Bishop Hill What goes around...
May 6, 2015 Environmentalists have two main features to their modus operandi.
- Making up tall stories
- Trying to suppress dissenting views
One of the ways in which they try to achieve the second of these aims has been through complaints to media and advertising "regulators", bodies that they have tended to wholeheartedly support.
Until, that is, those bodies start coming up with the wrong answers. Or, worse still, when their opponents adopt the same approach. Given the other part of the green MO noted above, environmentalists are of couse wide open to retaliation and today brings the satisfying news that Greenpeace have been well and truly hoist with their own petard:
A Greenpeace advert claiming that allowing fracking in UK ‘won’t cut energy bills’ has been banned in a victory for David Cameron and other supporters of the technology....a complaint from the pro-fracking Labour peer Lord Lipsey said it was wrong and misleading to state that access to a new source of gas from shale rocks will not cut prices.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has agreed and banned Greenpeace from making the claim in its anti-fracking advertising campaigns.
The ASA is an abomination of course, but one can still appreciate and enjoy Greenpeace's discomfiture.
Reader Comments (29)
They're claiming conflict of interest (or the Rice-Davies gambit, I suppose) since Lord Smith (he does get around, doesn't he?) is connected both to the ASA and to some pro-fracking outfit as, apparently, is Lipsey who made the original complaint.
It's all on the Mail website. The report over there is taking a bit of flak. More than usual. Mail readers may well not be big on the global warming scam but they'e not big on believing Cameron when he says fracking will cut your energy bills. The less any politician says on any subject these days the better.
I am quite amazed by this. When I reported a similar thing some years back - claims made by a political lobby group - the ASA told me that political adverts were outside their remit as were religious.
So 'Labour isn't working' and 'Jesus saves' were as inviolate as 'wind energy will save the planet' from Renewable UK.
If we can now cite precendent here, the game is on to eradicate all the propafanda from Green and Renewable political and trade lobbies.
Go to it my friends...
One symptom of how bad the climate obsession truly is regards the belief by otherwise smart people that increasing the supply of something will not lower its price.
I see the mistake Greenpeace made, from the article:
"The group cited comments from the Lib-Dem energy secretary, Ed Davey, who in March described the idea that fracking would massively reduce prices and transform the economy as ‘ridiculous’"
It was always going to be difficult to maintain credibility after that...
Greenpeace quote the views of 22 experts supporting their views, and Ed Davey.
Real evidence from people who put fuel in a vehicle, is obviously inferior to 22 people deemed by Greenpeace to be experts, and of course Ed Davey.
I wonder how many donations to save polar bears, were wasted on legal fees. At least some lawyers are going to be saved by Greenpeace, the public will be relieved.
Actually fracking is unlikely to cut UK bills significantly, because all the gas would go into a common EU thingy, rather like UK CO2 having little effect on the atmosphere.
There is of course the small matter of fracking creating wealth, allowing us to pay for imports with something that foreigners won't laugh at, but we must be in some kind of post-modern economic era in which wealth creation no longer matters, as our esteemed politicians no longer speak about it.
@golf charlie:
perhaps if their lawyers were to dress up in polar bear outfits.......?
The Luddites would probably also have said that mechanisation of farming wouldn't bring down food prices, or that driving a car wouldn't be faster than cycling. Both could be true in some circumstances, and Greenpeace always choose their circumstances to suit their ends.
Fracking for us is more importantly about energy security, including the 1000 yrs of coal reserves we have off the North Sea coast to supply sustainable energy until real alternatives are found or developed, not the half cocked so called renewable stuff
http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/drilling-date-set-north-seas-6896191
It will be a long time before us plebs see any advantages in our pockets with 20 yr contracts in place to landowners (Inc Crown estates) for wind & solar.
Ever get the feeling we've all been played here like the Barons & surfs of old ?
Environmental groups have got way out of hand / too influential and have become neo Nazi like in their lies & alarmist statements
They have certainly turned me away from any sympathies I held toward them in the past along with any faith I had in much of the media services
Its good to be Green...is it? Animal Liberation Front needed to lend a hand (around the neck I suspect)
Guido...again:
http://order-order.com/2015/05/06/the-green-party-terrorist/#_@/kcaTFKoPy6-0Iw
Supply and Demand Law deniers!
They'd have got away with it if they'd just said 'probably' - as in "probably the best lager in the world".
Green economics:
Greater supply leads to greater demand; which leads to greater prices and supplies running out.
Obama said fracking wouldn't reduce gas prices in the 'closed' US market. Then gas supplies rocketed promoting wider use at the expense of coal, forcing down the price of not just shale gas but coal too, in turn impacting on oil prices. Cue a Saudi-led oil-price war and the global price of oil dropping like a rock. Who predicted this outcome? Almost nobody.
cheshirered on May 6, 2015 at 1:09 PM
"Who predicted this outcome? Almost nobody."
Few (especially the politicians and the Left) predicted that shale would be so productive, so quickly.
However, Saudi Arabia's (political) response is not such a surprise, given that its Oil and Gas industry supports a very large social programme. And given the dysfunctional nature of the worldwide Oil and Gas industries, now that most is in the hands of political powers in Socialist states, the drop in oil price is just what any decent Economist would expect.
The remnants of the big oil global companies, the Seven Sisters, now hold only around 5% of reserves and the market.
Graeme No3, the problem with Greenpeace getting their lawyers to dress up as polar bears, is that Greenpeace and other climate alarmists won't be able to see them.
Polar bear numbers may never have dropped at all, it is just nobody told Greenpeace that polar bears are white. Greenpeace with all their experts, never figured out that these stupid bears would be the same colour as snow and ice. Unsurprisingly, satellite photographs also led Greenpeace experts to believe there were no polar bears.
For further evidence of this confusion, one expert, who actually knew polar bears were white, did mistake bits of ice, as dead polar bears, when seen from an aircraft, but Greenpeace were happy about it due to the publicity and donations they received.
In short, I have reached the conclusion that it is safer to assume that Greenpeace facts, are wrong. Worse, Greenpeace facts are deliberately wrong.
When it comes to denial of science, truth and facts, Greenpeace experts, lead the world. (Closely followed by Ed Davey)
Greenpeace will be campaigning for all polar bears to be fitted with Dayglow orange thermal underwear, with integral buoyancy pads, GPS tracker, and a handy pouch containing a thermos flask full of hot seal stew. Without this help, polar bears will never survive.
Depending on the outcome of the election, it is not clear whether Davey will have the time to follow a suitably equipped polar bear, and if so, how closely. It is worth pointing out that no survey has been carried out to measure the temperature of fresh polar bear droppings, as they hit the ice. Grant funding for such work, will not include a pension contribution.
@blackpearl:
On R4's Farming Today this morning (early-morning insomnia is a pain) some dopey woman was pushing the idea that what was needed (I paraphrase) was a return to smaller farms because as fossil-fuels were coming to the end of their finite reserves there would be a dearth of things likes nitrates to feed the soil, which, with global warming, would be harder to farm.It seems that Farming Today always manages to get in at least one reference to AGW.....
"Making up tall stories"
And even to hyperbole in comments. They can't help it. It's just what they do.
Andrew
If only mummy polar bears told baby polar bears to eat their greens.
BLACK PEARL, I was around when you did your edit. Saw both versions.
Trolls constantly underestimate both the vigilance and the intelligence of their targets.
"The group cited comments from the Lib-Dem energy secretary, Ed Davey, who in March described the idea that fracking would massively reduce prices and transform the economy as ‘ridiculous’"
May 6, 2015 at 11:18 AM | Steve Crook
The precedent does raise interesting issues as regards the value of statements made by Energy Secretaries, seldom known for having the least clue on the not unimportant matter of national security and economy they are tasked to manage.
After tomorrow I wonder which fine mind we will be blessed with next?
GC: what a good idea. I am sure that greenpeas will have plenty of volunteers willing to commit to the task of getting this equipment fitted to those oh-so-cuddly ickle bears. Now, whether it is more news-worthy to see the heroes being eviscerated by ursine gratitude than to see them trying to board a fossil-fuel production platform from their fossil-fuel powered boats is another matter.
In the event of a Miliband/SNP/GREEN/PLAID CYMRU vomitcoagulation win tomorrow, Greenpeace will be anticipating Lord Rusbridger to be in charge of the Advertising Standards Authority.
All car adverts will be banned, apart from chauffer driven Prius'
All job adverts, will have to be in the Grauniad, who will moderate adverts prior to publication.
All Greenpeace activities will be judged excellent, apart from those judged fair, reasonable, and appropriate under the circumstances.
Everyone WILL live happily ever after, or not live at all. By order.
Mikky:
Absent shale gas, the UK will become dependent on imports from Norway, and more expensively, from LNG. Shale will back out expensive LNG, reducing the average cost of gas. At present, the UK acts as an offshore LNG terminal for the continent at times of higher demand, which means our prices are lower than theirs by at least the cost of shipment to them (whereas if we import gas from them - as we have from the Dutch gas fields, we must pay their price plus shipment). There is anticipated to be a flood of new LNG trade which will lower prices. A significant portion of that will come from the US - supplied by shale gas. The balances will vary seasonally, but there seems little doubt that even if we don't become a gas net exporter again, prices will be lower because of the transport arbitrages. If we become a large exporter, prices will be set by export parity, which would have to allow for the cost of e.g. LNG liquefaction as well as transport.
hunter:
Green economics:
Increase the supply of CO2 and we'll raise the price... Decrease the supply of CO2 and we'll also increase the price. There is no such thing as a market - we fix it.
Greenpeace will be launching an appeal for legal fees, otherwise some of their lawyers will have to resort to legal aid work. At least when representing polar bears they don't have to actually meet any of their clients in the flesh. Much as the polar bears would relish the opportunity of a free lunch.
Correction:
Environmentalists have three main features to their modus operandi.
Making up tall stories
Trying to suppress dissenting views
Sabotage or eco-terrorism
The DBs will never learn
fracking won't massively reduce prices and transform the economy
=============
there is the lie, twice told.
The politician adds the word "massively" to make it seem like fracking won't help much. GP then removes the word "massively" to make it seem like fracking won't help at all.
Yet one only need look at the world price of oil to see the effects of fracking.
Black Pearl;
Perhaps that's "barons and serfs", not "barons and surfs"? Dude!