The Global Warming Policy Forum welcomes the decision by the new Government to abolish the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
Both the GWPF and its chairman, Lord Lawson, have been calling for this much-needed rationalisation for several years.
As the new government under Theresa May focuses on the much more important issues of economic growth, international competitiveness and leaving the European Union, the decision will provide vital savings. It is hoped that the abolition of DECC will also encourage a new emphasis on cost-effective policy-making.
“Moving energy policy to the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy should give ministers a fresh impetus to ensure that the costs for consumers and businesses are driven down, not pushed further up,” said GWPF director Dr Benny Peiser.
The newspaper The Independent” calls this a “…plain stupid’ and ‘deeply worrying’ move“, see below:
The decision to abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change has been variously condemned as “plain stupid”, “deeply worrying” and “terrible” by politicians, campaigners and experts.
One of Theresa May’s first acts as Prime Minister was to move responsibility for climate change to a new Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.
Only on Monday, Government advisers had warned of the need to take urgent action to prepare the UK for floods, droughts, heatwaves and food shortages caused by climate change.
The news came after the appointment of Andrea Leadsom – who revealed her first question to officials when she became Energy Minister last year was “Is climate change real? – was appointed as the new Environment Secretary.
And, after former Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd announced in November that Britain was going to “close coal” by 2025, Ms Leadsom later asked the coal industry to help define what this actually meant.
Former Labour leader Ed Miliband tweeted: “DECC abolition just plain stupid. Climate not even mentioned in new deptartment title. Matters because departments shape priorities, shape outcomes.”
Greenpeace said it was concerned that the new Government did not view climate change as a serious threat..
John Sauven, the campaign group’s executive director, said: “The voting record and affiliation with climate sceptics of key cabinet appointees are deeply worrying.
Full story here
No, what’s deeply worrying is that organization like Greenpeace have had so much power that they have effective infilitrated the government with activists. As far as I’m concerned, they have reaped the results of their years of overreaching alarmism, and the pushback we are seeing is the direct result of pushing too hard for things like the need to take urgent action when slow change would do. Perhaps if there had been some real investigative work done over Climategate, rather than the CYA whitewash job we saw from Muir Russell, DECC might not have got the total axe. Then of course, there is the added cost DECC was forced to reveal:
Closure of DECC is well deserved and well past due in my opinion.
How is the UEA budget holding up and the BBC? While the money changers continue to fume, it would be a great break out opportunity to lead on some small and medium sized reforms where the cackle for their budget exposes them each in turn.
Wrusssr – uh, that is – you go United Kingdom. The UK hasn’t broken up into Northern ireland, Wales Scotland and England yet.
But it is encouraging that CC has been folded into business. Also, whether Environment includes any kind of CC stuff or not, it is also encouraging that Andrea Leadsom holds the environment remit. Maybe dredgers will be allowed to dredge rivers, rather than being stymied by EU regulations – which of course worsened the floods last year when everyone “left” was whining about climate change as the cause.
Politicians only do sensible things when general living conditions get worrisome … and then not always.
Since a lot of international orgs are based in Paris, it would be a good time to start reviews of each and the dues paid to them (IEA, OECD, and many more)
hardly the hair-cut money
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/07/14/french-president-francois-hollande-spends-11k-month—-his-hair/87078010/
Yes, but it’s a declining (receding) resource.
Any organization funded by governments has to try and inflate their importance to try and stay off the chopping block. And private companies inflate the importance of their services to generate more sales. So for us to take the recommendations of the IPCC as an unbiased evaluation of the situation with global warming does not make sense. If the IPCC says the truth, that global warming is not a serious issue, that we can easily adapt to the small warming influence man has on the climate, then they are essentially saying “Cut my funding, you can better spend your money elsewhere”. So this move to abolish the DECC will scare the pants off the IPCC. Expect a press release from the IPCC soon with a new level of fear tactics invoked, trying save their own cushy jobs as rock star earth savers who are paid to solve a non-existent issue.
I remember one of C. Northcote Parkinson’s ” laws” is that the main purpose of any organization is to perpetuate itself (and expand if possible). And if it is large enough, the members are kept busy with meetings among themselves with no useful work will leave the group.
just following comments…
The 24th August will become Britain’s Independance Day. I was astounded to see, of all people, the President of the United States of America in Britain telling us that we need not be a free, independent, self governing, parliamentary democracy. And did so four and ten score years after the battle of Yorktown.
Eleven score and fifteen years? 2016 – 1781 = 235
Obama was just trying to give you the benefit of his huge intellect. He’s generous like that. It does seem to rub some people the wrong way. Perhaps it is the arrogance.
Yeah, they’re a bunch of mass murdering crooks who deserved to lose their jobs 1000 times over.
I am astonished at their inability to find the actual temperature records, and learn that the climate is very, very stable. But while they have the wrong problem, they do have the RIGHT SOLUTION. And that is more important.
Paris was voluntary, which blunted their usual anti-Life (anti-fossil fuel) garbage. But they ALSO decided to sequester the carbon into SOIL instead of other approaches to the increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. This, they can WIN at, and increase soil fertility, and in some local cases, improve climate (not annual temperatures, but rainfall and less variation–e.g. reducing 40-140 degrees F in a day to 60-90 degrees F in a day. Less extremes).
The world’s soils have been largely KILLED by chemistry-based agriculture, especially the poisons used. Yields are still high with artificial fertilizers, (and increased CO2 in the air), but the food is less nutritious than it used to be, and soils are eroding. There could come a major world-wide disaster from all this. There WILL come a disastrous famine unless we wake up in time and use restorative agricultural practices to heal the land. I think we will wake up in time.
Regenerative agriculture produces better, more nourishing food. It can enhance the ACTUAL economy and ACTUAL biosphere, as opposed to the horrible results of attacking fossils. Therefore, it is something we can all get behind.
And best of all, we can turn a bunch of mass murdering crooks into productive people enjoying real success when they try to make a difference. People are precious. Let’s work with these people.
Well you only need water and rocks, and energy to make food. That is how Mother Gaia does it, so we can just do that ourselves.
g
The important thing now is for governments to spend a little money on some efforts to explain the lousy science that predicated the anti-AGW efforts in the first place. The Greens will fight every step backward tooth and nail. If governments give an inch they will be run over completely in public opinion. Can’t let that happen at this critical juncture.
Ding! Dong! The Wicked Witch is DEAD!
The ‘Independent’ – A paper that has proceeded the Grun in giving up and becoming a ‘blog’. Nobody in Britain wants to buy their ‘brand’ anymore.
What more could we ask for …
Out of The EU
The Left stuck with bleating on FB about the ‘injustice’ of it all.
The wankerati blowing fuses left right and center
I’m a happy 3×2 tonight.
Could they maybe show us how to get rid of the Department of Education?
I see south Australia is having problems with not enough power being generated now that they have extensive wind farms and closed down a major coal fired plant , seems the extensive green element in this state have now put the state in jeapordy of massive power cuts .
Another failed green experiment state that now relies on fossil fuel generated power from another state .
Australia should do what we Brits do to meet our local energy production shortfall & import their gas & electricity from abroad ……….
Not only that, the 6 bihhest employers in manufacturing have told the government the cost of electricity will force them to leave the state.
Link to this story up page at July 14, 2016 at 4:08 pm
Well it’s getting late here in The UK … Party must finish, I need some sleep.
Out of The EU and no more DECC … Can we have our colonies back? (worth a try – I’m feeling lucky. Perhaps I should get on the first available flight to Vegas) :^}
Do not read too much into this yet. Whilst on the surface it appears good news it is more of a trimming of a bloated department. The responsibilities of DECC are being transferred and the offices are likely to be freed up for the new “Ministry for #Brexit”. As of right now nothing has changed regarding policy.
The department is being merged with the old Business Innovations and Skills department under Greg Clark who has been appointed secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy
He’s a bit of a warmist.
Responding to Clark's appointment, Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), called Greg Clark an “excellent appointment”.
We will see.
If Mrs. May really felt our pain and understood our struggle to meet our bills she could start with the low lying fruit that is the climate levies on our electric bills and the massive increase in grid costs as transmission line are upgraded to accommodate the occasional pulses of wind and solar power that are costing us all so dear.
She might even recognise that the whole thing is a regressive tax for the benefit of the greedy upper class toffs of the Cameron era.
Or perhaps her accession speech was just another load of bullshit from yet another cynical politician.
Plus ca change.
Craig,
You may be right about Greg but he is in exactly the same boat as Boris, David (Davies), Dr Fox and others.
Mrs May has recently adopted a phrase much used by Jean-Luc Picard – “Make it so!”.
To those who said we would be better off out of the EU (my self included) she has said “OK, the job’s yours, make it so! – but make jolly sure we are better off!”
To Greg she has said “OK, you say industry can thrive in a low carbon economy, make it so! – but make jolly sure industry thrives”.
No mercy will be shown to anyone who is long on talk and short on delivery; so watch out warmists.
It’s a good start.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change has been Brit-canned.
my twisted brain ….
Is there any hope of seeing Bryony Worthington locked up in the Tower of London?
Makes you think DECC is an acronym for “fifty lawyers wearing concrete overshoes at the bottom of the sea.”
Good move Mrs. May ! That one decision will save thousands of lives and begin to help restore common sense to environment and economic issues . Watch how fast other countries do the same . Long long overdue .
Protecting the environment doesn’t mean throwing your countries economy under the bus or killing people through abusive fuel poverty policies .
She has put the public interest first instead of ecovangilists dogma .
The BBC online actually gave the folding of the Department of Energy and Climate Change into
the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy a reasonably balanced report:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36788162
Even better would be if Bryony, suddenly overcome with gender confusion, had a sex change operation to become Bryan Worthington, who then fell madly in trans-hetero love with Naomi Oreskes, courted her and married her, and they both move to Tuvalu to document the sea level rise wiping out their new island home.
The Brits figured out the Socialist country killing agenda and gave it the boot….
Bravo!
I don’t know if Theresa May will be the next Margaret Thatcher,
but she is getting off to a Ronald Reagan start !!
Rocky days and treacherous knights lay ahead. Stay on course, T.
Mrs May is not Mrs Thatcher, she is Mrs May. Watch this space.
“Greenpeace said it was concerned that the new Government did not view climate change as a serious threat..”
Oh how I hope Greenpeace’s concerns turn out to be real.
Amen to that!
It’s a small step in the right direction. It was ever likely to start this way.
The expensive green vanity-projects will slowly be washed away by more pressing, real, problems that most people really care about. Reality will have its say eventually, but probably quite slowly.
Does the UK gov really have a May, Hammond and a Clark(e)? Or is this a new Top Gear? 😂
The fever is beginning to break. Hopefully the CAGW sickness will be cleared (by truth and a return to science by Science) before it kills the patient.
An observation:
All of us here in WUWT blogosphere contribute our individual uniqueness to the question of climate change and all the related topics that come along. In that sense we are a Borg-like collective, providing ideas and insights that one (or a few experts) alone might not have. Yet, we are not assimilated. We are free to quit. We are free to disagree ( and we often do, thanks AW for allowing it). We are free to walk away from GroupThink. The Alarmist and Climate Change religion-like adherents are not allowed to express disagreement. Much to their detriment. Itcauses them to be slow to adapt, slow to change, only after defeat, usually by nature herself.
My insights mostly come from my experiences as a trained scientist in human immunology. I see these scientific questions of Climate Change through the filters of my own training. I also have a BS in Civil Engineering, and some graduate level courses in EE signals communications theory and system controls. All of that helps me to parse through what seems relevant to me and to the questions, that usually generate more questions. For left and the CC believers, there are no questions beyond their settled science dogma. Only further refinements and adjustments of epicircle descriptions.
My point is I bring a diverse set of skills and thoughts to these postings. Many, many others of you do as well, each of you with your own set of skills, knowledge, and decades of training in the sciences, engineering disciplines, and in your practical work life. It is the strength of this WUWT blog of the diversity of its commenters that feed in ideas, insights and analyses; a strenght that confounds the Alarmists in their GroupThink.