous target of an 80% emissions cut.

Its report says new policies must be found to help people lead good lives without fuelling global warming.

Policies are needed to ensure that people living in care homes, hospitals and flats can stay cool in increasingly hot summers.

And ministers must show how funds will be found to protect critical infrastructure – like ports – from rising sea levels.

The committee said unless it delivered on these issues, the government would not have the credibility to host a global climate change summit of world leaders, likely to be held in the UK next year.

Doug Parr from Greenpeace UK said: "This is a truly brutal reality check on the government’s current progress in tackling the climate emergency.

"It paints the government as a sleeper who’s woken up, seen the house is on fire, raised the alarm and gone straight back to sleep".

The committee’s deputy chairwoman Baroness Brown told BBC News: "There’s an increasing sense of frustration that the government knows what it has to do – but it’s just not doing it."

The committee said the government’s 2040 goal to eliminate emissions from cars and vans was too late.

New ways must be found to nudge some drivers into walking, cycling and taking public transport, it believes.

There’s palpable annoyance from the committee that their recommendations are often ignored.

In the list of actions needed to meet emission targets, such as improving insulation of buildings and increasing the market share of electric vehicles, the committee found only seven out of 24 goals were on track.

Outside the power and industry sectors, only two indicators were on track.

Committee chairman Lord Deben, the former agriculture minister John Gummer, said: "The whole thing is really run by the government like a Dad’s Army. We can’t go on with this ramshackle system."

At current rates of global emissions cuts, the world may be heading for a temperature rise of more than 3C by the end of this century – but the report says England appears unprepared for even a 2C rise in global temperature.

It warns that the UK is failing to insulate itself from the knock-on effects of climate change overseas, such as colonisations by new species, changes in the suitability of land for agriculture or forestry, and risks to health from changes in air quality driven by rising temperatures.

The report says: "Last June, we advised that 25 headline policy actions were needed for the year ahead. Twelve months later, only one has been delivered by the government in full."

It complains that in some ways the UK is going backwards.

Green space in parks and gardens cools cities and helps reduce flood risks. But as more homes are crammed into cities, green spaces have shrunk from 63% of urban area in 2001 to 55% in 2018.

Heat magnifies the production of pollutants, so more people are expected to suffer breathing problems.

Meanwhile, the proportion of hard surfaces in towns has risen by 22% since 2001, even though they make floods worse.

The report says the government’s planning should consider the risks that the world may warm by as much as 4C by 2100.

It warns that the new net zero target requires an annual rate of emissions reduction that is 50% higher than under the UK’s previous target.

It is 30% higher than what’s been achieved on average since 1990 – a period when the UK has benefited from a relatively simple switch from coal to gas for electricity.

The report says: "The need for action has rarely been clearer. Our message to government is simple: ‘Now, do it.’"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48929632

 

The government, of course, has only itself to blame. For years, it has been only too happy to pander to these puffed up panjandrums, instead of telling them what to do with their advice.

But the simple fact is that all successive governments have done is throw tens of billions in subsidies at inefficient renewables. They have managed to convince the public that the resultant hikes in electricity prices have been the fault of wicked energy companies.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, the really difficult stuff starts now.

While politicians are happy to virtue signal by setting ridiculous targets for many years time, when they will be safely departed, none are willing to bite the bullet and present the public with the real impact of their policies.

Joe Public will, I suspect, be extremely angry when they see the costs and disruption imposed on their lives when natural gas is turned off at the mains, EVs are made compulsory and air travel rationed.

 

The CCC’s proposals are all predicated on fanciful rates of warming, which simply are not supported by real world data, which shows that temperatures in Britain have been stable for the last three decades:

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html

 

Suggestion of more green space in cities, and fewer homes, does not recognise the urgent need for more homes, given demographic trends.

Meanwhile, the CCC fail to recognise that virtually no drivers want to buy EVs, for the simple reason that they are not fit for purpose. This is despite the obscene subsidies thrown at them.

Billions have already been spent on free insulation for homes, and there is no evidence that further spending will be cost effective or affordable.

In short, the CCC want the government, AKA the taxpayer, to spend hundreds of billions on solving or adapting to a problem that simply does not exist at the moment.

If in the unlikely chance that temperatures do start to rise rapidly in a few decades time, future governments will be more than capable of dealing with the problems then.

Unfortunately, the CCC is established by law, under the Climate Change Act. But I see no reason why its wings cannot be clipped and funding drastically reduced.

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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July 17, 2019 at 04:42AM