Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Telegraph, a major UK Newspaper, has investigated a scandalous waste of British taxpayer’s money on expensive renewables projects which deliver very little return for the money invested.
Hundreds of millions of British aid ‘wasted’ on overseas climate change projects
Robert Mendick, chief reporter
12 MARCH 2017 • 10:00PM
Serious questions are raised today over hundreds of millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money being ‘wasted’ on climate change projects such as an Ethiopian wind farm and Kenyan solar power plant.
A Telegraph investigation shows little benefit so far from a £2 billion foreign aid programme to tackle climate change that was established eight years ago.
One scheme, costing £260m of UK taxpayers’ money, has produced only enough renewable electricity to power the equivalent of just 100 British households – about the size of a typical street.
Projects including solar parks in Kenya and Mali, a rubbish-burning power plant in the Maldives and wind farmer project in Ethiopia are all earmarked for funding from the scheme.
The Telegraph investigation raises major concerns over the use of international aid money to fund complex renewable energy schemes in some of the world’s poorest countries.
It will also reignite the row over the Government’s commitment, championed by David Cameron, to ring fence the £12 billion annual foreign aid budget, which is fixed at 0.7 per cent of national income.
Critics have accused the Government of “scandalously wasting” taxpayers’ money on the schemes.
…
The Government defended the funds’ performance.
A spokesman said: “The Climate Investment Fund is helping provide the world’s poorest people with stronger defences to extreme weather which can cause life-threatening crises such as floods, droughts and famine.
…
Britain passed a law committing 0.7% of British GDP to foreign aid in 2015, but the scheme has been misconceived from the start. Instead of having to justify expenditure, British bureaucrats are now required by law to find ways to spend enormous sums of money. The inevitable outcome of this government idiocy has been a tremendous perverse incentive for inefficiency and corruption.
Since British conservatives are much greener than US counterparts, a significant slice of this budget is directed to green energy schemes in the third world, a string of white elephant projects across Africa, dumped in locations which neither need or want them.
It is good at least some of the British Press are finally taking notice of this scandalous waste of money.
Britain has huge domestic problems which could really use some of that wasted money.
The single payer British government healthcare system is so bad in places, Médecins du Monde, which normally offers free medical services in third world war zones and the like has opened clinics in Britain, to treat people who are not receiving proper care from government health outlets.
Waste and poor treatment of British war veterans is an ongoing scandal.
Pensioners and poor people shiver away in policy created fuel poverty, starving themselves to save enough money to pay exorbitant green energy inflated heating bills.
British Government debt is out of control.
Yet despite all this disastrous waste and suffering, the British government still find extra borrowed cash to splurge on worthless renewable schemes in other countries.
The sooner this sorry chapter of British government waste is brought to a close, the better.
One place off the radar is Timor Leste.
The average income is $1 a day.
The local hospital has shortages of drugs, as have local area medical centres.
‘Medical facilities in Timor-Leste are limited and evacuation, at significant expense, is often the only option in cases of serious illness or accident (including diving accidents). The cost of medical evacuation can reach into the tens of thousands of dollars depending on the circumstances. Generally all emergency cases are treated at Dili National Hospital, which only has limited facilities available. Dental facilities are extremely limited. A limited supply of basic medicines is available.
There is no hyperbaric (decompression) chamber in Timor-Leste. Travellers who plan to dive should ensure that they have a current medical clearance to do so and that their insurance covers such activities.
In the past, local authorities have advised that fish sold on the roadside has been contaminated with formaldehyde. Heed any local warnings on avoiding contaminated fish.’
http://smartraveller.gov.au/Countries/asia/south-east/Pages/timor_leste.aspx
This place is ripe for gas fired electricity generation.
The British may want to help these unfortunates.
A good local fishing industry and Technical College education to teach them off shore mining skills would be very useful.
They need Green initiatives like a hole in the head.
As one close to me used say ‘A little help is better than a deal of pity’.
My best friend years ago went to Malawi working as an engineer for CUSO. He would get simple but very effective wells dug and the village would get a man to charge a pittance for clean water. Money was for his salary, gas and maintenance of the small pump. Nobody paid of course and when the pump broke down the women would return to walking a great distance to get water from the river. He said that the village knew that someone from the agency would return sadly showing little gratitude for the endeavour.
He also got malaria and was flown to South Africa for treatment. His African friends said he was very lucky he was white since they would not have been so fortunate. He loves the people and is still there but also believes much of the aid is misguided.
Polski: And that is why in Ethiopia in our well program we installed simple hand pumps and trained WOMEN to operate and maintain them since they didn’t want to walk the many miles to other (often unsafe) water sources. They had motivation to keep the pumps working and keep spare parts on hand.
Where did they have a problem with arsenic in those types of Wells?
The income tax collected in the UK is about 158 billion pounds. link
The foreign aid budget is 12 billion pounds.
That means the bureaucrats get to waste about 8% of the money the government has to spend.
If you say that foreign aid is less than one percent of the national income, it sounds trifling. If you put it in terms of income tax paid, it’s a big chunk. It’s that much more annoying when you consider that foreign aid is largely counterproductive.
Its the Modern Way innit.
Shiny. New. Hi Tech.
Devils Avocado rant:-
Everyone says, technology will save us in the future, oil & gas drilling tech will find endless amounts of fuel and warmists tell us windmills, sunshine panels and batteries will save us.
And what happens to the technology.?
Hi tech stuff in Africa and the like is stolen and sold, basically for scrap and not least because it is hi tech, shiny and new.
And The Internet is such a fine thing?
How often do we hear on here “The internet never forgets”
Is that *really* such a good idea, to be forever vindictive, holding grudges and being unforgiving?
What else, do we learn now that ‘Social Media’ is actually causing & exacerbating social isolation (loneliness)
And what else. to supple endless spam, fake news, relentless advertising, p0rn & smut and the enablement of folks to escape reality via trash films & trash TV
The very fact that all these things happen tell us that someone somewhere is already in an alternate reality, that they think this is ‘good’
If anyone really wanted to help these foreign folks, they’d be sending some kit to grind up chunks off the nearest mountain (ideally a semi-extinct volcano) and spreading the product (rock dust) across patches of desert.
But of course, that is not shiny or new, it is dirty & old technology and everyone now is so well educated they know that CO2 fertilises deserts.
Plus, that the more money you spend, the greater your virtue signal. But no-one has the strength of character or ‘guts’ anyumore to even acknowledge the fact.
On the other hand, we’re living longer and healthier. I wouldn’t trade places with any of my ancestors.
Also, on the other hand, my son and his fiance can video chat for free for an hour every day when they’re on opposite sides of the globe.
People don’t need technology to waste their lives away. They’ve been doing it for thousands of years. Laozi said that only one in ten lived life fully.
Bye the way, Eric – do you come from a land down under
https://youtu.be/XfR9iY5y94s
Eric does come from a land down under – not the one I’m writing from, thank goodness – and like too many of his countrymen he has a loud, opinionated and repetitive voice. Regrettably, he’s given far too much space on this website. However, “Quot homines, tot sententiae; suo quoique mos.”
And if anyone can still be in any doubt about how hard it is going to be to slay this vast entrenched Green monster you only had to be listening to BBC radio 4 news this morning (the UK’s most serious and once wholly respected radio station with nationwide coverage) to hear some pollution activist actually say “…about the threat of all this Nitrogen in the air”. Unchallenged by the simpering presenter in anyway. I didn’t hear the whole piece and I’m sure they were talking about car exhausts, but it was those words that came over. Can we borrow president Trump after you’ve finished with him please.
They actually said that wild flowers were being harmed by sources of nitrogen, including from agriculture.
The idea that fertliser is bad for plants was certainly novel and so newsworthy.
Too much nitrogen can hurt plants. Since nitrogen is a trace element in the metabolism of plants high concentrations can over stimulate growth and even damage plants. Too much nitrogen in water can cause algae blooms that can damage other aquatic life. Unlike CO2: plants are mostly CO2 and water. Nitrogen is more problematic. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://water.usgs.gov/edu/nitrogen.html&ved=0ahUKEwjG-PzKtdPSAhVE6CYKHaGiBSIQFghQMAQ&usg=AFQjCNHntiUINnFN4WmpF5E7Fr7Kf4r7Xg&sig2=jHqq_z21LjT3n8YDMF3SXA
As with anything, it’s the dose that makes the poison.
Trace element?
No!
Nitrogen is a key requirement to plant growth.
Nitrogen is so common it is ubiquitous throughout nature, beginning with the atmosphere.
Farmers pay for any nitrogen they spread around or ammonia injected into the soils. Farmers hate wasting money or fertilizer.
Suburban households that ignore fertilizer container labels and instructions or those that pay for frequent lawn fertilizings’ are major sources for excess nitrogen and potassium that flush into drainages.
EPA tried for years, by claiming that farm wastes are major pollution sources, but were mostly unable to prove pervasive pollutions by farmers.
Instead population centers and their sewage are far greater problems.
From your USGS link:
And:
“Can we borrow president Trump after you’ve finished with him please.”
Yes, you can! There’s plenty of Trump to go around.
I think Trump is actually inspiring people in other countries to look at things a little differently and not be blinded by the false reality created by the left and the MSM (of all western nations). He’s emboldening a lot of people to say what they really think about things.
The Old Way isn’t working. Trump is the New Way, and a lot of people are starting to hear that message. And why not, Trump is succeeding. Success breeds success. Happily for us, the success is in the right direction, for the U.S. and the world. Trump may just pull us out of our tailspin.
No.
Should have said no because he will be very tired by the time we are finished with him.
Yeah, the next eight years will be trying and he’ll be 78 at that point. But look around, Europe does have some Trump like people, you just need to find them. Look to the business sector-preferably construction which apparently tends to breed up realists.
“About 98% of an organism’s mass is composed of just six elements: oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Approximately 14 other elements are consistently present in living things, but in smaller quantities. Some of these, such as iodine and copper, are known as trace elements because they are present in such minute amounts.” From an older biology text, don’t think it has changed. Water is a problem in excess, last time I checked nitrogen was a major element in plant fertilizers.
Our local government has been concerned about excess nitrogen that would produce noxious algal blooms. With encouragement from grants and bad science and little or ignored real science, they put in nearly a mile long oyster reef in order to sequester nitrogen. They got what appears to be a recurring several acre algal bloom. Reality eventually intrudes.
Can’t count, left out hydrogen.
The BBC’s own website for schools gives the proportions of the gases making up our atmosphere. Nitrogen is 78%, oxygen is 21%, the last 1% includes argon at 0.9% and carbon dioxide at about 0.037%.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/ocr_gateway_pre_2011/rocks_metals/6_clean_air1.shtml
“…about the threat of all this Nitrogen in the air” indeed!
I am in the UK and it doesn’t seem quite as bad as you make out. You can have trouble getting free health care and a free pension but only if you are in the country illegally or if you can’t help stabbing the people who are trying to help you.
There are a lot of doom and gloom predictions around at the moment from everyone who stands to lose money, grace and favour from the Brexit. We who voted for Brexit keep pointing out that most of our European neighbours have a lot more to lose than we do.
The National debt is probably down to one Gordon Brown who got a lot of hospitals built on a terribly expensive “buy now pay later scheme” back before 2008. Unusually for this day and age, the debt will probably be paid off. It is not too late if we can avoid more Gordon Browns.
Luckily his spendthrift leftwing Labour party have made themselves unelectable by replacing Gordon Brown with a weird Trotskyite throwback to the 1950’s called Jeremy Corbyn. Sadly Jeremy has a brother, Piers Corbyn, who appeared in The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary where he predicted the weather by counting sun spots.
Prime Minister Teresa May will have to do something truly stupid if she is not to stay in power for the foreseeable future, I wonder what it will be.
Do you mean that your leftist media isn’t out there making up scandals to bring her down like ours is trying to do for Trump?
The reality is that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which Mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is really zero. So the projects in question will have not effect on climate. Even if we could somehow stop the climate from changing, extreme weather events are part of the current climate and will continue unabated. So the projects in question will not in any way help anyone to avoid the ravages of extreme weather events. There are many good reasons to be conserving on the use of fossil fuels but climate change is not one of them.
“There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is really zero.”
That’s the heart of the matter. There is no indication that anything unusual is happening with Earth’s weather or climate, which means there is no evidence CO2 is having any effect on the weather or climate.
I disagree that these schemes are failures. They are performing exactly as intended and the bank accounts of those involved are now overflowing with the green stuff.
+1
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+3
It is depressing to see how the limited views of science-unqualified politicians continue to influence the world . In the UK, a majority of cabinet members `educated` at Oxford with the PPE (philosophy, politics and economics) degree, are blinded by green vision. They are captive to what Thomas Carlyle called the `collective wisdom of individual ignorance` his `unenlightened mob`.
“A Telegraph investigation shows little benefit so far from a £2 billion foreign aid programme to tackle climate change that was established eight years ago.”
That means £2 billion was wasted.
How much of that £2 billion could have done for food, water and sanitation for those areas?
Food, water, and sanitation would have saved and prolonged lives, which leads to more climate change.
How much of that was used to support UK green industry lobbyists with exports of what is already a policy distortion domestically?
But it is endorsed by big green so it must be good. Not.
OK, so they found a way to keep socialism going forever – tap into philanthropy, and you never run out of other people’s money.
1/2 sarc, 1/2 real
CAGW is characterized by people who are ” thieves of virtue ” .
The so-called “green revolution” did manage to shift and obfuscate the location of environmental disruption throughout the energy cycle during recovery, production, operation,and reclamation , so that there is both an imagined and real benefit, especially in high density population centers.
It is bad enough that so much money is being wasted on hopeless green energy – I can barely bring myself to call it renewables because the only renewable feature appears to be constantly increasing subsidies – but the worst aspect is the constant drip feed to young people that everything is getting worse, harmless substances, or harmless concentrations, warming etc etc are going to destroy the Earth, now or next week unless we embark on insane anti-science projects or accept ludicrous beliefs. In fact, as is constantly shown on WUWT, there are good reasons to be optimistic about our future; instead an incessant narrative of catastrophe pours relentlessly into people’s homes and consciousness from people who know or should know better. With notable exceptions politicians in the UK seem to be a part of the problem.
I really hope President Trump ditches the Paris accord, the reaction will be volcanic in Europe.
“…Projects including solar parks in Kenya and Mali, a rubbish-burning power plant in the Maldives and wind farmer project in Ethiopia are all earmarked for funding from the scheme…”
A “rubbish-burning power plant?” That’s green? Not in the US.
While burning U.S. trees in the UK power plants. That in turn is not permissible in the U.S. power market. The circle would be complete if they could subsidize some green export program from Kenya to dump on the U.S. and around we go again with other people’s money.
“While burning U.S. trees in the UK power plants.”
This epitomizes the CAGW craziness.
Peanuts. We wasted £3.5B in 2015 on ROCs alone, and climbing. 90% and 180% Renewable subsidies added to our bills by fraudulent DECC law to put straight in the pockets of their lobbyists – and help pay off Yeo, Deben, Hendry, Huhne and Davey, etc. in untroubling directorships. And the greatest deceit is that renewables make net CO2 emissions from the grid worse than spending the money on gas replacing coal on grid connected sites, and nuclear replacing both, no subsidy required for the most adequate, affordable, sustainable and fastest pathway to zero carbon.
It is well known that many people travel to the UK simply to be treated for free by the UK NHS. Britain does not have identity cards so it is very difficult for health providers to establish a persons right to free health care in the UK.
For the cost of airfare, people show at the hospital in the US to get treated as charity where care might not be available in the country of orgin. Women from South and Central America do that. They wait until it’s almost their due date, then show up. Some guy crossing the border in Arizona illegally, broke his leg running from the border patrol. The local clinic was required to treat him. From the cost of treating the illegals, the clinic went bankrupt.
How do you account for being being charitable, but not being the world’s hospital when they aren’t supporting It? Once upon a time, I had a horse. I went to many of the events and shows at people’s farms. They were mainly to raise money for hospitals. There is a plaque in Bryn Mar Hospital and a statue of a horse in the lobby. And that was only a small part, others donated money to build a room. Our hospitals didn’t build themselves. My costs go up because I have to pay for them and myself. If they don’t build the facilities in their own country, I think the country of orgin should remit health care costs to the provider.
The real story in Africa is…China.
For example:http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/chinas-investments-in-africa-whats-the-real-story/
Not weighed down by Western post-colonial guilt and dewy-eyed environmentalists, China will do more to develop Africa than all the Western hand wringing and UN bureaucrats. Of course it is done for Chinese self interest, and some people will call it a new colonialism. But there is nothing intrinsically wrong in doing something good for selfish reasons, and fortunately no one in China will listen to those people anyway.
The reason there’s a symbiotic relationship between the two countries is graft. It’s endemic with both cultures. Not saying it’s bad. It just is. Western culture looks upon graft as a crime while most of the remaining world regards it as the cost of doing business. Anything to pull Africa out of its’ death spiral is worthy in my opinion. My take is China is cultivating resources….mainly food and minerals… that it requires to grow and doesn’t want to rely on the vagaries of Western politics to ensure them.
@ATheoK
“Kit is ranting about straw men. Tune him out.
When they’re too busy to check sources and follow links, they’re not worth the time to read or listen.”
Did you check to see what I wrote? Or were you too busy? Could it be that MarkW’s comment had nothing to with what I wrote? If fact it was entirely on a different topic.
My comment was about making electricity. I went back and checked. I did not miss anything in the links. I stand by what I wrote.
Hundreds of millions?
Pikers.
Try tens of billions:
https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2015/12/02/ontario-consumers-likely-paying-billions-extra-for-hydro-one-decisions-auditor-general.html
The name of “The Conservative Party” is merely a historical accident. David Cameron and Tony Blair are very similar men with very similar rotten values based primarily on false guilt, and accompanied by a complete indifference to the welfare of ordinary British people, whom they regard as racist scum who deserve to suffer.
Btw, I know how these people think because like them I went to Oxford, and only a few years later. Back when I was an eighteen year old freshman I assumed that intelligent people had superior judgement. I know better now.