Newsbytes from The GWPF via Dr. Benny Peiser
Britain’s carbon emissions grew faster than the economy last year for the first time since 1996, as a cash-strapped population relegated the environment down its league of concerns and spent more money keeping warm, according to a new report. The rise in Britain’s so-called carbon intensity increases the danger that the country will miss legally binding targets on reducing emissions, warns PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the consultancy behind the report. –Tom Bowden, The Independent, 7 November 2011
A RADICAL shift in policy on climate change is to be outlined by the Irish Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan today, when he announces that a climate change Bill is not a priority. It signals a major change from the policy of his predecessor John Gormley, who rushed to publish legislation setting binding statutory targets for emissions reductions in the weeks before the previous government collapsed last January. In another departure that will be seen as controversial, he said he would not set sectoral targets for emissions reductions as he did not subscribe to them. This is likely to attract criticism from environmental organisations and opposition parties. –Harry McGee, Irish Times, 3 November 2011
The government could save each member of the population almost £550 by 2020 if it scraps expensive wind energy plans in favour of cheaper nuclear and gas-fired power plants. A controversial report by KPMG, the accountants and adviser on government energy policy, will this week say that Britain can reach the 2020 target on reducing pollution imposed by the European Union for a third less than predicted, a potential saving of £34 billion. To do so, says the report, entitled Thinking About the Affordable, the proportion of wind power envisaged in the current plan would need to be slashed and the energy shortfall made up by new gas-powered stations and nuclear reactors. Danny Fortson, The Sunday Times, 6 November 2011
A FIRST licence for the controversial gas drilling technique known as fracking has been granted in Scotland – with more likely to follow. — Jennifer Fyall, Scotland on Sunday, 6 November 2011
Many of the Western democracies are likely to become major oil and gas producers, helping to glut the world and collapse energy prices. And today’s energy-rich countries, most having undiversified economies, will then lose the lion’s share of their revenues and become neutered politically. –Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, 5 November 2011
Climate Change Minister Greg Barker this morning told an audience of local councillors that it was “morally wrong” that the feed-in tariff scheme was offering such large returns when it is funded by a levy on everyone’s energy bills. –James Murray, BusinessGreen, 2 November 2011
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Is the “CO2 blanket” that warms the Earth beginning to fray?
Wow!
Times article paywalled. here is alternative:
http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/11/07/ditching-expensive-wind-farms-will-save-34bn/
Starting to sink in but oh so slowly. Heads will roll eventually, but so much economic damage has been caused that it will likely take decades to put right. Drill baby drill.
Finally, a little realism!
I’ll count my chickens later, common sense from a politician these days is rearer than hens teeth!!!
The only reason fracking is “controversial” is that it stands to cheaply recover a large amount of natural gas from places where it was not practical before and stands to make “green” energy even less competitive. So “controversies” are created, often out of whole cloth, to block it.
There is going to be a major change when the people of the western world wake up and realize they have been subject to the biggest fleecing ever in the history of Western civilization. They have been robbed.
Total collapse of that green economy which was supported by tax-payer-paid pseudo-scienctists and pushed by politicians of sorts.
Mao Stlong* Lepolt.
Mao Strong*, c/o Red China, has been knee-capped at long last.
Left-Guardian/MSM spins the body blow to Red-Green AGW.
“In the early 1970s, U.N. Secretary General U Thant tapped Strong to organize and direct the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.
The conference came to be known as the first Earth Summit.”
http://www.nationalcenter.org/DossierStrong.html
…-
“Rio Earth Summit postponed after clash with Queen’s diamond jubilee”
“Rio+20 dates rearranged to avoid jeopardising the attendance of 54 Commonwealth leaders, including David Cameron”
“Brazil has postponed the biggest environmental summit in 20 years to avoid a clash with the Queen’s diamond jubilee.
The Rio+20 summit was scheduled for 4-6 June but has been moved to 20-22 June to avoid jeopardising the attendance of 54 Commonwealth leaders, including David Cameron. But Cameron, who said last month that he would not attend, is still not planning to attend, Downing Street said on Monday, despite his pledge to lead the “greenest government ever”.
Instead, the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, will be leading the negotiations, a Downing Street spokesman said.
Though Brazil has not officially confirmed the date change, president Dilma Rousseff indicated at the G20 meeting in Cannes on Friday that the summit would be postponed. The Guardian understands European governments are already working to the new dates.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/07/rio-earth-summit-postponed-queen-jubilee
*Canadian Liberal leader Bob Rae’s uncle Mo, c/o Red China.
You know Ireland is not part of the UK, right?
Sorry Anthony. I know how tiring moderating comments can be, especially on this subject with so many vociferous opinions flying around. I wasn’t trying to hijack the topic into one about chemtrails but I can see now how that could have easily happened, and so I apologise for my thoughtlessness. It won’t happen again. Best wishes, Ishtar PS. Now that I’ve seen your rules, I think I may institute some myself. 🙂 PPS Ishtar Babilu Dingir is my real name.
Finally, people are waking up from their novocaine daze. It took cold weather, a bad economy and the realization that punishing yourself with needlessly high energy prices was not a good idea, to turn this ship of fools around.
The article mentions “legally binding agreement” with whom? the EEC which could not run a 7 eleven. As a UK resident, living in plain view of the biggest European land wind farm, I can tell you that the Ministry of Energy is run by greenies with another agenda than the welfare of the populace of this Isle of ours. This winter will tell, see the numbers of aged people arriving in hospitals due to cold related problems, a national disgrace.
Reality. What a concept.
crosspatch says:
November 7, 2011 at 8:50 am
…….There is going to be a major change when the people of the western world wake up and realize they have been subject to the biggest fleecing ever in the history of Western civilization. They have been robbed.
____________________________________________
My hope is that people wake up before we find ourselves with a world government who controls every move we make. We are headed that way very rapidly through “Harmonization”
From Hauser Global Law School Program:
http://www.nyulawglobal.org/Globalex/Unification_Harmonization.htm
We in the USA have learned how dangerous it is to allow power to be come centralized far distant from home. The further the politician is from the people the more dangerous he becomes to the interest of the people he is SUPPOSED to represent.
I’ll really believe that sanity is prevailing if the BBC Panorama programme tonight lives up to its billing:
“What’s Fuelling Your Energy Bill?”
“Panorama investigates the inconvenient truth behind the UK’s rocketing energy bills – that government policy is stoking much of the rise. Your money is being staked in the country’s biggest energy gamble ever. As power stations are closed down, due to old age or high carbon emissions, 200 billion pounds are needed to keep the lights on. Fuel poverty now threatens one in four households yet the government remains committed to expensive alternatives like offshore wind and nuclear power: greener but, so far, dearer.”
The fact is the UK is broke and it looks like our politicians are realising that to continue to fund the Green gravy train will be economic (and, more importantly to them, political) suicide.
Meanwhile, the scientists defending the consensus are still quite unable to face reality. As I commented on ClimateAudit today:
I second the identification of “willful obtuseness” [Steve McIntyre’s words] on the part of climate consensus defenders. With respect to my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison, I found the Venus/Earth ratio of temperatures at equal pressures to be 1.176, which implies an incident power ratio of 1.91, just that provided by the ratio of the two planets’ distances from the Sun** (and thus proving there is no greenhouse effect, even for so large a CO2 increase as from 0.04% on Earth to 96.5% on Venus). Defenders of the consensus (most recently Vaughan Pratt on Climate Etc.) keep insisting that the true incident power ratio is about 1 or 1.1, evidently thinking this explains the 1.176 temperature ratio. They are not even acting like scientists in this, more like ecclesiastical authorities on the climate consensus. With respect to facing the obvious fact of the Venus/Earth temperature ratio, they are in my opinion insane (unable to face reality).
**That solar distance ratio squared gives the incident power ratio, 1.91, and the fourth-root of the latter gives the 1.176 temperature ratio.
Sooner or later, economic reality trumps political manipulation and propaganda.
The legacy of Al Gore, James Hansen, Michael Mann is going to be a very sad read in a few years.
I think that once governments can no longer rely on a decent cost-benefit analysis to underpin work to promote the idea of excessive man-made climate change, they will gradually drop it. Judith Curry has produced another nail in its coffin today on her blog, about two new papers which are being published alongside BEST, that are looking at the same data, but in a different way, and it all leads to a very interesting conclusion. She says:
Our two papers [1], hereafter LU, and [2], hereafter LL, were published almost simultaneous with the release of the BEST papers. The basic objective of all of these papers is the same – to document reliably the surface temperature of the Earth from the beginning of the 19th century until the present.
LU analyzes the period 2000 years before present (BP), whereas LL examines the 20th century only.
Conclusion:
LL demonstrates that the 20th century’s global warming was predominantly a natural 100-year fluctuation. The leftovers are caused by UHI, the warming effect by increasing station elevation, changes to the screens and their environments in the 1970s, variations in the sun’s magnetic field that could influence the amount of clouds, warming caused by increasing anthropogenic CO2, and further unknown effects. However, the station density over the Earth is strongly irregular, which makes any global record but also the results given by LL disputable. The SH stations of the GISS data pool show less warming (resp. stronger cooling) than the NH ones. Since the available stations worldwide are concentrated in the NH, the real mean of the 20th century warming could be even somewhat smaller than LL have evaluated. LU and LL compared with BEST reveal differences in the following items:
– the magnitude of the 20th century warming
– the 19th century cooling (not present in BEST)
– the exceptionally small standard deviation of BEST
[1] H.-J. Lüdecke, Long-Term Instrumental and Reconstructed Temperature Records Contradict Anthropogenic Global Warming, Energy & Environment, Vo. 22, No. 6 (2011),
[2] H.-J. Lüdecke, R. Link, and F.-K. Ewert, How Natural is the Recent Centennial Warming? An Analysis of 2249 Surface Temperature Records, International Journal of Modern Physics C, Vol. 22, No. 10 (2011),
[3] S. Lennartz and A. Bunde, Trend evaluation in Records with Long-term Memory, Application to Global Wariming, Geophys. Rev. Lett. 36, L16706, doi: 10.1029/2009GL039516 (2009)
[4] S. Lennartz, and A. Bunde, Distribution of natural trends in long-term correlated records: A scaling approach, Phys. Rev. E 84, 021129 (2011)
[5] T.J. Crowley et al., Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years, Science 289, 270 (2000), doi: 10.1126/science.289.5477.270
Prof. Dr. H.-J. Lüdecke
Dr. R. Link
Prof. Dr. F.-K. Ewert
You can read the whole of Judith’s blog post here: http://judithcurry.com/2011/11/07/two-new-papers-vs-best/
Eventually you are found out, and overrun by truth. Never fails.
I think someon above meant “Who is really pocketing your energy bills ?”.
I think the ‘back burner’ will be needed to keep the front room warm (if my calculations even moderately materialise).
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NV.htm
I think we have been predicting, this sort of collapsing, of the AGW industry, for some time now. Watch as sanity and prudence accelerates! It is ourselves that we MUST survive. GK
Climate Change Minister Greg Barker this morning told an audience of local councillors that it was “morally wrong” that the feed-in tariff scheme was offering such large returns when it is funded by a levy on everyone’s energy bills.
Taxpayers are on the hook for a rapidly-expanding overabundance of dubious green schemes in California. There are many different programs designed to get buy-in from those who otherwise would oppose green energy. Renewable Energy Credits, and Feed-In Tariffs will all raise energy bills for the vast majority citizens. Corporations will pass higher energy costs along to consumers, cut jobs, or leave the state. These programs induce public agencies and other entities to construct facilities that pencil out to profit after N years only if the programs remain in place. Without these payments, in most cases rate-payers will be left with a system that never pays for itself. Nobody talks about this issue. General Managers and engineers see only cool projects and the prospect of making some money. The public will be left having to pay for useless unprofitable systems.
Californians have paid a Public Goods Charge for electricity since , amounting to $1 billion per year for 14 years [1]. The legislature has attemptede to renew it, and may try again. A similar charge may be added to water. The PGC is used to fund energy research and renewables programs [2]. Much of the “research” is actually intended to either justify regulations (climate modeling) or test new methods of gaining further control (TOU metering and smartgrid). Time of Use metering will raise everyone’s rates, unless you prefer the graveyard shift. Smartgrid is an invasion of your home, and constitutes a new threat to business intellectual property security.
Supposedly, a great deal of progress has been made in building new renewable generation capacity. The State proudly announces about 1700 MW of capacity have been added since 2003, 64% in state. That is the equivalent of one or two large generation units, such as in a natural gas-fired plant. However, they provide nameplate capacity, and don’t factor in the 30% capacity factor. We get about 1/3 of the nameplate capacity. Also, they don’t consider the higher O&M costs. Salaries and benefits will be the biggest part of the budget, and these multiple small facilites needing constant attention will quickly exhaust the existing revenue stream. But the State assumes public agencies can always increase rates.
The State now claims we are close to achieving the Renewable Portfolio Standard goals [3]. The IOUs have reached about 17% of the RPS, with 33% being the goal for 2020. It’s hard to say how honest the number is. The State reported being at around 9% RPS in 2010. The good news is, the state doesn’t want to look bad, so they can fudge the numbers all they want to get to 33%. That will save the taxpayers money. However, the State seems to want to punish the IOUs who didn’t gleefully march forward to achieve the bright socially-responsible goals mandated. The Renewable Auction Mechanism will drive up energy bills because utilities will be forced to purchase renewables at any price. The State claims they are using a “market-based” mechanism; however, there is no limit to the cost of the power [4]. IOUs will be forced to purchase renewable power to achieve the mandated goals.
Until the people of California understand the impact of parasitic government, nothing will change. It appears the limits have finally been reached in the British Isles. California has farther to fall before changes will occur. After all, here, you can create your own reality. At least for a while.
1) http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-09-23/news/30192410_1_state-energy-program-new-energy-technology-legislative-session
2) http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/E8F14974-C95E-4B65-81A0-852D72E8A4FE/0/CPUC_Senate_PGCReauthorizationHearing_032911_RenewablesEE.ppt
3) http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/0F203FFD-6264-430D-8BBF-AEB8366943FA/0/PeeveyPresentationtoSenateEnergyAug162011.pdf
4) http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/Renewables/hot/Renewable+Auction+Mechanism.htm