Tory ‘energy bill cap’ savings dwarfed by Climate Change Act charges

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In the Telegraph, Christopher Booker writes

“I would defy anyone unfortunate enough to hear the Today programme at 8.10 last Tuesday morning to have made head or tail of an interview in which our Business Secretary, Greg Clark, droned on for 10 minutes with Justin Webb about the Tories’ promise of a “cap” on energy bills. The essence of this flood of deathly jargon was that, thanks to something called the Competition and Markets Authority, this could save 17 million households a total of £1.4 billion a year.

“What Clark and Webb never mentioned, of course, were the figures recently published by the Office for Budget Responsibility, showing the soaring cost of those green subsidies and taxes we all pay for through our energy bills. These are officially projected to more than double by the end of this Parliament, from £7.3 billion last year to £14.7 billion, or from £292 a year for each household to £565.”

“In other words, even if Theresa May’s “cap” on energy saves £1.4 billion a year, this will be dwarfed by the additional £7.4 billion a year due to be added to our bills under the Climate Change Act.

“But if you ask any candidates in this make-believe election what they think of those figures, almost certainly they will never have heard of them. If they come to your door, try it.”

True of candidates of the legacy parties, who all but unanimously voted for the CCA in 2008, but UKIP candidates know their onions on this stuff, because it’s been part of UKIP energy policy for years. You can download and read the UKIP energy policy for yourselves and vote accordingly.

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May 14, 2017 at 03:09AM

You’re Calling Me “Anti Science?” 

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Credit: BBC

A brief run-through of some of the problems with ‘man-made warming’ theories, which so often get swept under the carpet and treated as unmentionable.

One of the main accusations launched by climate activists is that anyone arguing against man-made global warming is “anti-science.”

They tell us that the science is “settled,” and that anyone who objects is ignoring a blindingly obvious set of facts.

But what to do about someone like me, asks Steven Wright in Climate Change Dispatch?

I’m in hearty agreement that the global climate has warmed by roughly one degree Celsius over the past 150 years. However, my study of the relevant geology and physics leads me to believe that solar variability, not carbon dioxide, is responsible for this warming.

And so, it is precisely because of science that I am skeptical of man-made warming. Should I still be labeled “anti-science?”

Of the people who deride climate “deniers,” I’d like to ask some basic questions:

Continued here.

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May 14, 2017 at 02:09AM

Syrian Conflict Links to Climate Change Demolished

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By Paul Homewood

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Andrew Montford, now Director at GWPF, has this analysis of a talk by conflict expert, Professor Clionadh Raleigh, about the links between climate and conflict:

Yesterday, Clionadh Raleigh, an conflict expert from the University of Sussex, gave an extraordinary talk at the Oxford Martin School. In it, she took a fairly hefty axe to the idea that a link between climate and conflict has been demonstrated, although she saved the real fireworks for the Q&A session at the end.

The whole presentation can be seen on Youtube and it’s well worth a watch.

I looked at at the (frequently alleged) link between climate and conflict in my GWPF report on heatwaves and drought, noting in passing the extraordinary steps that one Colin Kelley had taken to arrive at his widely reported finding that the Syrian conflict was caused by climate change. Reading between the lines of Prof Raleigh’s talk, it seems that I’m not the only one to have noticed problems in the field, because this is what she has to say about it:

“There is a cottage industry that has emerged to promote [the climate conflict relationship] and others very similar to it, and those people and institutions …will find evidence or will…I hesitate to use the word “manipulate”…they will provide evidence as they see fit. There’s plenty of evidence that many of these presumed relationships are nonsense, but they are routinely used by the military or development organisations or by government…”

And when she spoke on Syria she had this to say:

“…the 150 different militia groups that have emerged in Libya or the 1000 that have emerged within Syria are not doing it because it didn’t rain 10 years ago. That’s not why they’re fighting.”

“It did disturb me, the way [climate] caught on as the main lens through which people wanted to understand violence…especially the narrative about Syria is quite disturbing”

At times Prof Raleigh has quite a lot of fun at the expense of our green friends. She wonders about the oft-claimed increase in raiding behaviour by pastoralists, allegedly caused by climate change or, more specifically, drought. As she deadpan explains, the problem with this argument is that no self-respecting pastoralist is going to steal animals during a drought because there will be no fodder around to keep them alive. Any pastoralist who wasn’t born yesterday (or in Islington) knows that you steal your neighbour’s animals at the start of the rainy season. The argument for some kind of a climate link is, once you understand the situation on the ground, completely preposterous.

But perhaps she is at her most devastating when she comes to the implications of the arguments put forward by the environmentalists and their friends in the Guardian and the New York Times:

“In very recent years, natural scientists have picked up on [the climate conflict] discussion. I would go so far as to say that their arguments are out and out environmental determinism: temperature goes up, violence goes up. It’s horrific…to imply that about people who are leading very difficult lives…to imply that they are somehow naturally violent is appalling.”

Which could be seen as…quite a strong accusation. It only gets worse when she considers the policy implications, which she says are “wide and profound”.

“The notion of “threat multiplication” and that the US sees climate conflict as one of the most important lenses through which to view African violence…will have long-term effects on these regions and their ability to adapt and mitigate if they are treated as a security issue.”

I sense, however, that environmentalists are not bothered in the slightest.

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Professor Raleigh maintained academic niceties in her talk, but it is clear that this is a really blistering attack on the integrity of so called scientists, such as Colin Kelley, who have twisted the evidence for their own purposes.

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May 14, 2017 at 01:24AM

You’re Calling Me “Anti Science?”

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One of the main accusations launched by climate activists is that anyone arguing against man-made global warming is “anti-science.” They tell us that the science is “settled,” and that anyone who objects is ignoring a blindingly obvious set of facts.
But what to do about someone like me? I’m in hearty agreement that the global climate has warmed by roughly one degrees Celsius over the past 150…

Click title above to read the full article

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May 14, 2017 at 01:21AM