Sunday
Dec012013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill The new friends of the people
Dec 1, 2013 Energy: grid 
David Rose has the must-read article this morning, trying to work out just how much the greens - the new friends of the people - are going to cost us at the end of the day.
Yes, £50 may be being cut from bills. But astonishingly, there’s still another £300 billion of projected increases from green commitments to go.
They make Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze bills meaningless. For this, we must thank primarily his own biggest legislative achievement – the passage, when he was Energy Secretary, of the 2008 Climate Change Act.
Reader Comments (75)
Taxes, taxes, taxes - whatever weasel words the Government uses such as levy, obligation, contribution, these addtions to our power bills are simply taxes AND because they are collected through our bills we are honoured by having to pay VAT(ax) on them. There is something wrong here, or have I got it wrong?
David Rose writes:
Both completely fair comment, except it's been David himself, following the pioneering lead of Christopher Booker but gaining a far greater mass audience through his hard-hitting yet properly detailed exposés.
I've finally seen the figures for last winter's excess winter deaths, up 10,000 to 30,000 from around 20,000 the previous winter.
Ed Miliband with his Climate Change Act is a mass murderer. Sugar coat it all you want, he has their blood on his hands. They want to see sceptics on trial but sceptics aren't murdering anyone for their ideology.
The danger is, to save face by all Britain's political parties, all blame will be pushed on the power companies.
Their share price will collapse due to withdrawal of nervous investors from these companies.
The sector will then have to be nationalised.
A slow motion train wreck seems likely.
The cost of green is also analysed here
Does anyone remember seeing Ed Miliband being asked in a television interview about the consequences of the Climate Change Act and his responsibility for it? I certainly don't. Does anyone remember reading any articles in the press about replies from Miliband to journalists questioning him about energy prices and the Climate Change Act? Again, I don't.
Why are those journalists who are able to interview Ed Miliband so silent about the matter?
I for one will not accept these obscene taxes. I will use my vote to put anyone ANYONE in power who is prepared to overturn them. I'm afraid it is not a "slow motion" train wreck. It is happening very quickly. Excess deaths there already may be (maybe because I have seen an analysis that blames a flu epidemic for most if the increase) but what is absolutely certain are vast increases in energy charges and a dangerous mismatch between supply & demand. Ed Miliband has hit us with the CCA which significantly increases our energy bills, Davey has hit us with his fatuous illogical frankly stupid Energy Bill. Miliband, yet again, has now destroyed the investment climate for any new UK generating capacity. So we will end up with power cuts in a scale never seen before in a modern economy. If we have a bad winter the dead will be stacked up in the streets. The investment needed to get out of this trap will require nationalisation of the generating industry and will take years to pay off. You couldn't make this tragedy up.
"For this, we must thank primarily his (Ed Miliband) own biggest legislative achievement – the passage, when he was Energy Secretary, of the 2008 Climate Change Act."
Labour's hypocrasy - Ed Balls on ITV News
"Fundamentally, what's happening is that energy prices are going up this Winter by £120-130, a £50 cut when they're going up by twice that, means that people are still paying more in energy."
Mr Balls added: "I set two tests for George [Osborne]- one, would he stop bills rising? Secondly, would the energy companies pay?
"I would say to George, while the Prime Minister is in China, get back to the drawing board, come up with a policy, we've had lots of u-turns already, do another one, freeze the bills, take Ed Miliband's policy - that would be wise."
http://www.itv.com/news/
When will labour admit their greatest mistake rather than blame other politicians or the big 6 energy companies!
We must never forget that only five MPs voted against Miliband's disgraceful climate change act. They were all Tories, and one has left politics. So, whatever we say, or whatever even David Rose says: there is a massive number of MPs to convince that they were wrong. There is no way that this will be achieved without a complete change of emphasis in the MSM, especially the BBC: and massive support from the public. It will be an up hill task.
JohnofEnfield
If you really want an explanation for this fiasco blame those, which I'm afraid to say is most of us for abdicating our political responsibilities!, who allowed children to run the country.
It may not be true that age is a sign of wisdom in the way it used to be before the days of the printing press but a certain amount of experience of life is a great help when it comes to informing the decision-making process. Not to mention that when you get to my age you know longer give a stuff about losing face and since over the course of 70 years I have probably got things wrong as often as I have got them right and now know the difference between the two I reckon that I am just about mature enough to run a medium sized country. What I am absolutely sure about is that I would not have been fit to run the UK when I was Cameron's age or Miliband's or Osborne's or Balls', still less Baby Bryony's.*
I may be wrong (again) but I genuinely believe that a big part of our problem is that the kiddies are in charge and they are easy meat for those with an axe and to grind and agenda to pursue.
*Pitt the Younger was a fluke!
The main problem is that we have a Parliament which resembles a middle school debating society, largely devoid of real-world expereince, scientific knowledge and maturity.
The more mentally adept, or devious, have seen green energy for what it is- a money redistribution scam from which they, like Troffa Tim, can enrich themselvers and their cronies.
There are two possible outcomes here- blood on the streets, or a mass vote for UKIP.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
So - good!
But this David Rose - what sort of impacts have his articles had? Has he a track record? A wide range? Ever been caught over a porky? Easily ignored as a habitual loud-mouth? Or respected or feared?
So - how good? Very? Or only a little?
Gryskopf (Dec 1, 2013 at 9:30 AM): VAT - Value Added Tax. VALUE Added Tax. Now, there is a misnomer, if ever there is one!
Isn't there some law in which you can sue for misrepresentation in a name?
I like the phrase "great green leap forward".
Poor Bob Ward must be disappointed. Earlier this week he tweeted that he was amused to learn that Rose's article was going to be about his outfit.
I have commented before that my belief, sadly, is that only a combination of rising public awareness and anger at rising fuel costs, a sharp and sustained increase in cold winter deaths, and severe and widespread power cuts will force a change in policy. AGW believers are just too many and too well set in the establishment to expect a rational change. Perverse though it will undoubtedly seem, I rather hope Miliband and co are then in power. The prospect of the Labour party being completely destroyed by the fall-out may make it worth bearing the pain of another Labour Government. But what a price to pay for such abject and hubristic folly!
@Mike Jackson @Don Keiller
Both bang on the money!
30,000 premature deaths because of un/under heated homes will not change public opinion. I seriously doubt that opinion would change all that much if the number rose to 300,000. The propaganda machine, led by the BBC, would see to that. I saw what was laughably called the paper review on the Marr prgramme this morning. It looked and sounded more like a Greenpeace propaganda puff to me.
Change will only come if enough people vote for an alternative to the current political parties in charge in the HoC. Next years elections for MEPs offers the next opportunity for the expression an opinion if not to change the composition of the HoC. The result of that election and its consequences for UK domestic politics have the potential to be significant in shifting opinion, but probably not enough to achieve the change of course that is required.
Roy (Dec 1, 2013 at 10:02 AM):
Because journalists are carefully vetted before they can interview “senior” politicians. Did you not know that? It was a process started by Phony B-Liar, after his humiliation first by the WI, then by a bunch of sixth-formers, finally by being accosted by a lady outside a hospital. Suddenly, ordinary members of the public no longer had access to his proximity, and, should a journo ask a dodgy question in a press meeting, that journo had his invitations curtailed. No journalist will now ask embarrassing questions, for fear that they will not get ANY story.
With all this rhetoric about who is to blame, I would have thought that the energy companies should just itemise everything on our bills. That way we can see how much is levy, how much is the cost of gas/electricity. I know that it will take a while for us all to work out where the increases are coming from, time that we probably haven't got, but it would make everything a whole lot clearer and we would then know who is talking porkies; politicians or energy companies?
I can never decide if Milliband is monumentally stupid in failing to understand the impact of his Climate Change Act – even the very name of which sets my teeth on edge – or monumentally hypocritical in pretending that rising fuel bills are not a direct consequence of his act of vanity and vandalism.
Weirdly "the bedroom tax" is actually the removal of the spare bedroom subsidy, VAT rates are also a subsidy on fuel and energy. Has subsidy become the new word for Tax?
@Richard Drake
...of the green taxation debate by revealing the inconvenient truth about global warming: despite the confident forecasts of climate computer models that underpin ‘eco’ policies, the world has stubbornly refused to heat up for the past 17 years.
Both completely fair comment, except it's been David himself, following the pioneering lead of Christopher Booker but gaining a far greater mass audience through his hard-hitting yet properly detailed exposés...
I would tend to stress the work done by McIntyre and McKitrick in actually uncovering the truth (against vicious opposition) and Anthony Watts in distributing it around the world.
The mainstream media simply copy from these sources.
The petty squabbling children, the "I care more than you do" sanctimony in the HoC is a charade - not a single one of them including gorgeous George II in the treasury want to climb down: all of them are geared to the green agenda and the EU sets the timetable and policy.
We've got to be talking about fekkin priorities and the political claque do nothing of the sort.
It would take a PM of considerable guts [Cameron ain't it] to back track and rescind maybe the most egregious EU diktat.
Namely, informing the Brussels Kleptocracy that, Britain will not totally enact the LCPD and thus enable the remaining coal fired plant due to be closed down - to remain open. Furthermore, until such time as Britain has built suitable replacement generation capacity: all coal power stations will keep supplying the grid. These plants are not to put to fine a point on it - knackered but they are and by a light year or, fifty are better than 'alternative sources' of energy.
With regard to the paucity of any form of cogent energy policy, with the dogs dinner of the Climate Change Act, the rampant waste involved in building quite patently useless bird mincers, it is evident: the idiots in Westminster do not realize the gravity of the nation's energy supply situation.
Why have we, the people allowed it to come down to this - we have been asleep but even at this late hour - it is time to make our voices heard.
When assigning blame for "this slow-motion catastrophe," do not forget activists such as Bob Ward and others at the Grantham Institutes, and remember Paul Nurse and his friends. The politicians will blame those percieved to be scientists, even though they paid the activists to give them bad advice (an example being the Stern Review), so we might as well include those bad apples.
JaceF
The decision to set taxes of any kind at differing levels is a matter of government fiscal policy. It is not a subsidy.
I am not 'subsidising' people who buy children's clothes or books or newspapers or food.
The wholly mendacious argument that fossil fuels are "subsidised" which is assiduously put about by such serial misinformation purveyors as Ward and Porritt needs to be slapped down every time it rears its ugly head.
Likewise the bedroom tax (so called) is neither a tax nor the removal of a subsidy. It's a levelling of the benefit playing field carried out in a manner that simply reinforces the arguments in my 11.01 post about letting the children play with the reins of government!
Dodgy Geezer: I'm just drafting something that may soon be published on Geoff Chambers' blog in which I have cause to mention James Delingpole twice, with affection, not Rose, Booker, McI, McK, Watts, Montford or a host of others. My words here were prompted by Rose giving credit to the Mail on Sunday. He was I think right to do so but I at once thought of the author himself and Booker, because this was clearly all about the MSM. Booker preceded all others in that regard in the UK but Delingpole is a unique and precious voice. As for the non-MSM blogsters, wow. Point taken.
@Don B
I have thought for a while now that when the end comes, as I think it must, politicians will blame the activists. And as you say, especially the "scientists". All these groups overlap but I reckon at some point politicians will seek to throw off any blame.
Given that scientists who have bent data in other fields, or have been found negligent like the Italian earthquake scientists (in 2012), have gone to prison - is it fanciful to belief that some climate scientists may end up the with the same fate?
I detect a few who have been solid warmists developing a subtle exit strategy, stating some reservations on their earlier position, while still keeping the sinecure afloat for now.
Taxes aside, so called "Green" opposition to nuclear power since the 1970s has set us back decades. We could have far more, better, and safer nuclear technologies already in place without their kind of 'help'.
Some of them have now even changed their minds a little bit (without apologies), but the movement remains as essentially Luddite as it ever was. Who is calculating the aggregated cost of their ministrations?
At the next election remember............
99% of our MP's voted the Climate Change Act into law. Actually 176 didn't bother voting (too busy fiddling expenses), while 465 voted for it. Only 5 MP's voted against, they were...
Christopher Chope
Philip Davies
Peter Lilley
Andrew Tyrie
Ann Widdecombe.
Disappointingly my MP, Damian Green (CON - Ashford), turned up to vote for it. That means I can't vote for him.
£50 off my £1250 annual energy bills. Well whoopydoo WTF are these politicians thinking? They obviously don't want to be re-elected.
This is the reason. If you are right wing, put your fingers in your ears now. La la la la la !
Carbon trading could be worth twice that of oil in next decade
The carbon market could become double the size of the vast oil market, according to the new breed of City players who trade greenhouse gas emissions through the EU's emissions trading scheme.
The ETS market may see $3tn (£1.8tn) worth of transactions a year in the next decade or two, according to Andrew Ager, head of emissions trading at Bache Commodities in London, with it even being used as a hedge against falling equities or rising inflation. "It is still a relatively new industry with annual trades of around €300bn every year. But this could grow to around $3tn compared to the $1.5tn market there is for oil," says Ager, who used to be a foreign currencies trader.
The speed of that growth will depend on whether the Copenhagen summit gives a go-ahead for a low-carbon economy, but Ager says whatever happens schemes such as the ETS will expand around the globe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/29/carbon-trading-market-copenhagen-summit
The science is 100% irrelevant as Pielke Jr said. They just lie over and over again.
As I write, wind is providing 0.32GW, Biomass 0.65GW and solar not enough to measure out of a total demand of about 41GW.
Putting the obscene costs of these renewable to one side, how on earth can these morons think that renewables can ever actually physically power the national grid?
Politicians do not have a clue about the implications of their decisions. Take windmills, for example, and add up the trail of costs all the way to distribution, grid upgrade, smart meters and new control systems.
The whole lot costs trillions. The politicians believe the green lies that soon windmills will be cheaper than coal.
Politicians only worry about their seats, so it will require public outrage on a national scale before they start getting worried. Since most of the public don't think beyond the size of the bill, and don't appreciate the destruction carried out by politicians, that isn't going to happen.
Following on from SC's 4:30 post, the impact of the push for renewables on the distribution system needs to be pushed into the spotlight. The energy companies do not control the charges from the grid and they have been rising sharply as well, alongside the more visible green taxes.
It would be great if David Rose et al could be given further ammunition, perhaps in the form of a comparison between today's power costs with and without all of the green add-ons, including infrastructure that would not be needed if we were to stick with the classic power mix. That could be followed by how the difference is going to increase over time.
@Richard Drake
..My words here were prompted by Rose giving credit to the Mail on Sunday. He was I think right to do so but I at once thought of the author himself and Booker, because this was clearly all about the MSM. Booker preceded all others in that regard in the UK but Delingpole is a unique and precious voice...
Point taken in return. Incidentally, if you are specifically interested in the MSM, there are, of course, very few courageous souls who have either done the basic research and come up with the right answer, or (more probably) been able to get a suitably sceptical article past their editor.
A more interesting activity might be to find and name the most egregious supporters of the scam - those who happily repeated the smearing and marginalisation of the few members of the MSM who retained their sanity. They will be hiding this now, of course, but if they receive no brickbats they will only learn the lesson that it pays to go with the crowd.
One major name I would mention in the List of Shame is Ian Hislop. His organ, Private Eye, prides itself on its track record of speaking truth to power. And yet there has been NO coverage of the AGW scandal - a point made by Delingpole himself. I recall watching an edition of 'Have I got News for You about 18 months ago when Paul Merton mentioned that Global Warming seemed to be in a fix; he was then treated to a scathing comment from Hislop to the effect that if Paul thought that he knew more than the assembled scientific establishment perhaps he should change his profession...
Comet Ison destroyed by Global warming.....
On Thursday, Comet ISON was approaching the perihelion, the closest point to the Sun on its trajectory. Centuries ago, before the climate began to change, such a moment in the life of a comet would be an important event for the religious societies. However Comet ISON was largely destroyed. The experts are not quite sure about the cause but most of the researchers mention the global warming. The Solar System is being catastrophically heated up by the man-made emissions of CO2, especially by those produced by the corporations in countries with GDP per capita exceeding $20,000, particularly those countries which tolerate a larger number of the climate change deniers, heretics, and other contrarians.
H/T Lubos Motl
Print this in the Guardian and it will be repeated as Gospel by the brain-dead numpties in the BBC and Parliament.
I'm applying for green subsidies to set up wind farms on the moon. Perhaps I could do some tidal wave generators as well....
One major name I would mention in the List of Shame is Ian Hislop.
Dec 1, 2013 at 6:17 PM Dodgy Geezer
I remember reading that Hislop said to someone that his friend G Monbiot, who was an expert on the subject, had explained global warming to him and so there was nothing for Private Eye to report.
Monbiot has a friend?!
Hislop isn't a 'major name', his magazine has a circulation (bi-weekly) of less than 250k, a little more than the daily sales of the Guardian (mostly the same folk I reckon). He's clearly a Guardian Reader and believes everything they print, he's mocked climate change 'deniers' on Have I got News for You more than once, particularly when that sanctimonious pr*ck Marcus Brigstocke is on.
What would Energy prices be under a scenario where greenscare had never happened ? Half ?
- no wind/solar subsidies + inefficiencies
- no green taxes
- lower excuse taxes "it's for the environment"
- fracking would have got cracking years ago
- people wouldn't be panicking about todays energy bills
- and people would not be dreading bills tripling or quadrupling today's £300bn to be found somewhere
(..i just posted #this on unthreaded, but relevant here)
A major "new friend of the people " must be Chris Hune.
The BBC now wheel him on as an "independent energy expert"
The stench of incest among the 'wheelers and dealers' is overpowering.
@mikeh
..Following on from SC's 4:30 post, the impact of the push for renewables on the distribution system needs to be pushed into the spotlight...
There are TWO things that need to be pushed at this stage of the game.
1 - CO2 is NOT DAMAGING AT ALL. Because the greens will certainly say: "Ok, we're not warming - but CO2 is still a dirty pollutant, and should be suppressed...".
2 - The impact of wind power on the grid. Again, the greens will say "Perhaps it's a bit expensive. But it still saves something...".
This last is a particularly dangerous untruth. There is a good reason that engineers did not put wind farms onto the grid until the green craze began. The reason is that variation on the grid costs money.
Ideally, generators will run optimally at a single fixed speed. That gives you the cheapest electricity. But, because the demand changes, at least some generators have to be prepared to alter their optimum point and 'follow the load'. Generators doing this drop to about 50% of their former efficiency. If the alterations are unpredicted, the efficiency drops much further. The demand put on the grid by the users is variable, though grossly predictable, and this means that generation is less efficient than it might be. But wind power is also unpredictable over short time periods, and this effect can completely negate the benefits of the electricity generated.
The point at which adding wind power becomes actively damaging varies, depending on various assumptions made. A particularly informative paper is this doctorate thesis on the subject from Dr Denny - doctorate theses are unlikely to be politically biased:
Wind Power Cost Benefits
You will see that connecting wind farms to the Irish Grid (similar to the British Grid) results in positive benefits up to a point - beyond this the benefits are negative. Depending on assumptions this point can range between 5% wind power to 30% wind power - in practice 15%-20% seems to be the point at which adding more wind actually costs us. That is
The UK government plan to have 40% wind power by 2020. It would be nice to have Delingpole's comments on that...
British prices are prob lower than the European average
http://www.itv.com/news/2013-10-29/how-uk-energy-prices-compare-to-other-eu-countries/
Gas prices have risen much more than electricity prices.
How can this be dudes.?
@jaffa et al
..Hislop isn't a 'major name', his magazine has a circulation (bi-weekly) of less than 250k..
His TV appearances add to his impact, of course, as well as the PE reputation of being an establishment scandal-digger. If PE were to come out against AGW that would be a major blow.
I wonder what Hislop is thinking about the situation at the moment? Staying quite and hoping that it goes away, I suppose. That's why I think a little kicking is due...
We need more publicity.
The blogs do an excellent job for the relatively few people who have enough interest to seek them out.
In terms of MSM publicity, Booker is the pioneer and is quite an authority. However, the telegraph presents it more as specialist comment rather than important news analysis. They often print the latest green propaganda in the same paper.
David Rose in the MoS gets prime position and high circulation. But that is about it. The Guardian and Independent would never touch sceptical stuff and the BBC is a biased disgrace. That leaves the Express and the other tabloids. Detailed arguments about climate science or energy policy are not really the stuff of eye-catching headlines.
I don't often see much interest in the other TV channels and their news programmes. I guess they take their lead from the BBC which has about 85% of the audience if you include radio.
All of this suggests that if we wait for wider publicity we could wait a very long time.
Perhaps the trick is to present stories that the media cannot avoid reporting. Milliband did this with his energy price freeze and focussed all the media on the cost of energy including the tax element. So leading politicians have the power to set the MSM agenda. Perhaps we should be trying to influence a few of them.
A few leading scientists "coming out" as sceptics would upset the so-called 95% "science is settled" bandwagon and cause a few ripples.
However, since these possibilities are unlikely to occur on a reasonable scale, we shall probably have to wait until the destruction of our manufacturing is clear, fuel poverty has killed hundreds of thousands and the planet is about 30 years into another little ice age.
@esmith
...Gas prices have risen much more than electricity prices. How can this be dudes.?
Not sure what you're measuring, but that doesn't sound surprising. We only use gas for about 1/3 of electricity generation, so, very simplistically, and ignoring units, if gas goes up £30, electricity should only go up £10...
Dec 1, 2013 at 8:05 PM | Unregistered CommentereSmiff
"British prices are prob lower than the European average"
That's because it's been in the hands of private enterprise for the last 30 years. Sadly though not for much longer. The pressure is on from all you embedded commies to make a play for state control,blaming the big six for rising prices, when in fact the state is wholly responsible for the increases.
Smiffy, you must be ecstatic?
I’m sorry, eSmiff (Dec 1, 2013 at 3:03 PM), but your logic is rather… erm, obscure. What exactly is carbon trading? Is it trading in some real substance, like oil, or in some airy-fairy myth? Call it what it is: it is pixie-dust trading; it is trading a concept, an idea – and a shaky idea at that. It is reasonable to assume that you consider yourself “left-wing”; perhaps that is why you consider trading in a dream such a great thing. I have yet to meet anyone who claims to be “left-wing” who has any contact with reality.