By Paul Homewood
h/t Patsy Lacey
Isle of Wight Council set out plans to save the planet!!
The good residents of the Isle of Wight can sleep soundly in their beds, thanks to the selfless efforts of their councillors and bureaucrats, who clearly have nothing better to do than write soppy climate strategy plans.
As the council only produces 1% of the island’s emissions, they actually expect the public to make all the sacrifices, including forking out for heat pumps and insulation, and buying EVs. (All of which is being forced on them by government anyway!)
What therefore is the point of this report, some might ask, other than green virtue signalling?
The council, naturally enough, attempts to scare its citizens with threats of nice warm summers, but knowing this won’t work resorts to the sea level scam:
According to the links, this is sourced from an outfit called GreenMatch, who appear to make money from sales of renewable energy systems. In turn GreenMatch have based the map on the fraudulent Climate Central sea level rise tool, which assumes a sea level rise of 7.1m by 2100.
However, there is one cat which the Council has inadvertently let out of the bag:
This refers to research by the Tyndall Centre, published by Friends of the Earth in 2019:
https://policy.friendsoftheearth.uk/insight/more-electric-cars
It is not clear how the Isle of Wight Gauleiters propose to enforce this draconian target.
Finally, it is worth looking at the section on planting trees:
If 2,534,700 new trees were planted, to offset all the island’s emissions, it would mean planting 5068 hectares, effectively doubling the current 13% covered by trees. One would not have thought that to be totally impossible.
Would it not make a lot more sense and be considerably cheaper to do this, rather than eliminating emissions directly?
However, the Council have made an almighty cock up in their calculations. I have checked their workings, and you would need to plant that number of trees EVERY YEAR, not in total. This is the relevant section from the study they link to:
http://www.carbonify.com/carbon-calculator.htm
Let’s run through the calculations for offsetting 15% of emissions, which the Council reckon needs 380,000 trees:
15% of emissions = 76KtCO2
5 trees absorb 1 tonne CO2 over a lifetime of 40 years = 25kg pa
76Kt Divided by 25kg = 3,040,000 trees
3,040,000 trees = 30,400 hectares
Given that the island already has 5073 hectares of woodland, the total would amount to 35473 hectares.
The Isle of Wight’s area is 38,000 hectares.
Houston, we have a problem!!!
Of course, offsetting in this way actually achieves very little in practice, because it is only a temporary solution. Once the trees are fully grown (40 years in these assumptions), the carbon dioxide returns into the atmosphere one way or another, and the whole cycle starts again.
But maybe somebody living there might point out to the council their monumental balls up!
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January 7, 2021 at 08:18AM
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