Quote of the day, goofy edition

This moment requires we the people to rethink democracy as a global mechanism for enacting policy for and by the planet.

Environmentalist Daphne Muller goes all Che Guevara

Fiddle me this - Josh 346

Volkswagen has been found cheating on US emissions tests. But with the Green Blob fiddling everything from Renewables to Global Temperatures, it's no wonder they thought this was ok. Some like Stephen Glover blame green zealots directly.

Cartoons by Josh

Environmentalism may not be perfect!

The Today programme picked up the current ecomodernism meme, with a segment in which Owen Paterson faced off against Greenpeace's Doug Parr on the subject of technology.

I can't recall a previous occasion on which someone has been permitted to take a potshot at environmentalists, so it will have been a surprise for the average Radio 4 listener, who has previously been led to believe that greenery is beyond reproach.

A three-minute segment on a news programme is just a gesture of course; we await (with no great sense of expectation) a three-part critique of environmentalism analogous to critiques the BBC has commissioned on, say, climate sceptics and libertarianism.

But nevertheless, credit where credit is due.

Audio below.

Paterson Ecomodernism

Why the poor should pay higher rate tax

In the crazy world of the environmentalist, the following logic holds:

Oil companies are subject to a supertax on top of corporation tax.

Oil companies operating West of Shetland do not have to pay this supertax.

Therefore oil companies operating West of Shetland are subsidised.

Therefore we should apply the supertax to all oil companies.

One can apply this logic elsewhere:

Rich people pay income tax at 40%.

Poor people pay income tax at 25%.

Therefore poor people are subsidised.

Therefore we should tax poor people at 40%.

I'm not sure our environmentalist friends have thought this through.

Shameless, shameless, shameless

Having been hanging round the energy and climate debate for a long time now, it's not often I am taken aback by the Green Blob. But this article by Carbon Tracker's Anthony Hobley really made me gasp. The whole thing is amazing, but this in particular took the biscuit.

Investors are paying dearly for the inactions of the energy incumbents who have seemingly ignored and laughed off the impact of renewables. In the last five years 26 coal companies have gone bankrupt and US coal equities are down over 76%[1].

The suggestion that the pain being felt by coal companies is caused by anything other than the shale gas revolution and the surge in production from OPEC is astonishing. Non-hydro renewables are just 7% of US energy generation. Their impact is therefore nugatory, and there is simply no way Hobley cannot know it.

Shameless, shameless, shameless.

Update on Sep 22, 2015 by Bishop Hill

On Twitter, Hobley claims that he was describing a "perfect storm" of factors doing for coal.

Unfortunately, a brief perusal of his article suggests that this is simply not true.

No other factors are mentioned. No word of "shale" or "gas".

Shameless.

Muck and brass

There is much entertainment to be had this morning from the revelation that the ringleader of a notorious gang of climate scientists has been taking home as much as $750,000 per year from his climate activities. Professor Jagadish Shukla spearheaded last week's attempt to get the Obama administration to prosecute climate sceptics under racketeering laws. These new revelations make it look as if his real motivation was to protect his own income.

The news about Shukla is just the latest in a long line of stories showing that the loudest scaremongers in the Green blob are able to command extraordinary incomes. Lord Stern's speaking fees are one example, and another was last week's reminder that the chief scientist at the Met Office earns more than the Prime Minister.

Muck and brass, you might say.

Monksbane

Back when they were opposing the extension of the coalbed methane operation in Falkirk, I remarked upon the evidence from witnesses for Friends of the Earth, which didn't echo any of the claims the group was making in public about health and environmental impacts of unconventional gas operations. Indeed, as Dart's QC noted at the time, neither of FoE's witnesses even opposed permission to drill being given.

It's one thing giving evidence to a fully lawyered inquiry, but quite another to sound off in public, and today Friends of the Earth have returned to the fracking fray, trying to persuade the SNP to turn the moratorium on new developments into an outright ban, backed up with lurid claims about what gas wells mean for health and environment. Interestingly, FoE Scotland boss Richard Dixon seems to have delegated the task to a young lady who is barely out of her teens.

Flick Monk, of Friends of the Earth Scotland, added: “Local communities do not want their health and environment damaged by energy companies aiming to extract gas at any cost."

I suppose Dr Dixon wouldn't want to get caught misleading the political classes himself. Still, it doesn't seem very chivalrous to me.

Update on Sep 18, 2015 by Bishop Hill

This just in from INEOS's PR people:

While we don’t see eye to eye with Flick’s position on very many things she at least came along to the INEOS Grangemouth public exhibition and engaged with us. INEOS would much rather have a civilised event, even if at times the conversation gets spirited, with Flick or anyone from Friends of the Earth Scotland, regardless of their age, than no conversation at all.

Lucas to DECC?

Guido has just tweeted a rumour that Corbyn is to appoint Green Party MP Caroline Lucas to the DECC portfolio. If true, that should go down like a lead balloon with ambitious Labour party backbenchers.

I assume it's not true though.

Update on Sep 14, 2015 by Bishop Hill

Indeed, it was a bit unlikely wasn't it? The dear leader has filled the DECC shadow role with Lisa Nandy, an MP with little or no previous interest in the subjects of energy or climate.

Green rump

With mainstream greens all coming out in favour of fracking (Robin Harper signed up yesterday, adding his name to a list that now includes Stern, Deben and Worthington), it looks at though only a green rump - the true oddballs of the movement - want to continue the fight.

Dame Vivienne Westwood's anti fracking tank rides to David Cameron's house in #Witney. #HeartNews pic.twitter.com/oRRn50ibBg

— Thames Valley News (@HeartThamesNews) September 11, 2015

(You would have thought that a top person in the creative industries could have thought up their own publicity stunt rather than pinching Guido's idea.)

Weirdness

Bryony was glad she had someone to protect her from Bob's furyBack in July Secretary of State Amber Rudd told the Energy and climate change commitee that shale gas was effectively a low-carbon source of energy, a remark that had a harsh response from the usual suspects, including Simon Bullock of Friends of the Earth and BH favourite Bob Ward.

#ECC @AmberRuddhr shale gas "is low carbon source" - this is nonsense! Most of world's gas is unburnable for climate goals.

— Simon Bullock (@simonbullock) July 21, 2015

Bob Ward described Rudd's remarks as "bizarre".

Bizarre. Energy SoS @AmberRuddhr tells @CommonsECC that shale gas is a low-carbon source of energy. Only compared with coal!

— Bob Ward (@ret_ward) July 21, 2015

Today, of course, Bryony Worthington has said almost exactly the same thing.

What do people think about @bryworthington calling shale gas "low carbon"? For today's @guardianeco Eco Audit.

— Karl Mathiesen (@KarlMathiesen) September 10, 2015

We await comment from the Grantham Institute.

Update on Sep 11, 2015 by Bishop Hill

In the Graun, Bob Ward says that Worthington's stance is “perfectly sensible”.

Will removing cost make things cheaper?

The Today programme decided that it would invite two anti-capitalist greens on to discuss shale gas. I suppose we should at least be grateful that they picked two greens who had some minor disagreement, with Bryony Worthington wanting a domestic shale gas industry to develop and Friends of the Earth boss Craig Bennett adopting a zero-tolerance approach to any future development (audio posted below). Roger Harrabin's website report on the item also has a quote from Matt Ridley.

Worthington's view is that it's a waste to compress gas in Qatar, ship it thousands of miles and then decompress it again in the UK.

The important thing is to minimize the carbon emissions from gas. That means if we can get our own fracked gas, it's better to use that than importing gas that's been compressed at great energy cost somewhere else.

No doubt we should rest assured that removing this "great energy cost" from the equation will have no impact on gas prices in the UK.

Worthington Bennett fracking

Greenpeace warns of ice age dangers

Greenpeace are fond of telling us that the planet is going to fry because of our evil addiction to fossil fuels. How then to explain their submission to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which maintains a register of issues and potential problems with the nation's nuclear waste repositories?

The long-term effects of glaciation on repository safety could be very serious, potentially involving a large release of radionuclides due to glacial flushing from a damaged repository zone. Future glaciations could cause faulting of the rock, rupture of containers and penetration of surface and/or saline waters to the repository depth.

Surely some mistake?

Destroy the planet to save the planet

A new paper in Nature (some readers may prefer to discount the paper on those grounds alone) finds that efforts to abate emissions of two key greenhouse gases that are emitted as industrial wastes have managed to create incentives to produce more of them.

Carbon markets are considered a key policy tool to achieve cost-effective climate mitigation^{1, 2}. Project-based carbon market mechanisms allow private sector entities to earn tradable emissions reduction credits from mitigation projects. The environmental integrity of project-based mechanisms has been subject to controversial debate and extensive research^{1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9}, in particular for projects abating industrial waste gases with a high global warming potential (GWP). For such projects, revenues from credits can significantly exceed abatement costs, creating perverse incentives to increase production or generation of waste gases as a means to increase credit revenues from waste gas abatement^{10, 11, 12, 13, 14}. Here we show that all projects abating HFC-23 and SF₆ under the Kyoto Protocol’s Joint Implementation mechanism in Russia increased waste gas generation to unprecedented levels once they could generate credits from producing more waste gas. Our results suggest that perverse incentives can substantially undermine the environmental integrity of project-based mechanisms and that adequate regulatory oversight is crucial. Our findings are critical for mechanisms in both national jurisdictions and under international agreements.

Oh well done Gaia lovers, well done. It seems that we have to destroy the planet to save the planet.

Changed times

By almost any measure, the UK - and England in particular - is seriously overpopulated. According to the Optimum Population Trust, our numbers are growing by more than 320,000 a year. Addressing this doesn't mean forced sterilisations or a Chinese-style, one-child policy, but it does mean giving incentives for people to have smaller families and addressing rising levels of immigration.

Mark Lynas, vintage 2007

Perhaps today the circumstances have changed...

See you there! #refugeeswelcome pic.twitter.com/enjuk1dP6l

— Mark Lynas (@mark_lynas) September 2, 2015

Greenpeace's failed predictions

Whilst offshore wind is expected to get cheaper as the industry grows, the cost of gas is set to increase due to a combination of rising fuel and carbon prices. Our bills are likely to go up in all future energy scenarios, but the government's own advisers say the best way to limit that rise is through increased renewable energy.

Greenpeace spokesman, September 2013

The gas price has fallen – which makes subsidising nuclear (and offshore wind) much more expensive. Cheaper options for cutting emissions – like onshore wind and efficiency measures have, for various reasons, been parked.

Greenpeace spokesman, August 2015

Which is about as convincing a demonstration as you could wish for of the foolishness of listening to environmentalists.

Hat tip Ben Pile