Monday
Sep162013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Empathy, EU style
Sep 16, 2013 Bureaucrats Climate: Parliament The cynicism of the bureaucrat knows no bounds, but EU Climate Change Commissioner Connie Hedegaard really takes some beating:
Regardless of whether or not scientists are wrong on global warming, the European Union is pursuing the correct energy policies even if they lead to higher prices, Europe’s climate commissioner has said.
Bureaucrats operate under perverse incentives, that much is understood, but when, as they tend to do, these reveal themselves as such wholehearted contempt for the general public the revelation takes the breath away every time.
Reader Comments (60)
Hedegaard:"... it makes a lot of sense to get more energy and resource efficient"
The point is, of course, that wind and solar energy are NOT resource efficient and never will be, regardless of the amount of subsidies thrown at these technologies.
Wind and solar energy are intermittent, they have long periods of zero output, hence no existing fossil and nuclear plant can be shut down. Therefore wind and solar are extras, so all energy used in their lifecycles (production, installation, digging, net connection, maintenance and removal at end of life) must be counted in the energy balance to see if there is really any reduction in fuel cost when they contribute to the electricity grid. Also the strongly varying contribution causes havoc on the grid, causing conventional plant to run at low efficiencies. It turns out that the energy balance is negative for net renewable energy contribution in excess of 5-10% of demand.
That is all without looking at the capital cost, which I suppose the EU does not think of as a resource.
The negative energy balance of wind and solar is borne out by the fact that in Germany last year the CO2 emissions rose by 2%, which means that 2% more fossil fuel was used, regardless of the large installed capacity of renewable energy.
Unfortunately uninformed people believe that wind and sun are free. Using them, however, turms out to be very expensive. There were good economic reasons for commercial shipping to turn from sail to steam...
Monster Raving Loony Party?
The political answer is much simpler than most posts suggest. We cannot continue to live in this grey vague middle ground and there will be no future if we try. We have to see the back of Cameron and his like and get an opposition leader forced by the democratic process to get a grip on things (i.e like energy policy, Islamic influence etc etc). The price we pay for this will be a labour led coalition but we have to accept that as the price of a viable future and just hope that they don't wreak too much damage.
And we can't even vote these idiots out of office. Some Democracy this!
This ''we did the right things for the wrong reasons'' crap smacks of straw clutching. I can hear the rising flood waters of reality in the distance.
Hedegaard appears to have been put into the EU by the Danish Energy Agency to lie about Danish windmills. She wasn't to know that by 2004 they had proved the windmills couldn't work at >10% demand.
So, it's all been a big lie to sell Danish windmills. She should resign and take up knitting but being a bully she is now insisting that she didn't lie but was morally right.
The CBI, under present leadership (Jon Cridland), is very much a pro-EU lobbyist who champion the renewables industry. It is one of their prime campaign themes
http://www.cbi.org.uk/campaigns/maximising-the-potential-of-green-business/?page=2
Here is a typical example
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jul/05/green-growth-false-choice-cbi
@JamesG and further to Pharos's comment above...
The CBI is to all intents and purposes the trade union that represents only big and multinational businesses - these are the ones that have the most to gain from the sort of complex regulations that are a hallmark of the EU... They keep the competition out.
The CBI is absolutely not the "voice of business" in real terms.
Sep 16, 2013 at 9:05 PM | Robinson
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Not necessarily so. This is the great known unknown.
If enough people voted for UKIP then the UK candidate would be elected in the place of the Tory candidate. Of course that will not happen in all constituencies but if that were to happen in enough constituencies without thereby letting labour win the consituency, one would get a mixture of UKIP and Tory MPs whose combined number may provide a majority thereby leading to a UKIP/Conservative coalition.
Now that would be an interesting scenario, and may lead to quite sensible government, by providing the best of what each has to offe,r and limiting the worse which each offers.
One can always dream, but as you say, voting UKIP runs the risk of letting in Labour, which would be a repeat disaster of what has been before.
Thats why in a democracy, one should vote for policies not for a party. Perhaps at elcetions say 20 main policies (with alternates including tax implications &/or welfare implications of the policy) should be put to the electorate, and they can vote on each policy, and any government elected is obliged to carry out that policy whether it was one of theirs or was in fact a policy of one of the minority parties.
If you Google the words Connie Hedegaard Tax Scandal you get
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/carbonwatch/2010/06/carbon-carousel-europes-market-haven-for-tax-fraud.html
Guess who was the Female Danish minister in charge when all this tax fraud involving Carbon Credits was going down.
"Monster Raving Loony Party?"
Yup.
Connie, is a raving monster who is partying because: the loonies [the taxpayers] write the cheques.
Pertinent to your question..................vote for the - Monster Raving Loony Party?
In British politics there is stiff competition. With it's abundance of clowns, paid for shills, megalomaniacs, flunkies, sycophants, fabians, and all manner of birdbrained twerps - currently sitting in Parliament. Incontrovertibly, the monster raving loony party provides refreshing relief in that they, unlike other principal political institutions - do not pretend to be anything other than raving loonies.
Thus Don, you could do worse than place your X by their brand.