Bishop Hill Huhne's damaging legacy
May 22, 2011 Climate: Sceptics Climate: solar Energy With serious allegations about Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne's driving licence, the last thing our favourite politician needed was this:
Even if Chris Huhne does lose his job over allegedly persuading his ex-wife to take his penalty points for a speeding offence, he will have been in office long enough to leave a damaging legacy – last week’s Carbon Budget, which commits the UK to halving emissions of carbon dioxide by 2025.
Breezily insisting that this would set the country on a path towards ‘green growth’, Mr Huhne told the Commons that the cuts in emissions, which can be achieved only by a radical and hugely expensive reconstruction of the energy industry, would not only protect the climate, but ensure prosperity.
Others are less optimistic. According to Tata, the Indian multinational that owns the great steelworks at Newport and Port Talbot, Mr Huhne’s Budget is likely to drive much of British industry abroad – to countries including the United States, China, India, Japan and everywhere else in Europe, which have made no binding CO2 commitments, and where energy will thus remain much cheaper.
Read the whole thing (scroll down the page to find the top of the story). The article also looks at the Cambridge conference and Svensmark.
(H/T to lots of people for this one - and sorry I keep forgetting to hat-tip people. I've got one or two rather big things on at the moment. Getting snowed under.)
Reader Comments (41)
The problem with 'green growth' is that it tends to have a negative value. The only hint of anything approaching realism in Huhne's mad scheme is that there is at least a get-out clause in that it is supposedly going to be conditional on other EU countries being equally stupid.
H/T to matthu on this one
Credit where credit is due. Yes it was Huhne’s proposal but if reports are to be believed there were voices of reason and dissent within the Cabinet that were overruled by the PM.
So ultimately the responsibility lies with Cameron.
Yes, there is the get-out to which DaveS refers. And in my view, the chances of the other EU states being quite as daft as BuffHuhne and DaveBoy is negligible.
Does that mean we don't have to worry? Not at all.
As TATA's comments show, this will undoubtedly have a significant effect on investment decisions. And the "Fourth Carbon Budget" will absolutely unquestionably make any investment in the UK on large energy users, or in the coal industry (and potentially in gas and oil) almost impossible to obtain.
This is costing real jobs in real industry now.
Meanwhile the BigWind con men are making hay whilst the sun shines.
Green Sand (above) hits the nail on the head. The 'monkey' is already 'toast'. Time to concentrate on Samantha Sheffield (the wind-farmers daughter) and her husband the 'organ-grinder'. His insistence on the 'Greenest Government Ever' is at the root of all our impending problems.
Ironic that Tata should now realise how damaging it is to play at climate management by making drastic cuts in emissions, given that he funded Pachauri in the first place.
toad
So much
vestasvested interest cannot be a good thing for democracy ;-)The problem with wind turbines is that they are a triple whammy.
First they cost 4 or 5 times as much to build as conventional (say gas fired) stations.
Secondly the existing honest generators are levied and will have to pay hundreds of millions of pounds every year for decades to pay for the climate change levy and the feed in charges (all paid for by us when we buy our electricity).
Then thirdly you have to build all the gas fired power stations you would have needed if the wind turbines didn't exist anyway so they can act as back up when the wind does not blow.
It defies belief that so many in our government are sufficiently ill informed that they are happy to go along with all this. I agree that the responsibility for this lies particularly with Cameron who (unless he is a great deal more stupid than I think he is) appears to be prepared to let our industry do to hell in a handcart just so that he can hold together his precious coalition
Regarding Huhnes speeding ticket - it seems that he merely employed a cleaver way to handle a problem - hide the assign, if you will. I imagine that Huhne will now announce that he is commissioning an independent inquiry panel to investigate the charges. Then, he'll actually commission two panels (after all, two panels are better that one). One panel will be given a mandate to examine whether he was legally married at the time. The other panel will be asked to look into whether he was the owner of the car. Each panel will then dutifully report that none of the allegations has any merit and each panel will decry the internet culture that leads to such specious claims. Never mind that these were not the actual charges that were made. Huhne will state that no less than two independent panels have cleared him of all charges. Case closed. A blinder played.
“Ironic that Tata should now realise how damaging it is to play at climate management by making drastic cuts in emissions, given that he funded Pachauri in the first place.
May 22, 2011 at 10:28 PM | David S“
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Suppose you had bought a source of engineering and technological knowledge.
Unfortunately, it came with an expensive production operation. Your intent is to move that production to a cheaper place. But you can’t just shut the existing operation down, the outcry would be damaging to you. What you need is no ensure that the existing operation becomes, and becomes very obviously, unviable. What would be a good way of ensuring that outcome?
No, I don't wear a tin-foil hat, but Tata did not become the size it has by the owner being dumb.
Totally, unrelated...is there a way to subscribe to this site via e-mail instead of RSS, the way Wordpress allows?
Green jobs, green investment = robbing the taxpayer, no ifs or buts - if it wasn't for the taxpayer's $, there would be no green 'investments'.
See Deutsche Bank - how they go 'all a tremble' at Green 'investments' - hence they are amongst the biggest shrillest AGW advocates on the planet - not far behind Dave's green goddess [she who wears the trousers chez Camland] and Chris; "who's for the points tonight dahling?" Huhne/DECC/the most stupid government on the planet - aka HMG Britain.
The woeful innumeracy of the majority of our elected representatives is shameful, couple that to their ignorance and a propensity to jump aboard any passing hobby horse without giving it a once-over and it's truly a recipe for ruin.
I recall a science questionnaire sent to all MPs - in the late 80's IIRC, multiple choice, one question was the boiling point of water and the choices went something like 212°C, 100°F, 100°C and 373K. Depressingly, I recall 90%+ of the honorable members got it wrong.
I see no evidence that the "clever" Mr Huhne is interested in much beyond personal "advancement" and I see much evidence that he judges issues simply on their likelihood of being a foothold up the greasy pole. Unprincipled, ghastly incompetent berk - I hope he comes a real cropper.
@Athelstan
"Dave's green goddess [she who wears the trousers chez Camland]"
I understand that she's a very highly paid handbag designer...
It's been very quiet on the subject of Dave's Notting Hill house windmill - anybody know if it's still there?
Sorry, but I cannot subscribe to the theory that our political elite are stupid or innumerate. They know the issue and understand the consequences of their actions, they are culpable and will be held accountable. Not that this will be much consolation after the fact.
With heavy industries negotiating secret deals to mitigate Hune's disastrous taxes, where else is the burden to fall? Not the domestic consumer, shuereley ...... ?
The Era Of Constant Electricity At Home Is Ending, and I should know.
@Geo
I have met and dealt with folk from the local council to the HoL and would say that functional innumeracy is endemic. A browse of Hansard will reveal numerous (and woeful) failed attempts at arithmetic - I've simply lost count of the number of times a government minister hasn't done the number of people affected vs. the amount sum... before they read their prepared speech - Dawn Primarollo in the last government f'rinstance....
As to stupidity, it's related to ignorance but the two are indistinguishable to an observer if an error isn't corrected - and let's face it, you can't deny the number of errors....
As has been noted in comments here, Huhne was "briefed" early in his tenure by David Mackay and showed little sign of enlightenment when braying to his eco-acolytes.
Thankfully, there are a quite a lot of exceptions to my rule but I feel safe in the assertion that the majority of the mandarinate and the elected representative bodies can't count (or aren't interested in counting anything much as long as lunch is paid for) and we suffer the consequences of their self obsessed ignorance.
"John Mitchell, principal research fellow at the Met Office.
‘People underestimate the power of models. Observational evidence is not very useful,’ he said. ‘Our approach is not entirely empirical.’"
Read it and weep.
If Huhne goes who will take over his legacy?
The appointment will be the indication as to how long this fallacy will last.
@Lord Beaverbrook
I thought I read somewhere that it would be Charles Hendry, current Minister of State for Energy.
Here is a speech he made on CO2 Capture.
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/chsp_ccs/chsp_ccs.aspx
May 23, 2011 at 8:32 AM | Lord Beaverbrook
It does not matter who wears the crown of "Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change", he or she has to obey the law of the land, namely "Climate Change Act 2008".
This madness will continue until CCA 2008 is repealed, and it is unlikely that this will happen until such time as it will make no difference, i.e. when economic activity in the UK has been reduced to taking in each other's laundry and going down to the river bank and bashing the rags against a stone.
Trebles all round!
When I arrived in the UK almost a decade ago and eagerly began observing the political scene, I was staggered to discover that most politicians here are only semi-numerate and almost all of them, with a couple of notable exceptions, are also totally ignorant of any form of science. And economics, and the Humanities. Even honesty and humility, which are the products of a sound upbringing rather than an expensive education, seem to be in almost desperately short supply..
Sadly, Westminster democracy is now little more than a very impressive annexe to some very splendid gravy trains. Perhaps, as a wide-eyed Colonial who was once very proud of being British until a rapacious Whitehall dumped many former colonies during the 1960s to get into bed with a European tart, I expected too much.
Perhaps it was ever thus.
What happens to a country with a very modern energy policy can be seen today in Spain. For every green job created they lost 2.3 other jobs, and their finances got busted. Seems the people do not like it.
Last week in the Swiss county of Bern they voted about an energy law which included new electricity taxes (against a proposal by some people which did not). The governement and the "Great Council", being the representatives of the people, lost, 30% Yes to 70% No.
I'm confident that our EU partners will agree to equally challenging emissions targets without the slightest intention of achieving them. This is the EU way, as exemplified by the current debt crisis.
Your Grace
"Getting snowed under."
Doesn't that prove there's Global Warming?
DP
When ...
The North wind doth blow and we shall have snow,
And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?
He'll sit in a barn and keep himself warm
and hide his head under his wing, poor thing.
And when it does't blow, what shall we do then?
‘green growth’
Politically, that's an oxymoron.
Functionally innumerate is highly likely among MPs who took a GCSE rather than an O-Level.
I have been trying to recruit graduates for positions which require the use of Excel in ways that entail a bit of numeracy. I've interviewed about 20 in the last few months. One of my interview questions is "are you numerate?" and when they claim they are I ask them what is the square root of 256.
I can report than 0% of recent non-maths graduates can answer this question, including those with an A Level in maths.
Maybe, I thought, they get it wrong because it's not an obvious number. So I have tried making the question easier by changing it to 121. What's the square root of 121? If they can do their eleven times table they can surely answer this question. But no. 100% of graduates do not know what the square root of 121 is either. Since I presume they can do their eleven times table I tend to assuem this means they don't know what a square root is.
I asked a candidate with Double Maths A Level what the area under a curve integrated to, and she had no idea. She didn't know what a standard deviation was, nor for that matter what 0.5% of 250 was.
It's enough to make you weep, and I really don't know how people can survive when so poorly educated. They're not thick, they just haven't got a bloody clue.
Commercial on telly last night by EDF - trumpeting the fact that they are using 'green' power for the Olympics.
Oh, well - won't be able to watch it on telly, then - better peep over the fence - presumably the electronic timekeeping will be replaced with men with stopwatches, etc, etc....
Front page of The Sunday Times yesterday - Chris Huhne thinks he 'might' have been driving the car...
Oh - that the rest of us could be blessed with such selective hindsight on the rare occasions when we get into trouble...
Justice4Rinka
It's enough to make you weep, and I really don't know how people can survive when so poorly educated. They're not thick, they just haven't got a bloody clue.
My younger sister, who still teaches "advance mathematics" in a private high school has stories that would curl your hair (if you have any left!). She blames all the neat electronics they were raised with. Most can't even add without a calculator.
David
You have to be very certain of your facts when you have 'selective memory' since it is easy to overlook something that may lead to a trail back to you. For example, his passport may have been scanned (which would confirm whether he was travelling on that date) and when you are on 'expenses' you tend to pay by card not cash. An airport drink, in flight purchase, car parking fee etc may leave a trail. There may be airline passenger inventory, mobile phone records showing usage (and roaming/no roaming surcharges etc). The police have confirmed that they have found some papers and surely at the very least this will contain details of the car registration. Is it a 2 car family? Is this his car etc?
If he has something to hide, selective memory syndrome is unlikely to assist him and is likely to do more damage in the long run.
Perjury is potentially serious. Both Archer and Aitkin went to prison over perjury and a similar fate may lie in stall for Huhne.
Messenger, Bronedoff: from Charles Hendrys website.
'One of the major issues that will affect us over the next few decades will encompass decisions being made now on how much - and what type of – energy we need. In the next ten years, nearly a third of Britain’s electricity generating plants are due to go offline. This means we need to make choices now and we need to get the balance right.
I believe that we should strive for the most amount of clean energy we can possibly produce however current technological constraints mean that we are nowhere near being able to generate more than a fifth of our energy needs from such sources. As a result we need to consider how best to use current sources in as green a fashion as possible.
Nuclear, as we know, gives off few C02 emissions but is nonetheless very controversial as well as expensive. There are currently planning barriers in the way of developing new nuclear power stations and we propose to level the playing field so that nuclear technology may be cultivated free of hurdles but without subsidy. If companies feel they can do this without government funding, I think they should be free to do so.
Gas is due to become a very large portion of our energy sources just as North Sea stores are starting to fall. As a consequence, we need to consider very carefully upon whom we will be dependent for our fuel sources in the future. We should certainly not rely upon unstable and volatile regions for our energy needs and as such we must deliberate cautiously over whether further gas powered plant expansion is desirable.
Coal, while plentiful in the UK is, in its current form, unacceptable as a future source of the majority of our energy requirements. Recent tests have however shown that ‘carbon capture and storage’, through which the emissions are captured and stored where gas and coal have been removed from the ground. It remains to be seen whether this is a cost effective way of tackling carbon emissions.
All this shows how complex the task of deciding our future energy requirements is. I will strive, as Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change, to come up with the best policies for the UK and its future security.'
Step in the right direction?
Appologies Brownedoff, really should take more time.
M'lord B
No step at all IMHO;
"I believe that we should strive for the most amount of clean energy we can possibly produce..."
" Nuclear, as we know, gives off few C02 emissions but is nonetheless very controversial..."
Why not juxtapose;
I believe that we should strive for the most amount of nuclear energy we can possibly produce...
Clean, as we know, gives off few C02 emissions but is nonetheless very controversial...
He sounds all very reasonable but underneath, its the same-old same-old.
Richard Verney says "car parking fee etc may leave a trail".
That's assuming that he was driving the car that left the car park. It's possible that his better half got a taxi to Stanstead to collect him and the car.
Just circumstantial, see?
This Huhne related item seems to have been released without fanfare last week. I wonder why.
Oh wait a minute, he might be getting his collar felt, so something this important has to take second or third place in his list of priorities!
18 May 2011 - Chief Nuclear Inspector publishes interim 'lessons learnt' report
Here is the full 122 page report:
http://tinyurl.com/44ort2s
DECC summary paragraph:
"An interim assessment of the implications of the nuclear crisis in Japan concludes there is no need to curtail the operations of nuclear plants in the UK but lessons should be learnt.."
Then here comes Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change:
"Safety is and will continue to be the number one priority. I am pleased that today’s report confirms that the UK’s current safety arrangements are working.”
Good.
As I predicted under the Bishop's blog item "Exit stage left, Huhne...? dated May 3, 2011:-
May 4, 2011 at 3:22 PM | Brownedoff
.....
"We should therefore wait for the preliminary report, due during May, when I expect that the Chief Nuclear Inspector well inform Huhne that the UK nuclear fleet is under constant surveillance by his inspectors and everything is satisfactory."
.............................
Trebles all round.
It's worth recognizing that the electricity supply industry only outputs a third of UK CO2 emissions, so even if this industry became 100 emission free in 14 years, it would still not be enough on its own.
Transport is another 20% and is presumably not going to change significantly. The 30% which is emitted by business and residential for heating may be reducible, if micro-generation was a realistic proposition. That leaves waste management, agriculture and industrial processes that emit 15% between them.
The only way this could be done in 14 years is to import from France.
Mr Potarto
It's worth extending your analysis.
According to the CDIAC figures (as used by the UN), the UK emits 1.84% of annual global total CO2 emissions.
Various arguments that this omits 'exported emissions' suggest a higher actual figure - perhaps ~3%.
It makes no difference. If actual climate change is what we are concerned about, then in the face of emissions increases from China, India, Brazil etc, even if the UK were to reduce its emissions to zero, there would be no effect on future climate.
This is why, when pushed, activists start to waffle about 'moral leadership', which is of precisely no value if nobody (eg China, India, Brazil) is going to pay the slightest attention.
@May 23, 2011 at 4:17 PM | Lord Beaverbrook
Hendry is the Minister for Energy in DECC, just as Greg Barker heads up Climate Change.
I would be disappointed if virtually every commenter on Bishophill (with the exception of ZedDeadHead)could not come up with a potted survey of the energy situation, of similar length, but showing at least a little evidence that the writer had some grasp of what was going on.
Hendry's blog posting is absolutely pathetic. Presumably written by some spotty "research assistant." He deserves to be kicked out of office.