By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Today’s resignation of Chris Huhne, the UK Minister for Climate Change, offers the prospect of a belated return to sanity at the former Ministry of Agriculture in Whitehall. Huhne now faces prosecution for an alleged attempt to pervert the course of justice by asking his then wife to say that she was driving at the time when one of Britain’s thousands of speed cameras caught him going faster than the law allows.
Under Huhne, the Climate Change Department has been indistinguishable from a lunatic asylum. I first came across him – or, rather, didn’t come across him – when he and I were due to debate the climate at the annual jamboree of a massive hedge-fund in Spain three years ago. Huhne only found out that I was to be his opponent when he reached Heathrow Airport. He turned straight around and went back to London.
When I visited the House of Lords’ minister, Lord Marland, at the Climate Change Department a couple of years ago, I asked him and the Department’s chief number-cruncher, Professor David Mackay (neither a climate scientist nor an economist, of course) to show me the Department’s calculations detailing just how much “global warming” that might otherwise occur this century would be prevented by the $30 billion per year that the Department was committed to spend between 2011 and 2050 – $1.2 trillion in all.
There was a horrified silence. The birds stopped singing. The Minister adjusted his tie. The Permanent Secretary looked at his watch. Professor Mackay looked as though he wished the plush sofa into which he was disappearing would swallow him up entirely.
Eventually, in a very small voice, the Professor said, “Er, ah, mphm, that is, oof, arghh, we’ve never done any such calculation.” The biggest tax increase in human history had been based not upon a mature scientific assessment followed by a careful economic appraisal, but solely upon blind faith. I said as much. “Well,” said the Professor, “maybe we’ll get around to doing the calculations next October.”
They still haven’t done the calculations – or, rather, I suspect they have done them but have kept the results very quiet indeed. Here’s why.
The UK accounts for 1.5% of global business-as-usual CO2 emissions. At an officially-estimated cost of $1.2 trillion by 2050, or $834 billion after inter-temporal discounting at the minimum market rate of 5%, the Climate Change Act aims to eradicate 80% of these emissions. So just 1.2% of global emissions would be abated even if the policy were to succeed in full.
Business-as-usual CO2 concentration, as the average of all six IPCC emission scenarios, would be 514 ppmv in 2050. A full and successful reduction of UK emissions by 80% over that period would reduce that concentration to – wait for it – 512.5 ppmv. This dizzying reduction of 1.5 ppmv over 40 years would have the effect of abating 0.008 K of the 1.05 K of warming that the IPCC would otherwise have expected to see by 2050.
The UK policy’s mitigation cost-effectiveness – the cost of abating just 1 Kelvin of warming if every nation pursued the UK’s policy with the same cost-ineffectiveness – works out at $108 trillion per Kelvin abated.
The policy’s global abatement cost – the cost of abating all of the 1.05 K warming that would otherwise occur over the policy’s 40-year lifetime – would be $113 trillion, or $16,000 per head of the global population, or almost 7% of global GDP over the period.
To determine how much better it would be to do nothing than to try to abate that warming, it is necessary to agree on how much damage the warming might abate. The Stern Report on the economics of climate change produces some of the most extreme and exaggerated cost estimates, so we shall use it for the sake of being as fair as possible.
Stern agrees with most sources that if there is 3 K warming this century (which the IPCC predicted at the time), it will cost 0-3% of global 21st-century GDP (actually, he says “now and forever”, but that is one exaggeration too many). However, the IPCC’s current central estimate is that the CO2 we emit between 2000 and 2100 will cause little more than 1.5 K of warming. So let us assume that this 1.5 K of CO2-driven warming will cost us 1.5% of global 21st-century GDP.
Yes, I know that anything less than 2 K will probably be beneficial, but we have to bear in mind the already-committed warming of 0.6 K that the IPCC says is already in the pipeline on account of our past sins of emission, and the warming from the non-CO2 greenhouse gases that is not addressed in the UK’s CO2-reduction policy.
However, Stern’s calculations are all based on an inter-temporal discount rate of just 1.4%, which is far lower than the minimum rate of return on capital, which is 5%. Correcting the Stern-based 1.5%-of-GDP cost of taking no action to allow for the minimum market discount rate brings that cost down to 0.3% of GDP.
Accordingly, the 6.85%-of-GDP cost of taking action to mitigate the warming would give an impressive action/inaction ratio of 22.8. Bottom line: it is almost 23 times more expensive to pursue the policies outlined in the Climate Change Act than to sit back, do nothing, enjoy the sunshine, and adapt in a focused way to the consequences of what little warming the IPCC predicts may occur.
Just one problem with this entire calculation. It depends upon the assumption that the $1.2 billion spent by Mr. Huhne’s former department to 2050 would actually achieve an 80% reduction in Britain’s CO2 emissions. And that may not be a justifiable assumption. Real-world climate-mitigation policies are proving far more costly than government estimates.
The United Kingdom is no longer a democracy. We still have all the trappings, but in reality it no longer matters who we vote for. Five-sixths of our laws, including overall policies on environmental matters, are set by the unelected, unaccountable, unsackable Kommissars (that’s the official German name for our new and hated masters) of the failed European Union. For the seventeenth year in a row, the EU’s own court of auditors has declined to sign off the Kommissars’ annual accounts as a true and fair record of how they have squandered the $3 million an hour we pay them. It is these Kommissars who dictate that we must have carbon trading.
So let us compare the pie-in-the-sky cost estimates in the Climate Change Act with the actual, real-world cost of the EU’s four-times-collapsed carbon trading scam – er, scheme. The calculation is similar to that which we did for the UK alone.
Over the ten-year timeframe of the EU’s scheme, CO2 concentration will have risen to 413 ppmv, or 412.4 ppmv if the scheme is fully successful, abating 0.004 K of “global warming”. The cost of the scheme, according to Bjorn Lomborg, is 2.5 times the cost of the trades actually executed: call it $230 billion a year, or $2.1 trillion after 5% discounting over the ten years.
The mitigation cost-effectiveness of the EU scheme is $535 trillion per Kelvin abated; its global abatement cost over the period 2010-2020 is $117 trillion, or $17,000 per head of global population, or 22% of global GDP over the ten-year period. And that is 72 times more costly than the 0.3%-of-GDP cost of the climate-related damage that the policy is intended to forestall.
This, too, understates the true cost-ineffectiveness of trying to tax, trade, regulate, reduce or replace CO2. For the predicted rate of warming is not occurring. By many methods, the climate literature demonstrates that the models are over-predicting CO2-driven warming at least threefold. If so, then the true cost of the EU’s mad policy, of which Mr. Huhne and his party are such enthusiastic supporters, could be at least 200 times greater than the cost of climate-related damage from doing nothing at all.
Will Mr. Huhne’s successor get the sums done and scrap the Climate Change Act? Will the EU come to its senses? Don’t count on it. Gradually, though, reality is breaking through. Desubsidization of solar and even of fashionable wind energy has now begun in the UK, Denmark, Germany and Spain.
The sheer cost of these pointless, environment-wrecking “alternative” energy sources is so crippling that European governments, already near-bankrupted by their incompetent management of the mickey-mouse Euro, cannot any longer afford these self-indulgent indulgences. The removal of Mr. Huhne from the scene will at least take Britain one step nearer to sanity, scientific reality and economic common sense about climate change.
Hell will have to freeze over (almost literally) before the EU gives up on its primary secular religion.
I can’t see who wrote the above – I assume not Anthony, who isn’t British.
REPLY: It was Monckton, and somehow when I added Josh’s cartoon his byline got accidentally deleted, fixed now. – Anthony
Brilliant analysis, as a UK resident I am so frustrated with this obsession with climate change and the cost of it, based on no empirical evidence.
Common sense and climate change generally don’t go together. It doesn’t surprise me that no numbers were ever calculated to estimate the cost of “saving the world”. No alarmist can give a straight answer to such a simple question. To quote CCR:
“when you ask them; how much should we give? The only answer is more – more – more – more….”
No price is too high in the name of saving the world – not even destroying the world is too high a price, it seems….
David Davidovics says:
February 3, 2012 at 7:46 am
It’s for the children, you know. Oh, the HUMANITY!!!
Much cheaper to adapt to the changing climate than to fight it. And warmer is better, within reason. I know I’m enjoying the NE US winter this year FAR more than last year’s constant battle with below average temps and Snowpocalypses.
well dunno about hell but most of the Eu and Uk is or willbe under snow ice etc now or soon.
whats of concern is?
who?
will they replace this fool with??
I thought they were going to let him off because it was not “in the public interest” to pursue the case. Question is, will his successor be able to stonewall the Conservative part of the coalition who are wanting to cut energy costs and start making stuff in the UK again? Huhne didn’t listen to reason, if the new bod tries to justify his stand he could be in trouble, he may have taken on a bit of a poison chalice should the press swing against him. Also I have a 9kW injection moulding machine I want to turn on.
Wow. Staggering. I knew that it was bad. But I never imagined that it was this bad. There is awesome stupidity and then there is this. It seems more and more likely that the people behind this aren’t interested in climate at all. Just destroying the economy so they can rebuild it as the new masters.
After nearly 40 years of satellite IR the CO2 band is no colder,
so the theoretical forcing hasn’t taken place.
Satellite-measured global temps rose little at all,
giving the lie to official declarations of unprecedented warming.
CO2 concentrations are highest over the world’s jungles, not cities.
Sea level is falling, and never rose that much in the first place.
Record low temps are accumulating far faster than record highs.
The more that reality votes against alarmism,
the harder the alarmists double down.
Obviously, it was never about climate in the first place.
Amusingly enough, I recall a press release when the US EPA decided CO2 was to be regulated as a pollutant. In the release, they estimated it would cost $170 trillion to reduce Earth’s temperature 1 degree C, which is not that far off your estimate.
1) I find it astounding that someone can toss such a figure around without any consideration for the economic effects of committing that amount of cash to….anything.
2) I was surprised to find such a figure in an EPA press release. I would have thought hiding it would have been more politically savvy and more in keeping with transparency demonstrated daily by the Globalwarmists.
3) I’m guessing whoever permitted release of the cost/C had a serious problem keeping his job.
As a UK resident I’m very relieved Huhne is stepping down, although our governments have a poor track record of doing sensible things – removing individual fools from power can only be a positive step.
I make a point of highlighting WUWT to anyone with an opinion on CAGW….. let the discussions, facts, graphs, data unpicking, and “climategate” info speak for themselves.
Anyone in full possession of their own mind can only come to the conclusion that a little warming is a good thing and that the government advocated committing of industrial suicide to PERHAPS mitigate immeasurably small amounts of that warming is utter madness.
Goodbye and good riddance Huhne, you won’t be missed.
Instead, these trillions could be spent in a “Manhattan Project” to develop thorium reactors or another practical alternative.
Use fossil fuels until a reasonable non CO2 alternative is perfected.
But after all that, one might discover that CO2 was never a problem in the first place.
Developing thorium reactors though, would be good, regardless of CO2’s role.
That’s a win, win…. except for the burdensome taxes…
Monckton, in response to Skeptical Science, wrote the article. The insanity of the climate change scientists and the IPCC is unbelievable!
Yes, Anthony, Monckton’s name needs to be put closer to the text. I was thinking that you were beginning to emulate CM’s style.
It never ceases to amaze me, how one intelligent question, can reduce authority/bureaucracy to their natural state of mumbling idiocy. Thanks for asking that question. They should all be looking for jobs. Hopefully, somewhere they cannot do further harm. GK
Belief in ‘climate warming’ must surely now qualify as full blow mental illness?
“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Hopefully he won’t be replaced by another eco-tyrant
TYPO CORRECTION:
Just one problem with this entire calculation. It depends upon the assumption that the $1.2 billion spent by Mr. Huhne’s former department to 2050 would actually achieve an 80% reduction in Britain’s CO2 emissions.
That’s trillion. With a T.
Congrats to the Brits!
According to Fenbeagle (and reproduced by the Tallbloke), Huhne is a former director of a company that introduced speed cameras to Britain.
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/the-charge-of-the-light-brigade-to-continue/
No loss, but no change. Ed
DivvyDavey’s first comments on taking over were about wanting a “green economy” and growth in “green jobs”. Green in the sense of naive, or green in the sense of underdeveloped, I wonder?Nick Clegg said of him that he had “a lifelong commitment to the environment”. A commitment to preventing power blackouts in a few years’ time would be handy too.
Delingpole has this excellent summary of Huhne’s warm and engaging personality:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100134689/huhne-youd-need-a-heart-of-stone-not-to-laugh/
Excellent presentation, there are many Brits celebrating today and i will be joini9ng them with a pint or two later this evening. Good riddance to bad rubbish
I would be glad for Mr Huhne’s defenestration from the UK government, but for the fact that under the “rules” the current Coalition works, his post has to be filled in by another Liberal Democrat. This means things are not going to get much better (in fact some are saying that Vince Cable might replace him, and that will be worse, much much worse, believe me).
FD
Wastrels, all. The end of Communism is officially placed at 1989. Hah. They’ve only just begun. In an insidious, slippery fashion. And the dialectic apparently applies to velocities measured by radar.
On Bishop Hill he has posted this tweet from The Moonbat:
“I’m sad to see #ChrisHuhne go. He’s been one of the few voices of (relative) sanity in the Coalition.”
What is it that makes people like The Moonbat so blind?
Who is the author of this piece?
Unfortunately, Huhne’s replacement, Ed Davey, is every bit as enthusiastic about greenery, climate change, bird-choppers and massive energy price increases. I’m willing to bet that there will be no change in policy.
$30 billion per year that the Department was committed to spend between 2011 and 2050
I’m all for bashing greenies…but when we say how much needs to be spend on ‘energy infrastructure’ to achieve a CO2 emissions reduction we really should subtract out the cost of the infrastructure we are going to need regardless of ones CO2 emissions goals.
The last I checked UK coal was losing money with coal prices at historical highs and a significant portion of the UK’s generating capacity is at ‘end of life’.
So Huhne was tossed out because of a traffic violation, and not because of his insane ‘climate’ policies? Well, any straw in a storm, I guess.
Will the post of ‘Minister for Climate Change’ be filled with another whacky alarmist? Or will the Brits come to their senses and abolish the position altogether?
As others have noted, this account was apparently written by Monckton—needs a byline.
/Mr Lynn
Love the BBC’s continued bias;
“As energy secretary he claimed some policy success when he signed the government up to tough new climate change targets.
He’s forged a positive reputation for much of his work to push the green agenda, often battling resistance from the chancellor, whose priority is cutting the deficit.”
Personally I think he should be villified to choose this scam over the welfare of poor Britons. I thought the LDs were supposed to be for the people first. The state of the economy is bad enough without so much money being used on ineffective “green” technologies, and other scams related to AGW.
The LibDems and especially the conservatives used to bang on about stealth taxes during the New Labour years. Well, what do you call forced subsidies and all sorts of green taxes then? Maybe if people had more money to spend, the economy wouldn’t be forcast for another recession.
You have to know how to silence bureaucrats. Just ask them publicly to disprove your calculations showing that their decisions produce no significant result. In my country highway speed limits used to be reduced during ‘smog’ (*) until I calculated an upper limit on the effect of that reduction, irrefutably proving that it was just a feel-good measure addressing gullible greens.
Basically, and pardon my French, if you stop p!ssing in a river, does that river cool down ? Yes, theoretically it does, but immeasurably little.
(*) ‘smog’ is a contraction of smoke and fog, but in newspeak it is any condition when the particulates (including sea salt) in the air exceed some arbitrary small limit.
I’ve just made the following post on Bishop Hill.
I’ll be making my annual visit to Scotland from next week until the end of the month so I will be raising a glass to Huhne’s…. retiral?
i’m also looking forward to seeing the windfarm above Aberfeldy…
Lapogus: We’ll have to meet up for a beer.”
Steve H says:
February 3, 2012 at 8:26 am
I’m one of the Brits celebrating…
Frederick Davies says:
February 3, 2012 at 8:28 am
“Defenestration:” – that’s the word i was searching for.
I’m really pleased to see what I hope is the last of C Huhne. One can form some sort of idea of what he’s worth from the simple fact that he is to face serious charges (on a question of honesty), something that the Crown Prosecution Service does not do lightly. Let us hope that his replacement will be much less misguided, though I fear that he won’t. Will these idiots in government ever understand that they are pursuing an unreachable goal, using our taxes to fund their play.
Another problem with the calculation above – it assumes that the UK’s share of global energy consumption would still be at 1.5% in 2050. Considering that the UK, as an industrialized nation, is going nowhere fast, it will probably be more like 0.15% at that time.
Huhnes departure is welcome, but perverting the course of justice in the uk carries a maximum jail term of life. So it’s a serious charge
He would probably get a few months if he were found guilty, but he must be a very worried man
That Huhne resigns doesnt matter.
The asylumn; the Climate Change Department, is still there.
It needs to disappear.
I get the same sense of the shocking insanity of this every single time I read an article about it. I think I’m going to write to my MP (Minister for Agriculture and Food), again!
Good to see Huhne go, but there is no reason to expect any “return to sanity” so quickly.
Davey’s appointment indicates no change of course.
P.s. I agree that it is confusing to wonder about the authorship of this piece. I gather it is by CM?
When speed cameras were introduced, I thought they were an awful, anti libertarian, useless development.
How wrong I was!!!
Too funny; over a parking ticket.
This should demonstrate to everyone how these goons feel as though the laws don’t apply to them.
Out here in California we have the California Air Resources Board (CARB) also known as the “Commissars.” I am sure Mr. Huhne can find a position in our state as we are just getting started with our cap and trade program which is supported by our legislature and governor.
Speaking of costs we do have some estimates of what it will cost our state to meet our 33%RES- A meeting held on 23 NOV 2010 sponsored by the California Energy Commission (CEC) http://www.energy.ca.gov/2011_energypolicy/documents/#11232010 entitled ” Joint Committee Workshop on Electricity Infrastructure Need Assessment” discussed infrastructure needs to meet the 33%RES, enacted via an administrative law requirement by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), by 2020 in CA. The California Energy Storage Association stressed the need for energy storage to address the intermittent nature of most forms of renewable energy (wind and solar) in a public comment http://www.energy.ca.gov/2011_energypolicy/documents/2010-11-23_workshop/comments/California_Energy_Storage_Association_TN-59287.pdf The CESA comment had a particularly insightful comment on page 4-
…”Finally, the timing for including energy storage as a fundamental component of California’s
electricity infrastructure has never been greater. At the November 30, 2010 CPUC LTPP
workshop, CAISO presented their findings related to full RPS Implementation, and found that the
33% in state RPS scenario resulted in a small INCREASE in MMBTU of fuel burn in California.
According to Mark Rothleder, Director of Market Analysis and Development CAISO, “The primary
reasons for this are a result of two things:
1) increased regulation and load following requirements resulting in resources with
flexibility being committed online more in the 33% reference case over other cases and
2) lower level net imports from outside of CA in the 33% reference case. This result may
change for depending on the ultimate source of flexibility.”
Unfortunately, the details of how to keep the grid stable without storage (and it’s costs) don’t appear to have been covered in the Report justifing the move to the 33%RES-
CARB report http://www.cal-span.org/cgi-bin/archive.php?owner=CARB&date=2010-09-23–
“STAFF REPORT: INITIAL STATEMENT OF REASONS
PROPOSED REGULATION FOR A
CALIFORNIA RENEWABLE ELECTRICITY STANDARD
Public Hearing to Consider the Proposed Regulation
to Implement the Renewable Electricity Standard
Date of Release: June 3, 2010
Scheduled for Consideration: July 22-23, 2010”
justifying the move from the current legislated 20%RES to 33% doesn’t cover the concerns (system requirements really) of the CASIO in their analysis. CARB’s bullet- “The cost-effectiveness of the proposal is estimated to be about $200/MMTCO2E in 2020. (page ES-3) ” on cost effectiveness is not valid without addressing the concerns (system requirements) noted by CASIO.
evanmjones says:
February 3, 2012 at 8:17 am TYPO CORRECTION: Just one problem with this entire calculation. It depends upon the assumption that the $1.2 billion spent by Mr. Huhne’s former department to 2050 would actually achieve an 80% reduction in Britain’s CO2 emissions. That’s trillion. With a T.
Since billions and trillions are now in common use, it would be nice to know exactly what they are.
million is fine – 10^6
billion is dodgy – 10^9 or 10^12
trillion is worse – 10^12 or 10^15
I guess there’s some international standard somewhere.
It is much the same way in America, where a vast majority of laws are actually rules and regulations adopted by appointed commissions and bureaucrats all monofocused on their area with no regard for expense, practicality, or the overall effect on society.
Good riddance to him, although his replacement’s no better. All our politicians are fully committed to ‘the cause’ anyhow, so nothing will change.
Alles klar herr Kommissar?
Mr Lynn says: February 3, 2012 at 8:37 am
“So Huhne was tossed out because of a traffic violation, and not because of his insane ‘climate’ policies?”
No. The penalty for the traffic violation would have been a suspended license, for 6 months or a year.
He had been charged for perverting the course of justice – bascially for lying. Somewhat more serious for a government minister.
Apparently there is no crime of “being a twat” so he get’s away with that one.
[SNIP: Yes it is OT. Please submit to Tips and Notes. -REP]
excuse me; over a speeding ticket.
Nick Clegg’s response following Huhne’s resignation: –
“Chris Huhne is a good friend and a close colleague and I think he has done an outstanding job as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.
He has been really a pioneer in new, ground-breaking policies which I believe will stand the test of time. If he clears his name, as he wishes to, I have made it clear to him that I would like to see him back in Government in a key position.
I am pleased that Ed Davey has agreed to take up the post as the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. Ed has a lifelong commitment to the environment, to green issues. He has shown as a minister a formidable grasp of the details of Government policy.”
So now we know! One lunatic replaced by another!
I wonder if Huhne was ordered to speed and lie so that they can appoint a new guy to bury all this nonsense. Isn’t “huhne” German for hen – appropriate for a chicken little.
@steveta_uk
We’ve all been on a caution for that last one at one time or another, just not to the tune of $30b per year.
The sheer cost of these pointless, environment-wrecking “alternative” energy sources is so crippling that European governments, already near-bankrupted by their incompetent management of the mickey-mouse Euro, cannot any longer afford these self-indulgent indulgences.
I don’t mean this as a glib comment; I’m quite serious. My understanding was that the whole point (according to Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme) was to bring on the “collapse” of the “industrialised civilisations.” In this they seem to be succeeding.
It has been for some time been politically incorrect to challenge anything, or to express an opinion of any sort that differs from the official viewpoint. That’s not democracy. It’s EU-driven communism, bolstered by 13 years of misrule under the previous Labour government.
Let’s not forget that it was the socialist government in the UK that gave us the infamous dossier of WMD. Given that it was the same government that also gave us the Stern Report, why is this document still considered by the Coalition to be a work of reference with regards global warming?
But with Davey as the replacement for Huhne (or any other LibDem) there’s no way the Coalition will see sense and restore traditional conservative values to this country.
Taxing the public left, right and centre in a disingenuous and pseudo-scientific attempt to reduce emissions of a beneficial gas is a sure way to plunge this country into economic ruin – finishing the job that Labour started – and resulting in a frighteningly distorted energy market that only the wealthy will be able to afford to heat and light their homes, these folks who will, in fact, be subsidised by everyone else through higher bills and the egregious compensation payments enjoyed by the almost exclusively foreign-owned energy companies.
What’s in it for us Brits? In what way do we as individuals, or our businesses and our economy benefit from the crazy belief that the utterly trivial levels of man-made carbon dioxide emissions in the UK are worth spending such mind-blowingly huge sums of money?
The Coalition needs to wake up!
It seems my fears were misplaced… Anyone know much about the new boy, Ed Davey? How much of a “believer” is he?
FD
Bob Kutz says:
February 3, 2012 at 9:31 am
excuse me; over a speeding ticket.
He was one speeding ticket away from an automatic ban from driving, he got his wife to say she was driving as her license was clean. Trouble was he got caught later anyway and got the ban later. His crime was perverting justice as he was the driver but did not carry the can.
No loss, but no change. Ed Divvy Davey’s first comments on taking over were about wanting a ““green economy” and growth in “green jobs”. Green in the sense of naive, or green in the sense of underdeveloped, I wonder?”
Green in the sense of “rotten” and “decomposing”
Frederick Davies (9:57 am) asks:
Anyone know much about the new boy, Ed Davey? How much of a “believer” is he?
Watch this and weep:
Your Lordship, I respectfully suggest that it will be a case of “Here’s the new boss, same as the old boss”!
Whichever government is in power, they’ll be hanging onto those green tax revenues, for grim death!
Michael Palmer says:
February 3, 2012 at 8:54 am
Another problem with the calculation above – it assumes that the UK’s share of global energy consumption would still be at 1.5% in 2050. Considering that the UK, as an industrialized nation, is going nowhere fast, it will probably be more like 0.15% at that time.
Hate to be pedantic but UK manufacturing output is higher than at any time in history (at least it was in 2009, inflation adjusted, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Wiki might disagree of course). It’s just that far fewer people are needed and the rest of the economy is far larger. Those are not necessarily bad things. The share of world manufacturing is bound to decline in future for the same sorts of reasons but our share of global energy will take a while to get to 0.15% (now that Huhne’s gone at least). This is all the result of everybody else is sharing in the fruits of the Industrial Revolution that we started.
“The speeding incident at the centre of the allegations is said to have occurred on March 12, 2003. Mr Huhne, who was then an MEP, had returned from the European Parliament, catching a flight from Strasbourg to Stansted which landed at 10.23pm.”
Still, it’s only poetic justice, for a man who has sold his country to be covered with worthless windfleets.
Congratulations will be due to the Brits when they listen to Nigel Farage and have a referendum right now on England’s membership in the EU. Just leave and save 50 million pounds a day.
Good job Lord Monckton.
One more Crackpot down, many to go. Good riddance Huhne you and your insane policy’s have hurt many people and the economy.
Ed Davey’s creed is no different from the idiocy preached by his down-fallen predecessor. The madness continues unabated, as do the taxes.
“I’m determined to work to follow on Chris’s priorities, the Liberal Democrats’ priorities, the coalition government’s priorities and make them my priorities.
“I want us to have a green economy with lots of green jobs to grow our economy.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16875525
Christopher Monckton wrote
“When I visited the House of Lords’ minister, Lord Marland, at the Climate Change Department a couple of years ago, I asked him and the Department’s chief number-cruncher, Professor David Mackay (neither a climate scientist nor an economist, of course) to show me the Department’s calculations detailing just how much “global warming” that might otherwise occur this century would be prevented by the $30 billion per year that the Department was committed to spend between 2011 and 2050 – $1.2 trillion in all. ‘Eventually, in a very small voice, the Professor (Mackay) said, “Er, ah, mphm, that is, oof, arghh, we’ve never done any such calculation.”
I can equal that. Last year I helped write an article whose purpose is in the title;
http://judithcurry.com/2011/05/26/the-futility-of-carbon-reduction/
After working out the effect the emissions reduction would have on UK temperature (notified in advance to Prof Mackay who replied ‘Well that’s the tragedy of the commons’) I wrote to around 18 of the worlds leading climate scientists asking exactly the same question.
As you rightly observe it was perfectly obvious that none of them had actually bothered to work it out, let alone knew the answer. Extraordinary. I think if the politicians knew the answer they might start to think a bit more about the consequences of their actions, which in Britain are sky high energy prices and other ‘green’ measures such as punitive flight taxes.
tonyb
Mr Huhne is now charged with a criminal offence and is thus innocent until proven guilty.
What he is guilty of is crass ignorance in the face of overwhelming evidence that the UK government is wasting billions on measures to mitigate global warming. If only he had got up to speed on this subject he then could have placed the UK in the fast lane in the fight against global warming alarmism.
Here’s one more Brit who was smirking all through the BBC news items about Huhne resigning. Unfortunately, as others have said above, I doubt whether this will produce any significant change – but maybe just a slight movement towards sanity.
Apparently Huhne has been pushing his agenda hard in the EU and the various climate jamborees as well as in the UK. With any luck his replacement will be less persuasive.
It is the same in California. Our Kommissars are called the California Air Resources Board. They are not elected. They can’t be sacked by anyone but the governor. When Governor Brown first created that organization, he was promptly sacked from office but the Board remained. The woman running it is the same person he initially appointed when he created the board decades ago. Now he is back. We have several of these in California. The Coastal Commission is another. It’s job is to rule over the land between State Hwy 1 and the coast. The problem is that in some places, Hwy 1 curves considerably inland and now farmers can’t get a bridge rebuilt for access to their land because the Coastal Commission and its Commissioners (the English for Kommissars) ruled that such a bridge might encourage greater use of the land, and they can’t have that, while they cheerfully approved a multi-million dollar Ritz Carlton Hotel at Half Moon Bay and its accompanying golf course. The farmer doesn’t have millions to dump into political campaigns in order to grease the wheels of the Commission.
The whole country is becoming like this with various unelected boards, bureaus, and commissions replacing the elected representatives of the people in the regulation process. Take a look at your own local “planning commission” and see how their Kommissars are implementing the UN’s “Sustainable Development” objectives under Agenda 21 of the Rio Declaration. Chances are the only ones active at their public meetings are the “watermelon” groups.
So Tweedle-Dumb will be replaced by Tweedle-Dumber. Don’t imagine “it couldn’t get much worse”. The Fates love to implode such illusions.
As for the costs, to Troo Greenies it doesn’t matter. The money will all be well-spent, you see, creating monster projects employing half as many (at most) of the people they displace, and committing the planet to a starvation energy diet. It’s all good!
Based on Lord Monckton’s calculations of how much the effect the small greenhouse contribution from the UK is, and how much a waste of money it would be to try to abate any warming that might come from that contribution, and what little difference it would all make anyway…then none of us should pay our taxes…as each of us only makes a very insignificant difference anyway.
On the confusion between billion and trillion, CM is probably of an age when the UK used the longer billion, of a million million (10¹²), rather than the US billion, of a thousand million (10⁹, aka a “milliard”). Similarly, a trillion would be a million million million rather than a million million. These older “long” forms have died out in economics, but they still cause confusion.
The sooner economists use SI prefixes the better? Right! I’m off down the shops to spend a few decastirling.
R. Gates says:
February 3, 2012 at 11:07 am
“Based on Lord Monckton’s calculations of how much the effect the small greenhouse contribution from the UK is, and how much a waste of money it would be to try to abate any warming that might come from that contribution, and what little difference it would all make anyway…then none of us should pay our taxes…as each of us only makes a very insignificant difference anyway.”
Come on, you can do better than that. I cite in my post above about Prof Mackay calling it the ‘tragedy of the commons’ when we told him the figures. The UK is spending £30bilion a year we havent got in order to solve a hypothetical problem which, if true, can only be ‘solved’ by everyone joining in.
As ‘everyone’ has no intention of joining in and the developing world now emits a greater proportion of the emissions than the developed world (and no one intends to stop them doing so) this s a complete waste of our money. People are dying here because they can’t afford the fuel for heating, and our petrol (gas) is some $10 a gallion. In return we are having our finest landscapes littered with useless wind turbines whilst the solar industry is making hay on the back of absurd Govt subsidies. Solar power in Britain! Have we gone mad!
tonyb
I’m delighted Huhne is going, but as others have said above, I fear Davey will be from the same liberal mould.
From his website:
“The Climate Change Bill has been debated by MPs this week.
As a result of a lot of hard campaigning by the Liberal Democrats, campaign organisations such as Friends of the Earth, Tear Fund and Christian Aid and members of the public, we have been able to strengthen the climate change bill in a number of important respects.
the target for CO2 cuts by 2050 has been increased from 60% to 80%; this was an amendment tabled by the Lib Dems which the Government has accepted;
all greenhouses gases are going to be included, not just CO2;
the targets will have to ‘take account’ of aviation and shipping
More needs to be done
There are still aspects of the Bill where we would like to see further strengthening.
The interim target for 2020 has not been increased, and given the urgency of early cuts in emissions, this is a source of concern.
The Bill says nothing about how far Britain has to ‘de-carbonise’ its own economy in order to meet these targets and how far it can simply ‘buy in’ carbon credits from elsewhere.
Green backbone
Most importantly of all, we want to see the whole of Government taking climate change seriously.
At the same time as the Climate Change minister is announcing tougher targets, other departments are working against him, whether by announcing massive airport expansion or preparing to give the go-ahead for new coal-fired power stations.
Our view is that there needs to be ‘green backbone’ running through all government policy if we are to achieve these vital goals on tackling climate change.”
Good to know that FoE are helping to decide our energy policy. Mr Davey did PPE at Oxford, so he knows all about energy, of course.
ozspeaksup asks: “who will they replace this fool with??”
My money is on Oliver St.John-Mollusk.
http://www.blinkx.com/watch-video/monty-python-upper-class-twit-of-the-year/xov0FSL8pT9N8zx9DgJ3UA
But where is this “pipeline?” How big is it? How many photons will it hold? Does it require magnets? Is it insulated?
Liberal Democrat policies for the environment
http://www.libdems.org.uk/siteFiles/resources/PDF/Election%20Policy/Liberal%20Democrat%20Environment%20Manifesto.pdf
But there’s always anotherone to take his place
Glad to see the back of Huhne – no punishment can be too harsh.
On the other hand, the only thing is the world worse than an eco loon climate change minister who is universally loathed and dispised, is a an eco loon climate change minister who is amiable and loved by everyone.
I think Ed Davey qualifies as ‘nice but dim’. I met him once and he was amiable and articulate enough, but did not stand out as particularly capable or dynamic.
With luck he won’t have the balls to outfox the Treasury and will be an impotent and ignored minister. Whatever platitudes he is obliged to spout to keep his LD colleagues onside I do not see him anything other than a timeserver.
R. Gates,
“…then none of us should pay our taxes…as each of us only makes a very insignificant difference anyway.”
Indeed you are correct Gates. If after paying trillions in tax all we got in return was one ramshackle school, two police officers, three doctors and four soldiers, then we should not be paying those taxes, because the benefit comes nowhere near the cost.
As we all know, this is an analogy of paying trillions into some fantasy climate change levy.
“..the Department’s calculations detailing just how much “global warming” that might otherwise occur this century would be prevented by the..”
They need to take a lesson from Australian politicians. The correct response is to avoid the question entirely and blather about the tax being about the country doing the right thing.
Capell says:
February 3, 2012 at 11:30 am
The world should express its overwhelming gratitude to the people in the UK for being willing to commit societal seppuku to demonstrate by bad example the utter futility and massive damage inherent in the alarmists’ program. Their willingness to “take one for the team” for humanity is unprecedented in all of human history. Of course, in the future when you find yourselves at the bottom of the massive hole you are relentlessly digging, I suspect the world’s only response will be to gather round and shovel dirt in your faces and few of the burgeoning number of our bureaucratic overlords will allow themselves to even recognize the truth you all have demonstrated.
I vote we give the vacant post to Lord Monckton.
It took the CPS nearly 8 years to charge Huhne ? Does it normally take them that long ?
Perhaps someone in the CPS just did some actual research and discovered that co2 isn’t a serious problem, or even any problem at all.
“The removal of Mr. Huhne from the scene will at least take Britain one step nearer to sanity, scientific reality and economic common sense about climate change.”
Sorry. Lord Monckton, you’re far too hopeful.
Huhne will be replaced by a carbon copy (sorry, couldn’t resist), as pointed out by their Party Leader, Mr Clegg:
“I am pleased that Ed Davey has agreed to take up the post as the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. Ed has a lifelong commitment to the environment, to green issues. He has shown as a minister a formidable grasp of the details of Government policy.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9059315/Nick-Clegg-backs-Chris-Huhne-for-return-to-government-if-cleared-of-charges.html
So, it’s business as usual, tax payers’ money wasted as usual, because with not real change at the top, the green-enhanced AGW supporters in that ministry will not change. Not even if we get a Maunder Minimum … And anyway, when have proper numbers and calculations ever beaten an ideologically encrusted, bureaucratic mindset?
“..as each of us only makes a very insignificant difference anyway”
Trollbait. No explanation needed as to why; everyone else here isn’t that stupid.
February 3, 2012 at 8:33 am
On Bishop Hill he has posted this tweet from The Moonbat:
“I’m sad to see #ChrisHuhne go. He’s been one of the few voices of (relative) sanity in the Coalition.”
What is it that makes people like The Moonbat so blind?
It takes one luny to reconnise another and know to confirm it for both.
A lot of the economic predictions are made by the “Stern report”.
Professor Stern is an economist who appears to be considered by our wondeful political leaders as someone who can predict the future climate and any economic impacts many years ahead.
However, along with all the other world leading expert economists, he seemed unable to predict the world economic collapse.
IMO the credibility of the “Stern report” is open to question.
@R. Gates says:
>…then none of us should pay our taxes…as each of us only makes a very insignificant difference anyway.
+++++
I am impressed that you read and understood what Monckton has written and yet you managed to completely avoid his point with an analogy so inept that it could only come from a warmer trying to lampoon real economics. Wow. I am not sure I could have come across with a diversion that ineffective even if challenged to do so.
You should have applied for the Ministerial post when it came open. A natural fit apparently.
——————————–
When I visited the House of Lords’ minister, Lord Marland, at the Climate Change Department a couple of years ago, I asked him and the Department’s chief number-cruncher, Professor David Mackay (neither a climate scientist nor an economist, of course) to show me the Department’s calculations detailing just how much “global warming”
—————————————————————
But Professor Mackay is a confirmed Greenie. It was Mackay in his on-line book “Sustainable Engery Without the Hot Air”, who claimed that electric vehicles were 5x more efficient than fossil fuelled vehicles. This is absolute nonsense, of course, for a good diesel is more efficient than any electric vehicle powered by fossil-fuelled power stations.
Professor Mackay did finally apologise to me personally for his (deliberate?) misinformation, an apology which was pulished in the Sunday Times. But by that time the damage was already done. Boris Johnson, the London mayor, dazzled by these false claims, demanded that London had 100,000 electric vehicles by the end of his tennure, while Chris Hughne offered £5,000 for enyone buying an electric vehicle, and sponsored a battery factory to the tune of tens or hundreds of millions of pounds. But the reality has been very different, with dissapointed owners, no charging posts, and dire sales of electric vehicles and their batteries.
In effect, Mackay’s misinformation (deliberate lies?) have cost the nation £milllions and cost many individuals £thousands. Perhaps the professor should consider paying back all of those £millions out of his own salary.
.
One good thing, for the first time in history we know who the straight politicians are (and journalists and scientists for that matter) anyone who jumped on this bandwagon since Mrs Thatcher saw through it anyway, must be hopelessly corrupt, so bad as to need a custodial sentence for fraud, no golden handshake, take their assets like the common criminals they are and take their degrees if they have any, they are pure scum.
Sigh! New boss, like the old boss.
FD
I’m no supporter of either taxes or speed limits, but…
It took taxes to get rid of Al Capone.
It took speed limits to get rid of Chris Huhne.
I was about to say “of course he’d guilty”, but everyone, even a climate minister caught speeding … deserves a fair trial.
… except of course, when we are considered as a group … and then it is OK for the whole of humanity to be tried, convicted and sentenced by a bunch of luny judges who overtly express their bias and intention to pervert justice.
How many politicians have kept away from this scam? a list would be nice so we can see who to trust!
[SNIP: Sorry, but no. Anthony has had enough of Godwin’s Law violations and this clip in particular. -REP]
New environment minister Ed Davey has some interesting family connections.
http://www.herbertsmith.com/People/HenryDavey.htm
Gah! – I’d have been fine if you’d snipped it for containing bad language but not for Godwin’s law – the ‘Downfall’ meme is NOT a Godwin’s Law violation.
[REPLY: Bad language, too, but Anthony has REALLY had enough of that clip. Sorry. -REP]
Credit where credit is due, Huhne was scalped by Guido Fawkes (http://order-order.com)…
Again, Christopher Monckton gets straight to the point. Well done!
Brilliant Christopher, just brilliant!
Watch out for snow if you head anywhere near London this weekend!
BIG NEWS 🙂
I see our American chums don’t necessarily understand why we have this ghastly coalition government. The Labour administration tried to buy votes and spent all the money. This would usually leave the Conservatives to take power and make lots of money for the next Labour government to spend. Unfortunately we had a US style presidential contest on TV and lots of people said, “Who is that man in the middle?” It seems a generation of new voters had grown up unaware of just how awful the Liberals are. There was a Liberal surge in the polls and the election was hung. Now the new voters understand about the Liberals we can forget them for another 20 years. They will disappear come the next election so we can also forget any green targets past then.
Huhnes big mistake was to dump Vicky Pryce in favour of Carina Trimingham, a bisexual public relations officer, forgetting that hell hath no fury etc. Vicky publicised how he’d made her take his speeding penalty, then discovered she was equally guilty in the eyes of the law. That is why we have a 2003 offence in the news.
Vince Causey says:
February 3, 2012 at 12:16 pm
R. Gates,
“…then none of us should pay our taxes…as each of us only makes a very insignificant difference anyway.”
Indeed you are correct Gates. If after paying trillions in tax all we got in return was one ramshackle school, two police officers, three doctors and four soldiers, then we should not be paying those taxes, because the benefit comes nowhere near the cost.
As we all know, this is an analogy of paying trillions into some fantasy climate change levy.
_____
I actually agree with Lord Monckton on this point. When it comes to actually doing something to reduce CO2 emissions (if that is what is desired), I’ve never been in favor of the economic program appoach. Certainly China and the U.S. are the 900-lb Gorillas in the room, and the UK is like a flee in their fur (when it comes to CO2 emissions, it’s just an analogy here- I love the Brits). Not much the Brits do, no matter how much they throw at it will amount to much. Having said this, the Brits would be served the best in the long run to focus on efficiency and energy independence, with CO2 reduction not being the prime focus, but only one of many potential secondary benefits. By focusing on efficiency and independence, there will be real financial benefits and paybacks in the long run, and great grandchildren will thank their great grandparents, not curse them.
Old Chinese proverb:
A wise man learns from his own mistakes. A fool learns from other people’s mistakes. An idiot never learns at all.
No prizes for guessing which one Wind Farm zealot Huhne is.
Huhne is one of the principal architects of the rolling blackouts and brownouts the UK is doomed to have by the end of this decade. From deliberately fudging giving the go ahead for a new generation of nuclear power stations to accelerating the building of unreliable, very expensive, windmills all over the countryside, to committing the UK to a decarbonisation policy, which if enacted, will wipe out the country’s remaining industrial base, he has been a complete disaster..
A man as inept as he is in his private life as in his public life, his going will be no loss. Unfortunately, his successor is certain to continue with the same goofy policies.
The real question has always been… does the money and the power go through the RIGHT hands? And will enough of it stick to the fingers there?
R Gates says:
“…then none of us should pay our taxes…as each of us only makes a very insignificant difference anyway.”
Gates, if you hadn’t noticed, in terms of greenhouse gas emission reductions, currently, noboby IS “paying their taxes”. LOL. Question really is, who is dumb enough to be the first?
“The removal of Mr. Huhne from the scene will at least take Britain one step nearer to sanity, scientific reality and economic common sense about climate change.”
Not so fast, m’Lord. This seems to me just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The lot should be sentenced hard labor — in a saner world. One day, perhaps……
Meanwhile, the inmates still run the asylum.
The problem being, if Huhne is found guilty but gets a sentence of less than one year he can continue as an M.P.! Beware!
OK I’ll ask the question about the elephant.
Just what physical mechanism will be employed by all the increased taxes to reduce the global temperature?????????????????????
I think it will do nothing other than enrich some people.
Pete H. @4.34
“, if Huhne is found guilty …. a sentence of less than one year he can continue as an M.P.! Beware!”
In the meantime that would be at an H.M.P.
Still, he should have no trouble claiming it as a 2nd. Home.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039462/MPs-expenses-Elliot-Morley-freed-serving-quarter-jail-sentence.html
Is Robin Hewitt (February 3, 2012 at 3:11 pm) ex Mayor Hewitt?
I, like you, very much look forward to 2015 and a proper government – but their is still much work to do within “the true party of government” to put this thing in perspective. The good Lord’s figure above of 23:1 cost of stopping it : dealing with it (it being AGW) certainly helps to clarify the situation.
(23:1 for thr UK, 200:1 for the EU)
The best part is that most of that money seem to go to German, French, and Swedish government owned corporations building wind and nuclear power in Britain, as in the limey pound isn’t staying with the brit for too long.
No wonder the British diminished isle empire has a shortage of funds but raking up the debts.
Joe V. says: (February 3, 2012 at 5:08 pm)
…he should have no trouble claiming it as a 2nd home.
as a mail reader you should know better.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091245/Chris-Huhne-splashes-1-3m-Grade-II-listed-building-London.html
Steve Allen says at 4:22 PM ….”Gates, if you hadn’t noticed, in terms of greenhouse gas emission reductions, currently, noboby IS “paying their taxes”. LOL. Question really is, who is dumb enough to be the first?”
Steve out here in CA we have been modifying how we allocate costs for electrical energy over the years. Our Independent Service Providers (ISO’s= PG&E, SCE, etc) costs have gone up over the last decade and are expected to continue to increase (partly due to bringing on-line more RE as we move towards our stated goal of 33% RE by 2020). In order to meet our RE targets our ISOs have to pay a premium price (for up to 25 years as that is the way the purchase contracts work) for renewable electrical energy. By law they are allowed to pass their costs on to their customers. So that leads us to the allocation of those costs. In other words who (which ratepayers) pays for the more expensive energy that the ISO’s we required to source to meet the RE goals.
It’s near to impossible to get answer to the who pays question. But, luckily for us the CPUC has weighed in on who paid for the increased costs for PG&E over the years- Tier 3, 4, and 5 customers to be exact picked up all the costs PG&E incurred for years (in the residential market allocation of costs that is). For some history on the subject these comments are rather enlightening-
ftp://ftp.cpuc.ca.gov/OGA/2010%20position%20letters/CPUC%20ANALYSIS%20-%20AB%20413%20(090601)%20-%20090623%20(Sen%20EUC).pdf ) .
A question I have is when is an allocation of additional costs the same thing as a tax? In my mind electrical energy ratepayers in CA are already paying the tax.
“Huhne is no loss.”
I suspect his successor is no gain.
$17,000 per head over 10 years sounds bad enough, but a lot of people in the 3rd world survive on much less than that. Either the richer countries would pay much more than that under the insane deindustrialisation planned, or people in poor countries would starve to pay their share. Let’s get positive. Let’s develop resources and free people from poverty. Forget the green madness.
excuse me; over a speeding ticket.
Speeding ticket = 3 penalty points + a fine of UK£60.00
12 points = 12 month licence disqualification
He had 9 points.
The offence as charged is: conspiring to pervert the course of justice
The penalty upon conviction could be life imprisonment, the average penalty is 24 months for that offence [driving]
The longest sentence has been 30 years, to date.
Could someone in the know teach me who is succeeding Mr. Huhne, and what is the stance of the successor on AGW?
R. Gates on “pay no taxes” and all those commenting:
Did someone mention Greece?
Some things do have to be paid for.
Others, not so much.
“There was a Liberal surge in the polls and the election was hung.”
That and because the Tories picked a second-rate Tony Blair clone as their leader when the country really needed another Thatcher. The election was theirs to lose, and they chose to lose it.
Huhne, I imagine, will either be reinstated after the CPS decide that prosecution ‘is not in the public interest’, or he’ll move on to a fat-cat job as a EU Commissar.
tokyoboy says:
February 3, 2012 at 7:22 pm
Well his replacement is Davey. An odd fellow in that he is a free marketeer: his orange book and all that.
He is said to be pretty green but how much that is his real view or more or less panders to his political base is unclear. Which base is very green and far from free market.
Certainly he lacks the aggression of Hunhe and is already being placatory over things like energy costs. What he will do, or try to do, only time will tell. It is a cabinet system you understand and in effect we do not know his calibre yet.
Interesting times eh?
As for Hunhe himself he maintains his innocence, the jury will decide, but I wonder what his ex wife’s lawyers have advised her. If she enters a guilty plea, given upon her own public admission that it appears that she did conspire although under duress, she can expect to get off very lightly indeed. Leaving him with a lone cuthroat defence at best: and that seldom works. Jurors can get very funny about these things you know. As can judges once they have verdict.
Hope this helps.
Kindest Regards
a jones says: February 3, 2012 at 9:36 pm
Thank you Jones. In view of a continual retraction from Green policies in European countries these months, I feel a kind of divine will in this event.
I hate to say it but for once I agree with R. Gates with one small change he says Co2 shouldn’t be the primary concern I think it could and should be ignored altogether, let it rise it will not harm us and will only benefit us in terms of food production, helping every person on the earth.
ROFL –
I can’t pass this one up… it is too no-brainer:
So, what exactly did he ask his then wife? “Huhne, would you please take the hit on this and say you were driving?”
How is that money (tax) going to help stop/slow ‘global warming’ ?
Is it true that Professor David Mackay is a professor of natural philosophy???
Interesting question here: http://progcontra.blogspot.com/2012/02/where-should-chris-huhne-serve-his.html
Make sure you get your vote in!
In case anyone missed it Ed Davey’s first speach said something like “I intend to continue the great work started by Chris Huhne”
The windmillmeister is dead. Long live the windmillmeister.
To those who think that Ed Davey would follow the same policies as Chris Huhne I’d like to point out that Davey is nowhere near as competent, combative or determined as Huhne, and certainly nowhere near a match for the Chancellor, George Osborne. So it’s a step in the right direction.
If Huhne is found guilty of preverting the course of justice he will be sentenced to 3 – 6 months in prison. There will be no way back to a ministerial career from that. How good his defence will be will be fascinating to see.
A small note on words: “Kommissar” is not used here in the German sense (that would still be a police officer à la “Lestrade of the Yard”), but in the sense it took on in Russian, after Lenin and his followers appropriated it into their terminology – like “politburo” or “central committee”. So though the word is German, and it is bandied about by German, ahem, politkommissars from the Brussels politburo, the implication are a bit more sinister than a glance into a dictionary might suggest.
@scott says:
‘Is it true that Professor David Mackay is a professor of natural philosophy??’
Yes.
But ‘natural philosophy’ is what Cambridge University calls Physics. Don’t get hung up about it.
Coinciding with the demise of the UK’s ‘climate change’ minister Chris Huhne, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology publishes report
Climate Variability and Weather February 2012
http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/POST-PN-400.pdf
with this statement:
Natural forms of climate variability are likely to be the main influence on the UK’s climate over the next few decades.
For some months now, a graphical representation of my numerical analysis was available here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NV.htm
Posted on climate blogs: first on
WUWT
then Climate Etc ,
RealClimate
and it has been picked by more climate orientated blogs.
Since its first appearance on WUWT it has had more than 1000 web-page hits including some from the UK MetOffice and the Exeter area (home of the MetOfffice).
It is nice to know that those in authority eventualy are realising that natural variability is the primary cause of the climate change.
But we do not know what the next man will be like but he is a Liberal D so expect much of the same to placate the Liberal rabble, sorry, elite.
But, Lord Monckton, our annual output of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels is 3% of the total annual CO2 budget the rest, 97% being from natural producers. If the atmospheric CO2 content increases it is due to the natural producers over which we have no control. For us to limit our CO2 production makes no sense and is economic suicide.
The WUWT link:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/03/uah-global-temperature-down-over-half-in-october-from-september/#comment-786818
“The EU is the old Soviet Union dressed in Western clothes”
(President Gorbachev)
Huhne, is a repugnant, meddlesome and mean minded individual, how he came to high office illuminates in a very stark light the paucity of capable ministers and shines a light on just how diminished the British electoral system has become.
In entering politics In Britain, candidates these days; do not do so out of an altruistic urge, or any public spirited desire to, ‘give something back’. Thus, the upshot to this means that most of the current sitting MP’s in the lower house are; gold diggers, self publicists and shysters – ‘on the make’ mountebanks.
It is also a fact, that most of the laws in Britain are made and drafted in Brussels. Parliament, is merely a rubber stamping council and an exercise of inanity but even then [with virtually nothing to do], our MP’s these days fail in their only real duty, that is, to scrutinise the bilge emanating from Brussels.
In Parliament, it is hard to tell which party is which these days, there is not a whit between their main policies of any of the main three [Tory, Lib-dem, Labour]. All worship on bended knee, at the altar before their masters in Brussels and not one of them raises any real opposition to Britain being a member of the Soviet of EU states and how perfect was the great scam to all of them. YES, AGW, a chance to show how much you cared and an opportunity to further burden and tax the bejeepers out of the already stressed taxpayer.
It is also hard to know in actual fact, just who Chris Huhne owed his allegiance to and who he was representing. Was it to his constituents who voted him to power – definitely not. Or, was it to his party and to Parliament – on that, the jury was always out on that. Finally, was it to the people who really matter? The ‘people who really matter’ of course reside in their gilded palace, Berlaymont in Brussels and Huhne has always been a [tribally] fierce defender of the EU’s honour and power.
How
hunky dory for the EUfitting was it then, that Huhne became minister and chief of the department of the Environment and climate change [a man on the inside]?In Chris Huhne’s dreams, emissions regulation, carbon trading, renewable energy, sustainable power, global warming were part of his raison d’etre – EU’s man in place – a marriage made in heaven indeed [bad news for the taxpayers of Britain though].
But oh Glory be! Now that he is gone, you can [maybe] understand how elated many of us feel here in Britain to see the back of this quite awful little man, a man living in Britain but not recognized as being one [British] and certainly no friend of ours.
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
W.S. Churchill.
MarkG says:
February 3, 2012 at 8:38 pm
Huhne, I imagine, will either be reinstated after the CPS decide that prosecution ‘is not in the public interest’, or he’ll move on to a fat-cat job as a EU Commissar.
———————
Now, I’m no expert on the law, but I would have thought that as that he has now been charged that the prosecution will indeed go ahead. The chance for a “not in the public interest” escape has now been excluded. If found guilty then I would expect that he’ll be given a jail sentence, hopefully of sufficient length to prevent him returning to politics, ie. more than one year. I’d be disappointed if he gets less than a 3 to 4 year sentence. Judges usually take ‘perverting the course of justice’ very seriously indeed.
Presumably Ed Davey was chosen as a replacement because he is as brainwashed by the nonsense co2 belief as Huhne and Cameron.
The zealot gas fanboys remain in charge of the asylum. But with every change there is hope that a smidgen of reality may start to creep in to government policy. In any case, time is on our side as ever deepening winters make their impact felt. They can build as many windmills as they like, but it will not prevent the sun from entering it’s long and deep minimum, one which the UK in particular is ill prepared for.
One question, Christopher, you mention the government plans to spend £30 billion per year from 2011 to 2050, totaling £1.2 trillion. My information was that the total cost of the climate change act was estimated by government to be £404 billion as the upper figure. Please can you tell me where I might find reference to your higher figure?
Bernd Felsche said:
February 3, 2012 at 8:19 am
According to Fenbeagle (and reproduced by the Tallbloke), Huhne is a former director of a company that introduced speed cameras to Britain.
Hoist by his own petard.
A number of people seem to have got the wrong end of the stick regarding what it is alleged he did. He got his wife to say she was driving the car when it was spotted speeding to avoid losing his licence, presumably because of previous speeding (he has now lost his licence anyway presumably because he doesn’t value the planet and other road users enough to drive economically and legally). He and his former wife are charged with perverting the course of justice, which is an altogether more serious offence, punishable by seriously long prison sentences. This was exposed by his wife when she discovered his extra-marital affair.
I just love how so many of a politicians are fine, moral people who are a shining example to the poor peasants they legislate over (not, in case anybody misunderstands me).
My only worry is that if this millionaire politician gets off, then he will be brought back into government.
Very nice epitaph for Mr Huhne’s career: richly deserved!
I’m prepared to accept Lord Monkton’s calculations and conclusion – Saturday’s my rest day. However, it might be educational to track the money. It doesn’t just disappear into thin (or poluted) air. The natural circulation of money, whether it’s income or debt, involves eventual redistribution from the one hand to another. Once the Kommissars have taken their tithe (more than 10%, I assume) the balance will be distributed hither and thither around the EU and other far away places we about which we know little. Turbine and solar panel manufactures and the like will gain through government-aided production, before paying out taxes, costs and wages etc. The bottom line assumes that the ‘little people’ will be able to benefit from these wages or government handouts and allowances to compensate in some way for the additional taxes and costs that were levied on them in CO2 reduction taxation in the first place. So, assuming it to be a ‘perfect engine’ what is the true cost of this money circulation – only the consumption of natural resources that CO2 reduction was designed to overcome. The fact that it might have all been put to better use is not something that Mr Huhne and his ilk would ever bother about.
Another excellent piece by Christopher Monckton.
When the Climate Change Bill was voted in, nobody knew what it would cost. Months later the government quietly slipped out a figure: 400 billion pounds. An accountancy firm published their own estimate: around 1.2 trillion pounds, three times larger than the government estimate.
But, as Christopher Monckton so clearly shows, they didn’t have a clue what this staggering expenditure what actually achieve, even assuming that the IPCC is right. And, if there’s one certainty, it’s that the IPCC is wrong.
It woud be quite funny if it were not so serious.
.
I was a lifelong Conservative voter, but no longer. I will not vote Conservative again until they return to sanity, both on climate change/energy and also Europe. Still, Cameron’s loss is UKIP’s gain!
.
I regard Huhne’s energy policies as criminal so I hope he ends up behind bars.
When the announcement was made yesterday at 10 am Huhne’s windmills were putting out just 0.7% of the UK’s consumption – and at a time when the UK is freezing cold.
.
Just one small bright note: Monckton mentioned that he spoke to Lord Marland, the Energy Minister. Recently Lord Marland described the solar energy scam as ‘one of the most ridiculous schemes ever dreamed up’.
Hopefully, when sanity starts to return, government ministers will describe Huhne’s windmills in a similar way.
Chris
1DandyTroll says:
February 3, 2012 at 5:34 pm
“The best part is that most of that money seem to go to German, French, and Swedish government owned corporations building wind and nuclear power in Britain, as in the limey pound isn’t staying with the brit for too long.”
German biggies are Siemens and EON and RWE; they’re publically traded companies. EON and RWE were state-owned in the 70ies but some time in the last decades got privatized.
In the UK we have the crime of “Involuntary Manslaughter”
http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/h_to_k/homicide_murder_and_manslaughter/
One aspect that comes under this legisation is
“that caused by the defendant’s gross negligence”.
Given the fact that the policies so rigourously pursued by Huhne’s have directly increased fuel poverty in the UK, he is undoubtedly responsible for deaths from hypothermia in the UK.
He should be charged as such.
Ed Davey does come across as a more personable , less coniving – some might say more naive – advocate than his predecessor. More of the useful idiot perhaps. However, such naivety can be just as dangerous & more powerful. Look where its got us already. Naivety allows for the passion & conviction of the true believer , which can be infectious.
While the more informed have to rely on the powers of deception, which is never quite as convincing.
Another conviction politician (if not quite in the same sense) ?
Yes, Minister?
A tale of Wind and Folly….
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/hanging-up-by-the-constables/
Lord Monckton’s carefully calculated article should go straight to the Prime Minister; every member of the UK government; and every civil servant in the Department of Energy and Climate Change (as though the two are linked in some way)…
By the way – I’ve looked at the definitions of ‘liberal’ and ‘democrat’ – and neither of them seem to be remotely connected with the policies of that section of the UK coalition government…
Is it just coincidence that the following BBC headlines are back to back?
Most parts of the UK are due to see heavy snow later, bringing disruption to roads, rail and air travel.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16883674
Chris Huhne’s resignation as energy secretary will be a big loss to the cabinet and the Lib Dems, says his former parliamentary private secretary.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16885854
We know wind power is not helping with the cold and snow event – so why will his policies and position on AGW be missed? Are Brit’s still afraid they will never see snow again? GK
R. Gates says:
February 3, 2012 at 11:07 am
Your fatuous, knee jerk first post does not become you. I am relieved to see the reasonable and thinking R. Gates shows up in your subsequent post.
R. Gates says:
February 3, 2012 at 11:07 am
“Based on Lord Monckton’s calculations of how much the effect the small greenhouse contribution from the UK is, and how much a waste of money it would be to try to abate any warming that might come from that contribution, and what little difference it would all make anyway…then none of us should pay our taxes…as each of us only makes a very insignificant difference anyway.”
As to what appears to be your [ambiguous?] logic above, Gates, not paying taxes based upon a strikingly negative return calculated from a “cost benefit” analysis of only one tax related goal obviously doesn’t automatically translate into similar action concerning all other tax related purposes, i.e., on the false argumnt that “none of us should pay our taxes” just because “each of us only makes a very insignificant difference anyway” toward accomplishing any of the rest of them.
So it’s good to hear you say, “I actually agree with Lord Monckton on this point,” essentially that no one should be paying taxes or increased prices based upon CO2 reducing goals – but that efficiency of energy use should be the real goal – and also given that you believe CO2 = Catastrophic AGW to be a “Religion” and that China and India’s full bore construction of hundreds of coal fired electricity plants is ~”rational” given the needs of their populations.
Perhaps you are also getting the message that we “rugged individualists” really do like company?
Kakatoa says: “In my rmind electrical energy ratepayers in CA are already paying the tax.”
As much as California has done to improve energy efficiency, you guys still haven’t reduced total emissions, right? Freeman, Sidhu and Poghosyan reported California emitted 427 MMT CO2e in 1990. The way I understand AB32, “business as usual” would have California at 600 MMT of CO2e by 2020. AB32 requires a 30% reduction of the that level by 2020, and a 80% reduction below 1990 levels (427MMT CO2e) by year 2050. According to Air Resources Board of CA, 458 MMT of CO2e was emitted in 2000 and 478 MMT of CO2e was emitted in 2008 (after recession started). This means that since 1990 to 2008 total CO2e emissions have increased by 11.9%. From 2000 to 2008, total emissions have increased by 4.4%. Yet I believe the AB32 goal is 420 MMT of emissions by year 2020. So even though California is getting more efficient, it isn’t likely to make the old AB32 goal without changing the economy in a radical and likely disruptive way. All that work has not decreased total emissions, in fact total emissions have continued to increase, which is my point. It’s so hard to actually reduce total emissions, that its likely to be econmic suicide and therefore, dumb.
Mr Monckton,
You obviously did not learn your arithmetic in the Public Schools of the United States of America. Do you feel good about your numbers? I don’t.
The numbers we make up are far more meaningful in that they provide a necessary sense of urgency about the problem of possibly massive, wide-spread death by global warming. And just as well, our fantastic expenditures and crippling regulation to mitigate the world-wide menace of CO2 waste induces a sense of hopelessness that leads to a calm, fatalistic acceptance.
Cattle are so much easier to slaughter when properly corralled, not because they know their ultimate fate. They feel good, as you know that they should, about where the herders are leading them. They follow one the other up the chutes. You would know this if you had been a cowboy, or grew up watching western movies.
So you see, your numbers just don’t add up.
HH
for huhne the bell tolls
huhne would’ve thunk that, huhne would neigh have hohned the sighs that huhn would be gohne
anyway, that hehne huhne is without sinn may thrown the first stohne
the good thing about the presumed Cagw is that it is al reversible
the co2 sinks are huge.
If it turns to be a problem in 50y time, and fusion is just 50 more years down the line while yet another generation of fancy nannystate troopers relax at the one ITER facility, we can maybe give fusion solutions or thorium fission some urgency and all will be well another 50y: the carbon sinks will bring us back to 2000 then in a matter of years.
If all problems were reversible like that..
That raised a chuckle!
Steve Allen says “As much as California has done to improve energy efficiency, you guys still haven’t reduced total emissions, right?…………………..”
Steve, the economic downturn has effected the state of CA more then most states. I just heard that we had another year of net outflow of population. Our housing market is just the pits in a fair amount of the state. I will have to locate a reference for you, but when I was at an energy commission meeting last year it was noted that our overall emissions were back below 2008 levels.
With the leakage of industries (those firms that leave the state to set up operations elsewhere) over the last 3 years (ex our last auto facility – the NUMI facility and all the parts suppliers to NUMI have closed their doors) the trend referenced by C. Mitchell is continuing- “Stabilizing CA demand article” http://www.fortnightly.com/exclusive.cfm?o_id=159 As an FYI the average residential cost for a kwh of electricity from PG&E is currently at $.186 with a marginal rate (Tier 3 usage) of $.295 kwh. High marginal costs certainly prompts one to look hard at efficiency improvements.
Our public utilities are now required to also meet the 33%RES (they were excluded from this requirement under the old 20%RES). The folks that service Palo Alto were a bit concerned with how the state was estimating the benefits of EE recently-
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2011_energypolicy/documents/2011-08-11_workshop/comments/City_of_Palo_Alto_Utilities_Comments_TN-61893.pdf
A snippet from their comments-
………”At the August 11 workshop, NRDC repeatedly quoted the cost of EE at 2¢/kWh. This
is a misleading number. Based on the SB 1037 reports submitted by CPAU in the past
three years, the levelized cost of EE, as expressed by the total utility cost divided by
present value of net lifecycle EE savings, has increased steadily, from 2.9¢/kWh in 2008
to 6.4¢/kWh in 2010. Looking forward, as new lighting standards take effect and other
low-cost efficiency measures reach saturation, the cost of EE will continue to increase.
While CPAU expects EE to remain a cost-effective alternative compared to other supplyside
resources, it is no longer the case that EE only costs 2¢/kWh.”
Can I get a Christopher Monckton T-Shirt anywhere?
We are sunk!
The Cleggerons are determined to destroy us and most of the electorate are more interested in the Bread and circuses of the media than real life.
Peter Plail said “he [Huhne] doesn’t value the planet and other road users enough to drive economically and legally” I was waiting for someone to point that out. Speeding does produce more CO2. However by taking himself off the road he is now saving the planet. So all is well.
Is that Huhne in his electric car, consulting his map to estimate distance to the next charging station?
I like the way Falco (der kommissar) dances btw
the duts would call it “van de pot gerukt”
ueberreisses du?
this can happen to each of us when reading too many climate reports
There’s an excellent headline on the front of today’s Sunday Telegraph:
101 Tories revolt over wind farms
MPs tell Cameron to slash subsidies and change law to make it easier for residents to object.
.
It does seem that, apart from some idiots such as Cameron, the Conservative party is somewhat more sceptical about AGW. It was a true catastrophe that they did not get an overall majority in the last general election, resulting in a coalition. The result of the coalition is that we have Lib Dems in charge of our energy. Now that’s what I call a real climate change catastrophe!
Probably the UK’s only chance of returning to sanity is that in the next elections the Leb Dems are swept away to oblivion, where they belong, and we have a good Conservative majority. Unfortunately Cameron will probably still be Prime Minister. Anyway, fingers crossed. If these morons have their way the UK will be firmly on its way back to Medieval Britain….
Chris
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9061997/101-Tories-revolt-over-wind-farms.html
Here’s hoping cross-party pressure will reduce the amount of taxpayers’ money being sent abroad and stop any more of this green and pleasant land being prickled by bird-mincers.
The last government were rubbish, this lot are rubbish, the Lib Dems are also rubbish who is there left to vote for ? The only ones that will rule impartially and with real affinity to the person in the street is the MONSTER RAVING LOONEY PARTY , bring them on.
J Martin says:
February 3, 2012 at 12:27 pm
I vote we give the vacant post to Lord Monckton.
It took the CPS nearly 8 years to charge Huhne ? Does it normally take them that long ?
Perhaps someone in the CPS just did some actual research and discovered that co2 isn’t a serious problem, or even any problem at all.
———————————————————————
It took the CPS 8 years to take action because it was only after Huhne left his wife for another woman that the wife brought it up. Now they are both in the dock for perverting the course of justice.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
lets hope huhne gets enough prisn time so he can read up on a few good books:
-an appeal to reason – Nigel lawson
-cool it- Bjoern lomborg
-etc.
so we get a fresh astute and illuminated Huhn , afterwards.
“…(V)ast sums of money will be uselessly spent on programs that won’t work against an enemy that doesn’t exist.” — by Alexander Cockburn writing in The Nation (of all people in all places) about the Warmists’ scares
Lord Monckton’s question to the modelers and their inability to answer–apparently due to never even having thought about the question–made me think of some bizarre statements made by Yvo de Boer [1] prior to the Durbin alarmist summit last December, lamenting the lack of progress toward the alarmist’s political solutions.
“ I completely understand that it is very difficult for a [climate] negotiator to move if you haven’t been given a political sense of direction and the political space to move,” [de Boer] said. Rather than act in their own national interests, many leaders look to see what others are willing – or unwilling – to concede.
“You’ve got a bunch of international leaders sitting 85 stories up on the edge of a building saying to each other, ‘You jump first and I’ll follow.’ And there is understandably a reluctance to be the first one to jump,” he said.
Talk about a Freudian slip! Reluctant to jump off the ledge 85 stories up; why would anyone be reluctant to do that? And why shouldn’t national leaders jump off after someone else has jumped? Are we to presume that the consensus science shows jumps off 85-story-high ledges end in a good result?
What a stellar and appropriate, if unintended, analogy for governments spending trillions and mandating draconian carbon emission reductions. And this strange utterance also indicates de Boer’s crystal clear expectation of groupthink from the Durbin attendants and from within “The Cause.”
But I won’t say that since they believe this stuff, “the team” should be the first to jump. I won’t. I won’t [3] …
—- Footnotes —
[1] Yvo de Boer – Exec. Sec.of UN Framework Conv. on Climate Change (2006-2010) and Chairman of World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Climate Change (2011- )
[2] The Washington Times, Sunday, Dec 4 2011, Ex-top climate official very concerned by global ‘lack of progress’
[3] Paraphrasing the movie “McClintock,” a popular 1963 western comedy starring John Wayne
To:- Darren Parker who asked on February 4, 2012 at 4:41 pm :
“Can I get a Christopher Monckton T-Shirt anywhere?”
Yes indeed. Just ask Josh if he can do one for you, with one of his inimitable cartoons.
He’s very obliging.
There’s a wonderful series if you scroll down on this page, to the three about Monckton on Planck. http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/
Ordering instructions are under the ‘Blurb’ tab at the top of that page.
Josh’s cartoons say much more than words ever could.
Having argued with so-called intellectuals against this man-made global warming foolishness since the beginning….and with only a two year degree…it never ceases to amaze me that so many have bought into this horse & pony parade.
It goes to show that properly presented propaganda knows no educational boundaries.
Clearly stated, no fool, looks more foolish than a educated fool.
Fighting global warming is just the sales pitch. What these global warming taxes are really about is redistributing (aka stealing) money from workers who create wealth to favored constituencies who only consume it. They seek to set themselves up as a new aristocracy.
By way of background, as the UK struggles through what by its standards is a Big Freeze, coal-fired generation covered 47.8% of our electricity needs in the last 24 hrs, while the wind farms, at 2.1%, just matched input from the Netherlands interconnector (figures from the neta site).
Official UK Government policy (courtesy of Mr Huhne and his predecessor, Ed Miliband) is to progressively reduce fossil fuel generation in order to achieve total ‘decarbonisation’ of UK energy supply by 2050. Happily, if/when we have weather this ‘bad’ in ten years time there will be even more wind farms and FIT-based domestic solar PV feed to fill the gap left by closed coal-fired stations…
note there does not need to be a big schism between “deniers” and people who fear the earth will be warming to catastophic results.
The problem is the ill conceived schemes like “biofuels” (now on its way down) , “solar in shadowy /dark places” (Germany is starting to understand tha nowt) and “wimmills” (an obvious scam and criminally concocted from top to bottom with many many elite people getting rich on it , so very difficult to eradicate unless you put heads on spikes).
Another patently near criminal scheme is to tax the evil big oil companies yet a bit more because they deserve it you know, they’re the 1% (they are not evil, these are just logistics companies they most of the time do not won the oil, oh and they are all someone’s pension pot, so taxing Exxon/BP is only raking in the pension pot of someone who obviously does not vote for you to fill another pension pot of someone you hope does vote for you)
These schemes just ask for it to be fought.
Many “deniers” would however full heartedly agree to further r&d in thorium fission, 5th generation U-fission, algae, fusion solutions etc. Never mind if it gets hotter or not . There are other reasons to want alternative energies (arab sheiks and their free ride and war mongering for example)
Very little focus from Al Gore & co on these ones, as you cannot “scale” this and “coordinate this” and empty others people savings with this, so easily.
On the other hand 834bn would go a long way allow us to act as world police in Iran and Syria, or make some bad loans to failing economies.
Obama will be free soon so if you are looking for a very big spender to take over as your global warming czar he will be available soon.
At the last election I wanted see:
1 G Brown’s discredited (to say the least) Labour government thrown out and replaced by a proper Conservative eurosceptic or even anti EU administration.
2 Chris Huhne to lose his seat at Eastleigh.
3 The Lib Dems to lose in Cheltenham.
Alas only 1/2 out of 3.
However I feel things are swinging back my way and if we can get rid of the Lib Dems at the next election I could eventually hit my 3 out 3 target.
Forgot the follow up box