Saturday
Jun232012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Delingpole on the Daily Politics
Jun 23, 2012 Climate: Sceptics Climate: Surface Greens James Delingpole put in a very good performance on the Daily Politics yesterday (video from 30 mins). He was up against some green chappie, who I didn't recognise. Admirable support was provided by journalist Peter Hitchens, while another hack Mary Ann Seighart seemed slightly out of her depth.
Subjects covered included the contribution of environmentalism to the wellbeing of the planet, "green jobs", and temperature trends in the twenty-first century.
Reader Comments (111)
Jun 23, 2012 at 8:40 PM | BitBucket
Joking aside, where does this 'green jobs destroy other jobs' nonsense come from?
I think it involves a certain Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) and the wasting of resources which would be better spent elsewhere.
James
I agree with you about the lack of good communicators amongst the sceptics. My hero uncle Steve is not good, Richard Lindzen is not good, Monckton would be good if his bulbous eyes and facial mannerisms did not cause one to worry that he might pull out a machete at any moment and decapitate all those in range.
I thought the late Michael Chrichton would be good based on his writing style but he was rather boring I think you might struggle to beat Dellers.
2.2 jobs lost per green job sounds terrible, I'm shocked! How do they get this number? They divide the estimated cost of each green job created (€571k) by the "average capital per worker" (€259k), giving 2.2. That sounds so simple - all you have to do to create a job is to cut taxes by €259k. So that's about 4 jobs per million, 4000 jobs per billion. Economic policy is so easy these days...
Joking aside, where does this 'green jobs destroy other jobs' nonsense come from?
Answer - Common Sense
For those interested in the most basic physics of the CO2 GHE, in the late 1940s, Hoyt C. Hottell at MIT showed the emissivity/absorptivity of CO2 in 1 atm air levelled off at ~200 ppmV in an infinite optical path.
This was confirmed by Leckner in the 1970s and the data are the basis of metallurgical furnace design. So there can be no CO2-AGW. The explanation is the phenomenon of IR self-absorption and any good IR spectroscopist will confirm this from their knowledge of carbonyl groups!
Dung,
Lord Monktons bulging eyes are caused by a thyroid problem I believe and we can't all look like Brad Pitt!
I have posted a full transcript of the video here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20120623_jd
The programme will be available on iPlayer until Friday - I'd like to echo others who'd like this to be saved and posted on YouTube before it vanishes.
Roger
You misunderstand me, I like Monckton and he was the one who got me into this whole argument. I am not mocking him at all but I am saying that he looks strange and that some people are swayed by that (not me!)
Spartacus
That would explain all of the empirical evidence showing that CO2 is not "currently" warming the planet. For example in Nahle's experiment using balloons the CO2 in the atmosphere was at around 400 ppm and the CO2 balloon was 100% CO2 so neither warmed.
Do you have figures for the other GHGs?
Joking aside, where does this 'green jobs destroy other jobs' nonsense come from?
If wind turbines are so brilliant generating free electricity out of thin air
Why are we having to subsidise them or rather Cameron scrapping subsidising them
They obviously dont pay there way
They re cr. p
There re four things you can do with a normal power station you cant do with a Wind turbines
1 You can turn them on
2 You can turn them off
3 You can turn them up
4 You can turn them down
Wind Turbines dont reduce CO2 because you still have to have Fossil burning and nuclear power
Because of the last four facts
Give me a a four inch solar panel on the lid of my laptop that means i dont have to keep plugging it in
Give me a 6 foot square solar panel that will fit nicely on my roof that can drive my tumble dryer washing machine my oven hob my telly hifi and lighting with an 8 x 4x 4 inch Gravine 5 month battery life last through the winter that will fit in my cupbord under my fuse box
Give me a Ford or VW 5 door car 5 star ncap rating, sat nav ,100 mph top speed with air con with an 8 000 mile Gravine battery / fuel cell range about average mileage, Means i never have to stop at another petrol station except when i get a yearly service then i get a curtesy car
All that at equivalent prices with a few tax cuts
3 years interest free
low maintenace 20 year service and parts gaurantee
Then i might turn green
SandyS, wasting of resources which would be better spent elsewhere, yes indeed. But left's get it in perspective. Greenery plays only a small part. There are taxes and waste throughout the economy. Dissentients complain about a billion or two of waste on greenery, but there's a £100bn budget deficit and a £200bn of welfare spending. Next to that, greenery is insignificant.
And then there is oil at $100 a barrel and gas up however many percent, but that doesn't get a mention as "job destroying". Net oil imports were 80 million barrels in 2010 implying a cost at current prices of around $8bn. Gas imports are also huge. You might not consider all this a "waste of resources", but to me it is hard to see the difference. Building renewable capacity that helps to reduce this seems sensible to me. Nuclear does too, even though it would have to be subsidised. I agree that the way things are being done may not be optimal...
You need three, because after you use the second. And then four, and yet more. It's a long strange trip getting home sometimes.
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Jun 23, 2012 at 10:09 AM | Farmer Charlie : I have a HUUUUUUUUUge crush on Mary Anne Seighart - made worse when she inexplicably posed as a french maid!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17784489
I must get out more.
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Charlie, I find no assets of said maiden that would support such an assertion ... you do need to get out more :)
I thought the late Michael Chrichton would be good based on his writing style but he was rather boring I think you might struggle to beat Dellers.
Jun 23, 2012 at 9:41 PM | Unregistered CommenterDung
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Ross McKitrick is very telegenic and articulate, but he's not likely to be available very often. Pity.
Re Bitty's silly question, there are two reasons why 'green jobs' are economically destructive. One is the inefficient allocation of resources, as others have mentioned - and the fact that other inefficiencies exist doesn't justify deliberately making things worse. The other is that if they were just painting rocks,at least the rest of us would not be up for more than their salaries. But, they are involved with producing things (principally energy) which are mandated for us to consume, and which cost many multiples more than alternative products. This has negative effects throughout every sector of the economy.
Only in the mirror universe that is 'green economics' does making necessities more expensive provide benefits to society.
Add mine to the list of foreigners unable to watch this video. Why does the BBC deliberately restrict its content in this fashion? It is not only shortsighted and counterproductive, it's wrong, wrong I tell you!
johanna, best response to bitty yet, we seem to have lost our critical economic capabilities sometime in the latter part of the 20th century, when the Western Industrial civilisations ensured that there was no poverty to speak of, certainly no one dying of hunger, child mortality rates dropping, a car in every home, supermarkets etc. At that point a huge section of our population seems to have assumed that money grows on trees. (Naturally in my view, because life had become so easy for the vast majority). So we have complete and utter nutters suggesting that it will stimulate the green economy if we give rich bastards able to afford solar panels 4 times the going rate per Kwh for electricity they don't use. Bitty isn't alone in not understanding why this is daft, because as he rightly points out there is huge waste in government spending, and this leads along the logical path bitty has chosen which is to say, "There's already a lot of waste in government spending so wasting it on a good cause isn't doing any real damage".
Of course the people who pay for this are the poor, who can't afford the solar panels. "Not very much!" is the plaintive cry, but I'm betting the people saying that don't run out of money before pay day, and don't know anyone who runs out of money before pay day, but there's a lot of people out there who do, or come very close to doing.
Jun 24, 2012 at 12:14 AM | Alex Cull
Thanks for the transcript.
Looking good on telly is a priceless asset. People who’ve got it aren’t going to waste it taking up unpopular evidence-based positions like climate scepticism, since it would only make other people who look good criticise them, and who looks good being criticised?
“Ecofascist” is a bad description. So is “watermelon”. “Ignorant rectal orifices too lazy and intellectually challenged to form their own opinion based on the evidence” is the nearest I can get. It doesn’t trip easily off the tongue, so you might prefer “luvvy” or “Guardian reader”.
"It doesn’t trip easily off the tongue, so you might prefer “luvvy” or “Guardian reader”."
I read the Guardian, have done for over 40 years. But I must admit it's I read it less and less because it's moved from a "wet" liberal newspaper to a hard left newspaper that disdains the working classes.
Geronimo
I’ve read the Guardian for 40 years too. It’s moved from a wet liberal newspaper which occasionally took a decent moral stand on important issues to a wet liberal newspaper which censors the truth about the issue which it claims is the most important one facing mankind. (And what they threatened to do to Ben Goldberg with the door was most unsporting).
Jun 24, 2012 at 12:14 AM | Alex Cull
Alex, I don't know how you manage to be so prodigious in your transcriptions.
But I, for one, very much appreciate - and congratulate you on - your tireless efforts which, in this instance as in many others you've transcribed, go to show that your many thousand transcribed words are worth far more than moving pictures (particularly when such pictures are unavailable to those who do not reside in their country of origin)!
Hear hear to Hilary Ostrov’s thanks to Alex
Anyone’s free to give Alex a hand with transcribing when an interesting audio or video document comes up. Sometimes a choice quote from a document under discussion transforms a thread from a generalised rant to a focussed analysis of what people mean - always a positive move.Obviously, the Daily Politics doesn’t go deep - it’s a debate between opposing views after all - a very rare event with respect to climate change in the media. Note that Andrew Neil offers to continue the debate on the programme’s blog. It’s not the presence of Delingpole and Hitchens or the quality of their contribution which counts, I think, but the very fact of a debate taking place.
Hilary, Geoff - thanks! (blushing.)
Earlier Geronimo concluded that since Venus, high surface pressure, is far hotter than Mars, very low surface pressure, that pressure has something to do with temperature. He is correct!
The theory of GHG's has failed with recent temperatures slowly falling and CO2 levels rising, the global tropospheric hot spot not existing and radiation from earth remaining the same for the past 30 years instead of falling with increasing CO2 as the theory states. The theory also violates the laws of thermodynamics so cannot work.
Atmospheric pressure is the cause of surface temperature together with solar radiation. It is called adiabatic compressive heating and is evident with every revolution of a diesel engine, every star that starts its nuclear fusion, and works regardless of gas type. Jupiter, atmosphere of Hydrogen and Helium, emits far more heat than it receives from the sun due to this compressive heating.
This is not fantasy like the GHG theory but there in theory and fact.
Johanna and Geronimo, I do agree that the feed in tariff is not sensible. My last post is the best defence I can make (after a few hours of trying!). A simple carbon tax would be preferable. But I find it objectionable that dissentients focus on the tariffs as if they are uniquely bad, ignoring all the other taxes and distortions that they know have a supporting constituency.
The unwillingness of dissentients to address the "elephant in the room", namely the cost of fossil fuels and the effects of those costs on the economy, is surprising. Anything you have to say about effects on the economy is suspect if this main energy source is ignored.
BitBucket
Would you care to remind us again what the cost per kWh is of electricity from various sources?
Once you've done that, can you then estimate the cost to the economy generally of relying on a system of generation that only works one-quarter of the time and that unpredictably?
Then (for the hat trick) what is the net surplus cost to the economy of maintaining spinning reserve?
The first requisite for an energy supply is reliability and consistency. All else is secondary.
The cost of fossil fuel is what it is. We are not distorting it. Please don't tell me you are one of those who has fallen for the "end fossil fuel subsidy NOW" crap!!
Bitbucket
If you read all of the sections of BH you will see that energy is a big topic of discussion but remember that this blog is a blog about climate change. A blog about ALL the things we dont like about government wasting taxpayers money would likely overwhelm the internet!
The price of oil is coming down; in the last 3 months it has dropped from $125/barrel to $90/barrel and is likely to fall further. The price of Natural Gas is not rising and if this government got its finger out and exploited the humungous deposits of Shale Gas under our feet then the price will fall there too.
Mike, I did not mention subsidy. You are not distorting the cost of fossile fuels, you completely ignore them. They go on indefinitely and (most likely) upwards unless we change our source of energy. Building wind power costs, sure. But the wind is free and we build an industry that could be huge. If we don't the Germans surely will - look at their ambitions.
For heaven's sake, Bitbucket, wind energy is not free because you have to keep the rest of the grid going to maintain the supply. Some simple facts: 2 years' ago, my son's Aussie father-in-law retired after spending 29 years operating a 60 MW stream turbine generator. He told me of the problems they had when the local wind farm opened up. Above ~10% penetration, the steam turbines 'hunt' and fuel consumption rockets. This has been seen in 5 other grids. Including the CO2 cost of the windmills, CO2 increases above the level without the windmills.
You can improve matters using CCGTs and OCGTs but by about 15% wind energy you get the same problem. The Danes knew this in their coal grid by 2004 and to save ~5% CO2 compared with no windmills, dump half their wind energy to hydro.and buy it back on the spot market.
A month or so back, MacKay warned DECC that to save any CO2 we need artificial hydro, flood the lake District and he Sea Lochs.with massive dams the CO2 cost of which will probably take over a century to return, Wind energy is bloody expensive unless you have lots of natural hydro and we'll have to use our nuclear power to pump the dams at 30% efficiency loss to save any CO2 at all from the windmills.
There are better ways to save CO2.
At that point a huge section of our population seems to have assumed that money grows on trees. (Naturally in my view, because life had become so easy for the vast majority). (geronimo)
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You have it in one. In the public sector, the notion of cost/benefit analysis seems to be disappearing fast. The regulatory regime is based on the 'if it will save one life' principle, as though there are no associated costs. Politicians are now riding the tiger after feeding that beast.
The notion of opportunity cost, which I learned in high school, seems to have vanished from public discussion, except in its crudest form (why are we spending money on foreigners instead of looking after our own, etc). In economic terms, it is painful for old fashioned economists like me to read about how jobs that cost hundreds of thousands per head, or more, are the way forward.
Bitty, taxes on your loathed 'carbon' products massively outweigh any subsidies that you might care to mention - not that you've been able to identify any that are not available to other industries in Western countries. Typically, the tax arrangements for mining and resource industries reflect the very high upfront costs of exploration and development - but when there is a payoff, the government makes the Mafia extortionists look like amateurs. Check the tax component of your fuel and energy prices - bearing in mind that that producers also pay tax once they become profitable.
That is bad enough. Being screwed yet again for the same product at several times the price because some crusty dreadhead or mediocre academic or 'passionate environmentalist' thinks it will save the planet is the last bloody straw.
"...namely the cost of fossil fuels and the effects of those costs on the economy,..."
Heh. What do you mean 'the effects of the costs of fossil fuels on the economy'? Fossil fuels and their usage are the economy.
BitBucket
"And then there is oil at $100 a barrel and gas up however many percent, but that doesn't get a mention as "job destroying". Net oil imports were 80 million barrels in 2010 implying a cost at current prices of around $8bn. Gas imports are also huge. You might not consider all this a "waste of resources", but to me it is hard to see the difference. Building renewable capacity that helps to reduce this seems sensible to me. Nuclear does too, even though it would have to be subsidised. I agree that the way things are being done may not be optimal..."
Thing is as far as electricity generation is concerned not only are we paying these prices for traditional power generation; we're also paying for all so called renewables. Not one power station has been switched off as a direct result all the solar,wind and micro-hydro etc. etc.
Think of it this way, how many people would invest in rooftop solar panels if they had to keep buying the same amount of power as before the installation at an increased price? That's what you're asking the businesses of Britain to do.
On the cost of oil destroying jobs, I'm old enough to remember the affects of the oil embargo after the Yom Kippur war, the problems after the Suez Crisis. The only country which had a sensible policy on electricity generation were the French (now suffering renewable madness too) by going nuclear in the 70s.
Sandy Sinclair
Sandy, "Not one power station has been switched off..." - if you mean decommissioned, perhaps not, but for every kWh of renewable energy generated another kWh equivalent of gas etc is saved. Maybe there are effects on the grid when renewables make up a large proportion of supply, but I think the UK is a long way from that point. And the grid can be upgraded, although it may be a challenge - there is an interesting article in Technology Review on this - see http://tinyurl.com/de-energy
I don't think you're listening. The gas fired station is running continously to provide electricity the second the wind drops. The savings that are made by using wind power are marginal. To all intents and purposes wind power does not result in any savings for that reason.
(Certainly not CO2 savings which was the whole raison d'etre, wasn't it?)
And (experts may correct me) the only way you can avoid grid instability above about 15% is by repealing at least one law of physics.
"Jobs" are a cost of production.
Perhaps if certain persons stopped treating a cost as a benefit, they would end up talking less nonsense?
Jun 24, 2012 at 8:56 PM | BitBucket
No I meant switched off, they continue to run and consume resources. That, in my opinion, means they are still on. Decommissioning as a result of "renewables" is pie in the sky.
By the way currently, after all that investment, wind is supplying 5% of demand, it's enough to make a grown man cry.
Sandy Sinclair
Mike, "The gas fired station is running continously to provide electricity the second the wind drops." - that is tragic if true. Can you give me a reference to read up on that please.
On job losses as a result of renewables investment, interested readers might like to look at a comment by the US Renewable Energy Lab: http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy09osti/46261.pdf
Ah bitty, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory thinks that renewable energy is good for the economy and that the independent report produced in Spain is bunkum. Quelle surprise!
I doubt anyone knows what effect moving money from the market place to subsidise unwanted and unusable on a significant scale energy generation will have, but one can guess it's not going to be positive and taking the word of people who have a vested interest in promoting RE isn't, shall we say, very clever.
Since Spain is hanging on by its fingernails now we can say with a certain amount of certainty that whatever the green technology did, it did not kick start the Spanish economy.
Do you even know what 'spinning reserve' is? If so, you know what I'm saying is correct.
BitBucket Jun 25, 2012 at 12:31 AM
Mike, "The gas fired station is running continously to provide electricity the second the wind drops." - that is tragic if true. Can you give me a reference to read up on that please.
I don't know if you're still reading here but try these:
http://www.uwig.org/UWIGIntSummary.pdf
http://www.masterresource.org/2009/11/wind-integration-incremental-emissions-from-back-up-generation-cycling-part-i-a-framework-and-calculator/
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/08/does-wind-power-reduce-carbon-emissions/
Remember that you have to read things that don't agree with your beliefs with an open mind, then change it when convinced.
Last night wind was supplying 5% on demand currently it is 1% (just above hydro at 0.7%), where do you think the 4% shortfall has been made up from. Answer Gas and Coal mainly, do you seriously think these sources were turn back on at the flick of a switch?
Sandy Sinclair
Bitbucket seems to think that when the wind is pushing out more power the gas plants are switched off. Dream on!!
All gas/coal.nuclear plants are working all the time regardless of wind power produced because none of these plants can be switched on from zero in under about 12 hours. So they have to be kept at idle, running but not producing power, burning the fossil fuels that this stupid government wants us not to use.
This just shows how useless wind generation is.
John Marshall
I think BitBucket may have taken his/her ball and gone home, now that bigger boys have shown him/her that he/she has been so misled.
Sandy
Bitbucket 12.53 am: the report you quote was debunked almost immediately it came out.
All you have to do to prove the effect of misplaced investment in renewables is to look at current Spanish unemployment, 5.7 million with a smaller population than ours.
High power costs, high taxes and lack of labour flexibility have have destroyed jobs.
Lots of nice responses, along with predictable rudeness and misinformation from Mr Jackson. Thanks for the refs Sandy; interesting stuff (BTW where are the real-time demand figures you quote, 5%, 1% etc?). I found various others in addition to yours to add to my reading list - starting with a large summary by the Energy Research Council at http://tinyurl.com/csop7c
I can't claim to have digested all the conflicting reports yet, so maybe I should not comment further, but what the hell....
The suggestion that wind saves no CO2 implies that all electricity generated from wind is 'spilled' in order to keep all conventional turbines running at full power. If this isn't nonsense then I'm a three-eyed mongoose. Power demand varies continuously - are people saying that the only possible response to varying demand in a wind-less system is at the level of turning generators on or off?
As far as power costs are concerned, Spain's industrial energy costs are not so different from the UK's or Germany's (see the tables at http://www.energy.eu/). Spain may have problems but "High power costs" are not so obviously among them.
BitBucket
I use the GridCarbon app for android phones, which was mentioned here last year. It was designed to monitor CO2 output for electrical generation. I use it primarily to win arguments on days like today. The UK figure for gCO2/kWh normally lies between 400 and 600, currently 559.
The online resource of choice is http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm,
Both show wind as 50MW or 0.1% (no wind enthusiast ever guess that low even on a windless night in mid winter)
The wind speed forecast for London (source http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=wind;sess=) is
Today 5.1mph (hence nothing being generated)
Tomorrow 8.7mph (pretty much nothing tomorrow)
Wednesday 9.5 mph (not much more)
Thursday 12.9 mph (might go back to yesterdays 5%)
Friday 16mph (might go slightly higher)
So now Gas Generation facility will be anything but generating at maximum up to the weekend.
Shetland, one the windiest places in the UK is only 15mph and Orkney 10mph. The June average windspeed in Orkney is 13mph and sustained wind speeds have reached 62 mph, January it is 19 mph and January sustained wind speeds have reached 78 mph (bear this in mind when reading the next few paragraphs)
The quote below was taken from
RenewableUK is the trade and professional body for the UK wind and marine renewables industries. Formed in 1978, and with 653 corporate members, RenewableUK is the leading renewable energy trade association in the UK.
"Wind turbines start operating at wind speeds of 4 to 5 metres per second (around 10 miles an hour) and reach maximum power output at around 15 metres/second (around 33 miles per hour). At very high wind speeds, i.e. gale force winds, (25 metres/second, 50+ miles/hour) wind turbines shut down."
So for Orkney every month of the year has wind speeds too low and too high to generate electricity; unfortunately nobody knows (copyright Patrick Moore) when and if this will happen, and for how long.
Having read the information supplied here (Bishop Hill) only the most diehard supporter of wind power would not begin doubting the sanity (viability) of wind turbines.
Sandy Sinclair
Sandy, thanks for the links. "Having read the information supplied here..." - the trouble is there is a fair bit of misinformation here too (not from you) and sorting the two apart is not so easy.
I'm no wind-power zealot and I have in the past wondered to myself about the viability of wind. But when I hear emotive language from people like JD (windmills chopping up birds, etc) I know that I can't trust what he says. He may or may not lie directly but I know he will be bending the truth. Sorry, but that is true here too.
Windmills may be a challenge to integrate into the network, but look at how much Germany is investing in them and their plans. One thing is sure: betting against the Germans is not a winning strategy.
BitBucket
If you do a bit of research you might find that a large part of the EU is not happy with Germany's policy, but it's not an area I've researched. I have caused myself enough stress looking at our problems.
I did some research about a proposed windfarm of two generators near where I used to live (until a month ago). This was within Derby City boundaries, there had been limited research on avian activity (not counting migratory species such as geese, swallows and martins) but using the figures available and the swept area, and a hit rate of 5% of at risk birds I reckoned several dozen would be killed every year. Now these would include protected species. In my garden, again in Derby City limits I have seen raptors (kestrel and Pergrine) take small birds and summer evenings several bats would appear most nights. The wind farm was/is to be built next to a sewage works so I guess insect and other wildlife might be more numerous than elsewhere in Derby.
JD may well be using colourful language but in this debate that is not unusual, but the basic fact remains wind turbines kill birds and bats, which if you or I did in our gardens we'd be prosecuted and probably get Community Service as a result.
Sandy
BitBucket
I wasn't being rude. Just honest.
The primary characteristic of a troll is its attempts to derail a thread by having other contributors chase their tails looking for an endless series of references to data which are already common ground — like the need to maintain spinning reserve.
At least half-a-dozen people on here have answered your faux-naive questions and still you play the daft laddie.
You're a troll.