In this newsletter:
1) Public ‘want a referendum on Boris Johnson’s Net Zero plans’ by next general election
The Daily Telegraph, 27 October 2021
2) 58% of Brits polled, who expressed a preference, want a Net Zero referendum, according to a YouGov/CAR26.Org survey
CAR26.org, 26 October 2021
3) Steven Baker MP tells BBC that Net Zero was imposed on the public without scrutiny
Net Zero Watch, BBC, 27 October 2021
4) Gerald Warner: COP26 costly cult could lead to the overthrow of the elites
Reaction, 27 October 2021
5) UK to shut out China with revamped nuclear funding model
Financial Times, 26 October 2021
Financial Times, 26 October 2021
6) Madeline Grant: Tory environmental policy owes more to Greta Thunberg than it does to conservatism
The Daily Telegraph, 27 October 2021
The Daily Telegraph, 27 October 2021
7) China’s energy crisis complicates its plans for climate announcements ahead of COP26
The Wall Street Journal, 26 October 2021
8) And finally: 45% of Americans don’t believe humans cause climate change, VICE News/Guardian poll shows
Vice, 26 October 2021
The Wall Street Journal, 26 October 2021
8) And finally: 45% of Americans don’t believe humans cause climate change, VICE News/Guardian poll shows
Vice, 26 October 2021
Full details:
1) Public ‘want a referendum on Boris Johnson’s Net Zero plans’ by next general election
The Daily Telegraph, 27 October 2021
The British public are in favour of a referendum on the Government’s net zero proposals, a new poll has shown.
Forty two per cent of adults said they supported a vote on the plan, whilst 30 per cent opposed it, and 28 per cent did not declare a preference, according to a YouGov survey conducted this month.
When the “don’t knows” were excluded from the results, a majority of 58 per cent wanted a ballot on the issue.
The survey showed that of those who expressed a preference, more than 50 per cent of each category polled supported a referendum on net zero. This included 18- to 24-year-olds, middle class voters, Londoners, Remainers, both men and women, and Liberal Democrat backers.
The findings will come as a blow to Boris Johnson just days before the start of the Cop26 climate change summit in Glasgow on Sunday.
While he is preparing to convince global leaders to take tougher action, the survey suggests more work is needed at home to convince voters that reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 is necessary.
Earlier this month, the Prime Minister unveiled his eco blueprint for achieving the target, which involves banning new gas boilers from 2035, installing electric car charging points across the country, and building new nuclear power plants.
Ministers have so far refused to put a precise cost on the plan, but analysts estimate that it could total more than £1 trillion over the next three decades.
The Treasury last week warned that additional public investment in decarbonisation may need to be funded from tax rises or spending redirected from other government priorities.
The polling was commissioned by Car26.org, a new campaign group calling for a referendum on net zero proposals and a pause in eco regulations until such a ballot is held.
All carbon-related taxes and costs should be optional up to the point public support for net zero is confirmed by a referendum, the campaign argued. It is calling for a ballot in 2024 or 2029, to take place in conjunction with the next general election.
‘Arrogant elite’ charging ahead in net zero debate
Lois Perry, director of Car26.org, said on Tuesday: “We must not let political consensus drive us into carbon poverty. Let the people take control of the wheel.”
She accused an “arrogant, remote elite” of “charging ahead in pursuit of costly and futile carbon policy” without due consideration for the families that will have to pay the price.
Some Tory MPs have also expressed scepticism about the Government's strategy, with particular concerns arising about the plan to phase out gas boilers in favour of heat pumps and other green alternatives.
Steve Baker, a founder of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group which now boasts about 40 Conservative MPs, has previously warned the idea risks making the public both “poorer and colder”, referring to the high cost of heat pumps and question marks over the level of heat they transmit in some settings.
The respondents were asked the question: “To what extent do you support or oppose holding a national referendum to decide whether or not the UK pursues a Net Zero Carbon policy?”
A sample of 1,648 adults were included in the poll, which was conducted between October 22 and 24.
The strongest support for a referendum was shown to be among Brexit voters, women, blue collar workers and Northerners. More than 62 per cent of each of these groups backed a ballot when “don’t knows” were excluded.
2) 58% of Brits polled, who expressed a preference, want a Net Zero referendum, according to a YouGov/CAR26.Org survey
CAR26.org, 26 October 2021
58% of Brits polled, who expressed a preference, want a carbon Net Zero referendum, according to a YouGov/CAR26.Org survey.
YouGov/CAR26.org asked: ‘To what extent do you support or oppose holding a national referendum to decide whether or not the UK pursues a Net Zero Carbon policy?’
From a sample of 1,648 adults surveyed between 22nd and 24th October 2021 weighted for demographics, then broken down by political allegiance, EU referendum voting, gender, age, social grade and region, 28% did not know whether they wanted to referendum on Carbon Net-Zero.
Only 30% of Brits surveyed did not want a referendum. This is made up of 15% being strongly opposed and 15% tending to oppose.
Meanwhile, 42% stated that they supported a carbon Net Zero Referendum. 20% of which strongly supported and 22% tended to support a referendum.
This follows calls from the Daily Telegraph last week publishing the first call for a referendum on Net-Zero.
They said: “The green challenge is too important, its implications too dramatic, to be left to an establishment that has embraced net-zero as if it were a new religion.”
CAR26.Org launched Tues, 26th Oct 2021 in advance the COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which commences on the 31st October 2021 from Glasgow.
According to CAR26.Org director, Lois Perry: “A majority of those expressing an opinion supported holding a referendum – greater than the winning sides in either the Scottish Independence or Brexit referendums.”
Full post
3) Steven Baker MP tells BBC that Net Zero was imposed on the public without scrutiny
Net Zero Watch, BBC, 27 October 2021
“Vast costs, like the #CostOfNetZero have been imposed on the public… nodded through Parliament with no scrutiny. And that's going to really now bite… the public have never really been given a choice... That's why it's so interesting that the idea of a referendum has emerged,” Steve Baker MP tells the BBC.
Click on the image to watch BBC interview
4) Gerald Warner: COP26 costly cult could lead to the overthrow of the elites
Reaction, 27 October 2021
If the political class purblindly pursues its hair-shirt Net Zero policy, ultimately provoking a volcanic reaction, things will go badly for anyone identified with that oppressive regime.
The Daily Telegraph, 27 October 2021
The British public are in favour of a referendum on the Government’s net zero proposals, a new poll has shown.
Forty two per cent of adults said they supported a vote on the plan, whilst 30 per cent opposed it, and 28 per cent did not declare a preference, according to a YouGov survey conducted this month.
When the “don’t knows” were excluded from the results, a majority of 58 per cent wanted a ballot on the issue.
The survey showed that of those who expressed a preference, more than 50 per cent of each category polled supported a referendum on net zero. This included 18- to 24-year-olds, middle class voters, Londoners, Remainers, both men and women, and Liberal Democrat backers.
The findings will come as a blow to Boris Johnson just days before the start of the Cop26 climate change summit in Glasgow on Sunday.
While he is preparing to convince global leaders to take tougher action, the survey suggests more work is needed at home to convince voters that reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 is necessary.
Earlier this month, the Prime Minister unveiled his eco blueprint for achieving the target, which involves banning new gas boilers from 2035, installing electric car charging points across the country, and building new nuclear power plants.
Ministers have so far refused to put a precise cost on the plan, but analysts estimate that it could total more than £1 trillion over the next three decades.
The Treasury last week warned that additional public investment in decarbonisation may need to be funded from tax rises or spending redirected from other government priorities.
The polling was commissioned by Car26.org, a new campaign group calling for a referendum on net zero proposals and a pause in eco regulations until such a ballot is held.
All carbon-related taxes and costs should be optional up to the point public support for net zero is confirmed by a referendum, the campaign argued. It is calling for a ballot in 2024 or 2029, to take place in conjunction with the next general election.
‘Arrogant elite’ charging ahead in net zero debate
Lois Perry, director of Car26.org, said on Tuesday: “We must not let political consensus drive us into carbon poverty. Let the people take control of the wheel.”
She accused an “arrogant, remote elite” of “charging ahead in pursuit of costly and futile carbon policy” without due consideration for the families that will have to pay the price.
Some Tory MPs have also expressed scepticism about the Government's strategy, with particular concerns arising about the plan to phase out gas boilers in favour of heat pumps and other green alternatives.
Steve Baker, a founder of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group which now boasts about 40 Conservative MPs, has previously warned the idea risks making the public both “poorer and colder”, referring to the high cost of heat pumps and question marks over the level of heat they transmit in some settings.
The respondents were asked the question: “To what extent do you support or oppose holding a national referendum to decide whether or not the UK pursues a Net Zero Carbon policy?”
A sample of 1,648 adults were included in the poll, which was conducted between October 22 and 24.
The strongest support for a referendum was shown to be among Brexit voters, women, blue collar workers and Northerners. More than 62 per cent of each of these groups backed a ballot when “don’t knows” were excluded.
2) 58% of Brits polled, who expressed a preference, want a Net Zero referendum, according to a YouGov/CAR26.Org survey
CAR26.org, 26 October 2021
58% of Brits polled, who expressed a preference, want a carbon Net Zero referendum, according to a YouGov/CAR26.Org survey.
YouGov/CAR26.org asked: ‘To what extent do you support or oppose holding a national referendum to decide whether or not the UK pursues a Net Zero Carbon policy?’
From a sample of 1,648 adults surveyed between 22nd and 24th October 2021 weighted for demographics, then broken down by political allegiance, EU referendum voting, gender, age, social grade and region, 28% did not know whether they wanted to referendum on Carbon Net-Zero.
Only 30% of Brits surveyed did not want a referendum. This is made up of 15% being strongly opposed and 15% tending to oppose.
Meanwhile, 42% stated that they supported a carbon Net Zero Referendum. 20% of which strongly supported and 22% tended to support a referendum.
This follows calls from the Daily Telegraph last week publishing the first call for a referendum on Net-Zero.
They said: “The green challenge is too important, its implications too dramatic, to be left to an establishment that has embraced net-zero as if it were a new religion.”
CAR26.Org launched Tues, 26th Oct 2021 in advance the COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which commences on the 31st October 2021 from Glasgow.
According to CAR26.Org director, Lois Perry: “A majority of those expressing an opinion supported holding a referendum – greater than the winning sides in either the Scottish Independence or Brexit referendums.”
Full post
3) Steven Baker MP tells BBC that Net Zero was imposed on the public without scrutiny
Net Zero Watch, BBC, 27 October 2021
“Vast costs, like the #CostOfNetZero have been imposed on the public… nodded through Parliament with no scrutiny. And that's going to really now bite… the public have never really been given a choice... That's why it's so interesting that the idea of a referendum has emerged,” Steve Baker MP tells the BBC.
Click on the image to watch BBC interview
4) Gerald Warner: COP26 costly cult could lead to the overthrow of the elites
Reaction, 27 October 2021
If the political class purblindly pursues its hair-shirt Net Zero policy, ultimately provoking a volcanic reaction, things will go badly for anyone identified with that oppressive regime.
In the entire annals of human folly, it is difficult to find a contender to rival the charade called COP26. It is a festival of establishment groupthink on supposed climate “disaster”, designed to proclaim the final triumph of the Net Zero cult and to signal the beginning of the serious economic auto-destruction deemed a necessary sacrifice to appease the great Moloch of anthropogenic global warming.
To inhabit the country hosting both HS2 and COP26 is a rare initiation into the illimitable fatuity of those who govern – not merely the government, but all its accomplices, including nominal opponents, in the delusional elite consensus. The lesson of Brexit has been forgotten already; the heady greenhouse gas of entitlement has befogged minds constitutionally disposed to regard all governance as a top-down imposition.
Even the venue chosen for this carbon-demonising circus testifies to its organisers’ detachment from reality. Who thought it was a good idea to select Glasgow as the host city? The only conceivable rationale behind such a decision is a hospitable aspiration to make delegates from Third World countries feel at home. The mountains of uncollected rubbish, the rat infestation and the 1970s-style strikes that characterise a city under the rule of the SNP, supported by Green loons, seems an implausible launch-pad for an ascent to a cleaner, ecologically purer future. The leader of Glasgow City Council, however, has unhesitatingly identified the cause of Glasgow’s malaise as Margaret Thatcher.
Glasgow is also likely to experience the first consequences of COP26. The city is already the Covid capital of one of the worst stricken countries in Europe. The political class thinks it helpful to funnel into one city 25,000 people from more than 200 countries, some of them with ill-developed vaccination programmes, presumably carrying every variant of the virus, and to exempt these wholly unnecessary travellers from the vaccination requirements that would be imposed upon a businessman bringing inward investment.
Even the fantasists running this extravaganza concede the gathering will probably result in a Covid “spike”, an outcome they view with equanimity. But there is no such thing as a Covid spike that does not involve additional deaths. In plain language, some people will lose their lives because a collection of grandstanding politicians and climate obsessives want to indulge in an orgy of virtue signalling. They don’t care. Hurtful though it may be to the self-esteem of the man in the street, in the eyes of his political masters he is expendable.
That principle obtains far beyond any epidemiological consequences of COP26: its core purpose, to enthrone the religion of Net Zero as a global orthodoxy, is predicated upon the total subordination of all human concerns – economic growth, increased living standards, personal comfort, leisure travel, even the traditional Sunday roast – to a fanatical belief in imminent apocalyptic destruction and the surrender to the state of unrestricted powers to counter this imagined threat.
This could be the Big One. It actually could. COP26, not as an event but as the beginning of a process, has the potential to provoke revolution. Not certainly and not in the immediate future; but the unfolding future of climate totalitarianism, already fairly clearly delineated in the plans of governments, is the one phenomenon that anyone with an historian’s insight will identify as a conceivable long-term cause of revolution. What shape such a revolution might take, whether purely political or violent, would probably vary according to the culture of any society in which it occurred. If politicians do not heed the warning signs that will eventually proliferate, future historians may compare the assembling of COP26 to the convening of the Estates General in France, in 1789.
With COP26 it is necessary to distinguish between the short-term reaction and the long-term consequences. Although the meeting could well degenerate, even on its own terms, into a farce, the worst that it would provoke is derision. The auguries are not good. Xi Jinping, leader of the nation responsible for 28 per cent of greenhouse emissions, to Britain’s one per cent, will not be attending: he is too busy taking old coal mines out of mothballs to meet his country’s energy needs. It will be left to Boris to posture as saviour of the planet, earning brownie points from his wife by pledging trillions of imaginary pounds to futile and tyrannical green projects.
The buffoonery on-stage will hardly bring mobs out onto the streets armed with scythes and pitchforks. The testing time will come later. If Britain endures a winter of power cuts, shortages, deaths from hypothermia and consequent loss of productivity and growth – all, as the public well knows, unnecessary and due to the virtue-signalling abandonment of reliable energy sources – fickle public opinion might well turn sour on green evangelism.
But if petrol-powered cars are banned in favour of unaffordable and unreliable electric vehicles, and householders are compelled to exchange their reliable gas boilers for absurdly expensive and under-performing electric pumps, along with a multitude of other petty harassments, financial impositions and a gradual decline in living standards, then the only thing that might avert revolution, of whatever kind, would be the speed with which the political class retreats from this kamikaze policy. However, as we saw with Brexit, graceful withdrawal is not in the DNA of the current elite and that is why an extreme outcome cannot entirely be ruled out.
If so, this would indeed be the Big One, with climate tyranny the issue that finally dethroned a political class already shaken by Brexit. In recent years, the chief axiom among political commentators has been the dangerous chasm separating the governing elites from the governed. Nowhere is that fissure wider than on the issue of climate. It epitomises the entitlement of the middle-class Guardianista liberal claiming “I don’t mind paying higher taxes if it benefits [permutate any bien-pensant cause],” heedless of the effects of any policy on poorer people inhabiting the real world.
And what is this all about? The earth has warmed by up to 1°C since the pre-industrial age. Certainly that is something to take into consideration, while trying, neutrally and calmly, to assess its possible consequences. If, as claimed, greenhouse gases are contributing to likely further warming, what is the composition of the greenhouse effect. Alarmists claim that Co2, both natural and man-made, is responsible for 72.3 per cent of the greenhouse effect. But that calculation excludes the largest component of the greenhouse effect, water vapour, accounting for around 95 per cent.
When the totality of greenhouse gases is assessed, CO2 accounts for only 3.6 per cent of the greenhouse effect, of which just 4 per cent is generated by human activity; alarmists claim that figure is 29 per cent. That is immaterial: eliminating 29 per cent of 3.6 per cent of the greenhouse effect would hardly have significant consequences. When water vapour is factored in (and why would it not be, when it is the largest part of the greenhouse effect?), if every nation on earth achieved Net Zero tomorrow, the result would be to eliminate between 0.14 per cent and 1.04 per cent of the greenhouse effect. Is that outcome worth beggaring the world and setting back human development?
Politically, this issue is hugely significant. The reality is that, even if there is a climate “emergency” (and the evidence does not suggest there is), there is no practical global response to avert it. As regards the significant, but not catastrophic, warming that is likely to occur, each nation must look to the protective ameliorations appropriate to its particular situation: in Britain, that means investing in widespread flood defences. Otherwise, some of the consequences might actually be benevolent.
What makes no sense is the fanatical drive for Net Zero.
The phrase itself is redolent of the absolutist prescriptions of leftist fanatics: it was they who first coined such expressions as “zero tolerance”. It seems the Conservative Party is resolved to commit electoral suicide over this extravagantly un-Tory issue, pursuing the extension of state power. Other institutions are similarly courting disaster: the Prince of Wales announced in March, 2009 that the world had just 100 months to prevent irreversible climate disaster. That meant the jig should have been up by July, 2017. Yet last weekend HRH was now warning of “a dangerously narrow window of opportunity” to save the planet.
The Duke of Cambridge has been recruited into the COP26 crusade: this is extremely ill-advised. Presumably royal advisers have calculated that, since climate issues do not belong purely in the realm of party politics, it is safe for two future kings to pontificate on what, before long, will be the most contentious issue in public life.
If the political class purblindly pursues its hair-shirt Net Zero policy, ultimately provoking a volcanic reaction, things will go badly for anyone identified with that oppressive regime. Only the silence the Queen has always preserved on controversial issues is a safe policy for members of the royal family.
Other institutions have long lost any credibility. In 2007 the BBC predicted the Arctic would be ice-free by the summer of 2013: in the autumn of that year, the volume of Arctic ice increased by a third. There will be plenty of such shamans, charlatans and Fifth Monarchy Men capering at COP26. What none of them are likely to predict is the backlash that will inevitably be provoked by their extravagant religious obsession with Net Zero, which could also herald a new political order.
5) UK to shut out China with revamped nuclear funding model
Financial Times, 26 October 2021
Tory MPs believe new bill will help oust CGN from future energy projects
Britain’s floundering nuclear energy programme is to be rebooted with a new funding model that allows costs to be front-loaded on to consumer bills, as ministers look to bring in new investors and shut out Chinese companies to replace its ageing nuclear facilities.
Kwasi Kwarteng, business secretary, on Tuesday set out a bill to revamp the way nuclear facilities are funded following the cancellation of recent projects, and is hoping to attract investors from the UK, US and elsewhere before the country’s existing reactors retire by 2035.
Although Kwarteng talks only of wanting to reduce “the UK’s reliance on overseas developers”, Tory MPs believe the move will help him oust China’s CGN from future energy projects.
The Nuclear Energy Financing bill will use a funding model known as the regulated asset base (RAB), which has been used for other infrastructure projects, including Heathrow Terminal 5 and the Thames Tideway tunnel. Under the plan, consumers will contribute upfront to the cost of new nuclear power projects during their construction phase.
Currently, operators only receive revenue when the plant starts producing electricity. This model, known as “contracts for difference”, has failed to create the nuclear renaissance that Boris Johnson believes is vital to help Britain meet its net zero commitments. The recent cancellation of nuclear power projects at Wylfa in Wales and Moorside in Cumbria — by Hitachi and Toshiba respectively is seen as evidence that the current model is broken.
“The existing financing scheme led to too many overseas nuclear developers walking away from projects, setting Britain back years,” Kwarteng said.
China’s state-owned CGN has a 20 per cent stake in the proposed Sizewell C plant in Suffolk — France’s EDF owns the remaining 80 per cent — and had hoped to build a nuclear power station in Bradwell, Essex. But Tory MPs hope that if new investors come into the sector, EDF would be able to find new investment partners before Kwarteng signs off the Sizewell project with a “final investment decision”.
The plan would also help Kwarteng avoid using new national security and investment legislation that comes into force in January, to forcibly block Chinese involvement — a move which would heighten tensions with Beijing.
Full story (£)
7) China’s energy crisis complicates its plans for climate announcements ahead of COP26
The Wall Street Journal, 26 October 2021
Worst power shortage in two decades is squeezing Chinese leaders between U.N. climate expectations and need for stable supply of energy
Starting in late September, China’s top leadership began holding a series of emergency meetings.
An energy crisis had started to engulf the country, propelled by high coal prices. And it wasn’t affecting just factories. Social media showed cars in northeastern China driving on pitch dark roads, people eating dinner by the light of their cellphone and families trapped in elevators that had suddenly shut off.
Fears of a prolonged energy shortage and a winter of discontent were growing.
The scramble by Chinese leaders to address the crisis over the past month coincided with Beijing’s preparations for a United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, highlighting China’s challenge balancing international pressure to speed up its shift away from fossil fuels and the need to keep the supply of energy stable at home.
Major climate declarations Beijing had planned ahead of the summit were delayed as leaders worried about laying out ambitious climate plans to a global audience at the same time that the country tries to ensure there is enough coal to heat households in winter and keep factories going, say people familiar with the discussions.
China published part of its road map for how to peak its carbon emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060 on Sunday, less than a week before the Glasgow summit. China’s climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, had told his European counterparts the road map would be unveiled in early October, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Eager to appear a major player in the battle against climate change, China often times its climate pledges around international gatherings. President Xi Jinping said at a summit in the spring that China will start reducing its coal consumption after 2025. At last year’s U.N. General Assembly, Mr. Xi changed the date for when China’s carbon emissions will peak from “around” to “before” 2030. Some advanced economies have been asking China to move the date forward even further.
The 16-page document unveiled Sunday mostly reaffirms already announced commitments. But a target for oil consumption to plateau between 2026 and 2030 indicates that China’s carbon emissions are set to peak close to 2025 levels, say analysts.
The document also said more detailed sectoral plans would follow in the coming weeks. On Tuesday, China’s State Council released an action plan with more specific targets for reaching peak emissions before 2030.
China still hasn’t formally submitted its updated emissions-reduction targets to the United Nations, a step it had been expected to make ahead of the Glasgow summit. Alok Sharma, the U.K. climate envoy who is organizing the summit, has said that responses from the world’s biggest economies will be crucial for its success. Those still holding out “must deliver,” he said.
Last week, Mr. Xie, China’s climate envoy, said China wanted to play a constructive role and was working for the success of COP26.
Energy-sector experts say that China’s electricity crunch, its worst in two decades, is mainly the product of a fundamental mishandling of the energy markets by China’s leaders, who largely ignored warning signs of a looming crisis.
While coal prices are set by the market, electricity prices are regulated by the central government. So when faced with skyrocketing global coal prices, power companies were unable to pass along the higher costs to consumers.
The energy-supply crunch came to a head in the final weeks of September. On Sept. 24, a benchmark price for thermal coal reached 1,079 yuan, equivalent to $169, almost double the price from the 580 yuan in early March.
The crisis set off political squabbles. According to people familiar with recent deliberations, various government agencies and state-owned companies have blamed the crisis partly on policies advocated by Premier Li Keqiang to control the price of electricity. The State Council and the National Commission for Development and Reform didn’t respond to requests for comment.
For years, China’s economic planners, led by Mr. Li, have voiced fears of social fallout from allowing electricity prices to rise too fast. In his annual government reports over the past few years, Mr. Li even called for electricity prices to drop 10% annually in both 2018 and 2019, and 5% in 2020 to help keep factories’ production costs in check.
After a series of emergency meetings, including over China’s weeklong national holiday in early October, President Xi ultimately came down on the side of easing price controls, according to two people familiar with the debates. On Oct. 12, China said it would allow the price of coal-fired electricity to fluctuate within a 20% range, up from the 10% range earlier, and to float freely for heavy users.
Full story
8) And finally: 45% of Americans don’t believe humans cause climate change, VICE News/Guardian poll shows
Vice, 26 October 2021
Nearly half of Americans still don’t think climate change is caused by human activities, but Democrats were far less likely than Republicans to hold those views, a new VICE News and Guardian poll has found.
The poll, which surveyed 1,000 Americans on behalf of VICE News, the Guardian, and Covering Climate Now, by YouGov, comes less than a week before leaders and delegates from around the world meet in Glasgow, Scotland, for COP26, the United Nations’ climate change conference. The data shows that climate change is a top voter issue in the U.S., behind health care and social programs. For college grads and Democrats, climate change jumped to top spot (for Democrats it was tied with health care).
But while 69.5 percent of respondents believe global warming is happening, they were divided on what’s causing it. Forty-five percent don’t think humans are mostly to blame for global warming, opting instead to blame “natural changes in the environment” or “other,” and 8.3 percent denied global warming is happening altogether.
That’s mostly due to Republicans (55.4 percent) and independents (33 percent) though, who were far more likely than Democrats (17.2 percent) to believe “natural causes” have led to global warming. Young people and educated folks too were significantly more likely to believe humans are to blame for climate change.
A significant group of people also believe scientists don’t see eye to eye. Many respondents (30.5 percent) think there's a raging scientific debate over the cause of climate change when there really isn't. Globally, there is consensus among scientists—97 percent or more—that global warming is happening because of human activities, according to NASA and international science societies.
But again, this number is split by political affiliation. Exactly half of Republicans said they believe there is discord between scientists, compared to only about 14.9 percent of Democrats.
Full story
To inhabit the country hosting both HS2 and COP26 is a rare initiation into the illimitable fatuity of those who govern – not merely the government, but all its accomplices, including nominal opponents, in the delusional elite consensus. The lesson of Brexit has been forgotten already; the heady greenhouse gas of entitlement has befogged minds constitutionally disposed to regard all governance as a top-down imposition.
Even the venue chosen for this carbon-demonising circus testifies to its organisers’ detachment from reality. Who thought it was a good idea to select Glasgow as the host city? The only conceivable rationale behind such a decision is a hospitable aspiration to make delegates from Third World countries feel at home. The mountains of uncollected rubbish, the rat infestation and the 1970s-style strikes that characterise a city under the rule of the SNP, supported by Green loons, seems an implausible launch-pad for an ascent to a cleaner, ecologically purer future. The leader of Glasgow City Council, however, has unhesitatingly identified the cause of Glasgow’s malaise as Margaret Thatcher.
Glasgow is also likely to experience the first consequences of COP26. The city is already the Covid capital of one of the worst stricken countries in Europe. The political class thinks it helpful to funnel into one city 25,000 people from more than 200 countries, some of them with ill-developed vaccination programmes, presumably carrying every variant of the virus, and to exempt these wholly unnecessary travellers from the vaccination requirements that would be imposed upon a businessman bringing inward investment.
Even the fantasists running this extravaganza concede the gathering will probably result in a Covid “spike”, an outcome they view with equanimity. But there is no such thing as a Covid spike that does not involve additional deaths. In plain language, some people will lose their lives because a collection of grandstanding politicians and climate obsessives want to indulge in an orgy of virtue signalling. They don’t care. Hurtful though it may be to the self-esteem of the man in the street, in the eyes of his political masters he is expendable.
That principle obtains far beyond any epidemiological consequences of COP26: its core purpose, to enthrone the religion of Net Zero as a global orthodoxy, is predicated upon the total subordination of all human concerns – economic growth, increased living standards, personal comfort, leisure travel, even the traditional Sunday roast – to a fanatical belief in imminent apocalyptic destruction and the surrender to the state of unrestricted powers to counter this imagined threat.
This could be the Big One. It actually could. COP26, not as an event but as the beginning of a process, has the potential to provoke revolution. Not certainly and not in the immediate future; but the unfolding future of climate totalitarianism, already fairly clearly delineated in the plans of governments, is the one phenomenon that anyone with an historian’s insight will identify as a conceivable long-term cause of revolution. What shape such a revolution might take, whether purely political or violent, would probably vary according to the culture of any society in which it occurred. If politicians do not heed the warning signs that will eventually proliferate, future historians may compare the assembling of COP26 to the convening of the Estates General in France, in 1789.
With COP26 it is necessary to distinguish between the short-term reaction and the long-term consequences. Although the meeting could well degenerate, even on its own terms, into a farce, the worst that it would provoke is derision. The auguries are not good. Xi Jinping, leader of the nation responsible for 28 per cent of greenhouse emissions, to Britain’s one per cent, will not be attending: he is too busy taking old coal mines out of mothballs to meet his country’s energy needs. It will be left to Boris to posture as saviour of the planet, earning brownie points from his wife by pledging trillions of imaginary pounds to futile and tyrannical green projects.
The buffoonery on-stage will hardly bring mobs out onto the streets armed with scythes and pitchforks. The testing time will come later. If Britain endures a winter of power cuts, shortages, deaths from hypothermia and consequent loss of productivity and growth – all, as the public well knows, unnecessary and due to the virtue-signalling abandonment of reliable energy sources – fickle public opinion might well turn sour on green evangelism.
But if petrol-powered cars are banned in favour of unaffordable and unreliable electric vehicles, and householders are compelled to exchange their reliable gas boilers for absurdly expensive and under-performing electric pumps, along with a multitude of other petty harassments, financial impositions and a gradual decline in living standards, then the only thing that might avert revolution, of whatever kind, would be the speed with which the political class retreats from this kamikaze policy. However, as we saw with Brexit, graceful withdrawal is not in the DNA of the current elite and that is why an extreme outcome cannot entirely be ruled out.
If so, this would indeed be the Big One, with climate tyranny the issue that finally dethroned a political class already shaken by Brexit. In recent years, the chief axiom among political commentators has been the dangerous chasm separating the governing elites from the governed. Nowhere is that fissure wider than on the issue of climate. It epitomises the entitlement of the middle-class Guardianista liberal claiming “I don’t mind paying higher taxes if it benefits [permutate any bien-pensant cause],” heedless of the effects of any policy on poorer people inhabiting the real world.
And what is this all about? The earth has warmed by up to 1°C since the pre-industrial age. Certainly that is something to take into consideration, while trying, neutrally and calmly, to assess its possible consequences. If, as claimed, greenhouse gases are contributing to likely further warming, what is the composition of the greenhouse effect. Alarmists claim that Co2, both natural and man-made, is responsible for 72.3 per cent of the greenhouse effect. But that calculation excludes the largest component of the greenhouse effect, water vapour, accounting for around 95 per cent.
When the totality of greenhouse gases is assessed, CO2 accounts for only 3.6 per cent of the greenhouse effect, of which just 4 per cent is generated by human activity; alarmists claim that figure is 29 per cent. That is immaterial: eliminating 29 per cent of 3.6 per cent of the greenhouse effect would hardly have significant consequences. When water vapour is factored in (and why would it not be, when it is the largest part of the greenhouse effect?), if every nation on earth achieved Net Zero tomorrow, the result would be to eliminate between 0.14 per cent and 1.04 per cent of the greenhouse effect. Is that outcome worth beggaring the world and setting back human development?
Politically, this issue is hugely significant. The reality is that, even if there is a climate “emergency” (and the evidence does not suggest there is), there is no practical global response to avert it. As regards the significant, but not catastrophic, warming that is likely to occur, each nation must look to the protective ameliorations appropriate to its particular situation: in Britain, that means investing in widespread flood defences. Otherwise, some of the consequences might actually be benevolent.
What makes no sense is the fanatical drive for Net Zero.
The phrase itself is redolent of the absolutist prescriptions of leftist fanatics: it was they who first coined such expressions as “zero tolerance”. It seems the Conservative Party is resolved to commit electoral suicide over this extravagantly un-Tory issue, pursuing the extension of state power. Other institutions are similarly courting disaster: the Prince of Wales announced in March, 2009 that the world had just 100 months to prevent irreversible climate disaster. That meant the jig should have been up by July, 2017. Yet last weekend HRH was now warning of “a dangerously narrow window of opportunity” to save the planet.
The Duke of Cambridge has been recruited into the COP26 crusade: this is extremely ill-advised. Presumably royal advisers have calculated that, since climate issues do not belong purely in the realm of party politics, it is safe for two future kings to pontificate on what, before long, will be the most contentious issue in public life.
If the political class purblindly pursues its hair-shirt Net Zero policy, ultimately provoking a volcanic reaction, things will go badly for anyone identified with that oppressive regime. Only the silence the Queen has always preserved on controversial issues is a safe policy for members of the royal family.
Other institutions have long lost any credibility. In 2007 the BBC predicted the Arctic would be ice-free by the summer of 2013: in the autumn of that year, the volume of Arctic ice increased by a third. There will be plenty of such shamans, charlatans and Fifth Monarchy Men capering at COP26. What none of them are likely to predict is the backlash that will inevitably be provoked by their extravagant religious obsession with Net Zero, which could also herald a new political order.
5) UK to shut out China with revamped nuclear funding model
Financial Times, 26 October 2021
Tory MPs believe new bill will help oust CGN from future energy projects
Britain’s floundering nuclear energy programme is to be rebooted with a new funding model that allows costs to be front-loaded on to consumer bills, as ministers look to bring in new investors and shut out Chinese companies to replace its ageing nuclear facilities.
Kwasi Kwarteng, business secretary, on Tuesday set out a bill to revamp the way nuclear facilities are funded following the cancellation of recent projects, and is hoping to attract investors from the UK, US and elsewhere before the country’s existing reactors retire by 2035.
Although Kwarteng talks only of wanting to reduce “the UK’s reliance on overseas developers”, Tory MPs believe the move will help him oust China’s CGN from future energy projects.
The Nuclear Energy Financing bill will use a funding model known as the regulated asset base (RAB), which has been used for other infrastructure projects, including Heathrow Terminal 5 and the Thames Tideway tunnel. Under the plan, consumers will contribute upfront to the cost of new nuclear power projects during their construction phase.
Currently, operators only receive revenue when the plant starts producing electricity. This model, known as “contracts for difference”, has failed to create the nuclear renaissance that Boris Johnson believes is vital to help Britain meet its net zero commitments. The recent cancellation of nuclear power projects at Wylfa in Wales and Moorside in Cumbria — by Hitachi and Toshiba respectively is seen as evidence that the current model is broken.
“The existing financing scheme led to too many overseas nuclear developers walking away from projects, setting Britain back years,” Kwarteng said.
China’s state-owned CGN has a 20 per cent stake in the proposed Sizewell C plant in Suffolk — France’s EDF owns the remaining 80 per cent — and had hoped to build a nuclear power station in Bradwell, Essex. But Tory MPs hope that if new investors come into the sector, EDF would be able to find new investment partners before Kwarteng signs off the Sizewell project with a “final investment decision”.
The plan would also help Kwarteng avoid using new national security and investment legislation that comes into force in January, to forcibly block Chinese involvement — a move which would heighten tensions with Beijing.
Full story (£)
6) Madeline Grant: Tory environmental policy owes more to Greta Thunberg than it does to conservatism
The Daily Telegraph, 27 October 2021
Instead of the pragmatic environmentalism of Sir Roger Scruton, ministers pursue eco-utopianism
They’ve scarcely finished hanging up the eco-friendly bunting heralding Cop26, but with each passing day, the view from Glasgow looks more and more like a Hieronymous Bosch hellscape. Bins are overflowing, while rats roam the streets – and that’s not just Bonnie the Seal, the summit’s unintentionally terrifying rodentine mascot.
As the delegates jet in, they’ll contend with piles of rubbish, Insulate Britain protesters glued to the roads, train chaos and overpriced hotels. Nicola Sturgeon will be frisking about, attempting to greenwash the SNP’s record, so too Greta Thunberg, egging on the bin and rail strikers. The absence of both China and Russia will render much of the exercise pointless.
There is something symbolic about the spectacle of this extravagant eco talking shop in full swing as the city hosting it goes to the dogs. But in an odd way, it mirrors our Government’s technocratic approach to the environment; a curious mixture of Utopianism and top-down diktat, which, in its lofty focus, neglects pressing problems on our doorstep.
In books like Green Philosophy, the philosopher Sir Roger Scruton argued eloquently for a distinctly conservative environmental ethos, rooted in personal responsibility, property rights and stewardship – as he put it “local attachment not global control”. This decidedly small-c mentality already abounds in bodies like the National Trust, the little platoons of volunteers who work tirelessly to beautify their areas, even the WI. Environmentalism, he argued, should harness market forces and attain democratic buy-in, finding incentives that “lead people in general, not just their self-appointed representatives, to advance it”.
Though our Government doesn’t share Extinction Rebellion’s methods or apocalyptic timetable, its playbook often seems more Greta than Roger. Ministers love celebrating capitalism in the abstract. Yet their decarbonisation agenda appears rooted in control; either picking winners or punishing voters into compliance. They show little faith in the power of incremental change on a human scale, as when the PM, in front of a panel of children this week, spoke disparagingly of the role of recycling as an answer to environmental degradation. Above all, they seem incapable of getting out of the way, creating a tax regime with clear incentives and leaving private sector innovators to get on with it.
A top-down approach naturally assumes a certain level of state competence in predicting future events, but recent “green” winners hardly inspire confidence. Drax power station, which burns wood chips shipped in largely from North America, receives more renewable energy subsidies than any other single installation, despite claims that biomass may produce more carbon pollution per megawatt hour than coal. (Advocates say the plant will become carbon neutral with time, yet according to some academic reports it could take many decades to offset the CO2 burned by growing new trees.)
A baffling moratorium on fracking has exacerbated energy insecurity as we continue to import natural gas. They have focused disproportionately on wind, a useful yet volatile top-up, while neglecting a genuinely practical solution – nuclear – for years. In the costly push towards heat pumps, the Government appears to be backing yet another lame horse; imposing a one-size-fits-all solution on millions of households for which it will be unfeasible and ruinous. Proposed new rules could even prevent mortgage lenders from advancing funds on properties with lower efficiency ratings – a scheme which threatens to create a new class of “mortgage prisoners”, trapped in their homes, unable to afford the energy efficiency upgrades needed to sell up.
So the Government’s environmental strategy puts security, even home ownership, at risk – yet it rarely applies in its own backyard. A recent Telegraph investigation found that not one Cabinet minister had bothered to install a heat pump in their own home. Cop26 president Alok Sharma was left blushing after it emerged he was still driving a diesel car.
Just as the latest Insulate Britain spokesperson invariably turns out to be a trustafarian who’s racked up more air miles than the Apollo space programme, environmentalism rarely begins at home for our leaders either. “One rule for us, another for them” proved a powerful force during the pandemic; such day-to-day hypocrisies could entrench disenchantment and further derail what was already an ambitious agenda.
MPs recently attracted criticism for rejecting a Lords amendment about restricting sewage discharges into rivers – much of it unfair and overblown. Nevertheless, the lack of capacity in sewage infrastructure has been well-known for decades. Along with pot-holes, litter and flood defences, sewers feel like precisely the kind of vital domestic topic that gets overlooked when our focus shifts away from the local.
So Cop26 isn’t just a glitzy eco-jamboree, but a reminder of a missed opportunity. We sorely need a Tory environmentalism that is pragmatic, which prefers the familiar to the untested, the good to the perfect, and above all, begins at home.
The Daily Telegraph, 27 October 2021
Instead of the pragmatic environmentalism of Sir Roger Scruton, ministers pursue eco-utopianism
They’ve scarcely finished hanging up the eco-friendly bunting heralding Cop26, but with each passing day, the view from Glasgow looks more and more like a Hieronymous Bosch hellscape. Bins are overflowing, while rats roam the streets – and that’s not just Bonnie the Seal, the summit’s unintentionally terrifying rodentine mascot.
As the delegates jet in, they’ll contend with piles of rubbish, Insulate Britain protesters glued to the roads, train chaos and overpriced hotels. Nicola Sturgeon will be frisking about, attempting to greenwash the SNP’s record, so too Greta Thunberg, egging on the bin and rail strikers. The absence of both China and Russia will render much of the exercise pointless.
There is something symbolic about the spectacle of this extravagant eco talking shop in full swing as the city hosting it goes to the dogs. But in an odd way, it mirrors our Government’s technocratic approach to the environment; a curious mixture of Utopianism and top-down diktat, which, in its lofty focus, neglects pressing problems on our doorstep.
In books like Green Philosophy, the philosopher Sir Roger Scruton argued eloquently for a distinctly conservative environmental ethos, rooted in personal responsibility, property rights and stewardship – as he put it “local attachment not global control”. This decidedly small-c mentality already abounds in bodies like the National Trust, the little platoons of volunteers who work tirelessly to beautify their areas, even the WI. Environmentalism, he argued, should harness market forces and attain democratic buy-in, finding incentives that “lead people in general, not just their self-appointed representatives, to advance it”.
Though our Government doesn’t share Extinction Rebellion’s methods or apocalyptic timetable, its playbook often seems more Greta than Roger. Ministers love celebrating capitalism in the abstract. Yet their decarbonisation agenda appears rooted in control; either picking winners or punishing voters into compliance. They show little faith in the power of incremental change on a human scale, as when the PM, in front of a panel of children this week, spoke disparagingly of the role of recycling as an answer to environmental degradation. Above all, they seem incapable of getting out of the way, creating a tax regime with clear incentives and leaving private sector innovators to get on with it.
A top-down approach naturally assumes a certain level of state competence in predicting future events, but recent “green” winners hardly inspire confidence. Drax power station, which burns wood chips shipped in largely from North America, receives more renewable energy subsidies than any other single installation, despite claims that biomass may produce more carbon pollution per megawatt hour than coal. (Advocates say the plant will become carbon neutral with time, yet according to some academic reports it could take many decades to offset the CO2 burned by growing new trees.)
A baffling moratorium on fracking has exacerbated energy insecurity as we continue to import natural gas. They have focused disproportionately on wind, a useful yet volatile top-up, while neglecting a genuinely practical solution – nuclear – for years. In the costly push towards heat pumps, the Government appears to be backing yet another lame horse; imposing a one-size-fits-all solution on millions of households for which it will be unfeasible and ruinous. Proposed new rules could even prevent mortgage lenders from advancing funds on properties with lower efficiency ratings – a scheme which threatens to create a new class of “mortgage prisoners”, trapped in their homes, unable to afford the energy efficiency upgrades needed to sell up.
So the Government’s environmental strategy puts security, even home ownership, at risk – yet it rarely applies in its own backyard. A recent Telegraph investigation found that not one Cabinet minister had bothered to install a heat pump in their own home. Cop26 president Alok Sharma was left blushing after it emerged he was still driving a diesel car.
Just as the latest Insulate Britain spokesperson invariably turns out to be a trustafarian who’s racked up more air miles than the Apollo space programme, environmentalism rarely begins at home for our leaders either. “One rule for us, another for them” proved a powerful force during the pandemic; such day-to-day hypocrisies could entrench disenchantment and further derail what was already an ambitious agenda.
MPs recently attracted criticism for rejecting a Lords amendment about restricting sewage discharges into rivers – much of it unfair and overblown. Nevertheless, the lack of capacity in sewage infrastructure has been well-known for decades. Along with pot-holes, litter and flood defences, sewers feel like precisely the kind of vital domestic topic that gets overlooked when our focus shifts away from the local.
So Cop26 isn’t just a glitzy eco-jamboree, but a reminder of a missed opportunity. We sorely need a Tory environmentalism that is pragmatic, which prefers the familiar to the untested, the good to the perfect, and above all, begins at home.
7) China’s energy crisis complicates its plans for climate announcements ahead of COP26
The Wall Street Journal, 26 October 2021
Worst power shortage in two decades is squeezing Chinese leaders between U.N. climate expectations and need for stable supply of energy
Starting in late September, China’s top leadership began holding a series of emergency meetings.
An energy crisis had started to engulf the country, propelled by high coal prices. And it wasn’t affecting just factories. Social media showed cars in northeastern China driving on pitch dark roads, people eating dinner by the light of their cellphone and families trapped in elevators that had suddenly shut off.
Fears of a prolonged energy shortage and a winter of discontent were growing.
The scramble by Chinese leaders to address the crisis over the past month coincided with Beijing’s preparations for a United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, highlighting China’s challenge balancing international pressure to speed up its shift away from fossil fuels and the need to keep the supply of energy stable at home.
Major climate declarations Beijing had planned ahead of the summit were delayed as leaders worried about laying out ambitious climate plans to a global audience at the same time that the country tries to ensure there is enough coal to heat households in winter and keep factories going, say people familiar with the discussions.
China published part of its road map for how to peak its carbon emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060 on Sunday, less than a week before the Glasgow summit. China’s climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, had told his European counterparts the road map would be unveiled in early October, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Eager to appear a major player in the battle against climate change, China often times its climate pledges around international gatherings. President Xi Jinping said at a summit in the spring that China will start reducing its coal consumption after 2025. At last year’s U.N. General Assembly, Mr. Xi changed the date for when China’s carbon emissions will peak from “around” to “before” 2030. Some advanced economies have been asking China to move the date forward even further.
The 16-page document unveiled Sunday mostly reaffirms already announced commitments. But a target for oil consumption to plateau between 2026 and 2030 indicates that China’s carbon emissions are set to peak close to 2025 levels, say analysts.
The document also said more detailed sectoral plans would follow in the coming weeks. On Tuesday, China’s State Council released an action plan with more specific targets for reaching peak emissions before 2030.
China still hasn’t formally submitted its updated emissions-reduction targets to the United Nations, a step it had been expected to make ahead of the Glasgow summit. Alok Sharma, the U.K. climate envoy who is organizing the summit, has said that responses from the world’s biggest economies will be crucial for its success. Those still holding out “must deliver,” he said.
Last week, Mr. Xie, China’s climate envoy, said China wanted to play a constructive role and was working for the success of COP26.
Energy-sector experts say that China’s electricity crunch, its worst in two decades, is mainly the product of a fundamental mishandling of the energy markets by China’s leaders, who largely ignored warning signs of a looming crisis.
While coal prices are set by the market, electricity prices are regulated by the central government. So when faced with skyrocketing global coal prices, power companies were unable to pass along the higher costs to consumers.
The energy-supply crunch came to a head in the final weeks of September. On Sept. 24, a benchmark price for thermal coal reached 1,079 yuan, equivalent to $169, almost double the price from the 580 yuan in early March.
The crisis set off political squabbles. According to people familiar with recent deliberations, various government agencies and state-owned companies have blamed the crisis partly on policies advocated by Premier Li Keqiang to control the price of electricity. The State Council and the National Commission for Development and Reform didn’t respond to requests for comment.
For years, China’s economic planners, led by Mr. Li, have voiced fears of social fallout from allowing electricity prices to rise too fast. In his annual government reports over the past few years, Mr. Li even called for electricity prices to drop 10% annually in both 2018 and 2019, and 5% in 2020 to help keep factories’ production costs in check.
After a series of emergency meetings, including over China’s weeklong national holiday in early October, President Xi ultimately came down on the side of easing price controls, according to two people familiar with the debates. On Oct. 12, China said it would allow the price of coal-fired electricity to fluctuate within a 20% range, up from the 10% range earlier, and to float freely for heavy users.
Full story
8) And finally: 45% of Americans don’t believe humans cause climate change, VICE News/Guardian poll shows
Vice, 26 October 2021
Nearly half of Americans still don’t think climate change is caused by human activities, but Democrats were far less likely than Republicans to hold those views, a new VICE News and Guardian poll has found.
The poll, which surveyed 1,000 Americans on behalf of VICE News, the Guardian, and Covering Climate Now, by YouGov, comes less than a week before leaders and delegates from around the world meet in Glasgow, Scotland, for COP26, the United Nations’ climate change conference. The data shows that climate change is a top voter issue in the U.S., behind health care and social programs. For college grads and Democrats, climate change jumped to top spot (for Democrats it was tied with health care).
But while 69.5 percent of respondents believe global warming is happening, they were divided on what’s causing it. Forty-five percent don’t think humans are mostly to blame for global warming, opting instead to blame “natural changes in the environment” or “other,” and 8.3 percent denied global warming is happening altogether.
That’s mostly due to Republicans (55.4 percent) and independents (33 percent) though, who were far more likely than Democrats (17.2 percent) to believe “natural causes” have led to global warming. Young people and educated folks too were significantly more likely to believe humans are to blame for climate change.
A significant group of people also believe scientists don’t see eye to eye. Many respondents (30.5 percent) think there's a raging scientific debate over the cause of climate change when there really isn't. Globally, there is consensus among scientists—97 percent or more—that global warming is happening because of human activities, according to NASA and international science societies.
But again, this number is split by political affiliation. Exactly half of Republicans said they believe there is discord between scientists, compared to only about 14.9 percent of Democrats.
Full story
The London-based Net Zero Watch is a campaign group set up to highlight and discuss the serious implications of expensive and poorly considered climate change policies. The Net Zero Watch newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.netzerowatch.com.
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