Climate Liar Think-Tank Confuses Trillions w. Billions In "Study", Among Many Jaw-dropping Errors

[hatrack]

EDIT

On Wednesday, Civitas published a pamphlet on net zero by Ewen Stewart, whose consultancy, Walbrook Economics, works on “the interaction of macroeconomics, politics and capital markets”. Stewart is also a climate sceptic, having written in 2021 that human-caused warming is a “contested theory”. Along with Civitas, 55 Tufton Street also houses the climate-sceptic lobby group the Global Warming Policy Foundation and its campaigning arm Net Zero Watch. These groups previously attempted to spark an “honest debate about the cost of net-zero” in 2020.

EDIT

The report was timed to follow hot on the heels of Rishi Sunak’s big climate speech, in which he called for an “honest” approach to net zero that ends “unacceptable costs”. Unfortunately the report’s author has confused power capacity in megawatts (MW) with electricity generation in megawatt hours (MWh). As a result, he presents a distinctly unrealistic “£1.3m per MWh” figure for the cost for onshore wind power. The true number is around £50-70/MWh – more than 10,000 times lower. He then compounded his embarrassment by mixing up billions with trillions.

Nevertheless the report got supportive coverage in the Daily Mail. A piece by the paper’s deputy political editor had a headline that claimed net zero “could cost households £6,000 a year”. At the Sun, the story also landed on the deputy political editor’s desk, and also inspired an editorial denouncing “dishonest rhetoric” on net zero.

EDIT

It is littered with assertions unencumbered by facts or evidence. It states, for example, that it is “not unreasonable to assume” that net zero would add £403bn to the cost of food. Actual evidence that the impacts of climate change and high fossil fuel prices has added an estimated £11bn to UK food bills in 2022 alone, on the other hand, is conveniently ignored. Similarly, Civitas cites a 2019 report from the Faraday Institute to claim that net zero could result in 114,000 job losses in the car industry, while ignoring the same report’s finding that, on the contrary, a well-marshalled shift to electric vehicles could support 246,000 jobs in the sector.

As well as ignoring the savings from net zero in terms of lower fossil fuel bills, the Civitas report sidesteps the costs of unmitigated climate change – and ignores the cost of business-as-usual.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/29/how-a-thinktank-got-the-cost-of-net-zero-for-the-uk-wildly-wrong

[Shermann]

1. Just wait until they get ChatGPT to churn out these "studies"

They won't have so many easily spotted errors, although they will have the same fundamental lack of soundness and validity. And there will be more of them. A lot more.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Millions, Billions, Trillions, Gillions, Zillions, Gazillions...

What difference does it make? They’re all just made up numbers anyway!

It’s like kilowatts, megawatts, gigawatts… Give me a break! Do you really expect me to take this stuff seriously!?

[Think. Again.]

3. Thank you for posting this.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. So, in all fairness...

What is a Billion? In the US, a Billion is a thousand Million. However, historically, a Billion meant a Bi-Million, a Million² or a Million Million. I ran into this several years ago, when discussing Bill Gates’ income with a Dane. For her, a Billion was $1,000,000,000,000 (10¹²) while, for me, it was “only" $1,000,000,000 (10⁹ ) (both inconceivable amounts of money, but, differing by 3 orders of magnitude!)

Similarly, a Trillion in the US is a thousand Billion (10¹² ) or a Million Million, while, historically, a Trillion is a “Tri-million,” a Million³ (10¹⁸ ) or a Million, Million, Million.

So, traditionally, in Europe (and in England) a “Billion” (10¹² ) is what an American calls a “Trillion” (the US usage is becoming increasingly common, but has not completely displaced the traditional definition) so a little confusion on the part of a conservative English writer might be understandable.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. But they made the "mistake" in the wrong direction

They claimed the cost would be in "trillions". Everyone took that to mean "a million million" (you don't have to be "conservative" in the UK to use it to mean "a million million million" so much as "antediluvian" ). But it actually is in the "thousand million" range. So it they were used to using the "traditional" trillion, they'd have said "thousand million" (or "milliard" - a word I've only come across in a translation of "Chariots of the Gods" ).

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. Yeah...

I’m being generous here.

For some reason, I cannot spell “personnel,” I want to spell it “personnelle” and “spell checkers” are of little help, they all suggest “personal.” (Thanks, got that one down.) i can certainly see someone having a similar block with Billions and Trillions (especially if when I “learned my numbers” it meant one thing, and then, someone changed it.)


Indeed milliards, a word I learned from Piet Hein, https://archive.org/details/grooks0000piet/grooks0000piet

ATOMYRIADES
Nature, it seems, is the popular name
for milliards and milliards and milliards
of particles playing their infinite game
of billiards and billiards and billiards.

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. The Guardian: Report claiming net zero will cost UK trillions retracted due to 'factual errors'

Report claiming net zero will cost UK trillions retracted due to ‘factual errors’

Rightwing thinktank Civitas mistakenly cost onshore wind power 10,000 times higher than reality and claimed bill would be £4.5tn
Damian Carrington Environment editor
@dpcarrington
Mon 2 Oct 2023 12.10 EDT

A report that hugely overestimated the cost to the UK of reaching net zero emissions has been retracted by the rightwing thinktank that published it.

The Civitas pamphlet published on Thursday claimed to offer a “realistic” estimate of the cost – £4.5tn – and said “the government needs to be honest with the British people”. However, factual errors were quickly pointed out after publication.

The most serious error was the confusion by the report’s author, Ewen Stewart, between power capacity in megawatts (MW) with electricity generation in megawatt hours (MWh). As a result, he presented an unrealistic “£1.3m per MWh” figure for the cost for onshore wind power. The true number is more than 10,000 times lower at about £50 to £70 per MWh. Another error was mixing up billions with trillions.

A statement on the Civitas website said: “This report has been taken down from the website because it was found to contain factual errors, it is undergoing revision and a fresh process of peer review. A revised report will be released when this process is completed.”

…