BBC Pisses on the Public, Kisses up to Warmists

via Defeat Climate Alarmism
https://defyccc.com

A WUWT reader ( ptolemy2,  April 20, 2017 at 2:22pm) wrote:

“In a radio interview I heard some years ago a BBC employee recalls his first day of work at the media establishment. An experienced colleague-mentor led him upstairs and out onto the roof. The two of them then stood together on the edge of the roof and urinated down on the people many floors below at ground level. (They were both male BTW.) This, the mentor explained was an important rite of passage impressing on a new employee the correct BBC attitude to hold towards the general public.”

“Therefore several decades of airwaves filled with hard-left agitprop has produced a reaction in the opposite direction. People are waking up to the fact that they have lived their whole lives listening to an unopposed unelected undemocratic stalinist hard left press. “

This is how BBC’s Roger Harrabin inquired about the climate alarmism party line in 2011:

“Some broadcasting is already in the pipeline that will relate to the themes of Rio+ 10, but this is an open opportunity for you to put forward ideas that will be collated and circulated amongst relevant BBC decision-makers.

* What should the BBC be doing this time in terms of news, current affairs, drama, documentaries, game shows, music etc? * How can the BBC convey the theme of sustainable development to viewers and listeners who have probably seen all the issues raised before? * Is there any scope for a global broadcasting initiative? * What are the strongest themes and specific issues that should appear in the media in the months and years following the conference?”

Sometime between the 1990’s and the 2000’s, the BBC became just a shadow of what it used to be.

via Defeat Climate Alarmism https://defyccc.com

May 5, 2017 at 11:09PM

Millions of smart meters may need replacing due to IT blunder

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
http://ift.tt/16C5B6P

By Paul Homewood

h/t mikewaite

Whoops!!

Millions of smart meters installed in British households under the Government’s flagship scheme may need to be replaced due to an IT bungle.

For the first time major energy suppliers have admitted that some of the 8 million "first generation" smart meters fitted in households are incompatible with a new nation al communications network, which links their systems to the devices.

A row has broken out after the government last night denied that the meters would need to be replaced.

Estimates show a worst case scenario in which every smart meter has to be replaced would add as much as £100 to every UK household’s energy bill, although sources said this was unlikely.

Meters not connected to the system "go dumb" when consumers switch energy suppliers to get a better deal, meaning they are no better than traditional meters as customers have to rely on estimated bills.

Under the Government’s £11bn smart meter programme every household in the UK will have been offered a device by 2020. Energy suppliers which do not comply face heavy fines. ….

A senior source at one major energy supplier said: "We have a smart meter trilemma: if we don’t roll out smart meters we can be fined. If we do, we know we could be offering a sub-par consumer experience. And all the while we’re told by BEIS to never mention the costs."

http://ift.tt/2qMDVGS

All of the comments at the Telegraph have so far been strongly anti-smart meters.

As this one points out, it is an outright lie that the meters are “free”, as the cost is being added to everybody’s bills regardless.

At £11bn, this works out at more than £400 per household.

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT http://ift.tt/16C5B6P

May 5, 2017 at 10:39PM

Climate of unintended consequences – NYT

via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
http://ift.tt/1WIzElD

Bret Stephens at The New York Times delves into the erroneous ‘climate-friendly’ image of biofuels, and questions the claimed success of renewables in general. Not new criticisms, but new for the NYT at least.

A few extracts from the piece:
“Converting biomass feedstocks to biofuels is an environmentally friendly process. So is using biofuels for transportation. When we use bioethanol instead of gasoline, we help reduce atmospheric CO2.”

These confident assurances come from “Biofuels: A Solution for Climate Change,” a paper published in 1999 by the Clinton administration’s Department of Energy. Feels a little dated in its scientific assumptions, doesn’t it?

. . .
It seemed so obvious. Flex-fuel engines, which mix gasoline and ethanol, were advertised as the motors of the future. Brazil, with one of the most developed markets for biofuel production and consumption, was touted as a country of the future.

Dramatic advances in biofuels tech, we were told, were just around the corner. And biofuels would help us gain energy independence and hence greater security from terrorism.

Wrong on pretty much every count.
. . .
Turning to renewables he writes:
There’s also been some acknowledgment that Germany’s Energiewende — the uber-ambitious “energy turn” embarked upon by Angela Merkel in 2010 — has been less than a model for others. The country is producing record levels of energy from wind and solar power, but emissions are almost exactly what they were in 2009.

Meanwhile, German households pay nearly the highest electricity bills in Europe, all for what amounts to an illusion of ecological virtue.

The author concludes:
We need to make policy choices based less on moral self-regard and more on attention to real-world results.
– – –
Full article: Climate of Unintended Consequences – The New York Times

via Tallbloke’s Talkshop http://ift.tt/1WIzElD

May 5, 2017 at 10:00PM

Oil Closes Near $46 As U.S. Shale Revival Cancels Out OPEC Efforts

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

Oil closed near $46 a barrel in New York, back to levels last seen before the OPEC deal, as the shale revival appears to be making the group’s cuts ineffective.

After dipping below $44 Friday, futures pared this week’s decline to 6.3 percent. But, prices remain near their lowest since the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries signed a six-month deal to curb production in November. Meanwhile, shale drillers are pressing ahead with their longest expansion since 2011. Market volatility and trading volumes surged.

“What we’ve seen in terms of the rebound today is really just a bit of a correction following an oversold market over the past several days,” Michael Tran, a commodities strategist at RBC Capital Markets in New York, said by telephone.

OPEC’s curbs drove oil above $55 at the start of the year, encouraging U.S. producers to ramp up drilling. The result has been an 11-week expansion of American production, the longest run of gains since 2012. Prices are still more than 50 percent below their peak in 2014, when surging shale output triggered crude’s biggest collapse in a generation and left rival producers such as Saudi Arabia scrambling to protect market share.

Oil market volatility, as measured by the CBOE/Nymex Oil Volatility Index, jumped to the highest level since December. The U.S. benchmark’s 14-day relative strength index hovered near 30, signaling the commodity is oversold.

West Texas Intermediate for June delivery rose 70 cents, or 1.5 percent, to settle at $46.22 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Total volume was about 70 percent above the 100-day average. The contract sank 4.8 percent Thursday.

Full story

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

May 5, 2017 at 08:26PM