The author of this substack is Norman Fenton, Professor Emeritus of Risk at Queen Mary University of London. He knows some stuff.
From his Where are the Numbers substack, April 12:
If they are really serious: a colder, hungrier population with extremely limited freedom. And it seems people were very surprised to hear that
Two days ago I posted what I thought would be quite an innocuous twitter thread about the implications of the UK Government’s target of “net zero” by 2050. Specifically, I showed this graphic from the UK Government funded FIRES project that summarised their recommended necessary strategy to achieve net zero by 2050 based only on evolutionary technological developments (the report it’s from has been around since 2021 and I’ve even posted about it before):....*****....Now, for clarification “net zero” means total greenhouse gas emissions (including methane) must be less than their removals (such as from planting trees). The FIRES report instead focused on an absolute zero target because they recognise the absence of novel revolutionary scalable technologies for 1) capture and removal of these gases; and 2) non-fossil fuel mass transportation and energy production. In other words, if you realistically want to achieve the net zero target by 2050 you essentially have to go for absolute zero.My twitter thread highlighed the eye-watering points that the strategy required:
All airports in the UK except Heathrow, Belfast and Glasgow to close by 2030.
No flying at all by 2050.
No new petrol/diesel cars by 2030;
By 2050 road use restricted to 60% of today’s level.
Food, heating and energy restricted to 60% of today’s level by 2050.
Beef and lamb to be phased out by 2050
I said that, apart from the extreme limitations on personal freedom and travel, this means either a colder, hungrier population or massive depopulation.
Within less than 24 hours the tweet had amassed well over 3 million impressions (by far the highest I’ve ever achieved).....
....MUCH MORE
It appears the good professor is pretty handy with a slide rule. (dad, what's a slide rule?)
