Newsbytes from Dr. Benny Peiser of The GWPF
A couple of weeks ago the great global warming bandwagon coughed and spluttered to a halt in Doha, the latest stop on its never-ending world tour. The annual UN climate conference COP18 is no small affair. This is a bandwagon whose riders number in the thousands: motorcades of politicians, buses full of technocrats and policy wonks and jumbo-jets full of hippies travelling half way round the world, (ostensibly) to save the planet from the (allegedly) pressing problem of climate change — Andrew Montford, The Spectator 9 December 2012
At the end of another lavishly-funded U.N. conference that yielded no progress on curbing greenhouse emissions, many of those most concerned about climate change are close to despair. –Barbara Lewis and Alister Doyle, Reuters, 9 December 2012
The United Nations climate talks in Doha went a full extra 24 hours and ended without increased cuts in fossil fuel emissions and without financial commitments between 2013 and 2015. However, this is a “historic” agreement, insisted Qatar’s Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, the COP18 president. —Inter Press Service, 10 December 2012
The conference held in Qatar agreed to extend the emissions-limiting Kyoto Protocol, which would have run out within weeks. But Canada, Russia and Japan – where the protocol was signed 15 years ago – all abandoned the agreement. The United States never ratified it in the first place, and it excludes developing countries where emissions are growing most quickly. Delegates flew home from Doha without securing a single new pledge to cut pollution from a major emitter. –Barbara Lewis and Alister Doyle, Reuters, 9 December 2012
Climate negotiators at the most recent conference on global warming were unable to reduce expectations fast enough to match the collapse of their agenda. The only real winners here were the bureaucrats in the diplomacy industry for whom endless rounds of carbon spewing conferences with no agreement year after year mean jobs, jobs, jobs. The inexorable decline of the climate movement from its Pickett’s Charge at the Copenhagen summit continues. The global green lobby is more flummoxed than ever. These people and these methods couldn’t make a ham sandwich, much less save Planet Earth. –Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest, 9 December 2012
Britain faces even tougher green taxes if a climate change deal is signed in Doha that could force it to reduce emissions by another third. The country is signed up to a target to cut carbon emissions by 34 per cent by 2020, but this could go up to 42 per cent under a new United Nations deal. Experts last night warned that the new target could add hundreds of pounds to energy bills every year, and industry leaders said new carbon taxes would make British businesses less competitive. Benny Peiser, of Lord Lawson’s think tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the cost to industry would be passed on to consumers. “The more renewables you build, like wind, the more you need subsidies so it pushes energy bills up. If business has to pay higher bills the costs of products goes up.” –Louise Gray and Rowena Mason, The Daily Telegraph, 8 December 2012
The UN climate conferences have descended into ritual farce, as naked money-grabbing on behalf of poor countries contrasts with finagling impossible solutions to what is likely a much-exaggerated problem. One leading question is how dubious science, shoddy economics and tried-and-failed socialist policies have come to dominate the democratic process in so many countries for so long. The answer appears to be the skill with which a radical minority — centred in and promoted by the UN, and funded by national governments and, even more bizarrely, corporations — has skilfully manipulated the political process at every level. –Peter Foster, Financial Post, 7 December 2012
It’s green, it’s cheap and it’s plentiful! So why are opponents of shale gas making such a fuss? If it were not so serious there would be something ludicrous about the reaction of the green lobby to the discovery of big shale gas reserves in this country. Here we are in the fifth year of a downturn. We have pensioners battling fuel poverty. We have energy firms jacking up their prices. We have real worries about security of energy supply – a new building like the Shard needs four times as much juice as the entire town of Colchester. In their mad denunciations of fracking, the Greens and the eco-warriors betray the mindset of people who cannot bear a piece of unadulterated good news. –Boris Johnson, The Daily Telegraph, 10 December 2012
Warmist Zealots sang this song
Doo-ha Doo-ha
The Zealots list was 5 miles long
On the Doo-ha day.
Goin’a play all night!
Goin’a talk all day!
Were gonna bet our money on the carbon gag
But bets were off when lord M had his say
Mac the Knife says:
December 10, 2012 at 11:47 am
^^^^^^^^^^
Now that’s funny. Especially as in 2010 Su Wei accused the US of being ‘Zhubajie zhao jinzi, li wai bu shi ren’, meaning a pig preening itself in a mirror. Zhubajie, the half-man half-pig character from the classic novel Journey to the West, is feckless, gluttonous and idiotic. Just add a bit of bear (xióng) and a Nobel Prize…………
“many of those most concerned about climate change are close to despair. ”
If they despair, then only because their gravy train is grinding to a halt and they have no idea what con they can perpetrate next.
john robertson says:
December 10, 2012 at 12:46 pm
” Problem for the politicians who have been trying to force feed the CAGW dreck, are you stupid? Or evil?”
These days I’m convinced they are stupid AND evil.
so many carbon cowboys to arrest:
10 Dec: BUSTED: Police raid City office after we warn on the menace of investment scams for worthless carbon credits
By Tony Hetherington, Financial Mail On Sunday
They sound so ethically correct. They appear to offer a decent return on savings in these troubled times. Yet carbon credits are at the centre of increasingly adventurous scams.
And last Tuesday morning, police investigating a suspected fraud network of investment firms selling worthless carbon credits arrested ten men and a woman in co-ordinated raids on offices in the City of London, Essex and Hertfordshire.
The raids follow mounting official concern at the scale of carbon credit scams, where investors pay thousands of pounds for overpriced certificates that are said to be linked to environmentally friendly projects such as tree planting.
There is virtually no resale market for the certificates and investors typically lose every penny…
As police continued their enquiries at Hudson Forbes, one of the company’s bosses arrived, apparently late for work.
He was promptly arrested. Another late arrival said he had come for a job interview as a salesman. He left to look for work elsewhere. Hudson Forbes is linked to a number of other suspect investment firms. Police are known to be investigating CT Carbon, which Financial Mail warned against in August, and a firm of accountants connected to carbon credit companies and to an earlier land banking scam. Police declined to name those arrested for legal reasons, but said all had been released on bail while enquiries continue… http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2245046/Police-raid-City-office-Financial-Mail-warns-carbon-credits.html
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DirkH says:
December 10, 2012 at 1:54 pm
“many of those most concerned about climate change are close to despair. ”
If they despair, then only because their gravy train is grinding to a halt and they have no idea what con they can perpetrate next.
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I they might already be throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks. Didn’t Anthony post something about a show that aired about what would happen if the Earth stopped spinning?
Maybe they’ll a tax for walking east and a tax break for walking west. Think hamster wheel, Keep us little gerbils moving in the desired direction. 😎
Slightly o/t but would welcome input…
I checked out the website of the guy who did the cartoon (cos it’s Finnish and I have Finnish friends, etc). He’s obviously a warmist and links to a 350.org campaign that claims that fossil fuels get 6x the subsidy that “renewables” get. So I tried to follow this back to check out the data supporting the claim but it just petered out on another green campaigning site (and no comments section on either of course).
So – anyone know of how they came up with this claim and what the actual figures are??
Thanks in advance from somewhere in Blighty
PS: it was 0.6 C overnight last year and 2.3C this time last night – that’s 1.7C warming in a single year. Oh the horror 😉
the bbc needed someone to comment on the farce tonight so they went to th UEA. The lad sounded a bit desperate on the bbc tonight.
The edifice continues to crumble.
Mike Seward says:
December 10, 2012 at 1:26 pm
On the contrary–Doha just had major pollution cut from their city. The participants should take pride in the fact that actions speak louder than words.
What’s the next unfortunate location for this emitter of pollution?
DirkH says:
December 10, 2012 at 1:57 pm
john robertson says:
December 10, 2012 at 12:46 pm
” Problem for the politicians who have been trying to force feed the CAGW dreck, are you stupid? Or evil?”
These days I’m convinced they are stupid AND evil.
*
That’s good because their stupid side will trip up their evil side. We’re seeing the fall in motion – slow though it is.
It has become their whole life…the fact that CO2 greened the earth in the first place was always lost on them. The next bit is to witness how the politicians and the media get themselves out of this mess.
telegraph & christian science monitor turn doha failure into success:
10 Dec: UK Telegraph Editorial: Has Doha finally laid the ghosts of Copenhagen to rest?
In terms of fighting global warming right now, it is a failure. But by finally sorting out the Kyoto Protocol and moving towards a global deal where both rich and poor countries cut carbon, could the Doha Deal finally move the world towards the treaty first hoped for in Copenhagen?
Ok, it wasn’t the best place for the latest United Nations climate change conference.
Qatar has the largest carbon footprint her head of any country in the world, largely due to gas flaring, desalination plants and air conditioning…
In a shrewd move, Ban Ki Moon, UN secretary general, has promised a ‘leader’s summit’ on climate change in 2014 that will be an opportunity to push for action…
After a meeting in a city based on gas this year, the next meeting of the UN climate change talks will be in Warsaw, Poland, that relies largely on coal, and after that possibly Venezuela, one of the world’s biggest oil producers.
But the really key meeting in 2015, to finally move the world towards a low carbon economy, is expected to be in France.
The French have been supportive of a deal and civil society will be able to pile on the pressure in a country that allows free protest…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9735995/Has-Doha-finally-laid-the-ghosts-of-Copenhagen-to-rest.html
10 Dec: Christian Science Monitor Editorial: Why latest failure of global warming talks may be a success
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2012/1210/Why-latest-failure-of-global-warming-talks-may-be-a-success
Are there experts in international law in the EU countries and the 8 other countries that supported the amendments of the Kyoto Protocol specifically the extensions of the protocol to continue to continue as of January 1 2013. While the UNFCCC secretariat is mandated to work on the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol seven years ago, the results of those negotiations has to comply with Article 21 and 22 of the Kyoto Protocol itself. One of the requirements is to circulate six months before the meeting of the parties the text of the amendments for discussions. A visit to the Kyoto Protocol website on amendments will show that the last notice by any member country is on 2009. ( i hope readers will save that website) and nothing on the documents submitted to Doha. Second, the amendments will only take place when three fourths of the parties have deposited the concurrence to the amendments. Seems to be a necessary conditions as the negotiators will need concurrence from their government on the commitments made especially those commitments taken in the last minute. As the protocol is expiring on December 31, 2012, and if the extension is not valid how could you extend a protocol that is no longer in existence ? If the protocol is ratified not just an amendment will it trigger the two requirements for ratification which is 55 per cent of the signatory countries or members or members of the UN ( easily done as there are more than 110 developing countries waiting for the rain of money from EU and the 8 other developed countries) and the second requirement that among the countries in Annex I of the UNFCCC ratifying the treaty they must have an aggregate of 55 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions. ( a difficult conditions as the EU and 8 other industrialized countries have less than 30 per cent of the Annex I greenhouse gas emissions. In fact if Russia did not ratify the original Kyoto Protocol with the US , it would never have come into force as US and Russia accounts for almost 60 per cent of the GHG emissions from Annex I countries.) In fact, the amendment procedure of the Kyoto protocol under Article 21 and 22 could result to a funny situation if all the Annex one countries withdrew and all the developing countries agree to extend it. There could be a protocol to reduce the GHG but nobody will be doing any reduction. Any legal experts to make a detailed analysis on the validity of the amendment and the requirements for the amendments if they are valid to come into force ?
Guest says:
December 10, 2012 at 9:44 am
Seemingly not easily found by googling: List of the 194 countries attending and a list of the subset of 37 countries who signed on to the Kyoto extension… ??
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Best I can find is;;;;
The deal obliges 37 industrialized countries — the 27 members of the European Union, Australia, Switzerland, and eight other states — to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2020.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/12/09/276986/un-climate-confab-extends-kyoto-protocol/
What gets me is that these scenarios repeat themselves each year. Same result. Definition of insanity, isn’t it? Glad it’s over for another year. But they’ll be back.
the reuters article was a little dig!
As thousands of delegates checked out of their air-conditioned hotel rooms in Doha to board their jets for home
You can’t say they are not consistent:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2012/12/un-climate-change-projections-made-in-1990-coming-true.html
Time for the way-back machine again me thinks. anyone?
All,
RobW’s link above has a global warming poll. Let’s all go answer their poll so the don’t get the answer they want.
are you censoring comments here??? Or is it Word press doing that. let me know so I don’t visit here anymore. OK??? If its word press then you should know about it and go to a different website that does not censor truth or comments.
[Reply: Comments are not censored. Please re submit, and I will look for it and post it. Sorry your comment did not show up. WordPress is not perfect, but then no other platform is, either. — mod.]
[snip. Please read the site Policy. Chemtrails is a subject up with which we will not put. — mod.]
Silver Ralph says:
December 10, 2012 at 9:12 am
And that proposal for a 5.5 degree glideslope to reduce noise over London is pure madness – most dangerous thing I have heard in years. Flying is difficult enough, without placing ‘normal procedures’ on the limits of what the aircraft can do.
They’ve been doing them at London City for a while …
http://www.ead.eurocontrol.int/eadbasic/pamslight-F51BD0753A33F206AE6EB82577C92F80/7FE5QZZF3FXUS/EN/Charts/AD/AIRAC/EG_AD_2_EGLC_8-1_en_2011-11-17.pdf
Gareth says:
December 10, 2012 at 2:10 pm
Slightly o/t but would welcome input…”
Words are wonderful things – sometimes they mean only what the person using them intend for them to mean. “Subsidy” is one such word and until you and the other person agree on the meaning the conversation is bound to be confusing.
Say I want to buy a green car. In some places in the US I can get a Federal payback, cash from the State, perhaps a discount by the manufacturer, and some other perks (use of fast lanes on urban freeways). What part of this should be counted as a subsidy? If a company wants to build a wind tower it might get, say, a multiyear government enforced contract saying the electric utility has to buy the power at a price much higher than the regular rate. Users of electricity have to pay a higher price for the power they use but because of the way it is collected and paid to the wind turbine company some might not agree this is a subsidy.
In the USA, some expenses are “deductable” but others have to be “capitalized”, meaning the business expense is considered as long term and is depreciated over time. In some circumstances this processes can be accelerated. The purpose from the government’s point of view is to encourage investment, job creation, and efficiency. Some folks believe this sort of accounting is a “subsidy” in the same sense as a cash payment to buy a curly-tailed light bulb.
Green companies or those parts of larger corporations are quite small when compared to the international petroleum companies, large refineries, and related power corporations. Thus, the numbers are very large for very large corporations and much smaller for the tiny players. The issue ought to be based on cost per unit of power produced (or some such thing) and not on the raw size.
My comments are very general and maybe others will correct or add to the above. The 6x claim you cite and actual figures may need a lot of investigation before you can say what is really happening. Good luck.
Doha: Global warming is slowing down, says Met Office
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9708144/Doha-Global-warming-is-slowing-down-says-Met-Office.html
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Here are some posts from the past (on WUWT) wrt subsidies:
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HaroldW says:
June 22, 2010 at 10:33 am
there are some subsidies, but they are actually really small.
1: royalties paid to foreign countries and states are credited for tax purposes…. as it should be.
if you paid for raw material, it has be considered as expense.
2: research credit that is available to ALL INDUSTRIES is available to oil&gas. there is nothing special here.
3: govt pays poor people for heat. that is welfare. not a subsidy to oil&gas. That money can be used for electric heat, even if it is hydro electric or other “renewable” source.
4: investment credits available to everyone is available to oil&gas. where is the subsidy there?
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Luke says:
September 26, 2011 at 10:44 am
Most of those $4.0 billion in “subsidies” are not specific to the oil & gas industry. They break down as follows:
$1.7 billion in Domestic Manufacturing Credits: Applies to all production companies equally. A reward for creating/leaving the jobs in the US economy. You can argue whether or not they can move this production from the US, since the oil is located here, but it is clear that they can move the exploration equipment to anywhere in the world and ship the oil in. There is no requirement that oil used domestically must be produced in the US. So given that, what other industries should we strip this credit from?
$1.0 billion in % depletion allowance: Applies specifically to the oil and gas industry as a mechanism for capital recovery. It takes the place of depreciating the assets in the ground. Of course we don’t like to talk about the dark side of this one, which is when oil prices are lower for a sustained period of time, it acts like an anti-subsidy, so this one can cut both ways and at time has. Easy solution is to use capital base instead of income. Over the long haul though, I doubt this equals $1.0 billion a year. Just $1.0 billion a year in the current price environment.
$0.9 billion in foreign tax credit: This one again, applies equally to all. The dodgy part with this is classification of royalty payments as income taxes. Some foreign governments have converted royalty payments to income taxes, allowing for greater deductibility under US tax law. This, however, is not unique to the oil industry. So again, who else would you like to strip this one from?
$0.8 billion in intangible drilling costs: This one is specific to the oil and gas industry. This however is not a subsidy. Period. Exclamation Point! At best, this is a shifting of tax payments to later years. It allows the oil company to deduct their exploration expenses immediately. When this rule was enacted, it actually made sense because 90% of those expenses were written off in the first year anyway because of the abysmal hit rate for new wells, as opposed to the alternative which is adding it to the depreciation base for a new well. Now that the hit rate is much better, maybe it’s time to rethink the break, but it will not provide an $0.8 billion dollar annual windfall. It might provided a short term difference, but after 4-5 years under the new rules, you’d be pretty much back to the same annual number for “tax breaks” resulting from intangible drilling costs.
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Jeremy says:
September 26, 2011 at 12:00 pm
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is proposing to end what he says are $4 billion a year in tax subsidies to the biggest oil companies.”
Firstly, all Oil Companies pay taxes on earnings just like any corporation. According to data found in the Standard & Poor’s Compustat North American Database, the industry’s 2009 net income tax expenses — essentially their effective marginal income tax rate — averaged 41 percent, compared to 26 percent for the S&P Industrial companies. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) concludes that, as an additional part of their tax obligation, the major energy-producing companies paid or incurred over $280 billion of income tax expenses between 2006 and 2008.
http://dailycaller.com/2011/04/25/the-truth-about-americas-oil-gas-companies-part-i/ .
Secondly, according to the ONRR, annual revenues from federal onshore and offshore (OCS) mineral leases are one of the federal government’s largest sources of non-tax revenue. In 2010, Royalty Revenue amounted to around $8 Billion
http://www.onrr.gov/
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chris y says:
September 26, 2011 at 9:31 am
“U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is proposing to end what he says are $4 billion a year in tax subsidies to the biggest oil companies.”
That $4B amounts to 1.6 cents per gallon of gasoline.
Did Schumer also propose an end to Federal, state and local gasoline taxes to ‘even the playing field’?
Did Schumer also propose an equivalent tax on solar and wind energy to ‘even the playing field?’
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Catcracking says:
December 3, 2011 at 7:20 am
One favorites of Pelosi is the reduction in royalities that was set up during the Clinton Administration to give companies an incentive to drill in deep water offshore in the Gulf when oil prices were low. Royalities are still paid but circa 20 % less. It was a good business deal for both sides at the time and improved for the drillers as oil prices rose. So now many of the tax and spend crowd want to change the contract and threaten those who refuse to comply with blackballing them from biding on new leases. How else can they make renewable energy sources look competitive?
Another item frequently referenced is the accelerated write off of capital expenses to encourage investment and boost the economy that is offered to every other business.
A third item is the foreign tax credits offered to all companies that bring foreign earnings back to the US.
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Janice says:
December 3, 2011 at 7:36 am
There is a hidden subsidy for both solar and wind power, one that could easily be avoided, but never will be because it is not politically expedient. The subsidy is the amount of money it takes to remove solar and wind farms once the parent company abandons them. It usually winds up being public money that is used, since the parent companies usually go bankrupt and are dissolved. It could easily be avoided if the parent companies were forced to post a bond equal to the amount it would take to remove the equipment, and restore the area. And that is a subsidy which coal and oil do not enjoy, because they are forced to remediate their mining and drilling sites.
Roy UK says:
December 5, 2012 at 8:33 am
@Alexandre 7.47am
Statement before the Senate Finance Committee
Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure March 27, 2012
FY2010 Electricity Production Subsidies and Support per megawatt-hour
(year 2010 dollars)
Natural Gas, Petroleum Liquids 0.63
Coal (pulverized) 0.64
Hydroelectric 0.84
Biomass 2.00
Nuclear 3.10
Geothermal 12.50
Wind 52.48
Solar 968.00
So subsidies per MWh to Wind and Solar are 100 – 1500 times the cost of subsidies to the Big oil. You didn’t really think your question through did you?
Steve Keohane says:
December 5, 2012 at 8:38 am
Alexandre says:December 5, 2012 at 7:47 am
I’d like to know where the Heartland Institute stands in the issue of fossil fuel subsidies. You know, being non-Big Oil and all…
According to the link you provided $58B was paid globally in so called oil subsidies. In 2004, according to energy.gov, we in the USA used 140 billion gallons of gasoline, for which $70B in taxes at the pump was collected. And don’t for get the corporate tax on the wholesale sales, and the taxes paid by the oil employees to make the gasoline, etc. So where is the subsidy? Your so-called oil subsidies are smoke and mirrors, nothing more.