Spiked-Online on My Aston University Talk

February 25th, 2009

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

At Spiked-Online Ben Pile has a nice summary and analysis of my talk at Aston University a few weeks ago on the UK Climate Change Act. In the article he interviews Julia King, Vice Chancellor at Aston and also a member of the UK Climate Change Committee. King has some very interesting comments.

Meantime, as far as progress being made on meeting the targets the Guardian has this vignette in its Eco Soundings column today:

The government has just 11 years to deliver on the ambitious renewable energy and climate change targets, so everyone was delighted when the Department of Energy and Climate Change was set up five months ago as “a joined-up department working on energy and climate change”. Oh yes? Eco Soundings phoned DECC last week and eventually got through to a person who answered: “Department for, er, energy and climate control”. From there we were passed to someone else who said “Hello, department for business”, who passed us on to a recorded message which started “If you want to report a dead bird, press one …”

2 Responses to “Spiked-Online on My Aston University Talk”

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  1. Paul Biggs Says:

    Sorry I didn’t make it to your Aston University talk, but I did attend Julia King’s inaugural lecture on ‘low carbon cars.’ I spoke to her afterwards and she made it clear she doesn’t like cars, she travels by public transport herself, and doesn’t see why everyone else can’t do the same, and believes that no more roads should be built, with demand ‘managed’ instead. To me she is another politicised scientist who failed to produce an objective ‘low carbon cars’ report. This comment doesn’t come as any surprise to me:

    ‘The biggest challenge is actually behavioural change in my view. My particular area has been looking at how we can decarbonise road transport. It wouldn’t take much behaviour change to reduce by 30 or 40 per cent our CO2 emissions from cars.’

    This is what ‘carbon-climate-claptrap’ is all about in my view – I’m not convinced the likes of King even believe in CO2 driven climate change, but it is so useful for achieving a socialist Utopia by behavioural changes via taxes and restrictions.

    The behaviour that needs to be changed is that of governments and their compliant, appointed cronies who continually bypass democracy. I’d like a referendum please, so that the electorate can vote on the policy of an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 – no one asked us – we didn’t get chance to say yes or no.

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  3. michel Says:

    It is the 2020 goals that are the interesting ones. By then we are looking for a 35% reduction from 1990 levels, say a 50% reduction from today. You have to look at what is available to get there.

    There are only two feasible things to do it, on that scale and in that time period. One is the virtual abolition of the private car. If we do not totally rebuild the rail network, people will just have to make do with what travelling they can manage by bike. Imagine mobility at levels of 1955. The second is to reduce energy in food production, which means a return to labor intensive largely organic mixed farming.

    To even reach the 2020 goals involves making Britain a different country, starting now. What is to be done to achieve the goals for the next 20 years is much harder to estimate. At least for 2020, massive and unparalleled though it is, we probably do know how to do it. After that, its lost in the mist.

    Meanwhile China is commissioning one coal fired power station a week….

    It is not going to happen, is it? Either in the UK or globally. Get ready for 500ppm+. We are going to find out together whether there really is a tipping point.

    What is worse is, even if the UK goal is achievable, it is probably useless. Because if the UK does transform itself into a low energy society, and the rest of the world does not, all we will accomplish is to be a low energy flooded-out society. If the rest of the world is not going to lower emissions, and the AGW account is correct, what we should actually do is starting now build massive sea walls all down the east and south coasts. That will be a far more productive use of our efforts than moving to being a low carbon society which will make no material difference to the planet, but distract us from the effort we could spend on saving our agricultural land from the sea.