Thursday
Nov262015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill A few recent headlines
Nov 26, 2015 Climate: Parliament Spending Review: Support for fracking and green energy, DECC budget slashed
You know that austerity is biting deep and hard when we can no longer afford battallions of climate diplomats to arrange showings of An Inconvenient Truth to the natives.
Reader Comments (22)
My heart bleeds.
More than 100 "climate diplomats". I have no words.
I have the optimal and budget basement foreign "climate" policy that could be implemented in all international fora and bilateral discussions and negotiations..
A sign with "Not interested" written on it.
I always said here that when it fell, it would go silently into the night.
I know many here want Nuremberg style trials, but that isn't going to happen.
It'll just gradually disappear until you wake up one day and you realise it was 5, 10, 20 years ago.
Wouldn't it save more money to sack the climate diplomats before the COP21 Paris Summit rather than after?
That still leaves plenty more to go. They could save £billions if they had a good bonfire (as promised back in 2010).
" In choosing to save a relatively small sum of tax payer money in 2015, government is unnecessarily committing vast amount of future energy consumers’ money." - Shouldn't this be challenged? If what I read about the penalties of attaching CCS to power stations is true, it looks like a very expensive option has been avoided. If, after all this time, the UK's best engineers haven't managed to make it work economically, it never will be viable.
Climate diplomacy sounds like quite a rare skill.
Talking the weather into changing its position is quite difficult.
Do they use sign language or resort to the traditional medium of dance?
TheBigYinJames it is a good point , the IPCC , like any UN organisation , will have zombie like abilities to truly never die no matter how much you cut off. Years from now it may be down to nothing more than a single person in an UN office somewhere , pushing out paper work that no one ever reads, but death will never become it.
Stonyground on Nov 26, 2015 at 10:11 AM
"Wouldn't it save more money to sack the climate diplomats before the COP21 Paris Summit rather than after?"
One would think so, but no. We would have to pay out damages for their hurt feelings in addition to what has already been booked or paid for.
BigYin
And that's the best way surely.
I know that some of the more overheated commenters (on many subjects, not just climate) are always on the lookout for lampposts and treason trials and such but, as you say, it's not going to happen and best it doesn't because a lot of the people involved were quite sincere and most of us have the potential to be "useful idiots" about something so "there but for the grace of God..."
Let us just keep the pressure on where needed. Continue pointing out the errors and the lies and ignoring the mindless trolls and it will all calm down in a while.
But CCS has never been a viable option, and never will be. It requires energy to drive the system thus reducing the efficiency of the whole idea. They will be proposing perpetual motion next. The stupidity of the political class passeth all understanding.
Actually, you could probably cut 90% of all diplomats without any significant effect. For example, the phrase "consular assistance is being provided" whenever someone has a problem overseas is a joke in my experience. I could go on but it would be an OT rant... Suffice it to say I don't hold a high opinion of the FO.
Being serious about TheBigYinJames’ point, there are phases to the decline of the IPCC. It will gradually lose its functionality until it is just a legacy bureaucracy.
1) The IPCC is Normative. It speaks not just about what the climate will do but also about what is good.
a) What weather is good.
b) What means to control the weather is good.
c) Even about how to virtuously redistribute resources to cope with whatever weather we get.
That will be the first thing to go. Specifically, 1a as what is good for Russia is not good for India. The 1b for similar geopolitical differences. But 1c will go only after Phase 2 is broken.
2) The IPCC sets regulatory procedures and institutions that form a bureaucracy and allow a Green elite to meet.
a) They create a new power block in developed countries (like the EU green committees).
b) They allow 3rd world elites to access influence and even the wealth of those developed world institutions.
c) They allow opportunities for corruption. Corrupt institutions are very self-sustaining as the costs of collapse are very high.
So we need to break up 2b by demonstrating that the rewards of honest economic progress beat the neo-colonial sucking at the teats of the new institutions. Then the new institutions will fragment, trying desperately to quarantine the more corrupt. At which point the IPCC is moribund.
3) The IPCC is useful to Governments. It has a cynical purpose that needs to be replaced because it’s too good to lose.
a) They provide a chance of achievement that cannot be measured. Constant Green treaties don’t actually do anything (as they are unenforceable) but makes leaders look like leaders.
b) They provide an excuse for leaders to get together without having a specific subject matter. Everything is affected by the climate and everything affects it. That’s useful. Especially to China who wants to deal with S America despite the Monroe Doctrine.
c) The IPCC (through points 1 and 2) allow democratic Governments to push unpopular measures without blaming themselves.
Point 3 is too god to lose. The IPCC will never be gone until a replacement for Point 3 is found.
In fact, we’re already there.
Point 3 is all that’s sustaining Paris (COP21). The US senate will veto any Treaty and no-one trusts the Chinese…
But still they come.
If Tim Yeo thought he was a freelance Climate Diplomat, it would now seem his self proclaimed status did not include Diplomatic Immunity.
Sepp Blatter still thinks he has some form of Diplomatic Immunity, as do 'Ambassadors' and 'Tsars' in other lucrative arenas.
I am currently in discussion with my MP about the regressive taxation of poor people to pay for the Climateers. This is an extract from my most recent letter. You will see that the rot even sinks to the level of depriving school children of £7.51 EACH a year to pay for this fraud. Read it and weep.
I was however quite disgusted, when I read the Governments report to find that we are going to penalise children's education to the tune of a £7.51 deduction from the grant for every pupil in the country to pay for even more worthless climate boondoggles. If you cannot resist the temptation to impoverish adults by the relentless increases in electricity prices caused by carbon taxes and subsidies for unreliable intermittent electricity generation then at least the Government could have avoided penalising children to finance this socialist train wreck of a policy.
I refer , of course, to the DECC Carbon Reduction Commitment on page 20. I thought when that Idiot Ed Davey and his Liberal cohorts were removed from DECC we would get back to some more sensible policies.
""
Approach for 2015-16
For 2015-16 we will revise this method. We will deduct funding for the CRC scheme from the DSG on a simple per pupil basis. We will first adjust per pupil funding to take
account of minimum funding levels (as set out in chapter one), then we will reduce each local authority’s per pupil funding by £7.51. This will reduce the cost of the dedicated schools grant by £51m, the same as the amount by which DfE reduced local authorities’ DSG in 2014-15
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/332652/Fairer_schools_funding_arrangements_for_2015_to_2016.pdf
UK climate diplomats face axe after COP21 Paris summit.
Sounds like an invitation to party more than usual.
To slash our CC Act obligations in one go is simply not possible politically as far too many politicians have their reputations (and no doubt finances) at stake. Likewise there's just too many (duff) jobs in 'climate change' to cull the beast overnight. However I think it's clear Osborne is slowly unwinding at a rate that keeps everyone just about onside. It will be a slow process.
Don't tell me someone in government has suddenly realised that Carbon Capture and Storage WON'T WORK....!
That really would be too much to hope for...
sherlock 1, carbon capture and storage will work. They are going to round up trees, and bury them in abandoned coal mines. They can always dig out more coal, to make room for more trees.
Big Game Hunters, armed with high powered rifles, will be replaced by Big Tree Hunters, armed with high powered chainsaws, tracking and stalking the world's biggest trees. and people will pay for the privilege. It will be Green and sustainable.
Oh please not more headlines!!
I promised myself I'd do a few quick posts for an hour or two this morning before getting on with other things.
Everywhere I look this scandal is growing arms and legs.
Dhim Dave's U-turn on defence spending could be a useful pointer to the future of energy policy in the UK. He spent the last eight years doing everything within his power to eviscerate the armed forces. Suddenly on a whim he decided he wants to play with the big boys and splash out on shiny new kit to make up for the god-awful mess he's made of it. It'll take another ten years to undo just some of the damage but, hey the media will soon forget even if no one else does. This is likely what will happen on the energy front. In a year or so, maybe sooner, the energy crunch will come when a number of factors combine to create a very serious crisis which could end in lasting damage to the grid and major outages. A decade too late, out of the blue Dave will suddenly execute a defence style U-turn and try to reverse the years of lunacy he and Huhne, Davey, Rudd and all the rest of the gormless arts graduate clowns have presided over. Might even at a pinch repeal the Climate Act (nah not really). Sadly he and we will by then be between a rock and a hard place because all the windmills and all the solar panels in the world won't make up for the power stations he's blown up. We'll all likely be walking around much of the time in overcoats N Korean style for quite a few years to come and, as for industry, there simply won't be any until they can build some proper power stations again - a decade. Next step - election of a Corbyn government in a fit of national disgust. The inevitable end result of arrogantly making policy on the hoof every day despite all the warnings sceptics have made for the best part of two decades that were gleefully ignored.
Don't worry about these poor climate "diplomats".
They'll soon get another parasitic non-job courtesy of the "situations vacant" section of the "Guardian"