Press Release (via email)
Conditional Climate Targets Are A Step Back From Blind Unilateralism
LONDON, 18 May – The Global Warming Policy Foundation regards the UK’s conditional adoption of post-2020 carbon targets as a first step back from blind and grandiloquent unilateralism.
“Nobody should fall for Chris Huhne’s green spin. It is now absolutely clear that the government’s proposed carbon targets are conditional on international agreements and developments,” said Dr Benny Peiser, the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
“The conditionality of UK targets on future EU targets is a step in the right direction,” Dr Peiser added.
Chris Huhne’s acknowledgement that “it is important that we move at the same speed as the EU” effectively means that the UK no longer aims to go it alone.
The ‘early 2014’ review of the government’s provisional targets are welcome, as is its assurance that UK targets will from now on be “aligned with EU targets.”
The government statement is an uneasy compromise between Vince Cable and Chris Huhne which, although a move in the right direction, does not go far enough. The Global Warming Policy Foundation is calling for the entire Climate Change Act to be suspended pending a binding global agreement.
The effective rejection of the Climate Change Committee insistence that the carbon budget be met entirely by domestic decarbonistion and not by carbon trading is also a welcome relaxation.
However, the promise to help energy-intensive industries, if carried out, would mean higher taxes as well as the higher energy prices implied by decarbonisation.
“The government’s claim that no other country has such targets is correct, as no other country wishes to inflict such damage on its business sector and economy,” said Lord Lawson, the chairman of the Global Warning Policy Foundation.
“We trust that, in the national interest, no serious attempt will be made by the government to attain these overly aggressive targets,” Lord Lawson added.
Contact:
Dr Benny Peiser
The Global Warming Policy Foundation – 1 Carlton House Terrace – London SW1Y 5DB
tel: 020 7930 6856 – mob: 07553 361717
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Latimer Alder said in reply to me;
“Tony is worried that the CCA is enhrined in law and cannot be ignored.
But there are many laws (far too many!) in UK. Not all of them are enforced. AFAIK it is still technically illegal to serve a pint of beer shandy or a bowlful of bananas, but the local trading standards aren’t prosecuting anybody since the public mockery and huhnmiliation they got whne last they tried.”
The difference with Climate change laws over many others is that they are very high profile and the first rank major polluters’ -Govt itself and big business -are easily identifiable and regulated. In addition there are a lot of high profile zealots-such as George Monbiot, Greenpeace etc etc- who wil blow the whistle at any infringements.
tonyb
Canada grandly proposed to adopt Kyoto targets that were pointedly greater than that of the US to prove how virtuous we were. Then the government made a big splash of ratifying the treaty. The famous pamphlet that Steve McIntyre talks about was part of this. Naturally Canada did absolutely nothing to meet these Kyoto targets. That was notthe point. The point was to look good and to score cheap points agaisnt the US.
The current Canadian federal government policy is to track the policies of the US. Canada will do nothing that will damage the competitiveness of industry
Mr Green Genes says: May 18, 2011 at 1:10 am
“Huhne is on the way out anyway. … under suspicion of getting his ex-wife to take penalty points for a traffic offence … an imprisonable offence.
Hell hath no fury …
Well then we have an explanation. As a global warming believer, Huhne puts his faith in global warming hell. And what with the lack of any extremes of weather in global warming hell, indeed as global warming hell has become “a bit of nice weather”, he’s obviously misunderstood the meaning of:
Hell hath no fury …
Huhne is a loon, Lucas is beyond description, what do you call someone madder than Huhne?
I was considering a public suicide in parliament square, ( thanks for the method suggestions), but I now think I will just die of cold and starvation like everyone else in about 2025 or thereabouts, and not make a fuss.
Sweeeet. It’s been an excellent week.
The dish is now cold enough for the soon-to-be ex-Mrs Huhne to eat. Labor/Green coalition in Australia is about to self destruct. A serially womanising banker is about to be hoist hoist by his own petard. I bet that last will go down well with a New York jury.
How do you spell “schadenfreude”?
Reading between the li(n)es.
Sign here, you know it makes sense:
http://repealtheact.co.uk/
The only upsige of the global economic problems is that it may put the brake on the mad proposals to decarbonise the developed world and by the time that the finances are in a better state, there may be significantly more evidence that temperatures do not follow CO2 emissions.
Whilst I hate the cold and consider that a warmer planet would be a blessing, I for one are hoping for a cooling trend over the course of the next decade. With such disconnect, it will make it very difficult for the politicians to carry an increasingly disbelieving public with the politicians plans for world governance.
Lets hope that the UK does not go it alone and lets hope that the rest of the world will not commit.
TAG says: May 18, 2011 at 4:01 am
“Canada grandly proposed to adopt Kyoto targets that were pointedly greater than that of the US to prove how virtuous we were.”
That was the prior Liberal government, in the last election they were wiped out; down to 34 members, the Conservatives now have 166 members. The liberals were in favor of Kyoto and a carbon tax (along with all the other parties), the people were not.
“The current Canadian federal government policy is to track the policies of the US.”
No, I think you may be a bit out of date on that one too.
The CAGW religion was started under a Conservative government, intensified under a Labour governmentand will deteriate under a Coalition government that still supports the theory, all party politicians attendending similar University studies.
If those involved are the cream of the output from the British university system then my advice is to raise the cost of a degree to £50,000 to reduce the numbers going into the system and school the population in common sense instead.
Sometimes I am really glad that I started earning a living rather than be brainwashed by the intelligencia.
How is it possible to have an Energy secretay who I would suspect would not have the first clue as to how to change the plug on a kettle?
I don’t plan to spend a lot of time commenting on this and similar threads, but I will make one comment that people ought to think about. Entirely separate from “The world is warming and we’re all gonna die” — which I think is mostly nonsense, there are two other issues. First, the world is almost certainly starting to run short of fossil hydrocarbons — starting with cheap oil. Second, about 80% of the human race is using less energy than they wish to. And they have a priority of fixing that as quick as they can. The impact of that is different for different countries. For Australia and Canada the issue is how to manage their energy resources — most of which will probably be sold and carted off to elsewhere — to optimize their future. For the US, it is how to manage large supplies of coal and natural gas to the benefit of the population rather than enriching a scumbag elite. And I might add that development of petroleum in the US has been a textbook example of taking every wrong direction on our lonely way back home (yes, that’s a Kris Kristofferson line — from “Pilgrim”).
For England, the future is probably different. With the North Sea oil and gas fields in decline, there are a limited number of choices — find a lot of shale gas. Build a lot of nuclear power plants. Try windmills and solar arrays — neither of which is very likely to work very well at that latitude and climate. Invade and loot someplace with lots of energy resources as Blair and Bush tried and spectacularly bungled in Iraq. (I’m not sure that it can be done in the 21st century even if the effort weren’t managed by card-carrying dolts. There probably are just too many AK47s and explosives in the world for 19th century imperialism to work). Or reduce energy usage — which is difficult as brits only use half the energy per capita that Americans and Canadians use.
It’s a tough problem.
So while I think that carbon emission goals are unrealistic, in a weird sort of way trying to meet them does put Britain on the track it possibly needs to be on. Right course of action, wrong reasons. I’m glad that I don’t share their problems and I wish them luck in solving them.
I don’t think this is really the right place to discuss all this. The Oil Drum (www.theoildrum.org) would be better. Let me emphasize that I don’t post at the Oil Drum because of their pervasive pessimism and cheery enthusiasm for a 19th century lifestyle that my grandparents in the 19th century couldn’t put behind them fast enough. But their technical articles are very good. And I find their model of the future to be a lot more persuasive than what I read at Real Climate.
Nigel Brereton says: May 18, 2011 at 5:35 am
“How is it possible to have an Energy secretary who I would suspect would not have the first clue as to how to change the plug on a kettle?”
Huhne: I polished the knobs so carefully that now I am the Ruler of your Energy!
Chorus: He polished the knobs so carefully that now he is the Ruler of your Energy!
(Apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan)
Hi I live in the UK, there was a very good interview of Johnny Ball on RT Russian Television news this morning. He is well known on TV in the UK as a mathematician trying to get kids interested and switched on to science. The loons in our Parliament seem to wish the UK to wander around in a miasma of ignorance watching windmills spin and comtemplating the arts. I am not a fan of Lawson but he does get economics.
I agree about TOD. Somebody before me has already said, the pessimists are always right but it’s the optimists that change the world.
The parlimentary sketch in today’s Daily Telegraph has it right:
“The green religion is very hard to challenge…”
Don K says:
May 18, 2011 at 5:37 am
“Invade and loot someplace with lots of energy resources as Blair and Bush tried and spectacularly bungled in Iraq.”
Hogwash. No one tried to “loot” the energy resources of Iraq. Your other point of running out of “fossil hydrocarbons” is on thin ice. There are hundreds of years of coal, natural gas, oil shale, etc here in the US. We should be figuring out ways to extract methane hydrates as they could supply thousands of years of energy.
Johnny Ball on Russian Times news
http://rt.com/news/greens-science-skeptic-co2-climate/
Don K says:
May 18, 2011 at 5:37 am
Hogwash. No one tried to “loot” the energy resources of Iraq.
———-
You are entitled to your opinion. I, believe that the facts support my interpretation.
———–
” Your other point of running out of “fossil hydrocarbons” is on thin ice. There are
hundreds of years of coal, natural gas, oil shale, etc here in the US. We should be figuring out ways to extract methane hydrates as they could supply thousands of years of energy.”
———–
Well, not exactly. opinions differ, but an optimistic guess might be 100 years after allowing for probable shale gas that hasn’t been found and may not all be recoverable. That’s due to the US’s huge coal reserves (the US is pretty much the Saudi Arabia of coal). Not all the BTUs in question are recoverable with current technology. And some are going to be expensive. I omit the huge Green River oil shale deposits because I suspect that they may never be economically exploitable. (They somewhat resemble candle wax disseminated through bricks). The problem with Methane clathrates is that estimates of the size of probable reserves keeps shrinking at a rather discouraging rate (Wikipedia says an order of magnitude estimate shrinkage per decade since about 1970). And many deposits are thought to be too small and dispersed to exploit. Still though, I agree that we should be looking into them. But I think we shouldn’t count on them for anything like what used to be thought to be available.
Two questions. First, how do you plan to prevent a century’s worth of US hydrocarbons from being sold, carted off to energy poor countries, and depleted in two generations? Second, after you’ve burned the furniture, what’s your plan for keeping the house warm?
Link to Mr. Harper’s remarks?
/Mr Lynn
Then along comes Andrea Rossi. Unfunded and private sector. He will change our world.
Governments never know which horse to back, thankfully.
Don K says:
May 18, 2011 at 8:03 am
“Well, not exactly. opinions differ, but an optimistic guess might be 100 years after allowing for probable shale gas that hasn’t been found and may not all be recoverable. That’s due to the US’s huge coal reserves (the US is pretty much the Saudi Arabia of coal). ”
German official study:
Bundesanstalt fuer Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe
(Federal Office for Geosciences and Resources)
http://www.bgr.bund.de/cln_160/nn_331084/DE/Themen/Energie/Produkte/energiekurzstudie__2009.html
Annual consumption ATM: 457 EJ (Exajoule)
Known Reserves (economically recoverable with current tech, under current prizes):
39794 EJ (equivalent to 87 years)
Known Resources, including the currently uneconomical ones: 613180 EJ
(equivalent to 1341 years)
Keep in mind that with rising prices some of the “resources” automatically become “reserves”.
@Don K says: May 18, 2011 at 8:03 am
“You are entitled to your opinion. I, believe that the facts support my interpretation.”
Heard that before somewhere.
Name one “fact” that supports your interpretation (with citation).
Like many people, I could write a book about all the mistakes in Iraq.
Attempting to “loot” Iraq’s energy resources wasn’t one of them.
On a matter more relevant to this post, it has to be said that any ‘peak fossil fuel’ scenario is (at best) highly controversial. It is likely that economically exploitable reserves might be measured in multiple hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years.
More than enough time to solve problems with other technologies such as Thorium.
As an excuse for throwing Trillions into technologies which demonstrably don’t work, the “peak oil / gas / coal” argument is laughably inadequate.
Andrew30 says:
May 18, 2011 at 2:28 am
[—————- “My party’s position on the Kyoto Protocol is clear and has been for a long time. We will oppose ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and its targets. We will work with the provinces and others to discourage the implementation of those targets. And we will rescind the targets when we have the opportunity to do so” “As economic policy, the Kyoto Accord is a disaster. As environmental policy it is a fraud”
Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada.
Leader of a recently elected Conservative Majority government in Canada.
There’s a lot more, but I stop now, it’s not fair to tease the rest of you in the un-developing world.
/gloat
—————————————————————————
Andrew: OK OK OK gloat away if it makes you feel good – but where can we get one of these Prime Ministers for us? Do you have a few spares there in Kanucistan who might like to come to NZ?
Douglas
Even if there is lots of fossil fuel, we should all be supporting rational attempts to get reliable cheap energy in a long term sustainable fashion, and to improve energy efficiency, including in the housing stock.
The idiocy is the panic to try for it “overnight” without proper planning and via silly things like windmills and solar PV in countries like the UK.
Is it too simple to think the best path is gas generation in the immediate future, followed by modern Nuclear, then possibly include Thorium, while achieving major energy efficiency gains? I would have solar thermal water heating tubes on my roof, but the Planners won’t let me (spoil the visual environment – listed building). And when last did you see a new build with heat exchangers on the waste water to pre warm the input water (excluding kitchen and toilet waste water of course). And so on.
Keith at Hastings, while I agree with most of what you said, your city planners just might be doing you a favor. My sister had one on her roof and had roofing problems from almost day one. Possible a problem with the installation, but the more holes you put in your roof the more potential portals there are to rain, damp, and rot.