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Oct242013
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Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Thursday open thread
Oct 24, 2013 Climate: Cuttings 
In my absence, here is an open thread for any climate and energy news today.
Oct 24, 2013 Climate: Cuttings 
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Oct 24, 2013 Climate: Cuttings
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Reader Comments (100)
@ Fragpig
Don't forget that's a direct list of levies.
Just as influential will be the reduction in coal power generation, leading to greater demand from fewer power stations. That has an upward-only impact on gas prices and sends completely the wrong message to the market. (namely, we're bent over with our trousers around our ankles...)
Dolphinlegs,
yes on my cursory glance I wondered what was in the rather large looking "Network costs".
Presume it's like the opposite of the Beeching Report which closed down all the small inefficient railway lines; now we're building loads of expensive connections to small isolated windfarms? Very disingenuous if substantial green costs are hidden in there. Would be nice to know the split.
I remember seeing some BBC programme about great engineering achievements with the Hoover dam and the like, all impressive stuff. Then at the end they tacked on an offshore windfarm spreading into the distance with the presenter marvelling at this 21C phenomenon.
My first thought was hang on, all those others are examples of enormous economies of scale whereas this wind farm (which IIRC wasn't even spinning when the programme was filmed) is an example of a diseconomy of scale - a small power station could churn out as much as this lot much more reliably. That aspect wasn't mentioned of course.
Why can't we just be honest about all the costs?
@EForster Did you ask any questinons ?
- So the meeting was a greenwash... what a surprise ! I think orgs take on board that they need to be green, so push stuff like recycling and then go native & step over the line into taking everything green at face value ..moving into green evangelism.
- Maybe As you said once they bring the FOE guy to advise on recycling then he is able to push all the greendream dogma & they just lap it up.
- Like when I was at the British Science Festival there wer a few time slike when Richard Hollingham opened a show with "Of course there's nobody here, who doubts climate change !" smirk smirk ..ie using rhetoric to put a complex issue into a simple box of false dichotomy of Good Guys who believe all vs Evil Deniers. And I wasn't in a position to counter it.
- But when I think it is that whenever we skeptics get the opportunity we should hold them to account. When I put in a question challenging an assumption, suddenly the greentrain can't continue rolling straight on, the atmosphere changes and they roll back on the cockiness.. and the 70% who aren't true believers (being more apathetic) suddenly have permission to think the doubts that they already have about what the bigman is saying.
- I noticed last week when dramagreens hijacked BBC Feedback to stage their cunning attack on skeptics, on Twitter there were almost no tweets just 5-6 skeptics and handful of alarmists (with namecalling& no evidence)
..so it seemed like the apathetic majority stood by rather than joining the bandwagon as they used to.
- Keep the pressure up with calmness & evidence and show them up for the namecalling, dramaqueening, dodgy subsidy biz & hedgefund connected, censoring bullies that they are.
Is anyone aware of this:
See https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-launches-balance-of-competence-review-on-energy
and https://econsultation.decc.gov.uk/decc-policy/balance-of-competence-energy-review/consult_view
Does anyone known anything about any competence on energy within DECC, the Government or the EU?
Oct 24, 2013 at 8:55 AM | madrigaul
This is a pretty good summary: http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/sh1/the_skeptics_handbook_2-3_lq.pdf
SimonW
we cannot expect honesty from the people who told us we would all be better off in 2020 because we will have spent fortunes on more efficient white goods. In the insurance industry that is called mis-selling. In DECC it is the sop.
I see from John Redwoods post this line:
Warm home discount (levy to pay for discounts for vulnerable consumers) £11
So was the Clegg just ignorant or simply lying when he claimed that this support for poor people was the reason for adding ten times this amount to the average bill?
Stew,
There was a short time for questions, but this brought a slew of expressions of solidarity from the FoE followers. The ex oil man academic, who I expected to talk some sense, expressed an even more extreme proposition of imposing strict personal carbon allowances on the public. I waited for one of the Thermodynamicists to express some fundamental engineering realism, but only one suggested that the additional carbon used to power carbon sequestration and storage might be as much as the carbon stored and so self defeating. There was no answer and I believe the meeting then concluded. I was expecting a real debate from my Alma Mater, but it simply turned into a PR exercise on behalf of the scaremongers.
"Twerking will not solve Climate Change"
Eco Hypocrisy at its grandest
http://uk.eonline.com/news/472194/2013-environmental-media-awards-the-complete-list-of-winners
Copy and paste and get ready with the sick bag.
@EForster "follow the incentive" .. money ? pretty thing ? Grantham ?etc. Google the name
- the oil industry is not nicey nicey so it's easy for DramaGreens to fantacise that it funds us, but there is a chance that Prof was pushed to opposite extreme due to bad experience with oil biz.
hmmm.....with (just call me) Dave going on the record about cutting 'green taxes' he then has to justify why he does not care about the planet anymore. He can only answer that there is not actually a problem with the planet anymore.....& to do so he will have to say something about 'new evidence' suggesting CO2 not as dangerous as first thought. So he will be looking to publicise that pov, joining in with the recent Telegraph/Express commentary. Considering what just happened in Australia, if I were a government funded climate scientist I'd not be going for that mortgage extension right now...
Maybe my Redwood comment didn't make it past his moderation team ..so I will inflict it on you here ..SORRY
- People complaining that the free market is not working ..well we DON’T have a free market we have a super TINKERED market .. with massive EU & government inteference. You can’t just make electricity and get on with it, no you have to build so much % renewables, take measures to cut your customers consumption.etc. All this tinkering removes from a energy corps key job.
- In a free market people who love green energy would have been able to choose to buy it from a GreenEnergyCorp and paid extra for the tinkering
- The people calling for industry nationalisation think we will end up cheaper ,cos profits will be removed, but actually a nationalised energy biz would actually end up being GreenEnergyCorpPlus with MAXIMUM TINKERED costs and therefore higher prices.
..but as someone suggested above gov could introduce a smaller gov energy corp to shake up the market. Well we could make it entirely green energy & call it “Ed Davey’s Big Green Energy Corp”. So if you want green energy you buy it there .
- BTW corps like the greentaxes : the higher the price the more £ a 5% profit margin is.
- Will the Greenpeace Broadcasting Corp START a policy of declaring an MP’s greenbiz interests when they give them airtime?
- Frack-on ! ..do we run this country by DramaGreen bullying or democracy
Oct 24, 2013 at 3:56 PM | steveta_uk
The BBC piece that I vaguely watched this am had someone actually mention this figure of £11 as he tried to imply that cutting that part of the green subsidy would save very little, less than 10%, from the green part of the average bill.
Clegg's insistence on his precious green whilst the other idiots endeavour to row back from impending electoral disaster will write the epitaph for the Liberals at the next election.
UKIP will surely be the third party in British politics in 2015, particularly now that their website is being regularly updated with robust views and opinions relating to daily issues. No wonder the MSM don't dare to give NF voice.
Lace curtain poverty - that's me.
Priti Patel (Con) and A N Other (f. Lab) were on the world at one yesterday, yabbering away about levies; Priti saying how much help was being given via Winter Fuel Allowance and all manner of other hand-outs (none of which I qualify for), while female Lab MP said the "Conservative" government with Chris Huhne at the DECC had put up green levies more than the Labour Government had.
Had me shouting at the radio that it was D Miliband who introduced the bloody CCA in the first place. Sorry J Rees-Mogg, but profanities leap from my mouth when I have to listen to all this crock.
I've spent the last 4 years tightening my belt an additional notch at a time and there ain't any notches left. My kids are at uni and it's a relief when they're away as strapping young men eat a lot and it means I don't have to heat their rooms. I am piling on the woollies, turning down the heating, I've changed as many light bulbs as possible, turn off as many lights as I can, but still the energy bills go up. As for the price of food................
I am nearing retirement age, but, although I am fit and healthy at the moment and don't want to stop working, there is no way I could afford it anyway. To all those blaming the baby-boomers (why? What exactly have we done?), short of involuntary euthanasia, I am not sure whether life could be made more difficult at the moment.
I think I'll go and hack at a few logs to keep warm while it's still light.
Cheshirered (Oct 24, 2013 at 10:27 AM): and what is wrong with being a toff, unapologetic or not?
Perhaps we could all do with an injection of toff-ness; to speak clearly and correctly, with proper enunciation and diction; to speak with wit and charm, without recourse to profanity at every opportunity; to have a broad spectrum of learning, particularly of history and historical arts; to act with quiet manners and have regard to others' viewpoints. It would be a welcome change from the simian grunting, brutal behaviour, unsubtle, constant sexual references and incredible ignorance outside the spheres of football and pop “slebs” so championed in the hallowed halls of the BBC.
Oct 24, 2013 at 11:47 AM | Unregistered CommenterRadical Rodent
What the f*** you on about, Dude?
But, joking aside, inverted snobbery is a strange thing but not new. I recall George Orwell writing in the 30's (The Road to Wigan Pier, perhaps) that people would be subject to scorn and derision simply for trying to pronounce a foreign word correctly. We British seem to be strongly anti-intellectual. However, looking at the "intellectuals" who have influenced the last 100 years or so, maybe we are onto something.
Green levy going to the lower paid
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-manufacturers/nissan/10389485/Nissan-Leaf-electric-car-long-term-review.html
Taking advantage of the Government’s largesse with taxpayers’ money, I had a POD Point home charging unit installed at our house last summer (mine was, I think, the first to be fitted in Scotland). This tidy little number that looks like a garden hose reel attached to the wall by our front door would normally cost more than £1,000; but the Office for Low Emission Vehicles generously subsidised the whole sum for ours – as they might for yours if you look sharp and get your application in quickly (homecharge@pod-point.comtel: 020 7247 4114).
Free insulation to anyone on benefits has been available for years, doubt there's anyone left except those who have a house construction that can't be insulated like mine.
U-turn ? it's not a U-turn, it's not even a pause, it's reigning back the green measures, based on new data
- the 2020 CO2 target was set when the temp graph projection was steep upto X
now with new data (the GW pause) the projection seems to be Y, so it makes sense to delay the 2020 target to 2030 etc.
- Like how much warming did the last 5 year cause ? if we had delayed measures 5 years ago what difference ?
so catastrophe looks further into future now. Cameron knows he can change his mind in future if by some miracle in 5 years time there is new data proving catastrophe day will be sooner.
- Anyone taking bets that we won't have fusion power by 2050 ?
John Redwood is some UKIP MP is he ?
The list of green levies is very interesting.
I suspect that there is another huge chunk of expense hidden under general headings such as updating the grid and distribution. All these useless on shore and offshore wind turbines have to be connected to the grid together with the fields of diesel generators, solar panels, etc.
Drapetomania, please stop making a complete ar*e of yourself on the GM issue. GM rice that has beta-carotene, the vitamin A precursor in its grains, is real. This is a FACT. Get used to it.
No argument, end of discussion.
Environmentalist Jonathon Porritt talks energy policies and green taxes with @afneil tonight on TV BBC1 11.35pm
Retweeted by @ClimateRealists ... Twitter : #bbctw BBC This Week @bbcthisweek
22:35pm Question Time
- predict Twitterstorm "What no Greens again". (how many votes do they get ? )
Oct 24, 2013 at 8:55 AM | madrigaul
Madrigaul - Jo Nova's Skeptic's Handbook is a good start.
http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming-2/
There are excellent videos here
http://topher.com.au/50-to-1-video-project/
including I think, these two very good videos by Jo Nova's husband, converted warmer, Dr. David Evans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plr-hTRQ2_c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=PSNW0LC32wU&NR=1
I also always ask believers what proof there is of global warming. I'm yet to get an answer.
I also ask them if they believe everything politicians tell them. Hums and hahs ensue.
Seen just now on a tweet by Emily Gosden, energy and utilities correspondent for Telegraph,
https://twitter.com/emilygosden/status/393413300957872128/photo/1
@Oct 24, 2013 at 11:20 AM | Robin Guenier
Richard North does a lot of good work, and of course works with Booker of the DT. However, he also has a monstrous ego, so anyone who doesn't go about their work the way he thinks they should is automatically relegated to an also ran.
Jacob's utterly un-toff like sister Annunziata ran against our crass and long-established local LibDim MP, David Heath, at the last election, and nearly did the bugger. For her hard work, she got kicked off the Tory MP selection list. We met her and talked with her for a good couple of hours during her election campaigning. Like her brother, she's smart and at the Libertarian end of Conservatism. Toff? Judge people by who they are, not by their provenance.
Stewgreen,
Clegg "vote yolk and end with a joke" - except they can't take a joke.
Re golden rice:
Problem: too many people relying on a diet almost exclusively based on rice.
Solution 1: well-meaning western scientists design GM food with extra nutrition allowing the same people to carry on subsisting solely on rice.
Solution 2: broaden the diet of the people subsisting on rice, eg by adding something yellow or orange to the diet, for example, carrots.
No doubt someone will explain why Solution 2 is impossible...
jamspid, I dared to look at the site. I quite like the Matt Damon films so looked at water.org for which he receives the continuing helpful chap award. Remarkably free of climate change references, and no 'advocacy' tab to be seen, though I don't know what they get up to in the background, I liked the 'build them a well and then let them get on with it' philosophy. I await disappointment.
SimonW, I very much in agreement with you that the massive increase in transmission costs (described as upgrading an ageing network) must include an enormous amount of expensive wires to remote locations, plus whatever boxes are needed to convert it into heterogenous power. Not brought up anywhere yet, as far as I can see, and the SSE presentation on the make-up of the increase suggested that 35% (?) was due to increased grid costs. Is it National Grid's job to connect up all the crap intermittents?
Swearing, and the English language: My mother was born in Germany and came to England when she was 9, and as a result considered all English words to be useful in conversation. Quite unusual to hear a late middle-aged woman with quite a posh English accent saying the 'c' word, as she treated it like any other one. And I know Radical Rodent is lying...he hit his finger with the hammer when Mme Rat made him put that picture up....
Jeremy Poynton,
"Jacob's utterly un-toff like sister Annunziata..."
Quite an achievement for Annunziata Rees-Mogg to seem un-toff like.
@Pharos ..direct link to that Emily Gosden @emilygosden Tweet photo
LAND USE : Hinkley Point C = 430acres, Solar 130,000 acres, Onshore wind 250,000 acres (farming done them though)
stewgreen
In the small print under the wind turbines it says
'The footprint will depend on the location and turbine technology deployed. DECC estimates the footprint could be between 160,000 and 490,000 acres.'
Fragpig
Any PM with B***s would do what is in the National interest (e.g. scrap all the green subsidies) and s*d the EU, what can they do; kick us out ?. I wish. We are the only country playing by the rules all the others are cheating like made in there own interests.
It's about time we put our own people first and ensure the poorest survive the winter. We should copy the Germans by building new clean, cheap coal powered power stations whilst fracking like made !
Jit
3 Current solution twice yearly Vitamin A injections, combined with the immunisation jags.
This is apparently cost effective.
To your question about option 2, natural vitamin A has two sources animal (liver, egg, milk and cheese) and brassicas, Mango, papaya and of course carrot. So I guess we're talking a areas where animals are too valuable to eat,and rice is the staple and there isn't much else in the diet. Some things are difficult to grow in the tropics, and if you were on life style where there was no slack in your food supply would you risk something new which might fail and leave you starving until the next harvest?
From that Industry defense "Solar Trade Association’s calculated that by today’s prices, solar would require £86/MWh for 15 years in 2019/2020 compared to the £89.50-92.50/MWh agreed for the electricity from Hinkley Point C."
- well why don't we drop the solar strike price down to that now ? it's still a £30/MWh subsidy
..oh but you forgot to say that solar doesn't run all the time , and add in extra costs like standby replacement generation.
-- now why do you want to ban fracking ?
Sorry I ment to say "whilst fracking like Mad".
SandyS:
Sweet potato then? I can't help thinking that diversification is the best plan. For starters, it makes the area more resilient against particularly bad seasons or outbreaks of pests or pathogens.
Radio Times "particulate pollution from diesl etc. kills 29,000 peopele a year" (suspicious figure)
..too good to be true ? ..properly controlled expt or TV drama ? "Trust Me I am a Doctor "..not sure I do trust you
Jit, SandyS,
Beta carotene in rice has a huge advantage - all the other sources mentioned above have a very short shelf life without refrigeration. Dry rice lasts for many months - you don't need to buy it fresh from the (distant?) market several times a week.
Golden grain. Surely, to feed a local population, you want food indigenous to the area. Growing rice, golden or otherwise, doesnt help the soil, or the people to a good diet. There are better, healthier and more cost effective ways of helping people to live healthier lives, and help themselves and their community, and which don't rely on misguided Ngos or Monsanto.
Permaculture being one of them.
Gore compares investments in energy companies to investments in sub-prime mortgages calling them "sub-prime carbon assets". Apparently "we have a carbon bubble". The private jets he uses are powered by wind and solar.
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/al-gore-carbon-bubble-going-burst-avoid-oil-121707563.html
SayNo
I don't think I made myself clear, I agree with what you say. The sources of vitamin A are well known and if they were viable then they would have been tried by now.
If I were living/subsisting in a poor area were rice is a reliable staple then I wouldn't risk changing to something which could potentially lead to starvation. In fact I might even wait until a couple of neighbours had tried growing golden rice first just to make sure it lived up to claims. I am a sceptic after all.
Oct 24, 2013 at 6:45 PM | James Evans
You might think so. And is it not a splendid name? But she's a very down to earth young woman. Always liked her old man as well, I'm old enough to recall the magnificent editorial he wrote for the Times when the Establishment jailed Jagger for crimes against .... the Establishment. A rose by any other name eh?
http://www.iorr.org/talk/read.php?1,1755802,1756208 links to a jpeg of said editorial.
The irish Times has an appallingly bad article today by an Oxford Physicist, David Grimes. It's par for the course though for the Irish Times, Ireland's foremost climate change cheerleader.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/climate-change-is-real-ignore-the-denialists-1.1570833
Peter Crawford (Oct 24, 2013 at 4:58 PM): snobbery is snobbery, whichever way up it is. To look at it really radically (and why not?), it is a form of racism.
As for the “intellectuals” of which you speak, they are actually pseudo-intellectuals. They have learned enough to be able to talk the talk, but not enough that they can walk the walk. These pseudo-intellectuals have read a bit about Marx et al, and thought it sounds so attractive (note that most Marxists tend to be rich and privileged – witness Milibands major and minor, most of the Labour front bench, and such luvvies as Redgraves V., L. and C. – yet cannot see the irony in their stance), and are unable to see the conclusion of the philosophy – abject poverty for all but the select elite. Guess which side of that fence they expect to be on.
I think it was Bertrand Russell who said: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
More recently, Thomas Sowell came up with: “The more I study the history of intellectuals, the more they seem like a wrecking crew, dismantling civilization bit by bit — replacing what works with what sounds good.”
A bit hard on the true intellectual, I think; however, another of his comments hits the nail squarely on the head: “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned, but not greed to want to take someone else’s money.” ”
Johnathon Porridge is an ignorant eejit, imho
SandyS, apologies for misunderstanding you - yes, I agree with you about the need for risk aversion - I'd need to see the stuff growing reliably if my family's life depended on it too!
Steve has a new post, thanks to Mosher. Not climate science but many parallels in terms of dodgy maths, broken peer review, and subsequent handwaving. Kudos to Nick Brown (a London based ex-IT professional) for exposing the bollocks as an undergraduate.
Nick Brown Smelled BS
Original essay: Nick Brown Smelled Bull - by Vinnie Rotondaro: http://narrative.ly/pieces-of-mind/nick-brown-smelled-bull/
Oct 24, 2013 at 10:11 PM | Alan
thanks for the link- quote -
"Such contrarian writers and broadcasters paint themselves as climate “skeptics”, but this is a calculated misnomer."
calculated - so thats a good sign then Bish.
someone with more clout than me needs to nail this "climate “skeptics” meme which is trotted out without any evidence whatsoever.
the IPCC story behind this scare/science (we seem to know this better than this guy) is that CAGW (GW for Global Warming caused by manmade co2) is the main driver not natural Climate Change & the end is nigh unless we change our ways..
everybody with half a brain knows Climate Change is happening, some of us are just not yet to be conviced by the evidence that man (thro co2 alone) is driving it & by reducing co2 can alter our climate.
Last nights BBC Question Time had Peter Hitchens eviscerating the Labour and Tory harpies who were wailing about increasing energy prices and who was to blame. He absolutely savaged the entire green project, directly linking the stupidity to global warming alarmism.
He ridiculed everything from wind and solar energy to the absurd terms for the new nuke, the fact we've ruined and sold off our civil nuclear industry and that we've now gone crawling on our hands and knees to China , literally begging them to bail us out. He even touched on STOR generators! He was on great form and just for once Dimbleby didn't shoot him down AND he got a huge ovation from the (tiny) Liverpool audience.
Tim Farron lamely played the Lib Dim pro-green card, and the less said about the Indy's young socialist upstart Owen Whatsisname the better.
It's the very first question so will be easy to find on I-Player once its posted.
@ Cheshirered, many thanks for the heads up re QT - looks like very good transcript material.
Golden Rice
It is fine to suggest other ways of meeting Vitamin A deficiency - but clearly they haven't yet been tried, or haven't worked. Why not? Perhaps because of some other problem that you haven't realised. Is this any reason for prohibiting a new approach? No - that is just Green fundamentalism. False ideologies kill people by the million.
Stewgreen, Oct 24, 2013 at 2:03 PM |: "On Today : "the levies help 2 million of the poorest families with their fuel bills"
a plie ? (Political Lie : rhetoric by politician which may not be an actual lie, but misleads creating a lie in the listener's mind)
- Clegg missed the word COULD : poor families could get help if they bother to phone up, get through, get the form fill it in, get the authorised etc. Just as 30m could get the GreenDeal not the actual roomful who will get it."
If everyone that qualified for this particular levy actually took advantage of it, would the charge made through our fuel bills be much larger than at present? Also, how much is pocketed by the chancers who cold call to persuade people to take advantage of the levy? Do the energy companies work out how much is paid out each year or is it a wet finger in the air job? Does anyone know?