From Benny Peiser at The GWPF:
In a sane world, no one would dream of building power sources whose cost is 22 times greater than that of vastly more efficient competitors. But the Government feels compelled to do just this because it sees it as the only way to meet our commitment to the EU that within nine years Britain must generate nearly a third of its electricity from “renewable” sources, six times more than we do at present. Madness is far too polite a word. –-Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
They are among the nation’s wealthiest aristocrats, whose families have protected the British landscape for centuries. Until now that is. For increasing numbers of the nobility – among them dukes and even a cousin of the Queen – are being tempted by tens of millions of pounds offered by developers. —Robert Mendick and Edward Malnick, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
In the course of the 25-year lifespan of the wind farm at Fallago Rig it could net the Duke anywhere between £18 million and £62.5 million. One industry expert estimated Fallago Rig could generate about £875 million income over the next quarter of a century for the Duke and his commercial partner North British Windpower. —Robert Mendick and Edward Malnick, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
The level of subsidy available to landowners to put up these turbines is out of all proportion to the public benefit derived from them and the temptation to ruin what is usually outstanding landscapes is overwhelming. It is a crime against the landscape. –Sir Simon Jenkins, National Trust, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
Green taxes will make up more than a third of the price of electricity by the end of the decade, pushing up prices to new highs by 2020. Figures from Utilyx, the energy consultants and traders, forecast a 58pc rise in the cost of power by 2020, largely driven by the impending avalanche of green taxes due to come into force over the next 10 years. –Rowena Mason, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
If Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has his way, Britons will be forced to subsidise renewable energy by approximately £100billion in the next 20 years. Electricity prices are likely to double as a direct result. The Government has to force energy companies to make electricity bills fully transparent so that the ever-increasing level of hidden green taxes are clearly listed for families and households. –-Benny Peiser, Daily Mail, 8 July 2011
Energy firms have been asked to clearly explain how they calculate bills after concerns were raised that customers may have been overcharged after price rises. —Totally Money, 20 August 2011
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Bloke down the pub:
Your investment in a solar array has been poorly made my friend. I know it looks like you will get your money back, but trust me, you will not. If you’re interested I can give you all the figures. Did your supplier tell you about the inverter (for a start)? It will fail in 10 years and have to be replaced. The cost is around £1,000. But that’s just the start of the figures – be prepared for a shock.
Will the last person to leave Britain please turn off the lights, please?
Oops, I forgot, there’ll be no electricity to turn the lights on in the first place soon
/Mango
polistra says:
August 22, 2011 at 7:26 pm
“Turkey.
Does everything right. Grows manufacturing, keeps bankers under firm control, maintains its culture.”
The Kurds might have a different opinion.
And this in a country where my energy supplier (the cheapest I could find, by a margin) has written to me in the past week:
“I am sorry to let you know that we will be increasing electricity prices by an average of 12.2% and gas prices by 19.6% on 14th September 2011.”
Note those percentages. And it’s under a year since the last (not much different) increase, and my income hasn’t gone up by a penny since those increases. It makes you wonder how much sh*t the British public will take before they wake up. Far too much, obviously.
For all you people in the UK, let’s all try to get this on the table . . .
There is a proposal on the government’s epetition website to repeal the CLIMATE CHANGE ACT (nothing to do with me, I’m just concerned about my children’s welfare). The link is
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/2035
Economic prosperity is the only route to improving quality of life, so please sign the petition and pass the information on to anyone you can think of who wants to save what’s left of our economy.
By the way, for all you that think all political parties are the same, I invite you to read UKIP’s manifesto from the last general election. I think you might be pleasantly surprised by their range of policies particularly an this issue
thanks
Terry
This really is madness. And Thatcher wanted the UK to be the finicial centre of the EU? I guess you can’t to that unless the wind blows. Good thing the UK Govn’t “shoehorned” 12 nuclear power plants in there too.
Wil says
I have NO sympathy for the Brits or their EU cousins. So suck it up and pay your green taxes – you all elected them and you’re getting the justice you deserve!
In most EU countries we have no mainstream political parties opposed to “green” policies, none whatsoever. So there is no way not to elect them.
Democracy only works if there are actual alternatives to choose from. One way the ruling classes subvert democracy is by taking the alternatives away and streamlining all parties to the same policy. “Green” politics isn’t the only field where that is happening.
With a bit of luck and a good wind Huhne will end up in prison for getting his wife to accept a speeding fine for him. The Police are still asking questions I am glad to say.
“Personally speaking, I have NO sympathy for the Brits or their EU cousins. None what so ever. If the majority of those people re-elect those dead beats they elect election after election then they’re getting exactly what they paid for”
“Problem is Wil, all the political parties subscribe to the green agenda. So it doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in”.
There is always UKIP… we are the fourth largest party in the UK. and are the worlds first and only large political party to hold a sceptical view on AGW. http://www.ukip.tv/?page_id=74
Cassandra King Aug 22 @ur momisugly 1.23pm.
A brilliant summing up of the position which applies in many countries. Your description of the situation in the UK is a mirror image of Australia as it is today. Only the names need to be changed. In my almost eight decades on this planet, I have never before known such anger and frustration in the general public against politicians of all persuasions, but in particular against the mish-mash of Labor/Greens/Independents under whom we have the misfortune to suffer and seemingly have to stand by and watch them ruin this wonderful country!
Wil says:
August 22, 2011 at 12:41 pm
“Personally speaking, I have NO sympathy for the Brits or their EU cousins.”
The problem is that all three major parties in the UK are equally deluded on this issue, so there’s simply no way to vote for a government that would bring this lunacy to an end.
There is just a small glimmer of hope. The fourth largest party – the United Kingdom Independence Party – is actually quite sceptical about climate change and it would be capable of bringing this madness to an end. Unfortunately its chances of getting a working majority in a future electuion are essentiallky zero.
However, many life-long Conservative voters – including myself – have switched to the UKIP. In the next elections, due in 2015, David Cameron will hope to get a full working majority so they can get rid of the Lib Dem idiots. To do this they may be forced to bring back voters from the UKIP, which would mean more robust policies on the EU and – hopefully – sane policies on climate change/energy.
My last hope for the UK is a majority Conservative government in 2015. Although Cameron seems to be completely deluded over climate change/energy, much of the Conservative party – including, now, Margaret Thatcher! – are quite sceptical over climate change.
By 2015 the tide against the climate change delusion will have gathered force, hopefully. Maybe even Cameron by then will be starting to realise that he had been tricked by the likes of Al Gore. Anyway, I have my fingers crossed!
Chris
Interesting. Iowa gets 20% of its electricity from Wind, and 85% of Iowans want More Wind.
To Wil, Tallbloke etc, you are all assuming that the UK Parliament in Westminster is our democratically elected government.
Our real government in in Brussels, is completely unelected and dictates 80% of our laws including ‘greenery’. We have no say.
Further, our MSM, led by the BBC, are completely supportive of this status quo. You must listen to Mark Mardell, the BBC’s North American editor, talking about the Tea Party as fruitcakes to understand most of the population will never be allowed to understand what is being perpetrated against them.
I despair.
Because of its ‘deep green’ pension involvement, the BBC will NEVER tell the truth on wind turbines or other ‘renewables’. Any news item relating to a new wind farm ALWAYS quotes the ‘capacity’ (i.e. ‘COULD power 15000 homes’) – none of their journalists EVER asks: ‘..and for what percentage of the time will that occur..?’
Recently – just before the government (for once sensibly) pulled the plug on industrial-scale solar farms – our local tv news sent someone to interview the developer. They stood in the rain in front of the array – and did the interviewer ask the developer to show him how much power was being produced at that precise moment..? Of course not – they just talked about how many homes COULD be powered… Oh – and also no mention of how much power would be produced during the twelve hours a day of darkness..!
Ian Walsh (UKIP) says: ““Problem is Wil, all the political parties subscribe to the green agenda.”
Sounds like ya’ll’s need to look into this TEA Party thing. It may not just be for America anymore.
“So how well do these things work when coated in snow and freezing rain?”
Great story. . . last year here in suburban Minnesota, the local government bought several used turbines from a California company and had them setup and running.
Until winter came. Oopsie. It turns out that while the turbines themselves were rated for winter usage, their actual ability to do so depended on the right lubricants being used. . . and coming used from California, these turbines weren’t using the winter-rated lubes. They froze up.
Investigations were done, and the problem discovered. So they had to pay a large chunk of money to have them dissembled, cleaned, loaded up with the right goop and reassembled, adding significantly to the lifetime cost. D’oh.
bil says: “To Wil, Tallbloke etc, you are all assuming that the UK Parliament in Westminster is our democratically elected government. Our real government in in Brussels, is completely unelected and dictates 80% of our laws including ‘greenery’. We have no say.”
I will refer back to those great English philosophers of the previous century . . . The Beatles:
You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
Sometimes a little revolution is good. It was Englishmen who produced the Magna Carta, nearly a millenium ago. Time to wake up, and become Englishmen again. “We have no say” just sounds like whining to me, and belies your great heritage.
** Apologies for the political rant. We now return you to your scheduled program.
Until the majority of Brits (and Americans, Australians, Germans, Spanish, etc.) wise up and get the green energy scammers out of positions of power they will get the fate that they deserve. As for the rest of us, we will be pushed to find alternatives or, eventually, revolt and incarcerate these idiots tp prevent them from harming us and themselves. I am always amazed that otherwise intelligent people buy into this green crap.
(Never forget that the BBC has millions of pension fund pounds locked up in climate change dependent “green” investments.)
The windmills are going to cost us upwards of £100 bn.
Not to worry though, we’ve made a start towards saving enough to pay for it…..we’re cutting 16,000 police offices to contribute £2.7bn – just £97.3 bn to go……..And our defence forces are being dramatically cut back…..oh, and did I mention that we’re closing hundreds of libraries to save money? Oh yes, we’re getting on top of this, make no mistake, it’s all under control.
Of course, there’s an extra £3bn to find for the overseas aid which our government has decided to increase to £12bn (India’s space program can always use the extra, even if an Indian company now owns Jaguar cars….and China can use some of the extra money to help fund MG motors which they now own.)
And did I mention the billions of pounds we’re giving to help out Greece and our other Southern neighbours who’ve discovered that they’re short of a billion or two?
Oh, and of course there’s the £ billions we’re paying every year to the EU, which hasn’t passed its own audits in the last 9 years….(but, you know, it’s a complicated business this European Union management thing, you can’t expect an auditor to understand the complexities, can you?)
There’s a bit of a challenge coming as companies begin to move their remaining UK based manufacturing plants abroad to avoid the punitive increases in energy prices which are inevitable to help bridge the gap in the windmill funding, (Cadburies chocolate are moving to Poland following their purchase by Kraft, Dyson have long since moved their manufacturing to China),
Oh yes, and the EU are threatening to tax all the fiscal transactions in London, which could cost us around £50 bn.
But we’re not worried…..we can sleep easy in our beds because our government are reassuring us that this doesn’t matter, they can always print more money……(of course, so easy, why don’t more countries do it?)…..no problem.
Good to know we’re in safe hands eh?
The average household budget has very little spare capacity to absorb increases in utility costs without having to cut back in other areas. This Green Madess will not end in a economically convenient manner. It will end when it is finally proved to be totally unsustainable, a concept the left loves to hammer the rest of us about. And the data is starting to pile up that CO2 levels trail temperature rises, not the other way around. So the Greens are doubly shown to be fools and dangerous people. The public backlash will not be pretty either.
A simple truth, which most seem to miss, and which seems so wrong that I have to constantly remind myself: Greenies don’t care if it costs more. They don’t care if it uglies up the landscape. They believe they’re fighting the good fight, and nothing will stop them. For them, windmills today=a better future for their progeny and the ever-important ‘environment.’
No cost, no inconvenience, no difficulty will change that.
We need to change the way we argue the point. We can no longer say ‘Wind power is more expensive, therefore it is not a viable alternative’. We must couch our arguments in more environmentally friendly terms. ‘Solar power costs more BECAUSE the initial energy invested in creating the solar cells is very near the energy returned during the life of the system’ (I’m not really arguing that point, but I think it is close to the truth, when you count manufacturing, transport, mining of materials-aka ‘cost’.)
This argument-the energy budget argument-may be the only thing that will dissuade the greenies. They are willing to pay ANYTHING if it harms fewer flowers and puppies, so we need to show that some technologies kill lots of puppies during manufacturing, and few puppies later.
For example, I read a piece some time ago that claimed that the manufacturing of a car used more fossil fuel than the car will ever burn over its lifetime. If that’s true, then we should be holding onto our cars for as long as possible-that’s the green way-NOT replacing it with an over-priced (read: energy intensive) ‘green car.’
“Unfortunately its chances of getting a working majority in a future election are essentially zero.
However, many life-long Conservative voters – including myself – have switched to the UKIP”.
Chris I would disagree.
Glad to talk with a fellow UKIP’er on here though.
I am chairman of a branch that has hundreds of paid up card holding members.
Even the conservatives say that UKIP will win outright the EU elections in 2014.
If I had a pound for every door I knocked on to the words “we are alone” but next door, the previous door, and the door after… say the same. Its just a question of letting the people know this to be the case. And In the latest national poll more than half the UK voters would leave the EU.
The more people that vote for us, the more likely that we will quit the EU… and stop this climate madness.
Look them in the eye and tell them UKIP will win. Our chance is not zero by any means. Cameron LIED to his members when he gave a “cast iron promise of a referendum on the EU.” prior the election which he promptly reneged on after ‘winning’ . His ‘ordinary members’ will have not forgotten this.
Eu bureaucracy……….I was interested to see a job spec for a local council for a “Climate Change Officer – SEACS Project”. SEACS – Sustainable Energy Across the Common Space – aims to promote, through the Channel area (this is another EU target; to do away with national boundaries by creating cross-border regions and the Channel area covers parts of Brittany, Devon, Doset and Wiltshire), the integrated development of ennergy efficiency and renewable energy in order to reduce carbon emissions, create economic opportunities and achieve social cohesion.
The project will build a cross-channel network of climate and energy ambassadors and jointly develop methods and tools adapted to the local context to empower communities to become local driving forces in implementing change in energy use. SEACS also offers to realize energy efficiency local projects, in partnership with citizens and local charities, to identify best practices leading to a sustainable energy use.
Amongst the main actions is Climate and Energy Action Planning for Public Buildings and Schools: development of a climate and energy awareness programme of workshops, exhibitions, materials for schools and public buildings.
In the local council job spec it says that the project will work with schools on energy efficiency/renewable energy projects, using the schools’ experience as a catalyst for the local community.
In other words, here is 2m Euros to get on and brainwash the children so that they can brainwash the more sceptical local joes.
This GACW/climate change octopus has more than eight legs and as fast as you try to prise one leg off you, another leg swiftly fastens on to the gullible public. Wil says he has no sympathy for the Brits or their EU cousins. To a certain extent I tend to agree with him. We all took no notice of those seemingly unimportant EU bureaucrats until the magnitude of their far-reaching tenticles has crept into every corner of our lives, fully aided and abetted by our own Houses of Parliament who passed the Climate Change Act. Quite how this can all be dismantled is a huge concern.
Only one thing made me laugh and that was that the job spec said that “you will need to be pro-active, solution-focused, politically sensitive and have strong negotiation and interpersonal skills”. Oh, and a skin like a rhinoceros hide if you think you can stick it out for the money. I can’t wait to meet the poor sap……………………………
Janice said August 23, 2011 at 6:50 am “Sometimes a little revolution is good. It was Englishmen who produced the Magna Carta, nearly a millenium ago. Time to wake up, and become Englishmen again. ”
Trust me UKIP… are ‘fighting’ .here is a small sample of what we are up against though. Can you guys in America understand the utter frustration here about this, its like waking up one day and finding Mexico has control of the USA and thats ok by your government.. and just to rub it in you give them $ billions per year for doing so..
The EU parliament is very similar to the former soviet polit bureau… ‘OUR’ EU president (of 500 million of us) Herman Von Rompuy (who) was chosen behind closed doors by bureaucrats whom themselves were un-elected.
The EU is a one (single) party system, there IS NO opposition party !!! and no means to remove them from office.
No one in the UK under the age of 54 now, has had any say whatsoever about this process, and when people of other EU countries such as France, The Netherlands and Ireland (and a few others) DID manage to have a referendum on the EU treaties, (those over 54 voter for a TRADE aggreement with the then E.E.C.)
AND SAID NO, they were either ignored or made to vote again (and again) until they said yes (as is the EU way)….but had they have said Yes of course, that would have been that !!!
Some 70 percent of Britain’s laws are now made in the EU, and ‘OUR government’ HAVE to enforce them. (and do)
British fishing boats throw millions of tons of DEAD but over EU quota fish back into the sea on pain of massive EU fines or jail. This is madness…
It is a criminal jailable offence to sell a pound (weight) of bananas or anything else. Madness.
We pay the EU £45 million per day just to be a member… and MIGHT get some of it back in the form of a ‘EU grant’ if you tug your forelock enough, for which they give you half of what you need and you have to match the grant for the rest, Madness.
‘Our government’ no matter which are just a puppet government of the EU,
On the 1st of December 2010 this county (with no fanfare) ceased to be a ‘sovereign nation’ It was given to the EU…we are now a region in the EU…The word England does not appear on EU maps.
Britain is divided into 12 regions, the Region of Scotland, the Region of Wales, and the Region of Ireland, England is broken up into 9 Regions, for example where I live is the South west region and is lumped in with Gibraltar
and the regions are further sub divided .. into three zones that are joined with areas in other countries. e.g.
The “Manche” region covers part of southern England and northern France while the Atlantic region includes western parts of England, Portugal, Spain and Wales.
The North Sea region includes eastern England, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and parts of Germany to create “transnational regions”.
Each region, which will be given taxpayers’ money to promote trade links, cultural ties, transport policies and tourism, is to be run by a “managing authority” of unelected officials overseen by a director.
None will be based in the UK, with Manche controled by the French, Atlantic by the Portuguese and North Sea by the Danes.
It really don’t matter which of the ‘big three get in’ Labour , Conservative, or Liberal Democrat, ALL are pro EU… and all are complacet in giving our national sovereignty away to a foreign power
Links would be valuable in backing up all that you say. Many members of WUWT are vague on the particulars of the EU and how it operates. Links would help those interested to research your statements and then they may feel like exchanging points of view. . . that is true for many contributions BTW .
Ian Walsh,
I think many people now feel they have nothing to loose by voting UKIP. In the past, you would vote Tory to kick labour out and get conservative policies implemented. Now all that has changed. The Cameroon’s don’t give conservative policies (with the notable exception of Michael Gove) any more. I no longer care whether the Tories win or loose the next election. Tory or NuLab, it doesn’t make any difference. Given no choice at all, why wouldn’t they vote UKIP?