From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Paul Kolk

Britain must cut its meat and dairy consumption by up to 50pc to meet the latest net zero targets, the Government’s climate watchdog has said. 

The Climate Change Committee said in an ideal scenario, meat and dairy consumption should halve by 2050 and products be substituted with plant-based options.

The proposals are part of new net zero targets that have been recommended to Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary.

In a letter to Mr Miliband, the committee said the Government must cut CO2 emissions by 81pc by 2035 when compared to the benchmark year of 1990. This would amount to a reduction of 200m tonnes from the current level of 384m tonnes.

Piers Forster, the CCC’s chairman, said persuading British consumers to change their diets would play a key role in achieving such massive cuts.

Mr Forster did not specify how the UK could reduce meat eating but options could include reducing subsidies for livestock, taxing meat products and a clampdown by regulators on advertising.

The committee has urged the Government to cut livestock numbers, especially sheep and cattle, because they argue the methane produced by these animals is a key cause of climate change..

The UK has just under 10m cattle and calves plus around 32m sheep and lambs.

David Handley of Farmers for Action, who keeps 500 sheep and 100 cattle on his Monmouthshire farm, said: “The amounts of methane produced by farming are tiny compared with the emissions from transport and other sectors.

“But these rules and regulations are devastating the sector along with the UK’s ability to produce its own food.” 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/26/britons-urged-to-eat-less-meat-hit-latest-net-zero-target

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Do they really think that people are so concerned about Net Zero that they will give up meat?

Of course, we all know that when they say “persuade”, they really mean “compel”.

In their zealotry, they don’t seem to care about the effect their policy will have on the rural economy. In England alone, livestock and dairy farms employ more than 120,000 people, and meat production is valued at £9bn a year, according to DEFRA.

Industry estimates suggest that you can triple the number of employees, when indirect jobs and jobs in the meat processing industry are added in.

Worse still, the rural economy in some parts of the country could be wiped out if livestock and dairy farming is ended. Shops, pubs , garages and other local businesses could not survive such a catastrophe.

To even contemplate such an outcome would be thoroughly reckless. And this is why Piers Forster, climate academic, is totally unfit to be in charge of climate decision making.

And as is ever the case, while we are trying to cut our meat consumption, the rest of the world eats more every year. Our consumption is barely 1% of the world’s.

https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare

None of that matters to Piers Forster though. All he cares about is the UK’s Net Zero targets.

From CFACT

By Paul Driessen

Environmentalists insist that they love the “little guys” — until they get in their way, ask inconvenient questions or try to block renewable energy projects intended to save the planet from “human-caused climate cataclysms.”

Then the little people learn the environmentalists are really working with wind and solar energy companies, public utilities, finance giants, politicians and bureaucrats — the climate-industrial complex. Stand in its way, and farmers, rural communities and American Indian groups can face protracted, expensive battles. But they often emerge victorious.

Energy analyst and journalist Robert Bryce reports that these little guys have rejected or restricted 735 U.S. wind and solar projects since 2015, including 58 solar and 35 wind proposals so far this year. Transmission lines, grid-scale batteries and other plans also face growing resistance.

Rural Americans don’t want these huge installations destroying their traditional way of life, hurting property values, raising electricity rates, wrecking vital croplands and habitats, ruining scenic vistas, killing birds, bats and other wildlife — and creating serious fire and toxic gas risks from lithium-ion electricity storage batteries.

They don’t want their countryside dotted with landfills piled high with billions of tons of broken and obsolete solar panels, wind turbine blades and other trash.

The proposed projects are daunting in their number and scale, and the dream of transitioning the United States from fossil fuels to an all-electric energy, transportation and industrial system would require vastly more.

Before being scaled back in a failed effort to reduce local and state opposition, the Lava Ridge Wind Project would have installed 400 huge turbines on some 200,000 acres of federal land in Idaho. That’s 310 square miles, over 4½ times the area of the District of Columbia. Most of its output would go to California, which already imports nearly one-third of its electricity.

The Koshkonong solar project near Christiana, Wisconsin, would cover 6,400 acres (10 square miles) and put a 667-megawatt-hour battery storage system near an elementary school.

The Biden-Harris administration’s plan for 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy translates into 2,500 12-megawatt turbines rising 850 feet above the waves. But all those turbines wouldn’t provide enough electricity (31,541 MW) to power New York state on a hot summer day if the wind blows.

The state’s plan is to spend $2 billion for 24,000 MWh of backup batteries for windless or sunless days, which would provide enough electricity to run the state for barely 45 minutes. Sufficient batteries would cost trillions.

Each offshore blade is 350 feet long and weighs 140,000 pounds; 2,5000 turbines would mean almost 500 miles of blades weighing more than 1 billion pounds. Imagine the cleanup and landfill costs after a major hurricane.

Yet a 2020 Princeton University report called for massively expanding U.S. wind and solar capacity to fight climate change and rebuild America.

As Mr. Bryce points out, however, those plans would require solar projects blanketing an area the size of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut combined — plus wind installations sprawling across lands equal to Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.

That’s without factoring in wind and solar power needed to charge grid-scale backup batteries to store enough electricity to power America for even a day or week of windless, sunless days.

Other projects are equally enormous, expensive and fanciful.

Summit Carbon Solutions wants to build a pipeline to carry carbon dioxide from 57 ethanol plants in five states — and inject the carbon dioxide into geologic formations beneath North Dakota. The company can provide no guarantees that the pressurized gas will stay in the ground and not erupt suddenly and violently, killing wildlife and people by rapidly replacing breathable air — as a natural carbon dioxide reservoir did at Cameroon’s Lake Nyos in 1986.

hy are you trying to end local land-use controls, take our property via eminent domain and destroy small local and minority businesses to build these enormous projects?

• How will ruining our wild and agricultural areas, killing wildlife and reducing our living standards do any good if China and India alone emit 38% of the world’s greenhouse gases (vs. 11% by the U.S.) and are building coal-fired generating plants every week?

Proud, principled resistance is essential if citizens are to defend their jobs, lands, living standards and freedoms.

• Paul DriessThe cumulative impacts of these wind, solar, battery, transmission line and other projects would be incalculable — on land, wildlife, families, budgets and human health.

Adding to the cost, construction and raw material requirements, home, neighborhood and regional grids would have to be expanded and upgraded to handle the ballooning electricity demands and the surges and plummets associated with unpredictable, weather-dependent wind and solar power.

This is all irrelevant to those in the climate-industrial complex, who want to extol the “pivotal role” they are playing in driving America’s “renewable energy transformation,” meeting arbitrary greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and preventing “climate catastrophes.”

Property rights advocate Tom DeWeese says concerned citizens can fight back by asking tough questions about these policies and projects.

For example:

• What benefits has our community received from the solar and wind farms we already have, and from the taxpayer subsidies and increased rates we already have to pay?

This article originally appeared at The Washington Times

Scuba divers have a fascination with sharks, we will go looking for them.  We know to always face them.  Never turn your back on a large shark.   That is something worth remembering more generally, in your life on land.

Of course, there is no point being offended, by a shark.   Worse, don’t confuse a shark with something else, like a coralliferous (coral eating) fish.

On land, I’ve noticed that the predatory individuals often dress-up as something else entirely.

It was always the case to some extent, but increasingly we are being told to let go of our own prejudices.   There can be advantage in that: being open minded.  But at what point do we hold onto that which we know instinctively?

Often, when we ignore our instincts, we become easy prey for the land sharks.

That is something worth remembering in all interactions, and something that many of us know instinctively.

Sharks hunt their prey like the worse in the human species, often in packs and opportunistically.

Here in Australia a pecking order is often maintained by ruthless attacks on reputation.

Whether in medicine or climate science but especially in the modern bureaucracies, the individual has a much-reduced chance if alone amongst a hungry pack that will work to maintain strict adherence to protocols and hierarchies.

In Australia, most everyone, but especially the sharks will work to prop up the institutions and the dominant narrative.

I don’t think it is instinctive, but rather a learnt behaviour.  I have always been interested in behaviour, my PhD was in insect behaviour.

In the ocean, sharks will circle their prey, often seemingly out of nowhere and frequently approaching from below.  Under strong feeding stimuli, excitement can intensify into a sensory overload.

Humans, even insects, are prone to sensory overload.

In humans, and also insects, sensory overload is especially a problem for neurodiverse individuals when what they are told doesn’t accord with what they perceive.

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The feature image is of a white-tip reef shark (Triaenodon obesus), photographed at a place called Chicken Reef on 5th September 2024 by Jenn Mayes.