The Chattering Teeth Classes

At age seven Tyler was scarred for life by his primary school teacher's tale of her great grandad being frozen to death on a stagecoach crossing Salisbury Plain. Now that was real weather.

And as it happens Mr and Mrs T will be spending tonight in Swindon. That is, if they make it through the weathergirl's promised whiteout hell.

Luckily the weathergirl's right hand girl in the Met Office global warming department has just been on R4 Today telling us that global warming is proceding at an even faster pace than she'd previously feared. Something to do with drifting boys being colder than ships apparently.

Well, in truth I'm not quite sure that is what she was saying. Just before the 7.57 weather forecast with its whiteout prediction for the weekend, she told us this could be the warmest year on record. And if it hadn't been for those pesky sunspots - the ones the Met Office never even mentioned to us before others pointed them out - we'd already be frying.

Hmm, yes.

In 2008-09 the Met Office cost us taxpayers £162m.

Of more importance to those of us in the teeth-chattering real world is Ofgem's newly announced probe into retail energy prices. Their latest analysis shows that the energy companies have indeed whacked up their profit margins for domestic consumers. In the last three months they've increased from £65 pa to £90 pa per dual fuel customer :

Now, they have to make a profit - we all need to understand that. But publicly raising their margins in the face of general austerity looks a tad on the dumb side. You wonder if we're getting the whole story.

So time to saddle up the stallions and hit the ice road.

Tally-ho.

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: eco wibble, regulation

Dear Chris...

He'd love to hear from you

As the spending battle reaches its climax, public sector bosses from the cops to the profs to the jolly Jack Tars, are starting to fight dirty. Cam and George need to be resolute.

The leaker of Doc Fox's letter to Cam is reportedly being tracked down by the very latest and highly sophisticated MOD drones. But given that the leaker pretty well has to be someone at the top of the MOD itself, it will be a miracle if the drones find anyone.

Still, there's no reason why we should stand by idly while the battle rages. We can help the good guys by at least showing them we're on their side.

And in that vein, the TPA has written to Energy Secretary Chris Huhne to urge the abolition of the useless £118m pa Carbon Trust. The letter neatly summarises why the Trust should be added to the quango bonfire, and the TPA suggests we all add our voices by e-mailing chris@chrishuhne.org.uk or writing to him at

Chris Huhne

Department of Energy and Climate Change

3 Whitehall Place

London

SW1A 2AW.

Well, what are you waiting for?


PS Grown-ups, eh? Of course we can all understand why Milli snr has stomped off in a huff because baby bro was given the biggest slice of cake (which of us can honestly say, etc). But the point about these people is that they're not supposed to be like the rest of us. They're the ones who reckon they are so grown-up that they deserve to be put in charge and to tell the rest of us how to behave. And talking of infantile behaviour, did you clock Milli jnrs' speech yesterday? Either he really believes all that tired old boilerplate crap about "a new generation" is actually meaningful - in which case he needs to grow up - or he thinks we'll have fogotten about the thousands of other manipulative chancers who've used exactly the same pitch - in which case he needs to grow up. Here's the benchmark performance - nobody has ever delivered it better, and to make it stick properly you have to die before your high flown promises turn sour... and not fall out with your bro:

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: eco wibble, politicos, TPA, waste

When Can We Stop Digging?

We are leading the world

As you will know, the man now in charge of Britain's energy supplies is one of our most notorious eco-hippies. But since we can't improve on Christopher Booker's brilliant Huhne demolition we needn't go on about that.

What we'd really like to know is when can we stop digging the huge black eco hole our grandstanding politicos have dumped us into?

We all surely understand the score by now. Our political class have presented us with a cataclysmic energy gap in the shape of closing coal-fired power stations with no practical replacement available. Common sense says we'd better delay the closures as long as technically possible, crack on with the new nukes for the long-term, and build a few Chinese style coal-fired stations for the short-term. Either that, or watch the few remaining bits of British industry leave for places that can still supply power... like China.

Some of us had somehow hoped that the new government would return us to sanity, despite Cam's personal wind turbine. But no such luck. Huhne is quite happy to continue digging just where the last lot left off, boasting yesterday:

"Britain is the first country in the world to set legally binding ‘carbon budgets’, aiming to cut UK emissions by 34% by 2020 and at least 80% by 2050 through investment in energy efficiency and clean energy technologies such as renewables, nuclear and carbon capture and storage."

Look, out here, we don't want to be the first (ie the only) country in the world to dig our own economic grave, thank you very much.

But at least the costs of this madness are now becoming apparent to everyone. Even Huhne's department admits that everyone's domestic fuel bills are set to rack up substantially. Over the next decade, they expect

"The impact of climate change and energy policies on energy prices [will be to increase them by] 18% and 33% on gas and electricity prices respectively for domestic consumers and 24% and 43% respectively, for medium-sized nondomestic consumers."

Which for an average UK household translates into an annual increase of around £300. And for a typical small manufacturing firm will likely be the straw that breaks them.

According to the department of course, it won't be like that. That's because we'll all cut our energy consumption to offset the increase in prices. So we'll all be just as well off, but the planet will be that much greener (reality check - a 25% cut in our total energy consumption would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by at the very most 0.5%... and that's assuming we don't simply export our remaining CO2 generating industries to China, which is what actually happens in the real world).

So the question is when will our anger at rising energy prices mount sufficiently to force a halt to the digging?

Step one is to make sure everyone understands just what it's costing us all. Step two will doubtless take care of itself when the lights start going out later this decade.

PS Hilarious contrast between the BBC/C4 coverage of the current US defence leak and the Climategate leak. Whereas the leaker/hacker responsible for the Climategate leak was branded a sneaky criminal - or possibly Russian black ops - the leakers of the defence material have been presented as courageous heroes. Yesterday's Newsnight featured Kirstie positively drooling over the Wikileaks man, even asking if he was Jason Bourne.

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: eco wibble

Please Tell Me

"Can you please tell me who will stop this happening and I will vote for them."

So says Mr Tony Nicholls in a comment under Christopher Booker's latest ST column today.

Booker (along with Richard North) has made another valiant attempt to unravel just how much of our tax money is being flushed down the bog of the global warming industry. It's not easy, as regular BOM readers will recall from our own attempts. Indeed, there is every indication that government departments deliberately mislead us.

For example, Booker describes how Defra paid £1,436,000 to fund the international working group that produced the last IPCC report - the one that included such lies as the melting Himalayas. Yet they later claimed in a report to Parliament that the cost was only £543,816 - only around one-third of the true cost.

Indeed, as Booker points out, when it comes to tax funding for the increasingly discredited global warming industry, official behaviour bears all the classic hallmarks of money laundering:

"Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs... lists 26 "suspicious indications" which should attract attention to the possibility that a financial transaction might need investigating. These range from "checking identity is proving difficult" or "reluctance to provide information requested" to "unnecessary routing of funds through third parties" and "transactions having no purpose" or "which seem to involve unnecessary complexity".

It's clearly outrageous, and not at all what any of us want. But as Mr Nicholls' comment highlights, we don't seem to have much choice. All three of the mainstream Westminster parties are committed warmists, pledged to go on with Operation Barbarossa however bonkers it may be, and whatever the catastophic impact on our prosperity.

Which brings us to the conversation Tyler is having with increasing frequency round the leafy glades of Surrey. It goes like this:

The Major (or Mr Scott, or Mrs Fitzgerald): "But why should I vote Tory when they're going to be just the same as Labour? Why shouldn't I stay at home to show what I think of them all?"

Tyler: "Well, because if you do that, the LibDems will get in all round here, and we'll either end up with Brown scraping back or a hung parliament. And if that happens, the markets will tank within weeks, there'll be the emergency budget to end all emergency budgets, taxes will go through the roof, and you'll end up in an even worse situation than now. Is that what you want?"

The Major (or Mr Scott, or Mrs Fitzgerald): "No of course not, but it may be we just have to go through it. I mean we never got Maggie until Heath had gone down and the country had experienced some serious pain. Right now we seem to be wandering around in a daze... nobody seems to understand what a grave situation we face, and Cameron isn't prepared to stick his head above the parapet to tell us. And even if he gets in, do you seriously imagine he'll get a grip? He'll be just like Heath... drifting along until we hit the rocks."

Tyler: "Hmm... well... Cam and Osborne are bright boys. They must know what happened back in the 70s, and they won't want to preside over a replay. Once they're in - assuming they can get a majority, that is - they'll have 5 years to sort things out. And whatever they say or don't say ahead of the election, they know they'll have to get a grip right away in order to give the economy the best possible chance of returning to growth by 2015. They're not dumb."

The Major (or Mr Scott, or Mrs Fitzgerald): "You think so, huh? And do you believe in fairies as well? Frankly, it isn't just the economy that worries us about Cameron, it's the whole deal - from hugging hoodies right through to this global warming nonsense. I mean, whatever happened to the traditional Tory party? Whatever happened to Tory values?"

Mr Farage (rudely butting in): "They all went off and joined UKIP."

*****

It's very difficult all this, isn't it. The horrible fact is, there isn't actually anyone we can vote for who will stop this happening. Sure, there are people we can vote for who will promise to stop it, but that's a different thing - under our grotesquely unfair first-past-the-post Westminster system of government, such people will never get the chance to actually implement their promises. Tyler's constitutional reform package includes separation of the powers and a directly elected President, but absent that, our real world choices are indeed very limited.

Which is why we will be out campaigning for the Tories again this time. They sure ain't perfect, and we share many of the Major's concerns, but in terms of forming a government to replace Brown's disaster, they're all we've got.

And what we can say is that from Tyler's personal knowledge, a good number of the new Tory candidates who will hopefully become MPs in May do share our belief in small government. Yes, they are all susceptible to the murky compromises that condemned souls make for power, but they are at least starting out on our side.

What we must do - all we can do - is to carry on campaigning outside of Westminster for the things we believe in. Believing that one day, when the tide of public opinion has turned far enough, our once and future king/queen will again step forward to wrench that sword from the stone.

It may not be much, but right now my friends, I'm very much afraid it's all we've got.

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: 2010 Election, eco wibble, electoral reform, politicos

Priests Screw Up - We're Doomed

So they get 15,000 priests, 5,000 scribes, and 45,000 worshippers, cart them all off to the Great Pyramid of the Sun, and then screw up.

No mass sacrifice. No bloodied beating hearts tossed down the steps. Just a bunch of weird attention-seekers thrusting themselves into the global pulpit whenever possible.

I tell you, the Gods ain't gonna like this.

****

What a shambles. If they can't even organise a £130m piss-up in the best brewery in the world, HTFFFF do they expect us to believe they can manage the future of our planet?

But I guess we can afford the odd £130m on a total waste of time. Much worse if they'd actually reached agreement. Because if these climate fascists ever get their way, we will all be A Lot poorer.

Today, the TPA published updated estimates of what so-called Green Taxes already cost us here in the UK. The shocking answer is £26bn pa, or over £1,000 pa per household (see paper for details).

And as things stand, all main political parties intend to increase that burden. They intend to tax and regulate our carbon emitting activites even more heavily - despite the fact that our taxes already far exceed the official estimates of the cost of our emissions. And they want to spend whole other shedloads of our cash on windchimes and elfin generators.

The Aztecs were only able to got rid of their destructive priests when the Spanish slaughtered them all. Let's hope we can get a grip before it comes to that.

PS Anyone who saw Newsnight yesterday will have seen their "Ethical Man" reporter in his kitchen, trying to prove that mankind is the evil destroyer of worlds by means of three empty Evian bottles, a length of plastic piping, and a large lady scientist. Needless to say, it proved nothing. But it did put Tyler in mind of the grisly bits in 10 Rillington Place, where Dickie Attenborough murdered various actresses in his kitchen using a very similar device.

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: eco taxes, eco wibble

More Of Your Cash Wibbled Away

I'll give you £1.5bn if I can wear the Big Hat

Never mind that we are stoney broke, the arrogant unelected clown masquarading as our PM has just blown another £1.5bn of our money in an attempt to buy himself some international status:

"At an EU summit in Brussels, the Prime Minister offered to pay the money into an EU fund intended to help poorer countries to cut their carbon emissions.

The offer will make Britain the largest contributor. France and Germany each promised around £1.2 billion to the EU fund, which will be worth around £6.5 billion in all."

Just so we're clear, Brown has agreed that we will pay 23% of the EU total, even though we only account for 13.6% of EU GDP. In other words, we are paying 70% more than our fair share.

And what is this fund anyway? How will it be spent? How much will get eaten up in the EU bureaucracy? Which wibbletech companies will get the orders? And which African dictator's Swiss account will benefit most? We know only too well what history tells us, but don't hold your breath for answers from Brown.

Meanwhile, the £180m pa tax-funded Met Office has published its latest scare story for Copenhagen:

"Global temperature for 2010 is expected to be 14.58 °C, the warmest on record."

Not one, but two places of decimals. That really is arrogance.

Of course, given enough computers, even the most blinkered monkeys will eventually hit the right answer. But we still suggest you note that prediction for future reference.

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: eco wibble, Gordo

Flat Earthers And Assholes

OK, it's warmer... but why?

Two, ahem, thoughtful contributions to the climate debate yesterday:

"With only days to go before Copenhagen, we mustn't be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics. We know the science. We know what we must do. We must now act." (Mr G Brown, a public employee with a direct career interest in extending the role of the state)

"What an asshole." (Professor Andrew Watson, a public employee with a direct career interest in extending the role of climate scientists)

Now, many of us would agree with Professor Watson's description applied to Mr B. Except of course, he wasn't describing Mr B: he'd hardly bite the hand that feeds.

No, the Prof - who is something senior at the University of East Anglia's utterly discredited Climategate Research Unit - was describing a fellow Newsnight discussant who had the temerity to challenge his views. Poor Martha hardly knew where to look (you can watch again here - at least for the next 48 hours)*.

As others have pointed out, once they start playing the man not the ball, you know they've lost. Climategate has crystallised the entire issue.

Because it turns out that these blinkered arrogant.... er... assholes have cobbled together hundreds of years of supposed temperature data from Irish pixie rings, crunched the data through a battery of computer models so convoluted they themselves can't remember precisely how they worked, and then presented the results as incontrovertible science. "Science" that has been embraced by big government types worldwide to justify a further massive increase in taxation, regulation, and jobs for the boys.

And as the scales drop from the public's eyes, all these assorted tax-dependents can come up with is that if we won't take their word for it, we must be behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earthers. Like, we should trust them because they have always been as pure as the driven snow... not that we'll have snow much longer.

So what's the truth, and can we handle it?

The story most of us have finally pieced together goes something like this:

The earth's climate has warmed a bit over the last few decades, although the warming seems to have stopped in 1998. There is no robust scientific explanation of why this has happened, which is hardly surprising given the complexity of the global climate system. Moreover, data on long-term climate change is extremely sketchy, although we do know that there has been considerable variation in the UK's climate over the last couple of millennia (from vineyards to ice fairs on the Thames, and back again).

So what should we be doing?

Given the uncertainty over the basic climate data, we're not at all clear we should be doing anything.

But even if we accept that the climate is warming, nobody has yet convinced us it's mainly down to our activities. The official line is that the link has been proved, but the people who say that have never presented the evidence in an open and transparent form that we can examine for ourselves. They simply assert it, present a load of hyped up exaggerated garbage like Gore's lamentable film, and rant hysterically at anyone who dares to question their authority.

But that's simply not good enough. It's not good enough for Brown and Miliband to close down debate by telling me and 60% of the UK population that we're flat-earthers. It's not good enough for them to tell us we have to go on with the green taxes and all the rest just because the world is warming. If the world is warming for natural rather than manmade reasons, making ourselves poorer by stifling our economy is not going to help - on the contrary, it will render us much less able to afford the costs of adaptation.

I want to be convinced. I want to see the actual evidence and be taken through how the models actually work. I want to understand the doubts and uncertainties, and I want to hear from both sides of the debate. And no, I'm not a climate scientist or even a scientist. But I do consider myself to be of at least average intelligence, and I do know a reasonable amount about number crunching and statistical models. And I do want to know.

So why can't the BBC do that for me? And not yet more spin from their in-house propagandists, but a sensible old-style BBC series with half of the progs presented by a sceptical specialist (Mrs T and I nominate Prof Stott).

*PS Yes, we realise Newsnight chose their climate sceptic to face Prof Watson with extreme care, in order to present all sceptics as excitable non-scientists. We are all aware by now that the BBC's editorial position on climate change is that of green propagandists. BOM correspondent NN suffered a seizure while watching a BBC news report on Wednesday about salt traders in Timbuktu. According to the report - a NEWS report note - said traders have apparently had to swap their transport camels for great big climate destroying trucks, because global warming has made the camels too tired and thirsty to do the work (well there is also the small matter of the always biddable truck being able to haul in one week what it takes the moody camels seven to achieve, but the real villain is definitely global warming). After a strong dose of smelling salts, NN emailed - "They sent a sodding reporter and camera crew and translator to sodding Timbuktu for this garbage. By camel? I would be willing to wager that they flew in a nice shiny aeroplane and then carted all their gear on one of the very same evil trucks that cause climate change. At least I hope so. The thought of BBC reporters earning 45 days of per diems while lugging their crap around on 1st century technology is truly alarming. What could have been a really good example of creative destruction and new technologies replacing old for the good of all involved becomes a truly loopy example of green non-thought. And spare a thought for the Tuareg salt-trader. Who wouldn't rather spend 45 days in blistering heat and thirst with a load of wheezing camels than seven days in an air-conditioned truck listening to Timbuktu FM. Of course it was climate change what done it. Aaaaargh. I think I need to leave the country to escape the madness, - by horse." We may join him.

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: eco taxes, eco wibble

Rich At Our Expense

Purrrrrrrr

By a strange coincidence, this year's Public Sector Rich List from the TaxPayers' Alliance is published just as the row over bankers' bonuses explodes once again.

The Rich List first. This year, the TPA has discovered 805 public employees earning more than £150,000 pa (and that excludes local authority employees, who are covered in the TPA's companion study, The Town Hall Rich List). Among the "highlights" (data relates to 2008-09):

• 8 people got more than £1m pa
• 333 earned more than the Prime Minister
• The group's average pay rise was 5.4%, compared to 2.7% for a nurse and 2.3% for a teacher
• The group's average total remuneration is £226k per annum; by comparison, according to the Institute of Directors, a managing director of a private organisation with a turnover of between £50 million and £500 million (about the size of a typical quango) could expect to earn £141k and an executive director £87k.

And for the first time, the Rich List includes executives from our nationalised banks (but note it's only board members - ie it doesn't including all those high rolling traders and investment bankers who remain anonymous because they are not on the boards). There are 30 of them, including the List's top earner, Mark Fisher of the Royal Bank of Scotland, on £1.4m.

Which brings us back to those banker bonuses, with over 5000 of the varmints apparently in line for over £1m apiece - ie a total bill in excess of £5bn just for the top guys.

Should we care?

You bet we should. As my Lord Myners was explaining all day yesterday, these bankers have been bailed out with squillions of taxpayer dosh. Apart from the effectively nationalised banks (ie RBS and Lloyds), all the other UK banks are being propped up with open-ended taxpayer guarantees on their liabilities. WTF should we allow them to walk off with barrowloads of our cash?

So what of their threats to resign and go off to work for Goldmans?

Call their bluff, we say.

Look, the key reason we're still in this mess is because Brown has not grasped the nettle we've blogged about so often (eg here). However it's dressed up, we need to split high street retail banking away from investment banking (aka a new Glass-Steagall).

High street banking should go back to being a low risk utility type operation, fully guaranteed by taxpayers but heavily regulated and subject to a hefty annual insurance charge to pay for the guarantee. Pay packets would soon return to the the more modest levels that always used to exist in our high street banks.

In contrast, investment banking should be much less regulated, a thousand flowers should continue to bloom, but there should be absolutely no taxpayer guarantee, either explicit or implicit. Investment bankers should pay themselves whatever they like, but if their bets go wrong, they should be left to incinerate.

We desperately need to get on with this. The existing arrangements are not only grossly unfair to taxpayers, but over time they will hobble our nationalised banks into oblivion. Whatever they decide to do, they will not be able to match their competitors bonuswise, because we won't let them. They will inevitably go the way of all nationalised industries before them - second-rate and a drain on national prosperity.

So what would we do right now?

Irrespective of international agreement, we'd announce our own Glass-Steagall. From say, end-2011, any bank wishing to offer UK high street accounts guaranteed by the taxpayer would have to comply with new regulatory requirements. And those requirements would include complete separation from any entity offering investment banking services (there would be other restrictions as well, covering such matters as asset and liability liquidity).

Meanwhile, we'd say to our nationalised banks yes, you can continue to pay bonuses, but they have to be in the form of deferred equity in your new post-2011 offspring. Cash? Forget it.

Throughout history, so-called "rent seekers" have sought to capture government so as to extract unwarranted financial gain at the expense of taxpayers. But whether in the public sector or the private, taxpayers should not be expected to underwrite the riches of others.

PS And talking of rent seekers, the furore over Climategate is gathering pace. The conflicted tax-funded global warming industry has now woken up to the threat, and is trying to argue that lies and distortions from East Anglia aren't that important to the case - loads of other "respected" scientists have come up with the same results independently. Except of course, it isn't like that. As the splendid Prof Philip Stott pointed out on R4 Today this morning, the whole global warming biz is an inverted pyramid, resting on the work of about 40 scientists. And 39 of them work at East Anglia. Well, no, I made that last bit up, but it is only around 40, forming a very tight groupthink mutual support network. But like the man said, you can't fool all of the taxpayers all of the time.

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: bank bailouts, bankers, eco wibble, public sector pay

Climategate

Warmism is not our specialist subject, but we really can't let the scandal of Climategate pass without comment.

As you will know, emails and other material "liberated" from the publicly funded Climatic Research Institute at the University of East Anglia, show quite clearly that warmist "scientists" have been manipulating data on climate change in order to con the public into believing their religion. Their very expensive religion.

The emails talk explicity of data manipulation "tricks", "hiding the decline" observed in actual temperature records, and suppressing dissident views (you can access the complete set here, but be warned - there are shedloads). It's all straight out of the Manual of Stalinist Tractor Statistics. The emails also contain requests to other warmist "scientists" to destroy embarrassing records that might be subject to public disclosure under freedom of information laws (an inconvenience such people didn't suffer in the USSR).

The significance of this hasn't yet been properly reflected in the mainstream media here in the UK (although Monbiot does admit it's "a major blow"). Certainly the coverage on yesterday's Newsnight tried to sweep it aside as some kind of handbags spat between a bunch of science beardies. Which was hardly surprising given that the BBC's stated editorial policy is to downplay the views of disbelievers in warmism (see this blog).

But although the UK msm is fully warmist, and its eco correspondents little more than propagandists for the cause, these days we all have other sources for our news. And the full story is emerging on the web. The ever excellent Watt's Up With That, has a good collection of posts and links on the scandal, including these two vids:

1) The punchy 5 min version from Fox News:



2) The longer 10 min version from Dr Tim Ball:



So to summarise, the so-called "settled science" of climate change is controlled by around 40 groupthink academics who "peer review" each other's papers, and exclude papers produced by dissidents. They have cobbled together a bunch of highly questionable data to support their claims, and refuse to release it to independent third parties in case their cobbling is exposed.

And who funds these charlatans?

Yes, that's right - you and I. It's you and I, and other British taxpayers, who fund the operations supplying the world climate change lobby with the bulk of their "scientific" input. As that pompous twerp Miliband Jnr keeps boasting, the UK is a world leader in fabricated warmist propaganda the established science of climate change.

Cost? As we've blogged before, exact figures are hard to come by because they are suppressed. But when last sighted, the Climatic Research Institute at the University of East Anglia had £3m of research grant funding, virtually all of it from taxpayers.

We don't have specific figures for the Met Office's notorious Hadley Centre (East Anglia's close working partner and cobbler-in-chief to the ludicrous Stern Report). But we do know that the Met Office costs us over £180m pa, of which £21m is for "climate research".

In any case, these research grants are the least of the costs. The real costs are measured in terms of the massive ecclesiastical bureaucracies spawned by warmism, and the even bigger tithes inflicted via green taxes and regulatory commandments.

But at least we all know the truth now: the "inescapable facts" of warmism are nothing more than a bunch of dodgy data manufactured by the high priests. The same high priests who have a direct financial interest in convincing us that they're right.

PS Farming News - according to Tyler's farming correspondent, the global threat posed by farting livestock could be dealt with very easily - by fixing a naked flame in the close vicinity of each animal's gaseous orifice. According to him, the methane would then turn into nothing more noxious than H₂O. Tyler advised him to apply for a research grant asap.

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: eco wibble

Green But Cold

After a few years you'll get used to it. Probably.

Mrs T returned from Sainsburys waving a 5p fuel token. True, she'd had to top up the shopping to fifty quid to qualify, but no matter: with diesel back to 106p a litre, every little bit helps.

Except of course, half the value of the fuel token has been immediately negated by Labour's latest increase in fuel duty: 2p a litre plus VAT equals 2.3p. Plus a further c2.5p when VAT goes back up to 17.5% at year end. Tax now comprises over 70p a litre.

Ah yes, but as Tyler's eco relations were telling him recently, we have to save the planet. We have no choice, and if you think otherwise you must be an idiot. You should stop moaning about fuel tax and just get rid of your gas guzzler.

Unfortunately, fuel tax is not the only cost being inflicted on us by our climate camping eco-hippies.

Over the weekend we got confirmation that those eco lightbulbs "are not as bright as their traditional counterparts and claims about the amount of light they produce are "exaggerated" (HTP Peter T):

"...under normal household conditions, using a single lamp to light a room, an 11W low-energy CFL produced only 58 per cent of the illumination of an "equivalent" 60W bulb – even after a 10-minute "warm-up".

On a website intended to answer consumers' questions about the switch to energy saving bulbs, the European Commission states: "Currently, exaggerated claims are often made on the packaging about the light output of compact fluorescent lamps."

Brilliant. Because it's the EU themselves who have imposed the sales ban on traditional bulbs, forcing us to use those ugly industrial-style compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) whether we like it or not.

But the most serious cost of the commissariat's green policies is the one we will be facing from the middle of the next decade. That's when the closure of our traditional and reliable power stations (also imposed by the EU) really begins to bite on the availability of electricity. As the Telegraph reports this morning:

"Demand for power from homes and businesses will exceed supply from the national grid within eight years, according to official figures.

The shortage of supplies will hit the equivalent of many as 16 million families for at least one hour during the year, it is forecast. Not since the early 1970s when the three-day week was introduced to preserve coal has Britain faced the prospect of reationing energy use.

The gap between Britain’s energy needs and demand throws fresh doubt on the Government’s assertion that renewable energy can make up for dwindling nuclear and coal capabilities."

The official figures are taken from the government’s Low Carbon Transition Plan, and here's their chart showing the projected energy gap (Expected Energy Unserved):

To put these figures in perspective, the 2025 shortfall of 7000 megawatt hours per year (itself based on highly optimistic assumptions) "is the equivalent to an hour-long power cut for half of Britain". Like the sound of that?

The thing about all these green measures is that they are not costless. The ludicrously spun Stern Report (see previous blogs here and here) tried to convince us the costs would be small, but as we can already see, in reality they will be very large.

We face higher fuel bills, dimmer lights, and f-f-freezing winters.

Enjoy.

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: eco taxes, eco wibble

Barbecue Summer Meets The Funnel Of Doubt

How come nobody mentioned the funnel?

Just for fun, let's see if we can work out the relationship between the following four statements:

1. "The coming summer is 'odds on for a barbecue summer', according to long-range forecasts. Summer temperatures across the UK are likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or below average for the three months of summer." (Met Office press notice 30 April 2009)

2. "You will need a brolly on holiday in the UK in August - the Met Office is issuing a revised forecast for more unsettled weather well into the month. It is a far cry from the "barbecue summer" it predicted back in April. The news will raise questions about the Met Office's ability to make reliable seasonal forecasts." (Roger Harrabin, BBC environment analyst, 29 July 2009)

3. "The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus." ("Safeguarding impartiality in the 21st century", BBC Trust Report 2007, justifying the BBC's overtly partial coverage of global warming; and see here).

4. "What of the... corridor of uncertainty? It must be related in some way to the ‘expanding funnel of doubt’ of which we hear so much in our line of work. Perhaps... ‘corridor of uncertainty’ is a generic term, used to describe a ‘funnel of doubt’ whose expansion/contraction properties are less well defined?" (The Actuary, 1 April 2005)

You see, the thing is, if the £180m pa Met Office's three months weather forecast is no better than than the flip of a coin, HTF can they possibly reckon to forecast our climate 50-100 years ahead? And given the rain lashing down on the barbecue, how can anyone possibly believe they are capable of that?

Admittedly, Tyler is no scientist (although I dare say he knows more about number krunching than the BBC's Environment analyst, who has an English degree). But in all the many forecasting exercises in which Tyler has been involved over the years, there is always this thing called the Funnel of Doubt.

The Funnel starts out nice and narrow - anchored to what we understand as today's reality.

But as you extend your forecast further into the future, the funnel expands rapidly. Known unknowns bombard the forecast from all sides, so that by the time you've got out a couple of years - at most - the funnel is so wide you're pretty well back to coin flipping.

A typical example is this chart showing 20 year projections of US government bond yields, ranging from roughly zero right up to 14%:

And that's without even considering the unknown unknowns, which have a nasty habit of cropping up... well... unknowably. You can't even model them.

The bottom line is that once you crank your forecasts out beyond the hand in front of your face, they are pretty well fiction. To be taken with a huge pinch of salt.

So what of that sodden barbecue?

According to Mr Harrabin:

"Some now ask if the Met Office risks its reputation by attempting to popularise its work this way. Certainly, at the time of the forecast there was pressure on the Met Office from tourism chiefs in the UK to be positive about holidays at home. Did Met Office staff feel an obligation to put on a sunny face?"

Actually, Roger, some of us are now asking a lot more than that.

Some of us are now asking why we taxpayers are stumping up £180m pa for a quango that has become the world's biggest producer of eco-doom fiction?

And yet more of us are asking why we are paying another £3.5bn pa quango to report such fiction as reality?

It's time we were treated like grown-ups. We don't believe any "experts" know what's going to happen to our climate a century from now. Still less do we believe they can justify the massive eco-costs they are now imposing on us.

Where there is doubt, let us see that funnel reported openly and clearly.

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: BBC, eco taxes, eco wibble

OMG

Soaring into the stratosphere

OMG 1

Today's public borrowing stats are way beyond dire: they are OMG terminal.

In the first two months of this financial year the government borrowed £30.5bn, comfortably over twice what they borrowed in the same two months last year.

At this rate we will certainly blow Darling's budget forecast of £175bn borrowing over the entire year. Even a straight pro rating suggests we'll hit £190bn, but with unemployment surging, that's an underestimate. Get ready for £200bn+.

In other words, Brown/Darling will smash the pre-NuLab record for a single year's government borrowing by a factor of 4 (previous record was £51bn in 1993-94). That is incompetence of an exceptionally high order.

Yes, yes, of course - you and I know we should adjust that for inflation. But not only does our beloved leader himself ignore inflation adjustments when it suits him, even if we did adjust the figures, this would still be well over twice the previous record.

And as we've said many times, either through taxes or inflation, you and I are the ones who will have to pay it off. For years and years... long after Catastrophe Brown has faded into just an unpleasant memory.


OMG 2

According to the Met Office, Hull is the new City by the Bay.

For an undisclosed fee - paid by those generous folk at "the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Department of Energy and Climate Change with the Scottish Government, Welsh Assembly Government and Northern Ireland Department of the Environment" - the Met Office has calculated Hull's climate in 2050.

We now know for A FACT that by 2050, Hull will be sizzling in Med-style temperatures, and its depressing North Sea drizzle will be a thing of the past.

As regular readers may recall, we've blogged the unappreciated potential of Hull before. This is the final proof. Thanks to the twin blessings of global warming and the property crash, you now have the chance to make your fortune!

Right now, you can pick up brand new top spec riverside apartments for a tad over £100 grand apiece. And just think what they'll be worth once the city looks like this:

You know it makes sense - I'll bet those boys from the Met Office have dived in already.

PS The Met Office describes its new toy thus: "UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09) is a climate analysis tool, funded by Defra, which features the most comprehensive climate projections ever produced. Projections are broken down to a regional level across the UK and are shown in probabilistic form — illustrating the potential range of changes and the level of confidence in each prediction." But when you look at the projections, all you find are numbers for temperature and rainfall. There's no mention at all of those extra hours of sunshine we'll enjoy in 2050. The sunshine numbers have been redacted - possibly literally, since there's an odd gap in the summary where they look like they might have slotted in. Why, you'd almost think the Met Office don't want us to know the good news about Hull. And indeed the rest of Britain.

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www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: debt, eco wibble, global warming