From Dr. Benny Peiser at The GWPF
The UK government wants nuclear power to be given parity with renewables in Europe, in a move that would significantly boost atomic energy in Britain but downgrade investment in renewable generation, according to a leaked document seen by the Guardian. The EU-wide target should be scrapped when its current phase – requiring member states to generate 20% of energy from renewables – runs out in 2020, according to a secret submission to the European commission. “The UK envisages multiple low-carbon technologies: renewables, nuclear and carbon capture and storage, all competing freely against each other in the years to come. For this reason, we cannot support a 2030 renewables target,” it reads. –Fiona Harvey and Juliette Jowit, The Guardian, 12 March 2012
The Government is poised to give the go-ahead for resumption of the controversial ‘fracking’ technique of mining that caused earthquakes near Blackpool last year. It is understood that the Department of Energy and Climate Change is likely to allow exploration by Cuadrilla Resources in Lancashire to continue on condition that the company introduces new safety methods to ensure mining stops on signs of impending tremors. —Mail on Sunday, 11 March 2012
The European Union’s ambitious low carbon plan collapsed yesterday when Poland vetoed plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically after 2020. If the Europeans can’t agree on a climate plan, the prospect that the rest of the world can agree is less than zero. Every dime spent by climate activists on this goal was wasted. Every white paper on the subject was a folly. Every global conference was a grotesque and pointless boondoggle. Every pundit who supported this agenda was blowing smoke and every politician who endorsed it was either an idiot or a demagogue — or both. This dog won’t hunt. This pig won’t fly. This horse can’t win. This parrot is dead. None of this will stop green scam artists raising money from naive and goodhearted donors. It won’t stop bureaucrats who have a vested interest in eternal international processes and immortal, salary paying institutions devoid of all purpose or use. It won’t stop people who don’t understand the international system dreaming up new and equally unworkable unicorn catching devices. It won’t stop socialists, Malthusians and other anti-capitalist activists from using green rhetoric in attempts to whip up resistance to progress and change. –- Walter Russell Mead, Via Meadia, 10 March 2012
A senior MP has demanded answers from Energy Ministers as support for the Green Deal appears to have started crumbling away. The Green Deal is scheduled to be launched on October 1 but reports this week suggest the full rollout may be delayed until next year in a wrangle over the payment mechanism. Critics are accusing the Green Deal of being a flawed policy, which could actually double the cost of installing energy efficiency measures, once a list of extra costs are factored in. —Green Click News, 11 March 2012
DECC have spent millions of pounds of tax payers money to arrive at a Green Deal scheme that is nothing more than a very expensive and complex ‘buy now, pay later and pay much more’ finance offering. A scheme that will lead to consumers receiving extremely poor value and that will harm the UK economy and destroy jobs. A way of using subsidies to destroy tens of thousands of longstanding non-subsidised jobs, that’s all that DECC have achieved, is it any wonder they are desperate to promote the Green Deal. –John Oddi, Green Click News, 11 March 2012
Wind power – more accurately wind impotence, since turbines operate at just 24 per cent of capacity – is the curse of Scotland. One of the most beautiful landscapes in Europe has been brutally ravaged, families have been driven into fuel poverty, pensioners have been presented with the lethal dilemma “heat or eat” – all to appease the neurotic prejudices of global warming fanatics. –Gerald Warner,Scotland on Sunday, 11 March 2012
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I’m a big fan of Walter Russell Mead and the quotation above shows why.
“eternal international processes and immortal, salary paying institutions devoid of all purpose or use”
I love him too!.
It’s only a question of time now.
This is just the first toe in the water of scepticism. They’ll soon realise that no one gives a damn any longer about warming – not even greens really care any longer!
All this policy is doing is making governments more and more unpopular, as soon as the government realise that … it’ll fall apart.
I have written to my Lib Dem MP about this, but still waiting for a response.
I want people to go to jail for this. I want public investigations, court cases, and high profile scandals brought out all over front pages.
I want my money BACK!
I want years of propaganda to be rolled back, with a promise that such bullshit will never, ever, happen again.
Why would you “leak” this to the Guardain….
…… you wanted to tip them off to ramp up the global warming hype
In 2006 the UK emitted 536 M-tons of CO2 while China INCREASED it’s emissions in the same year from 5058 to 5603 M-tons – a net increase greater than ALL UK emissions (data from IEA). DECC plans to spend 100s of billions all paid by taxes and increased energy bills just to reduce UK emissions by 20% in 2020 (& 80% in 2050) – thereby offsetting China’s increase by 2(9) months ! No wonder all our industries have moved production to China !
Ah, the “Lack of Huhne” Effect starts to become noticeable ;).
It’s ironic that the advertisement that comes up at the end of this article (for me in the UK anyway) is for installing solar PV on my roof – something that I get unsolicited telephone calls about on a regular basis (between the ones that want to speed up my computer, tell me I’ve won a lottery I never entered, or try to sell me some useless shares). I would love to think that the the first two items above mean that the government here is actually beginning to come to its senses but, sadly, I give the whole madness another couple of years yet.
Huhne has a face one could never tire of punching. Typical of many Westminster a********.
I sincerely hope he is hung, drawn and quartered after his upcoming trial.
Does that say that sanity is erupting? In the UK, or all places! (Lot of good stuff has started there, but they seem ashamed of it of late.)
The only reason this “fracking technique” is controversial is because media outlets such as The Guardian and various “green” agitprop groups create the controversy. They attempt to make people afraid of hypotheticals that have never appeared in real life. Basically, The Guardian helps create a boogeyman and I think more people are becoming aware of this fact.
“…the curse of Scotland” and indeed anywhere they are built.
There’s a lot of public anger in Scotland. But they have Donald Trump on their side against a Scottish administration which intends to build 3000 “ugly monstrosities”.
“It was reported earlier this week that Mr Trump plans to spend more than £10 million campaigning against offshore wind turbines and he reinforced his dedication to the cause on Thursday evening by sending his executive vice-president and legal counsel George Sorial to a meeting in St Andrews.
Also at the meeting was “Mr Stevenson, who is the chairman of the Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development Intergroup in the European Parliament. He said wind turbines only served to ”line the pockets of farm owners and foreign investors.”
”Tourists will not come to Scotland if it is littered with gigantic steel turbines,” he argued.
“Some members of the audience, mainly young men and women, said they were in favour of windfarms but were heavily booed which led to them walking out. ”
http://www.communitiesagainstturbinesscotland.com/
Whilst in England the father-in-law of the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, earns up to £350,000 from these ‘monstrosities’ erected on his 3000 acre estate and he has given consent for a further seven 400ft tall bird killers.
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1296999
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2038898/Samantha-Camerons-father-plans-wind-turbines-Britains-glorious-landscapes–YOU-helping-pay-it.html
March 10, 2012
Another EU Greenfail As Poland Vetoes Carbon Targets
The European Union’s ambitious low carbon plan collapsed yesterday when Poland vetoed plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically after 2020. The move is the latest stage in the ignominious failure of EU carbon policy that has seen a grandiose carbon trading system bog down in a quagmire of scandal and price collapse. Europe will meet its current carbon reduction goals less because of any serious action than because the continent’s economic crisis brought on by the poorly constructed euro experiment has stalled economic growth.
Now the post 2020 picture is in near total disarray as EU law requires unanimous consent for new carbon targets to be set
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/03/10/another-eu-greenfail-as-poland-vetoes-carbon-targets/
All good news. I’m surprised at the UK government, given that it has LibDems in it, and they are Greener-than-thou enviro-moonbats. And the Conservatives are led by a man who said ‘Vote Blue, Go Green’ (note to US readers: in Europe Blue is right-wing; Red is left). Maybe some sense is permeating, finally.
Time was, people voted Conservative because they were the ‘stupid’ party. For ‘stupid’, read ‘unwilling to take peremptory action to meet the demands of the latest faddish, fashionable idea beloved of the faddish, fashionable intellectuals in the faddish, fashionable universities (and the Guardian)’.
Unfortunately, the Conservatives decided to become ‘smart’ and ‘hip’ just when the faddish and fashionable idea was the stupidest ever – AGW.
Remember that PM David Cameron has a Father in Law who has heavily invested in Wind Power. So don’t expect that the UK Government will stop any future wind projects [thereby saving us taxpayers a load of hard earned cash] for many years to come. No normal married man would dare trash the wife’s father’s investment projects would they?
I am all for a maximum effort on Fracking for UK sourced gas production and as soon as possible.
Now if the U.S. has enough sense to follow suit, maybe this global economy can finally start to pick up.
mfo 11:35:
I didn’t know that about Donald Trump. He’s just gone way up in my estimation. Thanks for that.
“‘fracking’ technique of mining that caused earthquakes”
How about causes minor tremors that relieve the stress that if allowed to build up over long time frames could cause Earthquakes with damaging magnitudes.
Sonald Trump is planning a resort and golf course. He thinks the windfarms will mess it up. I don’t know why because the golf courses I go on always have a windmill.
Wicked. I’ve got another phrase for all the deadly watermelon stuff.
“The chloroform solution”.
Chloros is Greek for green, not the nice green of leaves but the pale green of sick – and chlorine gas. It is the word used in the Book of Revelation to describe the last of the four horses of the apocalypse. The first is white, the second red, the third black… and the fourth, “pale” – pale indeed! Gangrene-coloured, more like.
mfo says (March 12, 2012 at 11:35 am)
“Some members of the audience, mainly young men and women, said they were in favour of windfarms but were heavily booed which led to them walking out. ”
—–
Good!
I wonder whether these youngsters were truly local? The wind industry, in cahoots (as ever) with the ecoloon Greenpeace/WWF/etc lobby groups, have apparently been bussing supporters to public meetings from up to 150 miles away.
Nuclear power given equal chances as wind and solar? That would be too funny.
I’m just afraid Greenpeace is ready to kill people to save them from nuclear power…
The Year Solar Goes Bankrupt
Get ready for a new round of green bankruptcies, as Europe trims back subsidies for solar companies and taxpayers lose their appetite for subsidizing green power.
“The mini-bubble resulting from the rush to cash in on solar subsidies in European and U.S. markets is ending, as feed-in tariffs drop in Europe while loan guarantee and tax credit programs tighten up in the U.S.,” says a new report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch according to CNBC.com.
Last week Abound Solar announced it would lay off half its workforce despite receiving a $400 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy last year. The rating agency Fitch’s hit Abound over failures to meet stated goals, old technology, calling the company “highly speculative” according to ABCNews.
In the second quarter of 2008 First Solar (Symbol: FSLR) briefly touched $300 per share. Today it trades at $27.49. That equals losses of about $24 billion in market capitalization in just four years.
In April of last year Trina Solar LTD (Symbol: TSL) was trading just under $30 and is now trading at about $7.31. Earnings estimates have gone in the last few months from Trina losing about 17 cents per share for 2012 to losing about 63 cents per share.
The Guggenheim Solar ETF (Symbol: TAN) has also moved down from around $300 per share in mid 2008, until it trades now at $27.02.
It’s important to note that the poor performance of the solar industry came at a time when government financial support has been at an all-time high world-wide. It only goes to show that politics and public policy are poor substitutes for free market economics.
Expect the solar industry to continue to crash and burn as government money continues to dry up along with public support.
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2012/03/12/the_year_solar_goes_bankrupt/page/full/
“The European Union’s ambitious low carbon plan collapsed yesterday when Poland vetoed plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically after 2020.”
If I recall it correctly it was a Polish commissioner to the EU that publicly stated he thought CAGW was not a proven fact (or something similar) and greenpeace said his statement was terrifying. Looks like he’s just held two fingers up to them. .
Actually, the pursuit of nuclear as a “green” technology could be the only good thing that comes out of this decade of global warming nonsense.
Check out the Weinberg Foundation: http://the-weinberg-foundation.org/
If only to recognize one of the great scientists of the 20th century.