Workers at one charity shop in Swansea, in south Wales, described how the most vulnerable shoppers were seeking out thick books such as encyclopaedias for a few pence because they were cheaper than coal.
A lot of them buy up large hardback volumes so they can stick them in the fire to last all night.’
A 500g book can sell for as little as 5p, while a 20kg bag of coal costs £5.
Since January 2008, gas bills have risen 40 per cent and electricity prices 20 per cent, although people over 60 are entitled to a winter fuel allowance of between £125 and £400.
Daily Mail, 3 January 2010 Tom McGhie
Household gas and electricity bills are expected to rocket fourfold to nearly £5,000 a year by the end of the decade to meet Government-imposed green targets. And the price heavy industry will have to pay by 2020 is so high that energy-dependent firms could be wiped out, causing thousands of job losses, said an industry spokesman.
A massive rethink on the cost of ‘green energy’ is taking place in Whitehall among senior regulators and industry, leading some to question whether the public will be prepared to pay increasingly high bills for the UK to become greener than most countries.
Officials at regulator Ofgem now privately admit that a report they issued only last year severely underestimates the cost of cutting carbon emissions by building a new energy infrastructure for the UK.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1240201/Watchdog-rethinks-consumer-cost-green-energy.html
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In the UK we were promised a Mediterranean climate, and that France would be a desert! B*****DS!
Don’t knock wind turbines – they may not be good at producing energy but they are fantastic at making money! In the UK with subsidies to build them and the right to sell any electricity at a high price means you can expect to make 25% per annum on your original investment for the 25 to 30 year lifetime of the turbine!
Actually if any ‘green’ technology needs a subsidy then it isn’t green. Most of the cost of a product is the energy used to produce it, both directly and indirectly. The energy used in mining raw materials, moving them, refining them, shaping them, assembling them, and other transport costs. The wages of all the people in turn will be used on products which required energy to produce them. Most of that energy will be from oil. If subsidies are required then it suggests more energy from fossil fuels was used to produce it than it will produce in ‘green’ energy.
If they have a hard freeze and lose the citrus crop, then folks who like orange juice should go out and buy some frozen concentrate because the price will go up substantially.
I am not sure how much of the juice market is now served by the Florida growers but in years past when they had serious freeze losses the effects on prices for citrus crop products like orange and grapefruit juice went up substantially.
I can remember in the 1960’s and 1970’s as I recall it being a major news item with live shots from the orchards where they were spraying the trees with water 24 hrs/day to stave off freeze damage with the latent heat of freezing of the water spray, holding the local air temp near freezing and protecting the fruit from major frost damage. The smudge pots were not very effective as I understand it and today would probably be very expensive to fuel, not to mention pollution concerns probably blocking their use.
http://www.flcitrusmutual.com/industry-issues/weather/freeze_timeline.aspx
http://flcitrusmutual.com/news/ledger_freeze_010510.aspx
Larry
One more ref on citrus freeze:
http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr/1/c001p133.pdf
Larry
Apologies if this is posted elsewhere, but Joe Bastardi takes a well-deserved victory lap over at his European blog. A few choice quotes:
“What else am I supposed to say? There is nothing else since I AM A FORECASTER, NOT A NOWCASTER. Anyone can come in tell you it’s snowing and cold, once it’s snowing and cold.”
“But hopefully this winter will wake people up to the EXTREME position that has been taken by climate scientists on the global warming issue. For I must point out to you that the forecasts for cold winters came from people that A) are predominately private forecasters and b) have been at this competitive situation so long, that they are well aware of the practical aspects of the climate. I am not talking about ivory tower dictating from above, but instead the ditch diggers that do this every day of their life out of love of subject. The goal is not to “save the planet” but to nail the forecast.”
Read the rest.
http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/bastardi-europe-blog.asp?partner=accuweather
Ambiguous claim; like the global warmers making predictions 50 years hence.
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Paddy, Gail is prone to just a little more than exaggeration on subjects; read her like you would Mark Twain except she is dead serious and …
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In Michigan, Indiana and Illinois all the county road-commission trucks are equipped with under-body scraper blades; deeper snow requires a front mounted snow plow that can be angled left, right or straight ahead.
Deep snow plowing required a V-plow for ‘breaking’ through the snow on a street that has not seen a plow previously.
If you have bandwidth available, there are a number of snow-plowing videos on youtube; some of the videos involving snow plowing trains are particularly spectacular …
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I almost missed this on: The Grand Transnational-Corporation Food Conspiracy.
One would have thought this would would have been one of THE oldest and most enduring conspiracies (because, uhhhh, everyone has to eat!)
But no, not yet. It’s still in the making …
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Shades of “Fear Factor”; do you have any studies, ag-university documented studies as opposed to a loose collection of anecdotal tales followed up by worse-case extrapolation?
Or is just all this self-authored stuff by people (with a high content of scary adjectives, some hyperbole and no doubt some basic misconceptions of what’s in these bills)?
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P Wilson (07:23:16) :
“…What confuses me is the snowfalls in th e US and Canada are more considerable, yet you don’t get the same paralysis. I guess it’s because we haven’t had a cold winter like this for a long time (apart from last year)”
In Ottawa, Canada we just are just a lot more prepared for the winter.
City snow-removal equipment: 700 plows and trucks, about one for every 750 people.
Snow removal budget 2008: $65 million, about $130.00 per person
Amount of salt used: 220,000-plus tonnes, about 400 kilos per person
Amount of snow moved: 2.4 million cubic metres, about 5 cubic meters per person.
We can move a lot of snow. We can clear a 20 cm. snowfall from the city roads in less than a day.
We salt/sand all the road sometimes just in case of freezing train, why wait.
If this keeps up, someday you will too.
If electric bills ‘necessarily skyrocket’ these type of stories will become more common:
3 die in fire at Detroit home where power was cut
…had been without power for a long time because of unpaid bills and had been using electric space heaters for warmth…residents had been illegally accessing electricity…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100105/ap_on_re_us/us_fatal_fire_detroit
Alan the Brit (08:13:57) :
Mark Bowlin (07:08:01) :
“I suspect it’s a cold cold winter in East Anglia.”
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How will they ban Mother Nature from their global warming science!? What a travesty!
Maybe Ben Santer can beat her up.
Rich Day (08:11:27) :
Enjoy it. Winter snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event.
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Nice sarc!
As Svensmark said—enjoy the warm we have now.
Spen (08:08:25) :
‘A spokesman for the National Grid said the alert had been effective in prompting electricity companies to import more gas or switch to coal-fired power stations. ‘
Presumably the lack of wind means all those expensive windfarms are not working. Tut. Tut. More bloody carbon dioxide but hopefully that might warm things up a bit.
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Don’t bet good money on that. You may need it for home heating—-or to buy used books at Goodwill for winter warmth….
you know, curling up by the fire of a good book.
Rajendra Pachauri on Guardian radio today, “this is also in my view a measure of desperation on the part of the skeptics…” “Highlight the importance of the core benefits from mitigation of emissions of greenhouse gases, (I mean the holy syrup/ inaudible) energy security…”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/audio/2010/jan/05/climate-change-climate-change-scepticism
Yes Rajendra, we are so desperate watching you squirm as the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming narrative collapses. The desperate ones right now are those who are enjoying “the core benefits from mitigation of emissions of greenhouse gases”, like the “energy security” of knowing that they cannot afford to heat their houses tonight…
oldgifford (07:53:24) :
the 36,700 old people
Do you have the link or the source for this. I really want to know it.
Phillip Bratby (07:48:22) :
I’ve been listening to a BBC radio programme about the history of the Royal Society. Compared to the state and status of science in the UK over 300 years ago, you would be forgiven for thinking that we are in now back in the dark ages. Science has been thrown in the bin at the expense of green and politically correct advocacy. It’s enough to make a grown man weep.
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I can relate.
Just The Facts (20:46:28) :
Rajendra Pachauri…
I heard it said that pressure on people magnifies what is in them. It’s like squeezing a sponge: whatever is in it comes out. The pressure on Rajendra Pachauri from a poor Copenhagen showing, and the cooling earth, is showing what is in him.
photon without a Higgs (21:02:13) :
“Rajendra Pachauri…
I heard it said that pressure on people magnifies what is in them.”
Yes, and also a degree of projection, where one assumes and/or desires that others think and feel the same, in Rajendra’s case, desperation…
John A (16:43:14) :
Re: jjs (07:27:25) :
God save the Queen and get rid of the green.
“Since the House of Windsor are in the forfront of the eco-alarmist movement (probably because they can afford to be) what on earth are you talking about?
”
Being a (protestant) Scottish football fan maybe I can throw some light on jjs’ strange comment. I would guess that he is a Rangers fan (a protestant) and Royalist, and he is commenting about Catholicism …
Just The Facts (21:20:41) :
photon without a Higgs (21:02:13) :
“Rajendra Pachauri…
Mother nature is kicking their butts.
Swift’s description of the men of Laputa, the flying island, is thought to be a satire on the Royal Society of his day (Gulliver’s Travels 1726) and could still be relevant.
http://www.issnaf.org/web/images/stories/Others/laputa-castle-in-the-sky_08812.jpg
The Laputians are highly adept at mathematics and astronomy, but totally inept at practical uses for their knowledge:
“….These People are under continual Disquietudes, never enjoying a Minute’s Peace of Mind; and their Disturbances proceed from Causes which very little affect the rest of Mortals. Their Apprehensions arise from several Changes they dread in the Celestial Bodies. For Instance; that the Earth by the continual Approaches of the Sun towards it, must in Course of Time be absorbed or swallowed up….the Earth very narrowly escaped a Brush from the Tail of the last Comet, which would have infallibly reduced it to Ashes; and that the next, which they have calculated for One and Thirty Years hence, will probably destroy us……[the Earth] must in its Passage be set on Fire, and reduced to Ashes……at last be wholly consumed and annihilated….
…They are so perpetually alarmed with the Apprehensions of these and the like impending Dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in their Beds, nor have any Relish for the common Pleasures or Amusements of Life. When they meet an Acquaintance in the Morning, the first Question is about the Sun’s Health..”
Furthermore:
“…. The Women of the Island have Abundance of Vivacity: they contemn their Husbands, and are exceedingly fond of Strangers…”.
All you alarmists out there and you know who you are, be warned.
photon without a Higgs (21:45:24) :
“Mother nature is kicking their butts.”
I still can’t believe that they bet the house on the trajectory of Earth’s average temperature, it was a sucker’s bet from the beginning…
Burning paper can be done. Books burn slowly. But so does a lot of other high-density paper, not just because of the lack of air. There is stuff like clay and fabric in paper, which doesn’t burn (/well).
But you can recover a lot of heat by burning paper. Best done with a cross-cut paper shredder and compressed air to feed the paper intothe furnace.
Maybe CRU @ur momisugly UEA has some pre-shredded paper?!? 🙂