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Saturday 2 October 2010

Royal Society: New guide on climate change.

Royal Society Bows To Climate Change Sceptics

The Times, 30 September 2010

Ben Webster

Britain’s leading scientific institution has been forced to rewrite its guide to climate change and admit that there is greater uncertainty about future temperature increases than it had previously suggested.

The Royal Society is publishing a new document today after a rebellion by more than 40 of its fellows who questioned mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures.

Climate change: a summary of the science states that “some uncertainties are unlikely ever to be significantly reduced”. Unlike Climate change controversies, a simple guide — the document it replaces — it avoids making predictions about the impact of climate change and refrains from advising governments about how they should respond.

The new guide says: “The size of future temperature increases and other aspects of climate change, especially at the regional scale, are still subject to uncertainty.”

The Royal Society even appears to criticise scientists who have made predictions about heatwaves and rising sea levels. It now says: “There is little confidence in specific projections of future regional climate change, except at continental scales.”

It adds: “It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future.

“There remains the possibility that hitherto unknown aspects of the climate and climate change could emerge and lead to significant modifications in our understanding.”

The working group that produced the new guide took advice from two Royal Society fellows who have links to the climate-sceptic think-tank founded by Lord Lawson of Blaby.

Professor Anthony Kelly (Pic. Left) and Sir Alan Rudge (Pic. Right) are members of the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. They were among 43 fellows who signed a petition sent to Lord Rees, the society’s president, asking for its statement on climate change to be rewritten to take more account of questions raised by sceptics.

Professor John Pethica, the society’s vice-president and chairman of the working group that wrote the document, said the guide stated clearly that there was “strong evidence” that the warming of the Earth over the past half-century had been caused largely by human activity.

Meanwhile, the Government is planning an exercise to test how England and Wales would cope with severe flooding caused by climate change. Exercise Watermark will take place in March and test emergency services and communities on a range of scenarios that could occur.

The Times, 30 September 2010

More media coverage:

Niall Firth: Royal Society issues new climate change guide that admits that there are 'uncertainties' about the science (Daily Mail)

Duncan Clark: Royal Society's climate change guide cuts confusion out of the hard science (The Guardian)

Andrew Montford: Royal Society on climate change (Bishop Hill)

Anthony Watts: Royal Society blinks – embraces sceptics and uncertainty (Watts Up With That)

Wednesday 29 September 2010

Windfarm bases failing?


Is there big trouble brewing for wind farms? Read it here.

Monday 27 September 2010

The cost of one wind-farm to taxpayers


The Sunday Telegraph, 26 September 2010

Christopher Booker

In all the publicity given to the opening of "the world's largest wind farm" off the Kent coast last week, by far the most important and shocking aspect of this vast project was completely overlooked. Over the coming years we will be giving the wind farm's Swedish owners a total of £1.2 billion in subsidies. That same sum, invested now in a single nuclear power station, could yield a staggering 13 times more electricity, with much greater reliability.

The first all-too-common mistake in the glowing coverage accorded to the inauguration of this Thanet wind farm by the Climate Change Secretary, Chris Huhne, was to accept unquestioningly the claims of the developer, Vattenfall, about its output. The array of 100 three-megawatt (MW) turbines, each the height of Blackpool Tower, will have, it was said, the "capacity" to produce 300MW of electricity, enough to "power" 200,000 (or even 240,000) homes.

This may be true at those rare moments when the wind is blowing at the right speeds. But the wind, of course, is intermittent, and the average output of these turbines will be barely a quarter of that figure. The latest official figures on the website of Mr Huhne's own department show that last year the average output (or "load factor") of Britain's offshore turbines was only 26 per cent of their capacity.

Due to its position, the wind farm's owners will be lucky to get, on average, 75MW from their windmills, a fraction of the output of a proper power station. The total amount of electricity the turbines actually produce will equate to the average electricity usage not of 240,000 homes, but of barely half that number.

A far more significant omission from the media reports, however, was any mention of the colossal subsidies this wind farm will earn. Wind energy is subsidised through the system of Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs), unwittingly paid for by all of us through our electricity bills. Our electricity supply companies are obliged to buy offfshore wind energy at three times its normal price, so that each kilowatt hour of electricity receives a 200 per cent subsidy of £100.

This means that the 75MW produced on average by Thanet will receive subsidies of £60 million a year, on top of the £30-40 million cost of the electricity itself. This is guaranteed for the turbines' estimated working life of 20 years, which means that the total subsidy over the next two decades will be some £1.2 billion. Based on the costings of the current French nuclear programme, that would buy 1 gigawatt (1,000MW) of carbon-free nuclear generating capacity, reliably available 24 hours a day – more than 13 times the average output of the wind farm.

The 100 turbines opened last week cost £780 million to build, which means that the £100 million a year its owners hope to earn represents a 13 per cent return on capital, enough to excite the interest of any investor. And these turbines are only the first stage of a project eventually designed to include 341 of them, generating subsidies of £1 billion every five years.

A final claim for the Thanet wind farm (which Mr Huhne boasts is "only the beginning") is that it will create "green jobs" – although the developers say that only 21 of these will be permanent. These are thus costing, in "green subsidies" alone, £3 million per job per year, or £57 million for each job over the next 20 years. The Government gaily prattles about how it wants to create "400,000 green jobs", which on this basis would eventually cost us £22.8 trillion, or 17 times the entire annual output of the UK economy.

If all this sounds dizzyingly surreal, the fact remains that we must begin to grasp just what the green fantasies of Mr Huhne, the EU and the rest are costing us. Even the Queen, we learn, tried to claim a "fuel poverty" allowance for her soaring electricity bills, which have risen 50 per cent in the past year. But a crucial first step towards getting some grip on reality must be for those who report on these wind farms to stop hiding away the colossal price we are all now having to pay for one of the greatest scams of our age.

The Sunday Telegraph, 26 September 2010

Thursday 23 September 2010

Are we returning to an ice age?

Solar scientists, not to be confused with climate scientists, study the most important heat engine driving our planet’s temperatures-the sun.

Matthew Penn and William Livingston, solar astronomers with the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona, have found a marked decrease in sunspot activity lately. Studies show that such a marked drop in sunspots may lead to a prolonged cooling epoch or even a new ice age.

Since the formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 the talk has been about global warming. But 22 years on the evidence has grown to raise fears of a catastrophic climate switch in the opposite direction. We look at the evidence that is raising some very serious questions in the scientific community.
Zeeman Splitting Technique Raises Solar Alarm

Penn and Livingston used a measuring technique known as Zeeman splitting to study the magnetic strength of sunspots. The technique measures the distance between a pair of infrared spectral lines in a spectrograph from the light emitted by iron atoms in the atmosphere of the sun.

After examining 1500 sunspots they found that the average strength of the magnetic field of the sunspots has dropped by almost 40 percent in recent years. The reasons for the decline are unknown, but Penn and Livingston predict only half of the normal sunspots may appear on the surface of the Sun by 2021. Below that strength the formation of sunspots becomes almost impossible. More sunspots correlate with more global warming, fewer sunspots over a long period means prolonged cooling is likely.

Other Experts Confirm Fears

Backing up the claims is Australian Geophysicist, Phil Chapman, a former NASA astronaut. Chapman confirms the historic correlation of sunspots to global temperatures and points to the dearth of sunspots since 2007 as the reason why the world has since cooled by about 0.7C.

Writer, Alan Caruba (September 21, 2010) probes the story further after a June 14 article published in the New Scientist by Stuart Clark.

Caruba reports that Clark, “ raised the question of why and where the sunspots of gone. Noting that they ebb and flow in cycles lasting about eleven years, Stuart said, “But for the last two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged in nearly 100 years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise.””

Return to another Little Ice Age or Worse?

The last time sunspots disappeared altogether, during the Maunder Minimum (about 1645 to 1715), our planet descended into a lengthy period of cooling known as the Little Ice Age.

Prior to that an even more cataclysmic cooling event, known as the Younger Dryas happened 12,000 years ago. That sudden event plunged temperatures in the North Atlantic region to about 5°C colder and lasted for 1000-year duration.

Global Cooling Impacts Being Felt Now

Last year in the northern hemisphere, Britain suffered one of the worst winters in 100 years. While in the U.S. the National Weather Service (NWS) reported that the bitterly cold winter broke numerous temperature and snow extent records with 2010 seeing the 4th coldest February on record. New York and much of the U.S. Northeast was pumeled by record snow falls that deposited about 60cm (2 feet) of snow in NYC alone.

Worst Snow Falls Since 1970’s

Rutgers University Global Snow Lab also confirms that the 2010 Northern Hemisphere winter snow extent was the second highest on record, at 52,166,840 km2 and second only to February, 1978 which was slightly higher at 53,647,305 km2.

Indeed, it was in the 1970s, when climatologists were worried about the onset of an ice age, that we were warned of the ‘The Cooling World’ (Newsweek, April 28, 1975). Meanwhile Anna Petherick reporting for Nature.com ( August 27, 2010) shows that a brutal northern winter has been followed in the southern hemisphere by a viciously cold winter with an Antarctic chill killing millions of aquatic animals in the Amazon.

So will we see more scientists return to predicting global cooling due to changes in our sun?

From Climate Realists.

Friday 13 August 2010

Councils "Should Not Tackle Climate Change"

Councils ''Should Not Tackle Climate Change''

Dean Carroll, Public Service.co.uk, 3 August 2010

Councils in the UK should do "absolutely nothing" to tackle climate change unless a stringent global deal on reducing carbon emissions is reached through the United Nations, which includes developing as well as developed countries - according to Lord Lawson.

Insisting that such an agreement would be unlikely due to India and China's need to rapidly increase economic growth - in order to bring tens of millions of citizens out of poverty - the chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation claimed that town halls were wasting resources by promoting renewable energy schemes and green initiatives.

"For now, energy is carbon based because it is cheaper than anything else and it makes no sense to decarbonise unless everybody is doing it; it's lunacy to go it alone when China is building a new coal power station every week," he said, speaking at the LGA annual conference.

"It would cost the British economy £50bn a year up to 2050 to meet the requirementsof the UK Climate Change Act. Local authorities should do absolutely nothing to tackle climate change. Your money could be put to far greater use."

Lord Lawson said northern Europe would actually greatly benefit from continued warming and urged public servants to focus on adaptation rather than mitigation. He also highlighted Met Office figures showing that global temperatures had not risen at all in the last decade - although, he admitted they had gone up by 0.75 degrees over the last 150 years since the industrial revolution.

Countering his views, founding member of the Tyndall Centre professor Andrew Watkinson told delegates that 10 years was too short a period to identify weather trends and this explained the stabilisation in temperature.

"The climate science is sound and last winter was the second warmest globally despite the bad weather experienced here in the UK," said Watkinson, also a professional fellow of the University of East Anglia.

"We could see temperature rises in the future of between 1-4 degrees as a result of greenhouse gases - way beyond what humans on earth have experienced before, so local authorities have to take on the science and show leadership with new forms of energyas well as adaptation and mitigation measures."

Watkinson revealed that some scholars thought the global population could shrink from six billion to one billion if the worst effects of climate change came to fruition and parts of the southern hemisphere became inhabitable.

But Lord Lawson rejected these claims insisting that more extreme warming periods had occurred during Medieval and Roman times and that sea levels were not rising rapidly anymore."There has certainly been skulduggery with the science; it's totally one-sided - ignoring the benefits of global warming and exaggerating the downsides," he added."Climate change is like a new religion and there are some people who see it as a way to undermine capitalism."

Friday 25 June 2010

Mrs Clegg & Windfarm Interests

A general view of Europe's biggest onshore wind farm, Whitelee Windfarm on the outskirts of Glasgow
A general view of Europe's biggest onshore wind farm, Whitelee Windfarm on the outskirts of Glasgow Photo: PA

From the summit of Plynlimon, in the deep country of the Cambrian Mountains, there is a 70-mile panorama of the Cader range, hill after green-blue hill stretching into the distance, from the peaks around Bala to the shores of Cardigan Bay.

It was a view that caught the breath. It still does, in a different way. The view from Plynlimon now is of more than 200 wind turbines, nearly a tenth of Britain’s onshore total, stretching across ridge-lines, dominating near and far horizons. The author George Borrow wrote a whole chapter on Plynlimon in his classic 19th-century travelogue, Wild Wales. It’s not so wild these days.

Last week’s decision by Miriam González Durántez, wife of the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, to join a leading wind-farm company has thrown the spotlight on one of Britain’s most controversial industries.

Mrs Durántez’s firm, Acciona, is seeking planning permission to add another 23 wind turbines to the view from Plynlimon, filling up some of the remaining skyline not yet occupied by them.

To opponents, land-based wind-turbines – there are currently 2,560 – are, in the words of the chairman of the National Trust, Simon Jenkins, “creatures from the War of the Worlds”, industrialising the countryside, invading precious landscapes.

Supporters are no less high-pitched. At the annual conference of the wind farm trade body, the BWEA, John Prescott, Mr Clegg’s predecessor, stormed: “We cannot let the squires and the gentry stop us meeting our moral obligation to pass this world on in a better state to our children. So let me tell them loud and clear: it’s not your backyard any more – it’s ours!”

The then energy and climate change secretary, now Labour leadership contender, Ed Miliband, said that it “should be socially unacceptable to be against wind turbines in your area – like not wearing your seatbelt”.

Yet like so much else in the climate change debate, the emotions – on both sides – get in the way. Presenting wind farms as either an alien scourge or a moral crusade obscures what is surely the real question: are they effective at reducing CO2 emissions? Do the benefits they bring outweigh the costs they impose?

Last year, Mr Miliband announced that renewables – very largely wind – would be expected to provide “over 30 per cent” of the UK’s electricity by 2020, as part of ambitious new Europe-wide targets.

The BWEA, recently renamed Renewables UK, is confident about the potential. “The UK is the windiest country in Europe, so much so that we could power the country several times over using this free fuel,” it says, describing Britain as the “Saudi Arabia of wind”.

RUK says that “every unit of electricity from a wind turbine displaces one from conventional power stations”, and even the existing wind turbines have “the capacity to prevent the emission of 3.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum”.

The key weasel word in that last sentence is “capacity”. The CO2 reduction figure assumes that all wind turbines are able to generate electricity to 100 per cent of their capacity, 100 per cent of the time. But the basic problem with wind power is that most of the time, the wind does not blow.

A typical commercial turbine needs a wind speed of between 6-10mph to start operating – and automatically stops when the wind is more than around 55mph, to protect its mechanisms. Even when the wind is blowing between those speeds, it – and therefore the amount of electricity generated – is variable, and usually below the turbine’s full theoretical capacity.

According to government figures, the average wind turbine operates to just 27 per cent of its capacity – even the industry only claims 30 per cent – and there are some grounds for suggesting that even this is a significant exaggeration. Professor Michael Jefferson, of the London Metropolitan Business School, says that in 2008 less than a fifth of onshore wind farms achieved 30 per cent capacity.

One analysis of the government figures, albeit commissioned by wind farm opponents, suggested that Britain’s biggest wind farm – the 140-turbine installation at Whitelee, near East Kilbride – operated to just 7.3 per cent of its capacity that year.

That might be all right if we could store electricity for when it is needed – but we can’t, at least not in large quantities. The power companies have to generate it at exactly the moment you want to use it.

Unfortunately, the wind might not be blowing when millions of people want to put the kettle on after Coronation Street ends. If it only starts blowing when everyone has turned off the lights and gone to bed, that is of very little use.

Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Energy Intensive Users’ Group, which represents heavy industrial users of electricity, says: “Wind is a particularly useless form of power if you don’t have a way of storing the energy. It just seems the politicians have been taken in by the wind lobby, and they’ve taken leave of their senses.”

The wind industry argues that the wind is always blowing somewhere in the UK or off its shores, so provided the wind farms are widely enough spread, it should not matter.

But Professor David MacKay, who is now chief scientific adviser at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, has pointed out that in autumn/winter 2006/7 there were 17 days when output from Britain’s wind turbines was less than 10 per cent of their total capacity. On five of those days, output was below 5 per cent and on one day it was only 2 per cent. And those were the windier seasons.

To cope with what’s called “intermittency”, you must do two things.

First, you have to build far more wind turbines, in far more places, than you theoretically need. Prof MacKay says: “We need to be imagining industrialising really large tranches of the countryside.” Every view, from every summit in Britain – apart, perhaps, from a handful of specially preserved recreational mountains – will be like the view from Plynlimon.

The wind turbines required in Britain alone, says Prof MacKay, would amount to about double the number of all turbines in the world. Even then, “the maximum plausible production from on-shore windmills is 20 kilowatt hours per day per person”, about a sixth of Britain’s actual consumption.

Offshore offers further potential, but is much more expensive – meaning it will never provide more than a minority of wind generation in Britain. It also requires huge and ugly infrastructure, such as new harbours and power lines, on land.

The second thing you have to do is build more conventional, carbon-emitting power stations. Unlike wind farms, these can provide electricity predictably and more or less on demand.

Campbell Dunford, director of the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), says that Germany – which has the largest number of wind turbines in Europe – “is building five new coal power stations, which it does not otherwise need, purely to provide covering power for the fluctuations from their wind farms. I am not sure [wind] has been a great success for them.” Mr Dunford claims that Germany’s CO2 emissions have actually risen since it increased its use of wind power. Though the wind itself might, in RUK’s words, be “free,” the cost of backup capacity is likely to be astronomical.

The figures are fluid, and fiercely disputed by the industry, but the House of Lords’ economic affairs committee estimated that wind was at least 50 per cent more expensive per unit generated than the other main non-CO2 option, nuclear.

Even if, as seems likely, wind can remove some CO2 from the generation of electricity, the danger, particularly in a cash-strapped age, is that it offers less CO2 reduction for the buck than other means. The Government’s idea that it can provide approaching a third of our power within 10 years (it currently provides 2.3 per cent) is dismissed by most experts as unrealistic.

John Constable, director of policy at the REF, says: “There is a real risk that governments will succumb to panic and introduce very strong mandates to reach these targets. That would be disastrous, because it will result, as it is already resulting, in the adoption of sub-optimal technology.”

Constable says that far better renewables than wind are available already. Electricity generation accounts for less than half of UK energy consumption – transport and heating make up the rest. “Everybody is fixated with generating electricity, and the low-hanging fruit is being missed,” he says. “Renewables can make an immediate contribution, if encouraged, on the heating sector.” This means established technologies like ground source heat pumps, where heat is extracted from the soil in your garden.

Why, then, are we so “fixated” with wind? The number of onshore wind turbines is likely to treble in the next few years. A total of 7,000 turbines, on and off-shore, are either under construction, approved for building or seeking planning permission.

Part of the answer may be that wind turbines are visible, tangible symbols of political commitment and moral righteousness. Mr Clegg’s party wants 15,000 of them, and the Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, also a Lib Dem, has described them as “beautiful”. The Lib Dems are also fiercely against nuclear, though their Tory partners are not.

The rest of the answer appears to be subsidy. The Government pays an indirect subsidy, a “renewable obligation”, or RO – and putting up a wind turbine is the cheapest way to collect it. In contrast to better renewable technologies, a turbine is inexpensive to build, perhaps around £2 million, and it lasts at least 20 years.

The total RO paid to the wind industry last year was £400 million. So each of Britain’s wind turbines earned, on average, £138,000 in subsidy last year – more than Mrs Clegg’s husband makes. Add in the profits from selling the electricity they generate and after construction costs are cleared, you will be making nearly £300,000 per year per turbine, half of it courtesy of the Government.

It does make for some slightly perverse outcomes. Research and development on new renewable technologies – which might be able to reduce CO2 without needing to build large towers in the countryside – get far less subsidy than wind farms.

And one of the reasons so many of Britain’s wind turbines turn so little is that the subsidy doesn’t depend on where you put them. Developers like building wind farms in places such as Lincolnshire, where the countryside is dull and there is relatively little public opposition. Unfortunately, there is also relatively little wind in Lincolnshire.

Mrs Clegg has acted with characteristic business acumen. These aren’t just wind farms – they’re subsidy farms. As well as turning a blade or two, at least when the wind is blowing, they’re about to start turning a very healthy profit.

Wednesday 2 June 2010

The 'settled' science

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED

An Ironic Science Primer

Mr Columbus :

The science is settled, so that is all right,

sail to world’s edge and you will get quite a fright.

Fall over the end, for here there be dragons

and everything else that merry hell spasms.

Mr Harvey :

The science is settled, so that is all right.

Galen’s letting of blood will cure every blight;

as for anaemia, that is God’s chosen will,

so be a good boy now, and stick to the drill.

Mr Copernicus :

The science is settled, so that is all right,

God created earth, heavens, darkness and light,

with Earth at the centre of all that He made,

your Revolution’s wrong, be very afraid.

Mr Da Vinci :

The science is settled, so that is all right,

if God had wanted us to have bird-like flight.

Icarus would have succeeded, there’s no doubt,

so throw that ‘aerial screw’ and all your dreams, out.

All of Mankind :

The science is settled, so that is all right,

you know the globe’s warming, give up on the fight;

you’re made of carbon - that original sin -

no wonder the evil state we are all in !

--Alan McAlpine Douglas

Friday 30 April 2010

Lincolnshire Eco Twaddle




I was very amused by the large figures quoted for Lincolnshire Co2 savings of 70,000 tonnes, equivalent to the removal of 21000 cars, as was published in Lincs-Today.

Perhaps we need to get some perspective about this though. 70,000 tonnes sound like an awful lot of CO2 but in fact it is not.

Given that all of the UK's 30,000,000 cars only produce about 0.28% of all man made CO2 one can see that 21000 cars would only represent a saving of about 0.07% of 0.28% of man made CO2 or only 0.0196%.

At about 380ppm we are still at the very low end of historic co2 when the planet was very lush, green and vibrant, at about 4 times that quantity.

It seems that the anti human lobby are still trying to bamboozle us with these apparently high numbers when in fact nothing can be further from the truth.

Now what is the cost to Lincolnshire people for all this nonsense and who is making money from these figures as a result?

Tuesday 27 April 2010

Wednesday 21 April 2010

Windmills? 'a big waste'


Windmills: Bigger waste than eHealth
Posted: October 01, 2009, 1:06 AM by NP Editor
Wind reduces CO2 emissions at a subsidy cost of about $124 per tonne — one of the most expensive plans in the world

By Michael Trebilcock

O

ntarians take note. A detailed new Danish study shatters most of the myths that the Danish-based wind turbine industry has been propagating in Canada and around the world as to the virtues of wind power. The study, Wind Energy: The Case of Denmark by the Centre for Policy Studies in Copenhagen, strongly reinforces reservations that I have noted in previous op-eds in this newspaper.

While proponents of wind power like to claim that almost 20% of Danish electricity is generated by wind power, in fact over the last five years wind power has accounted for only about 9% of domestic electricity consumption. The other 11% or so — generated when the wind was blowing in the middle of the night or at other times that power was unneeded in Denmark — was exported to Norway and Sweden at spot prices that were substantially lower (often zero) than the subsidized prices guaranteed to Danish wind turbine operators. Meanwhile, when the wind wasn’t blowing in conformity with Danish needs, Denmark needed to import balancing power from Norway and Sweden, typically at substantially higher costs.

The main attraction in wind is the elimination of CO2 emissions. To the extent that wind power reduces CO2 emissions in Denmark, this comes as a subsidy cost of about $124 per tonne of CO2 — one of the most expensive CO2 reduction strategies in the world.

In order to keep industry competitive, the Danish government protects industry at the expense of consumers. Electricity to industry is hardly taxed at all, making for an outsized disparity between what householders and industry pay for their electricity — Danish householders pay 2.5 times more than Danish industry. Even before taxes, the average consumer price for wind-generated electricity is 50% higher than that from fossil fuel generated electricity.

Based on the total subsidies to the Danish wind industry, the average subsidy for the 28,000 workers employed in this sector equals US$9,000 to US$14,000 per year per job. However, this average subsidy does not reflect the actual cost of the additional job creation. In most cases, creating a job in the wind sector has only moved that job from another sector and not resulted in any additional job creation. A very optimistic ball park estimate of real net jobs created is around 10% of the total wind power work force, or 2,800 jobs. In this case, the actual subsidy for each additional job created is US$90,000 to US$140,000.

The Danish study finds that the energy technology sector in Denmark from 1999 to 2006 underperformed the broader manufacturing sector in Denmark by an average of 13% in terms of value added, reducing Danish GDP by approximately $270-million compared to what it would have been if the wind sector workforce was employed elsewhere. The Danish Economic Council concluded in a report in 2006: “The wind power expansion in the 1990s is an example of a policy that was unprofitable from society’s point of view, even taking the economic advantages that the wind business enjoyed into consideration.” The Centre for Policy Studies study concludes: “Denmark needs a proper debate and a thorough reappraisal of the technologies that need to be invented, developed, and costed before forcing the country into a venture that shows a high risk of turning into an economic black hole.”

Partly mesmerized by Danish wind industry propaganda, the Ontario government has embarked upon a similar exercise in economic and environmental folly. When the full costs of this misadventure are revealed — billions of dollars over the next 20years — the province’s recent financial scandals at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission and eHealth will seem trivial in comparison. This is the real political scandal in Ontario, upon which we should all be focusing our attention.

Financial Post
Michael Trebilcock is Professor of Law and Economics, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and a director of Energy Probe Research Foundation.

Monday 5 April 2010

This costly invention.


Now don't forget that we could save many lives with this money. So the climate change taliban are killing people now.

Christopher Booker
London Telegraph
April 4, 2010

One of the best-kept secrets of British politics – although it is there for all to see on a Government website – is the cost of what is by far the most expensive piece of legislation ever put through Parliament. Every year between now and 2050, acccording to Ed Miliband’s Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc), the Climate Change Act is to cost us all up to £18.3 billion – £760 for every household in the country – as we reduce our carbon emissions by 80 per cent.
Last Thursday – with northern Britain again under piles of global warming – another tranche of regulations came into force, as this measure begins to take effect. New road tax rules mean that to put a larger, more CO2 -emitting car on the road will now cost £950. New “feed-in” subsidies for small-scale “renewables” mean that the installers of solar panels will be paid up to eight times the going rate for their miserable amount of electricity to be fed into the grid, with the overall bill for this scheme estimated eventually to be billions a year.
Not the least bizarre of the Government’s strategies, however, is Decc’s new Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) scheme, requiring up to 30,000 of our largest energy users, such as ministries, councils, universities, hospitals, supermarket chains (and even “monasteries and nunneries”), to pay to register with the Environment Agency. Some 5,000 of them, using more than “6,000 megawatt hours” of electricity each year (equivalent to the needs of 1,250 homes), will then have to carry out a cumbersome audit of their carbon footprint, using “three different metrics”, in order to pay £12 for each ton of CO2 they emit – at a total initial cost estimated at £1.4 billion a year. This will eventually be contributed by all of us, either through taxes or, for instance, whenever we visit Tesco.

Monday 29 March 2010

Cameron's personal connection with turbines



Perhaps this is why David Cameron is so keen to be green:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -year.html

David Cameron's father-in-law is allegedly among rich landowners cashing in on Labour's green subsidies, with a wind farm generating an estimated £3.5million a year on his country estate.
Sir Reginald Sheffield, 63, who is worth at least £20million, splits the profits with the project's developers according to this report.

Around half of the income comes from a government scheme to make power companies use more renewable energy, much of it bought from private generators. It is subsidised by every household, via their electricity bills.

Sir Reginald's eight 400ft turbines were switched on last August at Bagmoor, part of the 3,000-acre Normanby Hall estate near
Scunthorpe that has been in his family since the 16th century.

He plans a second development at nearby Flixborough Grange, despite fierce opposition from locals.

Samantha Cameron, 38, is the elder of his two daughters by his first marriage to Annabel Jones, who later married former Tory minister Lord Astor. Her half-brother Robert, 24, helps run the family's Normanby Estate Company.

The renewable energy scheme is adding an estimated £13.59 a year to the average household power bill.

Industry experts said that in most agreements the landowner receives around five per cent of the annual income of a wind farm, with the rest going to the developer. In the case of Sir Reginald this is a company called RidgeWind.

The turbines have a life of around 25 years and Sir Reginald could collect as much as £4.4million in that time.

Wind farms: Sir Reginald Sheffield has eight 400ft-tall turbines near Scunthorpe

RidgeWind is also the developer for his Flixborough Grange scheme, currently the subject of a planning inquiry.

Steve Fuller from the nearby
village of Burton upon Stather, a member of the pressure group Burton Against Turbines, said: 'There has been very little consultation, which we are very unhappy about.

'We are concerned about noise and the impact on house prices.

Blades: The towering wind turbines on the family estate near Normanby Hall, which can be seen on the bottom right

'There are also people who have autistic children who are worried about the shadows and flickers from rotating blades.'

Marjorie Neasham Glasgow, managing director of RidgeWind, said the firm engaged 'extensively' with local people, including providing regular tours of the wind farm to local children and funding university scholarships.

She added: 'The subsidies were intended to kick-start the process of renewable energy in the
UK.

'The problem is that it is taking much longer for onshore wind farms to be built than had been anticipated, because of the slow pace of planning applications. Once more are built these subsidies will drop very significantly.'

Sir Reginald, an Old Etonian who lists his recreations as shooting and stalking, is the eighth holder of a baronetcy that goes back to 1755.

Normanby Hall, which gives its name to the estate, was sold to the local council in the 60s as payment of death duties and is now open to the public for weddings and as a museum and conference centre.

Sir Reginald lives nearby in Thealby Hall and also has a £5million stately home at
Sutton Park, near York. He could not be contacted yesterday.

Tuesday 23 March 2010

Anderby Fight


Well now the global warming climate change issue hits someone else. Now the people of Anderby and Anderby Creek are faced with this monstrosity; a wind-farm on their doorstep.

Some may have thought that the global warming industry had nowt to worry them. They may have been like many who have ignored and opposed my voluntary efforts and work in recent years; like Conservative Councillor David Andrews (picture) for example. Well now they know why I have been trying to get councillors like him to listen.

Well one thing is for sure. Like Eco Town, and the Humber Bridge Tolls, and unfair speed restrictions and driver taxes,
here is one campaigner who will be behind them all the way.

Click images to enlarge.

Monday 22 March 2010

Climate Targets cause pollution

MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee have warned that climate-change targets are exacerbating air pollution.

The Government has encouraged people to drive diesel cars which were more fuel efficient but created more particulates (CRN note: and Nitrous Oxide (NOx), plus don’t forget dirty diesel buses/taxis in our City/Town centres. Modern diesel cars have particulate filters), while the introduction of biomass boilers (CRN note: and wood burning stoves) in urban areas also led to air pollution.

On average people across the UK lose seven to eight months of their lives because of filthy air. But in pollution hotspots, that rises to eight or nine years.

Daily Mail: Air pollution in the UK ‘killing 50,000 people a year’, warn MPs

CRN comment: People are living longer – around 100 years ago the average person lived into their late 50’s. Now longevity of life is much greater we have problems paying the pensions and providing care home places for an ageing population.

According to the UK Office for National Statistics:

Life expectancy at birth in the UK has reached its highest level on record for both males and females. A newborn baby boy could expect to live 77.4 years and a newborn baby girl 81.6 years if mortality rates remain the same as they were in 2006–08.

http://climateresearchnews.com/2010/03/ ... pollution/

_________________
Climate Research News

http://www.climateresearchnews.com/

ABD Mercia

http://abdmercia.blogspot.com/


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Thursday 18 March 2010

The green economic death and destruction.

Yours truly in the Echo in response to.........
a self evident believer of claptrap.

(Click image to enlarge.)

Thursday 25 February 2010

Hurricanes and storms normal say scientists.

Roger Pielke Jr.


These scientists have confirmed that there is no 'man made' link to hurricane activity or that it has increased. Read a summary of their paper here.

Tuesday 16 February 2010

Your's truly Lincolnshire Echo: Co2 and Congestion


Yours Truly on Car Co2, public transport and congestion.


Click to enlarge image.

Saturday 13 February 2010

Example of IPCC sexing up what scientists said.


This is how the IPCC ,(Nicholas Stern pictured), spun the lack of a human signal back in IPCC SAR from draft to publication. Deletions shown as strike-through, replacements in italics:

"Finally we come to the most difficult question of all: 'When will the detection and unambiguous attribution of human-induced climate change occur?' when the detection and attribution of human induced climate change is likely to occur. The answer to this question must be subjective, particularly in the light of the very large signal and noise uncertainties discussed in this Chapter it is not surprising that the best answer to this question is 'We do not know'.

So: "Finally we come to the most difficult question of all: When will the detection and unambiguous attribution of human induced climate change occur? Particularly in the light of the very large signal and noise uncertainties discussed in this Chapter, it is not surprising that the best answer to this question is 'We do not know'.

Becomes:
"Finally we come to the difficult question of when the detection and attribution of human induced climate change is likely to occur. The answer to this question must be subjective, particularly in the light of the very large signal and noise uncertainties discussed in this Chapter.