Bishop Hill Lights out please
This morning the green movement is making an enormous and apparently coordinated attempt to force the government to switch the lights out.
First up, Lord Deben et al have published a report saying that we must stick to the path of insanity, regardless of the consequences:
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) says in a report that the country must stick to a plan that will add £120 to household energy bills by 2030, insisting the impact is “small and manageable”.
Interestingly, there seems a clear admission from the committee that their plans are only sensible if:
- everyone does the same thing
- gas prices rise sharply
Ridiculously, Lord Deben suggests that it is “almost impossible to imagine” falling gas prices. Given that the world has suddenly founds that it has unimaginably vast shale gas resources, this could be construed as a case of Lord Deben being in, ahem, denial. Or perhaps something worse. What is almost impossible to imagine is that developing countries will agree to wildly increase their energy prices.
The commitee's report coincides with a full on newspaper campaign from renewables businesses and various charities. Groups like Oxfam and Christian Aid are spending money that was presumably given to relieve hunger in the Third World on attempts to put people out of work. Just remember that when you see the tin rattling in the high street this weekend.
Reader Comments (36)
Lord Deben seems devoid of any sense whatsoever. One wonders if he ate a contaminated beef burger all those years ago.
Unbelievable !!! - well no it's not is it?
This is the CCC Corporate Fascists' version of the Battle of the Bulge. Hang onto Bastogne** and the Fuel Dump***.
**Scientific integrity.
***Real Experimental Data.
A long time believer in CAGW.
Someone totally devoid of any scientific qualification or understanding.
Chairman of veolia.
Also from Wikipedia:
" Friends of the Earth described his as "the best Environment Secretary we've ever had"
"in 2009 Gummer attracted attention after claiming £36,000 for gardening over 4 years, as an parliamentary expense"
"He had responsibility for food safety during the BSE scare in 1989–90"
Hiow can anyone be surprised by his conclusion!
He is also reported as having given the green light (ha ha) to fracking - dismissing green concerns - and saying we should get the stuff out as quickly as possible - although he says it wont bring down prices.
Are Oxfam and Christian Aid killing people again? What a surprise.
The main tenet of any religion is that if the proletariat are prepared to suffer now they will receive their reward in heaven. The theocracy and Aristocracy have used this relentlessly over the millennia to keep the largest share of the cake for themselves and placate the plebs with the dream of their rewards after death.
Unfortunately it appears that some of those damned ungrateful commoners don't want to wait anymore and are beginning to view M'Lord Deben and his ilk as somewhat disingenuous and just possibly, a little self serving. The drama greens had better hope that their pyramid crumbles from the top down in a controlled manner and does not get stopped by the French solution of 1789.
I think the Bishop meant
What is almost IMpossible to imagine is that developing countries will agree to wildly increase their energy prices.
Christian Aid have a considerable record of this sort of spending over the last 5 - 7 years. They also employ several people described variously as climate change advisors and senior climate change advisors amongst other descriptions.
I wouldn't give a single penny to these people.
Peter Stroud
I wouldn't say Deben was devoid of "sense". On the contrary, if you had the vested interests in renewables he has, it's sensible from his point of view to push renewables at every opportunity. Contemptible most certainly, corrupt very possibly.
Fiends of the Earth welcomed the report saying blah blah blah protect UK from the heightened risk of extreme weather events. What is it with the do-gooders that they habitually lie? How can you be both dishonest and morally upright at the same time? They know as well as anyone that the connection between increased atmospheric carbon and frequency of extreme weather events is tenuous if not to say non-existent. Yes, they carefully word their remarks so their position is technically defensible but the fact is they are deliberately trying to dishonestly influence the uninformed. Do they really see everything as just some version of a PR game?
The plan will add more than £120 to energy bills by 2030. However, I suspect that if the plan were to remain unchanged, then the country would not have any supply of electricity or gas by 2030. I expect most citizens of the UK will have left this mortal coil before then.
Lord Deben, quoted in The Times this morning (paywalled, h/t Richard Drake):
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/environment/article3945445.ece
Lord Deben last month, speaking on the Today programme:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20131107_r4
£120. Pull the other one!
If we are going to produce two thirds of our energy from renewables that cost three times the price, there is something seriously wrong with their maths. Add in the capital cost of the new power lines needed, the extra transmission losses, the costs of the STOR project to keep the lights on, the costs of Smart meters to turn the lights off, the costs of shipping in whole forests from America with double the carbon content of regular carbon fuels and with a very dubious carbon provenance, the costs of maintaining spinning reserves from under used grown up power stations, the extra cost and obsenity of running power stations with the Walter Mitty carbon capture process, and the fact that every man and his dog now wants and can get twice the going rate for supplying power, evidence the new nuclear deal, because the government have tied themselves up in knots with their obsession in Climate Change and now have no bargaining power left at all.
If they continue to refuse to return to some kind of sensibility, there will be revolt in this country, or even revolution. But this time the Luddites will be the source of the public's anger, not the one's demonstrating it.
Some interesting comments from Gummer here:
http://www.thegwpf.org/uk-climate-change-committee-green-light-fracking/
Applying the 'follow the money' rule, I wonder what is in it for him? It was enlightening to read that God had placed the shale gas in places that make it difficult to extract. Gummer also confidently predicts that the price of gas in the UK will not fall as a result of fracking. That man knows so much.
The man's an embarrassment.
I'm inclined to agree with him to the extent that shale may not be the game-changer it has been in the States, partly because of the European angle and he is right about security of supply but the idea of blaming the Almighty for putting it where it is hard to get is a new one on me and most other believers I know.
Perhaps he should have stuck with the laissez-faire theology of the Anglicans; on our side of the Tiber we tend to the view that having given us brains and free will God does not sit around micro-managing the universe to our dis-benefit and nor does he take sides in these matters!
Here endeth today's theology lesson!
Any chance of a better link to that ad' to see it in all it's 'gory'?
Cheers
Lets not forget the £120 is a sleight of hand, its replies on an assumption of massive increases in the cost of fossil fuels, without the increase its many times the £120. As the US is going to be exporting gas in the next few years and is increasing internal production of oil using shale technology the current prediction is lowering fossil fuel prices not increases.
Lord Haw Haw comes to mind.
The £120 a year addition to household energy bills seems to be calculated on
1. Actual increase in renewables
2. Less the forecast increase in gas prices (and coal)
3. Less the reduction in house energy bills from investment of £100bn in energy saving.
The increase will be more than £120 if
(a) The costs of green energy is greater than forecast (including nuclear)
(b) Gas prices fail to go up (or even fall)
(c) Households use savings to consume more energy
(d) Include the investment in energy savings in the household hosehold energy costs. Similar to a business charging the cost of investment against the profits from that investment.
Ivor Ward (Dec 11, 2013 at 10:10 AM):
Which only goes to show your misunderstanding of Christianity – a misunderstanding shared with many, many others, past and present.RR
As a sanctimonious Catholic (not all are, I realise) Deben believes he can do what he likes all week and receive absolution every Sunday. Mind you, he must have a rather simplistic view of the Almighty if he thinks He hasn't already spotted the crossed fingers. An eternity of unbearable heat will be a fitting result, IMHO.
Glad I bought a generator...
Rule number one in the post modern world, never, never, ever, give money to the charity industry...
Was this the report that required energy use to decline by 50% in order to keep green costs down to $120?
Or is this the one that assumes fossil fuel costs will skyrocket rendering green costs on a little bit higher?
or both??
How can you prove a myth?
How can you hunt a chimera?
How - can you use a political fiction to bend a nation to kneel?
No one but no one of God's GREEN earth can anywhere near to proving the truth of a man made supposition, that, man made CO2 emissions adding to the atmospheric concentration of natural CO2 emissions can somehow cause an 'imbalance' and thereby increasing average surface world temperatures - so much so that the world is going to fry at some unspecific time in the not too distant future or disappear into the oceans when it feels like it or - summat.
What little science [of CAGW] there is available is utter conjecture, made up of dodgy data and dubious statistics, and well past their sell by date computer models - nothing else.
But that is good enough for a man who has no scientific background, is a politician of such piss poor judgement and of mediocre standing that no one takes the guy seriously, is a serial peculator and dissimulator unequalled - almost [aren't they all?].
This lord of the vacuous, full of his own exasperating green cant, this man of tin, is a bloke telling us all - to carry on with the lunacy of the [ETS] emissions targets, the green agenda. He is fully aware - of Britain designing, formulating and writing its own unilateral suicide note [CCA 2008] and that; it will shut down British manufacturing and British Industry.
This infuriating platitudinous plonker - he wants you all to pay for his pension and aid 'his' French company Veolia stiff the nation for ever more 'easy money' riding the green gravy train. He couldn't care two bloody hoots about the domestic consumer and taxpayer - do any of 'em?
His name?
John Gummer, aka Lord Deben.
With all the climbers and peculators like Worthless and Dubious your House of Lords is starting to resemble something from a bad Star Wars 'prequel'.
Or the bar scene?
James P (Dec 11, 2013 at 2:08 PM): a good case in point. The basic idea for Catholics seems to be: sin all you like; so long as you confess at the end of the week, then you can carry on with whatever you were doing. One point to note is that, when Jesus forgave the sinners of his day, he told them to go, and SIN NO MORE! Tough call, but you have to put the effort in. Sadly, in the “Me, me, me!” culture we are generating, we are being taught that effort does not matter, as the State will look after you.
But we’ve wandered off-topic….
it's "almost impossible to imagine” falling gas prices.....
... as long as us Green mailers hold sway.
That is not what Catholics believe. That is how some non-Catholics characterise Catholics. The point of regular confessions was supposed to be that you would be constantly self-monitoring and aware of your wrongdoing. Have you never heard of "Catholic Guilt" ? I'm not carrying a flag for religion but this kind of low-level bigotry (also thrown at Tony Abbott in Australia) has no place in the energy debate.
I'd have to disagree with Gummer that the shale gas is inaccessible - it's supremely accessible, seldom more than a few metres from a made road and often in already built-up areas so no despoliation of pristine environment.
Except of course in the "anti" campaign literature, where hydrocarbon drilling can never be anything but evil.
But we know what he really means - easy accessibility of sites to media, protesters and NIMBYs can mean inaccessibility to industry.
Stock up on candles; buy them by the pound. Supplies may run out fast, so you better hurry!
Groups like Oxfam and Christian Aid are spending money that was presumably given to relieve hunger in the Third World on attempts to put people out of work. Just remember that when you see the tin rattling in the high street this weekend.
Don't worry Your Grace. None of them will have my money rattling in their tins.
I guess that it is always the case that any 'dedicated organisation', over time and corrupted by easy money will eventually forget 'the cause' that forced them together in the first place.
Many Moons ago I did some work for Age Concern (as was then). I always remember the Branch Director explaining that the organisation worked tirelessly in order to make itself redundant.
She will have retired long ago but I do wonder what she would make of the current 'incarnation'. An organisation dedicated to the welfare of older people that never mentions 'Eat or Heat' and would never dare mention 'frozen' (dead) pensioners. I guess 'Age UK' have their snouts in the same trough as Oxfam.
Funny how quickly even the 'most dedicated' will dump their 'principles' for the chance of a 'conference' on Bali.
Repeal the Climate Change Act, no longer any need for CCC...... win, win.
The Government is committed to spend £66m by 2015 on research into dementia. Dementia is a real problem which is affecting huge numbers of people and the numbers are growing.
The government's climate change plans however are going to cost billions of pounds, to solve a problem which doesn't exist and therefore has affected nobody.
You could not make up such an extravagant misuse of our taxes!
In yesterdays article in the Time's (paywalled naturally) I read the following "More than 50 large companies including Sainsbury's, Pepsico, Jaguar and Sky(?), signed a statement calling on the Government to follow the committees advice and stick to the target of cutting emissions of Plant Food by 20% (?) by 2025"
Does any of your expert bloggers on here know where I can find the names of the other 46 large companies so that I can exercise my ethical shopping rights by also boycotting them?
On a similiar vein, whilst your Ecclesiastical blog has several card carrying members of the Catholic faith (including myself), as regular readers and contributers, my shoulders are wide enough to bear justifiable criticism of Christian charities which have bought into the Great Lie.
In particular I mention a Scottish charity known as CAFOD. Not only do they send a 'delegate' to the IPCC boondoggles but they are closely associated with a real dummy crowd called 'stop climate chaos'
Our recently 'retired' Cardinal O'Brien even joined with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and some Methodist leader urging us (Catholics) to seek Penance for our sins of Emissions,
An offshoot of Cafod and Christain Aid, C of E and other Christain organisations is something called Ecocongregations.
This is another far left outfit which is corrupting young Christians into the belief that Carbon Dioxide is causing widespread suffering and weather disasters throughout the (third) world, and only by winding the clock back to the halcyon days of the 18th century, can we 'Save the Planet'
Of course the irony of having to save 'The Planet' all over again is completely lost on these Christains.
Strangely enough their might be a light at the end of the tunnel.
Our Diocese- Dunkeld - has just had a new Bishop appointed. Amongst other impressive academic qualifications he possesses is a BSC in Biology. Perhaps the osmosis of reality may permeate down to parish level sooner rather than later. At the very least he should understand what photosynthesis is.