With Climate Change, As With Covid, the Cure is Worse Than the ‘Disease’
Peter Lilley, former Trade and Industry Secretary, wrote a piece for the Telegraph the other day about the impact of Net Zero policies (which this website mentioned here, but I think it merits a more detailed consideration).
Lilley is careful to point out that he is committed to the science of climate change which he calls “rock solid”, but he’s worried about what we’re doing.
In 2008 he voted against the Climate Change Act “amid terrifying predictions of catastrophic heatwaves”. He, who was told he was the only MP to ask for a copy (he says), had read the Impact Assessment which “showed the potential cost was twice the maximum benefit”.
I asked ministers if they know of any peer-reviewed study accepted by the IPCC (the UN body established to assess the science of global warming) that forecasts the extinction of humanity if the world takes no action to phase out fossil fuels. The answer was clear: there are none.
He goes on:
The central conclusion of Lord Stern’s official review of the economics of climate change was that if the world does nothing – not if we do not do enough, but if we do nothing – it would be equivalent to making us all 5% poorer than we would otherwise be, now and forever. But a 5% loss does not remotely amount to impoverishment of the human race, just setting us back by two or three years’ growth.
More recently, Prof. Nordhaus, who won the Nobel Prize in 2018 for assessing the costs and benefits of action on climate change, concluded that the optimum target for the world to aim for is not 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, but nearer to 3°C, which means there may be scope to delay our Net Zero target beyond 2050.
If a Nobel Prize is not enough and you want the imprimatur of the IPCC, these are the opening words of its chapter on the impact of climate change on the economy: “For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers. Changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance and many other aspects of socio-economic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change.”
Lilley of course is also pointing out though that there are numerous other factors which have far more potential, individually and collectively, to change our lives for the worse.
That conclusion is particularly interesting. During Covid we saw the belief that one threat to us, regardless of individual perceptions of how significant that threat was or the variability of its impact, was so all-encompassing that the potential consequences of measures to control it were widely ignored by governments and certain epidemiologists. Today we are all too painfully aware of the damage caused, but you wouldn’t know it from the Covid Inquiry.
Are we witnessing the same phenomenon right now with climate change? The other day the King suggested future generations will castigate us if we don’t act now. Should we be so fast to judge? Future generations often curse their predecessors for the unintended consequences of their actions. Act in haste, repent at leisure and all that.
Lilley finishes up by recommending that the market should be used to “develop lower-cost alternatives to fossil fuels for heating, transport and so on before forcing people to adopt new technologies whose cost has not yet come down to those based on conventional fuels”.
But he leaves us in no doubt that he believes his words will be ignored.
As ever, worth reading in full.
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“During Covid we saw the belief that one threat to us, regardless of individual perceptions of how significant that threat was or the variability of its impact, was so all-encompassing that the potential consequences of measures to control it were widely ignored by governments and certain epidemiologists.”
The general public may have believed in the threat and not thought too much of the consequences. Those responsible for the folly and evil show no evidence of believing in the threat (they were partying and shagging) and every sign that they knew very well what damage would be done.
The general public believed the threat and didn’t care about the consequences of action in so far as they perceived that the action taken didn’t cost them anything personally.
Those who felt the cost were very much against the measures. And of course for the millions that not only didn’t feel a cost but actually saw a benefit – skive off work, free money, basically a paid stay at home holiday – they were enthusiastically for it.
And therein lies the fundamental malice in so much of what the modern state does. It almost always involves taking something from one group of people and giving it to someone else. A sick game of selling favours and playing favourites in such a way as to get support for one power grab after another.
It’s a terrible dynamic which, of rourse, is leading to ever growing polarisation and social unrest.
I agree with most of what you say. I don’t agree that there was no cost to them personally. There may have been no financial cost, but their lives, and the lives of their families, were interrupted considerably. But they saw this as necessary and managed not to mind, at the time – at least that is how it seemed. A tiny few are now angry, some because they realise it was very wrong, some because it has screwed up their children. Most seem to have forgotten. I’m talking about people known personally to me.
I have come to a similar conclusion tof.
I agree everyone bore a cost. I didn’t say they didn’t, I said they didn’t perceive it or feel it.
That’s why so much of state action is so destructive, because people don’t perceive the cost of those actions directly. So they think there is no cost.
Imagine how different people would behave if they received a regular statement of their share of the nation’s debt?
So you trot down to the bank to ask for a loan and they ask you your income, your assets and your current debts, including your share of national debt, and your loan was rejected because you were already in too much debt… on account of the money the government has borrowed on your behalf.
Indeed. Unfortunately for various reasons – prosperity, complexity, taking things for granted, lack of appropriate education – there’s a disconnect in people’s thinking, and they really think that wealth and money are the same thing and that wealth grows on trees.
People I know did perceive and feel the cost of lockdowns – at least in terms of the disruption to their lives – but they thought it was justified so they were not angry (except with “Boris” for not locking down sooner, or with “covid deniers” and “anti-vaxxers” for prolonging the “pandemic”).
That is how i fell out with a mate in late 2020 because I accused him of prolonging the sh@t show with his mask compliance, and he replied with. actually we’re still in this mess because of people like you!
He was a fellow Metalhead of all people.
Nothing so dramatic for me, for the most part, just drifted away from a lot of people I used to speak to/spend time with. I did get compared to Hitler by a colleague, which I thought was a nice touch.
The people in favour of Lockdowns should fund those that are not and those that deliver their stiff. Just like these Home Office types, flood them with bus loads of migrants….Diversity is our strength!
😀😀😀👍
And showing every sign they would do it all again. Happily.
I did hear a guy whose relative died early in 2020 (with of not sure) he was blaming Boris for not Locking down earlier — I would just say to him, what difference would that make when you consider Lockdowns do very little.
And the “disease” non-existent. At least not in the sense of anything out of the ordinary.
“the optimum target for the world to aim for is not 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, but nearer to 3°C, which means there may be scope to delay our Net Zero target beyond 2050.”
Anybody spouting crap such as this wants locking up. Humanity cannot control the temperature of the planet as if it is a bloody domestic oven.
Nobel Prize?
God help us.
The planet does not have a temperature. All temperature is local. You can record at a specific time a temperature anywhere you put a thermometer. But if you add two temperatures from different thermometers together from opposite sides of the world and calculate some average of the two, the number you get is NOT actually the temperature of anything. It is just a statistic. ———-Temperature is a field. There are an infinite amount of temperatures on earth.—-We need to all remember that the next we see Guterres or the King or Greta or the Pope stand at a podium and spout nonsense about controlling the earth’s temperature to some number plucked out of thin air like 1.5 C. —As you say “God Help us”
10,000% behind you with this. It’s a centrally misunderstood fact. Global temperature? No such thing.
I am a tad more certain than you – any advance on 10,000??
I do believe he would know that. He was making the opoint that the 1.5 of whatever we are told to fear was only half way to where we should want to be.
Indeed. I have an image always in my mind of us tiny humans, clinging to our sliver of moderately regulated land – not too hot, not too cold – with, on one hand, beneath our feet the great seething infernal turmoil of those churning tectonic plates, throwing vast quantities of magma, CO2, SO2, H2S etc into sea and sky, and on the other, over our heads, the colossal power of the sun throwing 173,000 terawatts of energy at us every minute of the day and night… and some of our number, the Thunbergians, precariously set between these two inconceivably powerful, utterly overwhelming forces, thinking they can change the situation in even the tiniest imaginable degree through their puny human activities. Does my bloody head in.
A latter day King Canute 🤬
Thanks for presenting the “climate change” scenario in such a vivid manner. I like that explanation. 👌
I think he is right, all that this 3 degrees is, is a way of stopping the nonsense of trying to do anything. To get 1.5 degrees they have fiddled the data to a ridiculous extent, to get 3 degrees it will be obvious to everyone that it is just “weather” on the hot days. A human can detect 3 degrees of temperature change quite easily, and will know that the “claim” is rubbish. Basically kicking the boiling claim into the long grass.
His belief in the science being “rock solid” is built on sand – which makes his stance unsupportable. He has to explain how he believes human beings can control, among other things, the Sun. Two brains?? Maybe not.
“The other day the King suggested future generations will castigate us if we don’t act now.”
Chuckles has always been away with the faeries. A horrible, mad little man.
I am sure it will come as a great surprise to this blot on the planet but what “future generations” think about me and how I lived my life when I am no longer here… Truthfully, I CGAF about.
It is easy for the King to say whatever he likes. There is no one to ever tell him “You are talking rubbish”.—–When no one tells you that you are talking rubbish you never will find out what rubbish you are talking.
It is the PM’s duty to advise the King.
When they both believe in fairies it is difficult to contain the silliness.
Yes indeed. I was a great fan of the Queen and DofE. The monarchy had a purpose. It was more than it appeared to be to every spotty ‘uni’ student and Marxist agitator. With this clown in charge, my support has evaporated. It’ll be a less colourful, less ‘meaningful’ country without them – but they have to go. (Apart from Anne and a few others. Yeah, put Anne on the throne. She’d stop this dreamy See You Next Tuesday in his tracks. Just a fantasy…)
I note that the esteemed Prof Nordhaus won the Nobel Prize in Economics, effectively for working with the discredited alarmist models and working out the ecomic consequences. It’s not as if he has any special expertise that qualifies him to pontificate on the underlying science, but the Nobel Prize-winner title gives his utterances unjustified gravitas. (Not unlike Lord Stern in their use of apparent eminence to strengthen the misconception that they know what they are talking about.)
Dealing with Covid and GGGW (if tehse existed) is as much and perhaps more about economics than science. It is certainly a lot more relevant than models.
Nobel Prize has lost its lustre never to be regained – previous winners with an ethical compass should return their “ trophies”…
JUST STOP OIL————-??????—— How many dreamers that glue themselves to the road are aware of the following? —–One barrel of oil contains the same amount of energy as one person working 40 hours a week for 11 years. —-I suggest NONE of them know that.. How many politicians know that? How many BBC and SKY News reporters rabbiting on about icebergs and sea levels know that? Does the GB News resident climate alarmist (Jim Dale) know that?——– But do they even care? Nope, they don’t. ——Dogma and Political Agenda’s care about nothing except Dogma and Political Agenda’s.
This assumes that our person can keep generating nearly 85W all day every day. Few possess that stamina or fitness. Normal people would take 16 to 18 years to generate that much energy.
True, but if a few more people realised how little actual “work” they do, we would be much better off! Work is the Physics term for energy transfer BTW.
“ Get on your (static) bike” 🫵😝
Jim Dale -“ stick to show business”
Jim Dale gets an easy passage on GB News because, Eamonn Holmes, Stephen Dixon, Anne Diamond and Isabel Webster don’t know anything about energy or climate. Mr.Dale can say anything he likes (and he does) and these gossip shop breakfast show presenters have no knowledge with which to question hi alarmism. Some others like Nan Akua, Bev Turner, Patrick Christies, etc do a little bit better, but it was mainly the likes of Mark Steyn that gave this idiot a hard time.
“Lilley of course is also pointing out though that there are numerous other factors which have far more potential, individually and collectively, to change our lives for the worse.”
Such as our now third rate political class…
‘Third rate’
You give them far too much credit Jeremy.
Peter Lilley? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear……
The science of climate change is rock solid…..
The science of night following day is about as disputed….
The climate has always changed. That’s why the venal and deceitful cloud botherers switched from ‘anthropogenic global warming’.
Hopeless.
It is the science of CO2 controlling the climate that is disputed…and there the science is all over the shop….
No basis for nut zero whatsoever…
I think if you have any nous you can already see that this agenda is dying. One of the few good things about our times. Dying rapidly as we speak for a number of reasons. And we are all at fault for being asleep at the wheel in terms of what the 1992 Rio summit actually meant. As one of our illustrious Yank cousins said, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. If you can’t be arsed and you think that voting every few years is all you need to do then you cannot really criticise anything. As if life ever works like that in terms of power dynamics.
“the science of climate change which he calls “rock solid”,”
Wow you mean there is such a thing as climate change? Well I never…
Natural yes, anthropogenic a tiny smidgen maybe? Certainly not enough to ruin 200 years of massively improved living standards. This gentleman from Africa has something to say about things as well….
https://expose-news.com/2023/12/04/message-to-cop28-africa-needs-fossil-fuels/
“Lilley is careful to point out that he is committed to the science of climate change which he calls ‘rock solid’”.
Classic politician, hedging his bets both ways (and being right about neither). He is absolutely wrong about ‘rock solid’ though, as there’s not a scrap of actual evidence man’s CO2 emissions have an impact on global temperatures, extreme weather events (frequency/intensity) or climate.