As others may have noticed, what the bansturbators and hair shirt Greenies like doing is continually pushing the boundaries of the barely plausible until they end up with something that a couple of years ago would have struck the man in the street as completely insane.
T'was but a year ago (long after the rot had set in, of course) that the BBC reported thusly:
Gordon Brown is facing the prospect of another significant backbench rebellion - this time over climate change. More than 80 Labour MPs have signed an amendment to the Climate Change Bill, which would force ministers to promise greater cuts in carbon emissions. The bill commits Britain to make at least a 60% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050. The MPs want that to rise to 80%. Meanwhile Mr Brown hailed "major progress" at the G8 summit, as leaders agreed to halve CO2 emissions by 2050...
A 50% cut was seen as 'major progress' and an 80% cut was still seen as loony backbenchery. I suggested, with tongue firmly in cheek, let's go for a 100% reduction. Rather bizarrely, it was subsequently suggested that our CO2 emissions would have to be reduced to negative figures, but presumably somebody pointed out that this would be impossible.
Fast forward to today:
The Committee on Climate Change proposed a global cap on aviation emissions and warned that households and industry would have to slash their carbon output if flights were to be protected... The committee, which was created by the Climate Change Act last year, said that Britain may have to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 90 per cent by 2050 so the aviation sector can continue to grow. The move would mean even bigger cuts than the 80 per cent drop on 1990 levels already planned for homes, cars and industry.
So a cut of 80% has gone from loony backbenchery to something "already planned" and the figure is now being nudged towards 90%*, and hence, no doubt, to 100% again.
* This defies logic. Maybe we could cut CO2 emissions by 90% if we all lived as smallholders and subsistence farmers, but we'd have neither the money to pay for air travel nor the means to get to the airport unless we were prepared to travel for days in a horse and cart first.
Flabby
6 hours ago
9 comments:
Would it help if we all breathed only half as much (and politicians cut their breathing by 90% to set an example)?
B, yes it would.
But on t'other hand, the government want us all to take a lot more exercise to keep fit, which involves breathing four times as much as when you're relaxing in front of the telly or the computer screen...
This exercise of whistling in the wind has become a complete joke.
As I understand it the Kyoto protocol aims for/requires the UK to reduce CO2 emissions by 8% from the levels of 1990 by 2012. We became subject to this so-called obligation in mid 2002. So that's 10 years to achieve an 8% reduction. Two years to go and the result is guaranteed failure. Our CO2 emissions have not fallen (although overall "greenhouse gas" emissions have).
Last year, without notable opposition from anyone other than Peter Lilley in the Commons and Nigel Lawson in the Lords, our parliament decreed a 60% reduction below 1990 levels by 2050. Now Bananaboy Junior wants to up that to 90%. It's pure posturing. The first 8% is the easiest to achieve yet a decade isn't enough, so they quintuple the timespan and increase the target elevenfold.
It might happen anyway as we wean ourselves off the oily product of the mad middle-easterners, but it won't happen because politicians say it must.
This morning I had cause to pop into the local council offices for a meeting. A third of their reception area is dedicated to their greenery agenda. It is distastefully decorated with reclaimed floorboards from a school out in the sticks which, no doubt, were dragged to central London on the back of a filthy diesel truck - a round journey of at least 100 miles.
The dedication to the god that is green is absolute among these people. These are fully-blown adherents to the mantra "other people's western comforts are an affront to mother nature". I teased them with a few questions, in particular about the apparent lack of global warming over the last decade. There was no sign of any of them being aware of it, let alone being able to discuss how it affects the very basis for their employment.
Earnest glassy stares were in abundance. They were thrilled because they are employed saving the planet. No questions asked, just blind stupid obedience to the official position. There is a long way to go to get some common sense prevailing.
Man Made Global Warming surely counts as an Extraordinary Popular Delusion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
BTW, the Wikipedia article shows nothing has changed. We still have crusades (Iraq War), witch hunts (paedophiles), alchemists (cold fusion), and bubbles.
My favourite line yesterday was the proposal to ban internal air travel as there are other alternatives.
Yes there are, but they all involve fossil-based fuels. I'd dearly love for one of these eco-fuckwits to see if he can drive from Manchester to Edinburgh in his little electric powered pedal car in under 5 hours.
Mark, you have provided me with the ultimate excuse when my GP accuses me of not getting enough exercise - I'm cutting down on my carbon emissions.
To my mind, it always a joke that Kyoto excluded aviation and shipping emissions as well as ignoring what China and India get up to. Politicians are now having to deal with the fallout from their own stupidity.
There is actually a CO2 negative way bof producing electricity but only in the tropics.
OTECs (Ocean Thermal Energy Converters which lift water from the deep ocean & use the heat differential to generate power) The deep water is literally nutrient heavy but because there was no light down there it couldn't be used. When brought to the surface it can be pumped into artificial ponds & used to grow blue-green algae in quite enormous quantities, doubling its mass in mere hours.
http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2008/03/petrol-from-sea-water.html
Breed the right algae & it grows oil. Obviously anything grown takes CO2 from the air. So electricity, unlimited renewable oil & negative CO2. Naturally since, like CO2 free nuclear, it is a high tech solution & the eco-fascists want neither hi-tech or solutions, they don't want it.
"This defies logic. Maybe we could cut CO2 emissions by 90% if we all lived as smallholders and subsistence farmers, but we'd have neither the money to pay for air travel nor the means to get to the airport unless we were prepared to travel for days in a horse and cart first."
What's funny is how much most Graun types don't realise how much they depend upon the non-greeness of others.
If we de-industrialised, there's no way we'd have the armies of five-a-day co-ordinators and ethnic awareness counsellors. We only tolerate that bullshit (moan, grind our teeth rather than reaching for pitchforks) because we still remain reasonably wealthy as a nation. People toiling on the land just don't have much money left over.
They just don't grasp that their public sector wages come from a whole lot of very non-green effort paying the taxes to pay for them.
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