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
[SNIP: If you don’t know the site rules, you can read them here. -REP]
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
Ishtar Babilu Dingir:
Thanks for the update on the Curry/BEST discombobulation. In boxing, it is referred to, as the “good old – one-two”. Welcome btw. GK
“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. ” WUWT? I thought we were sliding down the backslope of the oil and gas peak.
The British are an interesting lot. They have on the one hand the thickest-skulled, ideologue, anti-science institutions (UEA, BBC, The Guardian and the Royal Society are only four of scores and scores of academic and journalistic ‘consensus-nonsensus’ bodies ) and on the other hand, the most erudite champions of science, honesty, freedom and common sense (Viscount Monckton of Brenchley , Matt Ridley, noted bloggers (Bishop Hill) and others). In a few months they have gone from being the world’s leading climate crazies bent on self destruction to planning fossil fuel and nuclear energy as a way back to sanity. This bipolar shift will within a few months also hit Australia, which has been jealously trying to out Brit the British in this economic suicide pact. The rest of Europe, being more deeply mired in the socialist muck, will take longer to see any light but they will have to follow suit if they want to prevent revolution as the ordinary folk surpass their threshold of economic pain.
It was obvious a year ago that if the UK put its green taxes/subsidies on hold this would save abouy £18 billion per and if the country was to temporarily suspend foreign aid (which mainly lines the pockets of dictators and promotes fraud and corruption) that would save a further £12billion a year. The tital savings of £30 billion per year would largely fund the required austerity measures and any politician with an ounce of economic sense would have appreciated that temporarily holding back on those measures until the economy back on its feet would be one of the most sensible ways of tackling the economic problems. Not a total cure for the economic woes but the savings would go a long way to redressing matters. Tax cuts and a cut back in the size of the state and its medling would then promote some growth.
Given that it is obvious that for whatever reason global warming has temporarily stalled such that on any case there is additional time to address climate matters should it require addressing, it is crazy (perhapos incompetent) that the politicians have not sooner taken advantage of this hiatus and scaled back wasting needless finds on the green agenda.
Ishtar Babilu Dingir,
How refreshingly well mannered and polite you are Sir. I look forward to more of your well informed posts.
Regards.
Its so much like a replay of the King Knut (Canute) story.
For so long, fawning advisers (climate scientists) have played to their leaders (elected politicos) The politicians have been told that they have it in their power to control the tide (sea level), the temperature (keep it below 2’C rise), the number of bad storms there’ll be, the droughts etc etc etc.
Then, wWe all know the the climate scientists (are they still one of the Top Ten best paid professions in the US?) get lots of lovely (research) funding, endless new computer toys to play with and a continuous stream of new, far-flung and exotic places to go to for either ‘research’ or ‘conferences’ in return for their constant ego-stroking.
Is someone finally standing up in the role of Canute and call these people’s bluffs, is it the accountants who will call BS on the whole charade?
I could almost feel sorry for Mr Gore – he’s put absolutely everything (even his marriage) into his ‘crusade’ and it appears he actually does have the balls to call BS when he thinks he sees it.
Just a shame he picked the wrong ‘team’ at the start of the game.
Ho hum…
Gary Pearse says:
November 7, 2011 at 11:09 am
Gary,
I think the change of heart occurred when the good old British public, who tend towards indifference as a default setting, realised they were being asked to fund this nonsense through their energy bills. That led to a closer examination of the issue of CAGW and all of the inconsistencies we on this blog are all too aware of. Politicians now see green policies as an overall vote loser hence the drift away from eco-Huhnacy.
I wonder what effect this find had on their thinking-
“Back in August 2011, the experts at the The British Geological Survey team thought the country only had 150bn cubic meters of shale gas. Then on Sept 22 a group called Cuadrilla announced that they’d found the odd 5,660 bn cubic metres under Lancashire.”
That comes from Joanne Nova’s post on 22 Oct..
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/10/british-energy-landscape-shifted-a-month-ago-old-media-waking-up-now/
Alan the Brit says:
November 7, 2011 at 8:46 am
I’ll count my chickens later, common sense from a politician these days is rearer than hens teeth!!!
Count your chicken’s teeth first; These thieving politicos will take any thing they can.
One real test will be if the government throw Huhne to the sharks on the driving charges. Nice easy way to get rid of him from government and replace him with one of us. And long overdue too!
I am not a great believer in conspiracy theories.
In times of plenty I am perfectly happy to put my hand in my pocket and pay for an idle luxury.
When times are not so good, forget it.
I think it’s the same now in the UK, it’s not an anti-CAGW sentiment that has caused the rethink on green policy, its a pure lack of spare money.
It would be fantastic if it were otherwise, and the idiots actually realised the stupidity of what they have been pushing for the last x years.
Best news I’ve heard all day, and Ireland gets a mention – yessss!!!!
Is there an election due in UK soon?
LOL! Steve Jones, that’s the third time this week that my posts have been mistaken for those of a man! What is it I wonder… is it something about my delivery style? Or is that climate scientists are not so hot on ancient history? Ishtar was a Babylonian goddess at a time when global warming was a real problem for ancient Mesopotamia LOL!
G. Karst, thank you for your welcome and about the old one-two. What impresses me about Judith Curry is that she manages to deliver the old one-two with such aplomb and scholarly discretion that you’d never know that she was in an old one-two unless you understood the issues.
Its another sign that what ever the science the political will has gone out of AGW’s sails , and that from its proponents view is a far bigger threat for a great deal of their goals were political not science in nature and without view any drive from this direction they will be left drifting and heading to the rocks .
stanj says:
November 7, 2011 at 10:06 am
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?”
For the BBC it was very balanced – certainly not a “greenwash”
Duncan says:
November 7, 2011 at 12:44 pm
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
It is very strange that the crown prosecution service are taking so long to make up their mind on whether a prosecution should or should not take place.
As your next post shows, Oz has an insane urge to follow the UK wherever it goes, even into oblivion. They have agreed to the Carbon Tax in our deeply misled government. I can only hope that the UK’s actions will urge ministers here to at least reconsider….
The fate of green is inexorably bound up with the agonisingly slow yet inevitable demise of that other European folly, the single currency or Euro.
It was fascinating to watch the strutting popinjays from Brussells meet with their peers from the rest of the world at the G20 in Cannes only to be sent away with their begging bowls unfilled.
Now that they must try to save what they can of the preposterous Euro using their own resources, there will be nothing left over for Gaia.
To hell with green and to hell with the Euro, but who will save democracy from the ensuing chaos?
Now is the winter of our discontent and a glorious summer is but a distant dream.
Ishtar,
To quote Jack Nicholson (forget which film), “Don’t I feel like the ******* @sshole”.
Regards.
Memo to our American Friends: Republic of Ireland is not in the UK.
There was a program on the BBC tonight. An edition of Panorama, which used to be a sort of highbrow news analysis program back when the BBC was somehat independent. Called ‘The Great Energy Gamble’. Amazingly, it spelled out that current policies will lead to ever-increasing prices for (natural) gas and electricity.
An amazing admission from that organization. I expect to see much comment about it in the MSM and blogosphere tomorrow (Tue).
In that edition of Panorama, George Monbiot actually talked sense.
I wonder if he is ill?
The Irish Government is full of shit!
60 % of the cost of every tank of petrol or diesel goes straight to the government, then they landed a carbon tax on top of that, carbon tax on electricity to subsidise wind energy, giving money to big companies and nothing to ordinary people to install wind or solar p.v, disgraceful.
Even if they abandon climate change policy, will they eliminate the carbon tax + the duty on fuel? I seriously doubt it!
And then the cost of new small cars in Europe is gone crazy because of all the efforts to reduce Co2, and they wonder why car sales are low, and Nissan think we will pay 30,000 for a poxy 70-100 mile range car? The ones who could benifit the most from E.V’s are the ones who can’t afford them. They could run their cars for very little!
Europe has thousands of years worth of Thorium, l.f.t.r reactors are the way to go, electricity for cars, heating, and would save our land from turbines everywhere!
It was “A Few Good Men.”
Here, listen up.
http://www.wavlist.com/movies/084/afgm-feel.wav
The BBC programme actually pinned back Huhne (climate change minister) with some very direct questions challenging his assertion that energy bills would reduce because of his eco-policies. It went on to quote sources that showed that they might in fact triple. The sequence investigating offshore windfarms was on a calm day, showing them lazily turning over or stopped. Normally, wind turbine news reports depict them spinning round at high speed.
This was a departure from BBC norms on matters related to AGW. A year ago nothing like this would have happened, when a hatchet job on sceptics was all that we typically got.
Monday night on BBC had a one hour programme on whether we can expect snow this winter. It was fairly neutral regarding the influence of AGW and even criticised the Met Office at one point for its rash predictions of ‘barbecue’ summers.
Could this herald a sea change at BBC?
The time-integral of sunspot numbers, properly reduced by earth IR radiation by using conservation of energy, accurately (R2=0.88) correlates with average global temperatures since 1895 as shown in the pdf made public 3/10/11 at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true
The pdf made public 9/24/11 shows the equation that accurately predicted agt since 1990.
Change to the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide had no significant influence.
It seems to me without any facts at hand – so i could be wrong – that economies that don’t promote the agw agenda, like India and China are doing rather well, whilst continents that do, like Europe and America are facing decline and economic downturn
Updated: “Frack, baby, Frack!”
😉
Very interesting to hear the feedback on the BBC programme. Where I live in Spain, I cannot get BBC, nor will the BBC iplayer work. It does sound as if some measure of reality was put forward and if so then this is a departure from the usual BBC political mantra. I guess that they have little choice since if the UK is in for a couple of cold winters there will be people dying of fuel poverty and in the present economic situation more and more people will be complaining at high energy prices. Even the BBC would not be able to keep a lid on these types of stories which one can envisage will become more frequent. That being the case, perhaps the BBC has recognised the inevitable and is prepared to address the rising cost issue but I suspect that it will be quite sometime before the BBC goes as far as saying that the green agenda should be halted.
I never understood the “legally binding” part. To who? What is Britain going to pay and who are they going to pay it to if they miss their target? Half of the EU is in the toilet with a few on the verge of bankruptcy and they think they’re going to make them pay a few billion dollars/euros/pounds as a punishment for missing some arbitrary target? Is PT Barnum running this show?
“MattN says:
November 8, 2011 at 4:36 am
I never understood the “legally binding” part. To who? What is Britain going to pay and who are they going to pay it to if they miss their target? Half of the EU is in the toilet with a few on the verge of bankruptcy and they think they’re going to make them pay a few billion dollars/euros/pounds as a punishment for missing some arbitrary target? Is PT Barnum running this show?”
No, the EU is, through its laws (hence the legally binding bit), to which our deluded politicos still subscribe (big time). With luck it will all be over with pretty soon, when the whole shabby totalitarian edifice collapses under the weight of its own craziness.
“Very interesting to hear the feedback on the BBC programme. Where I live in Spain, I cannot get BBC, nor will the BBC iplayer work”
Richard, what you need is a proxy server. There are free, and paid for programs. The free ones are generally financed by advertising, and can be a pain. The paid-for programs are pretty trouble free. Your search bar is your friend.
Whilst the BBC programme on energy costs was substantially more balanced/realistic than recent efforts, it still repeated the mantra that our CO2 emissions actually matter as far as the climate is concerned. Until they drop this ridiculous position there is still much to be done as far as BBC bias is concerned.
And yes…George Moonbat came over as almost reasonable/sane.
Must be on new medication.