Another cycle of the Climate Change Scare Machine is laid bare. David Rose explains how those lobbying and advising the government on green policies are benefiting from green projects. It’s all in the Daily Mail. The Green Industrial Complex has simply bought everyone off, and, cleverly, done it with your money.
It’s the new business model really. Why work for customers and compete in the free market? Instead scare the public, sell them the “answer”, and to make sure they pay, convince the government that you need grants and gravy (or you’ll call them names). Pretty soon, the government forces the public to pay, disguises and splits the payments into a thousand parts, and tells the people it is for their own good. The fun ramps up when the government hires you back to advise it on how to keep the gravy flowing to you.
What is really mindboggling is that it’s so blatant. Many of these connections “exposed” by Rose are listed on the CCC website, the conflicts are obvious. Why it wasn’t exposed years ago? As I keep saying, the problem is not so much that there are people on the take (there always will be) the real issue IS the media. Someone tell me why the British Public pays the BBC news service?
David Rose, Daily Mail
“The fatcat ecocrats exposed: Web of ‘green’ politicians, tycoons and power brokers who help each other benefit from billions raised on your bills
- Four of nine-person Climate Change Committee, official watchdog that dictates green energy policy, are, or were until recently, being paid by firms that benefit from committee decisions
“No institution plays a greater role in dictating green energy policy than the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) – the body set up by Ed Miliband when he was Labour Energy Secretary through his 2008 Climate Change Act.”
“Amazingly, almost half the CCC’s members, whose decisions affect every UK citizen and the entire economy, have been paid by firms with green interests. They are all paid £800 a day for their part-time CCC work, except for chairman Lord Deben, who gets £1,000.”
“Among the most astonishing features exposed by our investigation is the way in which vehement advocates for radical policies designed to curb global warming are making huge sums of money from their work. Here are some of the key figures among the new breed of fat-cat Ecocrats…”
For the non-UK’ers the full membership of the Committee on Climate Change includes the following:
The Rt. Hon John Gummer, Lord Deben, Chairman established and chairs Sancroft, a Corporate Responsibility consultancy working with bluechip companies around the world on environmental, social and ethical issues.
David Rose writes: CCC chairman Lord Deben, 74, was until recently chairman of Veolia Water UK PLC, which connects windfarms to the National Grid. According to energy expert Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University, the drive to renewables means new grid investment will reach £25 billion by 2020. Deben has refused to state how much Veolia paid him. Company records say he resigned on November 12. His spokeswoman said that this was because the firm was being merged with a sister firm.
He remains chairman of his family consultancy firm Sancroft, which advises companies on ‘global environmental policy’. When he took up his CCC post, he resigned as chairman of offshore wind firm Forewinds.
David Kennedy (Chief Executive) Was an economist with the World Bank and the European Bank.
Jo notes that the World Bank clearly loves the idea that it needs to get money from taxpayers and hand it out to friends to save the planet. As I said before: Why would the World Bank be interested in promoting fear of man-made emissions? Could it be that they manage millions of dollars of funds and facilities, all of which would be pointless if man-made emissions are not a catastrophe waiting-to-happen. The World Bank published an annual report on the State of the Carbon Market and generated much PR and many headlines in the media, that is, until the carbon market collapsed and the World Bank didn’t want the world to notice, so they canceled the report.
Professor Samuel Fankhauser Co-Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics and a Director at Vivid Economics.
Rose writes:“Sam Fankhauser, 49, is a professor at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Institute on Climate Change, funded by the radical green billionaire Jeremy Grantham – the world’s most generous donor to green activist groups.Prof Fankhauser admits he is paid an undisclosed sum as a director of Vivid Economics, which offers business clients advice on how to respond to green Government policies – such as those set by the CCC.”
Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, CBE, FRS
Sir Brian Hoskins, a fierce critic of climate sceptics, is a climatologist at Imperial College, London, where he is director of another institute funded by Grantham.
Jo notes that The Grantham Institute is an activist group founded by Jeremy Grantham with a £12m donation in 2007 from his foundation. His green views are well known and he also donates to The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and WWF. The Grantham crowd call people they disagree with “deniers” and they dodge debates. We can safely guess that anyone paid by The Grantham Institute would not be popular at the office if they pointed out some flaws in climate policy or renewable energy. The Grantham Institute employs Bob Ward who has been caught promoting untruths with rank hypocrisy and who used his previous position at The Royal Society to pretend he spoke on behalf of UK’s top Scientists in order intimidate Exxon and stop them funding people with different views to himself. Hey it was a good way to close down free speech on science. Shame about the reputation of The Royal Society.
The Grantham Institute also gets government grants, and we can assume it would not exist at all if it were widely believed that CO2 had little effect on the climate. The Institute is widely referred to as “independent” by the media — though I defy anyone to find one rational reason why it should be.
Paul Johnson is the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Professor Dame Julia King DBE FREng “an NED of the Green Investment Bank”
Rose reports: “Dame Julia King, 59, is also a director of the Green Investment Bank, for which she is paid £30,000 a year on top of her £272,000 salary as vice chancellor of Aston University. The bank, funded by taxpayers to the tune of £3.8 billion, has investment in offshore wind as a ‘top priority’. The more the CCC’s rulings favour renewable subsidies, the better the bank is likely to do.”
Professor Lord Krebs Kt FRS, A zoologist who from 1994- 1999, was Chief Executive of the Natural Environment Research Council. He is chairman of the House of Lords Science & Technology Select Committee.
Professor Lord May of Oxford, OM AC FRS (was President of The Royal Society).
Rose writes: “…a former Government chief scientific adviser, is paid an undisclosed amount as a member of the ‘Sustainability Board’ of the global banking giant HSBC. In the section of its website that deals with its ‘sustainability’ work, the bank lists its four biggest green business opportunities. Top of the list is ‘low-carbon energy production such as bio-energy, nuclear, solar and wind’ – all directly affected by the CCC’s edicts.”
Professor Jim Skea, CBE
Jim Skea is also at Imperial, where he is Professor of Sustainable Energy, and was launch director of the Low Carbon Vehicle Project.
Jo Nova says: Hypothetically, imagine the situation where sustainable energy was expensive, unreliable, and not that sustainable either. On what planet would a Prof of Sustainable Energy be personally as well off if he advised the UK not to waste money on sustainable energy?
Probably my favorite line in Rose’s article was “A CCC spokeswoman said it had ‘rigorous checks and balances to ensure that there are no conflicts of interests for committee members’.” That, I think, tells you all you need to know about the integrity and honesty of the CCC.
The Green Industrial Complex has a wide web
Rose also discussed other aspects:
- £3.8 billion of taxpayers’ money funds the new Green Investment Bank, set up by the Department of Business and Skills. One of its biggest deals involved energy giant SSE selling windfarms to one of the new green funds, Greencoat Wind. The Green Investment Bank’s chairman, Lord Smith of Kelvin, is also chairman of SSE. The bank says it ‘provided expertise’ to enable BIS to take a £50 million stake in Greencoat, which helped fund the SSE sale.
- Firms lobbying for renewables can virtually guarantee access to key Government policy-makers, because they are staffed by former very senior officials – a striking example of Whitehall’s ‘revolving door’.
It’s good to see this information (which has been discussed at Bishop Hill, here, here, and here) finally get into the mainstream media. The public are going to be angry when the shonky donkey that is green activism is exposed properly.
UPDATE: Christopher Booker also wrote about Lord Deben in August last year.
Read it all at The DailyMail
Related posts on the Green Industrial Complex:
- Climate Change Scare Machine Cycle: see how your tax dollars are converted into alarming messages that demand you pay more tax (this diagram will need another layer of the cycle added).
- Nearly $1 billion a day to change the climate… the invisible vested elephant in the room
h/t Waxing Gibberish
Image adapted from Wikimedia Photo by Jacopo Werther.
Nice work if you can get it. I guess the people of the democratic western nations are either too stupid to recognize the corruption that is the CAGW crowd, or they just don’t care, or both. And we’re the ones being accused of accepting “dirty money.”
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“the problem is not so much that there are people on the take (there always will be) the real issue IS the media. Someone tell me why the British Public pays the BBC news service?”
It’s really about an Agenda about promoting socialism/Marxism, based on UNFCCC, Agenda 21 and an international climate treaty, nationally and globally,(international Marxism.)
In other words it’s a project about “making the world better” trough a radical change of society.
What they basically want us to do is to
The alternatives are none. The costs are not known. The facts are based on dogma and policy.
What they basically want us to do is to jump from a cliff in total darkness not knowing the fall and what awaits us below.
Much of the Western media knows about this great Agenda and actively or silently support it. If they write about this “make a better world” corruption that will also hurt their great Agenda. Their great Agenda can’t take either critic or negative stories in the Media.
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In a world where the rich are getting richer, you’ve got to hand it to agenda 21 nutters. Rich person: “Hey we’re really rich, but look over there, at those environmentalists and poor countries – they are the real enemy, not us. It’s called ‘agenda 21’ – you’ll like it, most conspiracy nuts do. Look, they are killing rare birds!”.
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Funny, Lord Deben doesn’t look at all like he is short of a buck? Or is he one of those “poor” to whom wealth can be distributed? Lord Stern’s high 50,000 pounds per hour fee for speaking engagement is mere altruism is it? All those 20,000 delegates flying to Rio or Cancun or Copenhagen yearly are merely frugal planet lovers selflessly donating their time for the betterment of the planet? Seriously.
What shred of evidence do you have, John, that one thin dime makes its way (or is even intended to make its way) to anyone who is poor or starving in the 3rd world, especially when none other than our ever-loving, full of the milk of human kindness POTUS, Barack Obama is reputed to have said in a moment of candour that the 3rd world can’t be allowed to develop due to CAGW? What more do you need?
You obviously don’t think people in high public office should be accountable for their decisions, and that those decisions involving taxpayer funds should not in principle be motivated by their own self-interest at the expense of the constituents they are meant to serve? You seemingly also don’t believe that governments are inherently corrupt unless subjected to rigorous and impartial oversight? Is that a summary of your position?
Sometimes, John, you absolutely amaze me at your naivete.
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*refusal to understand reality.
*confirmation bias.
*one sided “fairness”.
*stunted intellect.
*absurd rationalizations.
*
Please accept these alternatives.
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A good test the source/ideology of public claims and policies is to ask the 3 following questions.
What are the alternatives. What are the costs. What are the facts.
With today’s hard left environmentalism, UNFCCC and Agenda 21 there are no alternatives. No one can tell you the total costs, economically and politically, of the one and only “solution” that is on the UNFCCC based table. (Even Chavez during Copenhagen 2009 said that it was all about getting rid of capitalism.)
The facts are in a too far degree based on policy based science.
It’s about helping poor countries?
How is destroying the Western World economically going to enable us to help the poor countries even more?
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Jon,
It is not “hard left” — that is part of the propaganda.
The environmentalism we are observing is actually “hard right”, and has a great deal in common with fascism; especially the form of fascism established by Mussolini in Italy in 1922, in the way that it seeks to suppress opposition and criticism (by calling people “deniers”), and to regulate all industry and commerce by bureaucratic diktat (as in the EPA).
Everybody focusses on Hitler, who was a megalomaniac, but in so-doing, they tend to ignore Mussolini, who was a very shrewd politician, in the mold of Machiavelli.
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RW,
I always pictured it like a big circle, you can start at democracy and whether you head left or right if you just keep going you will end up right back where you started from.
I dont think fascism is the ultimate goal here communism seems to be where they want to settle.
As an aside my son says we will never get to communism because to do so we need to have a revolution, his theory is based on the fact that not everyone has an Ipod so therefore you cant have communism ergo you need a revolution. I countered his argument by stating without the internet (or at least one heavily filtered (NBN)) it matters none.
However he maintains that unless everyone or no one has an Ipod then it is not true communism………obviously the use of the word Ipod is a euphimism for all material belongings that will come under control of the state in a post agenda 21 world
regards
Crakar24
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Any way you look at it, it is all about a small minority trying to gain control over the general population, and what that population is allowed to do.
Yes, some small amount of control.. preferably self-control, is required, but what they seek is a control over basically everything, every little facet of your existence.
What you eat, what you do, how you use energy. They want to take away your choices, or to financially or legally force you into specific choices that they arbitrate.
Just look at the EU and the UN, this is exactly what they aim to do.
UK and other EU countries seem to have already lost their right to choice on many things.
Little by little.. drop by drop….. (Although more recently, the drop has become more of a deluge)
BUT……
these controls over activity, life, choices…… do not necessarily apply to themselves.
.
.
.
.
They should be very wary though.. stifling choices can often lead to anarchy !!!
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Andy thats exactly right, there two ways to accomplish this one leads to anarchy and the other to a beaten controlled populace.
For example, you can rule with an iron fist by rationing electricity, limiting/banning fast food, limiting/banning smokes, limiting/banning freedom of speech etc but some in the population will rise up against you. The purpose of this limitation/banning is to exert levels of control, layers and layers of control.
An alternative would be (phase 1) to inoctrinate the people into thinking that the government is there to protect you, through propaganda instill a sense of reliance on the government, plant the seed that everything the government does is in the best interests of the people.
Once this has been accomplished (which it has for the majority) begin phase 2, tell the people that carbon pollution is killing the planet and introduce a tax (remember a majority of the people asked Rudd to tax them even more in 2007) the purpose of the tax was to force people to use less this is a form of control.
labor flagged a fat tax on fast food, sold as a benefit to the fat people and the children (think of the children) the purpose of this tax was to control what you eat and would have been the first step in a taxation regime which targetted food stuffs.
raising taxes on smokes, naturally smoking is bad and the cost to the community is great (medical costs etc) so we must tax it.
Freedom of speech has been stifled, but this was sold as “even the nutters can have their say, all the good people have nothing to complain about” but even then you need to “apply” before you are allowed to stage a protest and if not you will be arrested under terrorism laws!!!!!!!!!
The point to all this is that nothing is banned, these activities and many many more are frowned upon by the government but dont worry they wont stop you they will simply charge you more to do it.
So people wil stop smoking or stop eating fact food or use less power because they cannot afford it NOT BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT BANNED IT hence no revolt.
And it will be too hard to organise a protest because most people are to stupid/lazy to care and the government red tape will grind you to a halt.
Having said that teh Liberal government is offering a slim slither of light at the end of the tunnel (i did say slither)
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Well, that is true, but picture true representative Democracy at the top of the circle, and total centralised control at the bottom. You can go left or right, as you say, but you can’t get past the bottom, to climb up the other side. The system at the bottom will trap you. So the only choice there is, is the route to the bottom.
Right now, we have centralised governments “encouraging” enterprise to produce certain outcomes, by way of subsidies, and lucrative contracts. That is the fascist model. A lot of German industrialists made a lot of money out of the German Government in the 1930’s, and a lot of engineering companies are making good profits out of building wind turbines today.
If we had been following the communist path, it would have been a Government Department that was trying to build wind turbines, and they would have caused even more accidents that occur now, and probably cost five times more (but they would create full employment).
You have only to look at the “Nationalised Industries” in Great Britain, during the 1950’s to understand what an abject failure looks like. The Nationalised Industries ended up being run for the benefit of the unions; not the Government, and certainly not for the benefit of the consumer and the wider population.
Hmm, That sounds a lot like Australia … 😉
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RW,
Once again you are correct. Interestingly we have a situation here where our car manufacturing is broke. Labor poured millions of tax payer dollars into it and it is still broke, the libs get in and they have cut them loose, no more money and they will shut up shop in 2016’ish.
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Rereke Whakaaro another victims of the lefts campaign to divorce itself from fascism. Fascism and Communism are just TWO MARXIST political systems, i.e. they are both of the left.
Rereke I suggest that you read about the origins of the fascist movement and its split from the other socialist movements.
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For those interested in the background to Agenda 21 etc , Ian Wishart a Kiwi author / investigative journalist / publisher has put out a new book on the history of it all. It is reviewed here
http://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/mike-butler-un-and-new-totalitarians.html#more
Ian is controversial at times but his work is usually well researched ( and well referenced).
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John,
You whine like Barack Obama.
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Yea, the Roman’s had NOTHING to worry about the Visigoths, right?
I bet you get fleeced at least once a month.
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Great analysis John Boy. Are you saying Agenda 21 doesn’t exist? That the UN and it’s reps aren’t promoting AGW as a means for wealth transfer?
Of course you’re not! What you’re saying is you agree with Agenda 21!
So when you describe people who don’t agree with Agenda 21 what you’re saying is those people don’t share your sense of moral imperative.
How anyway can claim that there is anything moral about AGW is beyond me; you’d have to be nuts to think AGW is moral; an AGW nutter in other-words.
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“Following the money” does not equal “conspiracy theory”. Staying on the gravy train is simply easier than getting off, especially when the ticket inspector is himself enjoying the ride too much to upset the partying passengers. CAGW is a quasi religion and just like religion, the warming “cause” requires no coordinated conspiracy, just an ideological mindset and the mutual love of control.
Typically, you didn’t just address the issue and the significant evidence presented. You distracted with innuendo and sneers. I ask every newcomer here to remember the name John Brookes, with the tilted-head avatar and weigh the signal-versus-noise ratio withing your comments. They can do the same with your evaporating mates. That should prompt them to ask, if your lot really has a good case, why not just present it and present it clearly?
You might think smarminess and supercilious piffle will help your “cause”. I seriously doubt that it can but if it can, it’s the wrong cause.
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Obviously there’s a misunderstanding. I’m sure the BBC isn’t biased. However, if there’s a doubt, the government could pay for a review by the ABC to establish if bias plays a role in BBC reporting.
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Heheh, I got that.
One good spin deserves another, eh?
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The BBC could also hire a journalist from the Guardian to run a Fact Check Unit.
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And while these Climate Fat Cats keep draining the public purse in the UK, and remember the UK was once one of Planet Earth’s powerhouse nations, then no doubt the UK will soon attain “3rd World Status” along with its cousins the EU. One question – is Professor Lord Krebs related to that beatnik Maynard G. Krebs of Dobie Gillis fame?
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Wow these people are really, really good – now there’s two things that no one in the world ever thought would be possible:
1. Tax the air we breathe.
2. Socialist Capitalism.
More to be pitied than put shit on….
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It has really been like taking candy from a baby, hasn’t it. An interconnecting grid of entrenched nepotism, a like minded elitist clique of academics and aristocrats who rubber stamp each other as they each rob taxpayers blind. The only wealth distribution that has ever been on the table has been from the middle and lower classes to the upper class landowners and their insider accomplices.
CAGW and the Green doctrine is clearly not even remotely about distributing wealth to “poor” countries at all, and anyone who fell for that (take note MattB, JB, Michael the Royalist, Maxine the zealot, TAboat the inarticulate, BA4 the incoherent, et al) is lacking some vital frontal lobe neuronal connections. It makes me livid with anger and disgust at the immorality of these people, and nothing short of sending them in a one way rocket to the sun would satisfy my desire for justice.
When the decline and fall of Western civilisation is written by future historians, these traitors will be at the forefront of those who should hang their heads in collective shame, for the regime that will likely replace what was built up over succeeding generations for more than a century is likely to be repressive, regressive and oppressive. Freedom and autonomy, wealth creation and prosperity, equality and tolerance, and scientific enlightenment and advancement is likely to be but a distant wistful memory of the one time hopeful ambition of humankind, now consigned to dust.
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The alternatives are none. The costs are unknown. The facts are based on political dogma and policy.
It’s like attacking an enemy in total darkness not knowing their position, equipment or numbers. It’s sucidal behavior.
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History gets written by the winning side. Distant, wistful memories of liberty and prosperity there may be — but if the totalitarians were to win, any who express such wistfulness would soon be made to appear, to the next generation, as deranged as people who lament the passing of Old Dixie.
But the tide seems to be turning, thanks to a few sites like this one. Groupthink networks can swing the other way; some journalists and pols are starting to rock the boat. Maybe some historians will join in?
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I called it all The Green Bank Authority in my little (“bigger on the inside”) scrapbook of AGW BS:
http://k.min.us/iby6xe.gif
I notice that reporters are getting lots of competent skeptical scientific facts right these days, in detail, and now finally the financials are being added up too.
FINALLY.
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You are so right.
Repeated exposure of the hard facts and hidden croneyism will eventually bring down the Global Warming Cult.
The problem in Britain, like so many other countries, is where you have an organisation like the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the general public expects it to be incompetent and/or on the take. After all, that is what these organisations, and all other so called NGOs were designed for, namely “jobs for the boys”.
Does anyone know of an NGO which actually does something useful?
As for the CCC, on what planet does a government set up an ‘independent’ organisation to lobby it to make hideously expensive, stupid decisions that: i) threaten its economy by closing down perfectly viable energy generating resources, ii) encourage the construction of unreliable and expensive energy generators, iii) encourage the imposition of unnecessary and damaging carbon taxes, all with the inevitable result of: i) driving people into energy poverty, and ii) energy rationing, which forces industry to relocate elsewhere? All this just to be able to erroneously and smugly claim: “look how good we are at saving the planet.”
As I have said many times before, it seems for the UK to end the insanity of its current energy policies requires extensive energy brown outs and black outs, plus many tens of thousands of people dying from the cold, either because they could not afford to turn on the heating or there simply was no electricity available.
The UK’s energy outlook does have some hope in the rising popularity of UKIP, the only political party with a sensible energy policy. In the EU elections in May next year, UKIP will probably win in the UK. This is going to have enormous political ramifications. The Conservatives’ David Cameron will probably/hopefully be booted out and to avoid a disastrous Labour government led by ‘Red Ed’ Milliband, the Conservatives may find themselves having to do an electoral deal with UKIP.
The insanity of the EU’s energy supply policy just makes matters worse – the EU’s economic salvation lies in fracking, a low cost, reliable, energy supply of shale gas. So what does the EU propose to do about it?
Answer: What it always does. Instigate rules and regulations that are so draconian no one will bother, or dare, to drill. This from the GWPF quoting the UK’s Sunday Telegraph.
http://www.thegwpf.org/eu-plan-fracking-law-threatens-uks-shale-gas-boom/
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Unfortunately the Cult will just morph into something else and the cronies will get away with their crimes. The vast majority of communist apparatchiks avoided punishment when the USSR collapsed. Many senior Soviet officials, including Vladimir Putin, prospered when the USSR collapsed.
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Only if the warming really does stop…
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Obviously you didn’t get the memo, John.
Seventeen years and counting . . . .
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This thread is about sustainable corruption in the radical environmental based industry. Don’t let John succeed in disrupt or off rail the thread.
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Derail or off-track is the standard choice offered by the ‘Hobson Joker’ troll.
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Well, leave out natural climate cycles and GISS data manipulations and what have you got?
Answer: Not a lot – in fact, almost nothing.
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Well PM, a clutch of invalid models, a mass of economic saprophytes — bureaucrats/politicians/banksters, and a catastrophe centered media with a death-wish?
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Just another day at the office …
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John,
You must be sitting on a lit gas burner. Doesn’t it hurt?
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You shouldn’t give in so easily, JB.
What if Natural Variability of the now quiet sun “masks” the CO2 warming for 150 years, which builds up in the meantime, then when the solar magnetic cycles predictably return to higher activity in 2175 we get a double-dose of warming to unprecedented levels?
Play the long game, nobody else is.
Your challenge will then be to argue that the people of 2075, with more money, more data, more climate knowledge, more technology, less fossil fuels, and a 100 year advance warning, will be LESS able to deal with the greenhouse issue of 2175 than we can in 2013. Good luck with that.
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If the Consensus Luddites, like John, have their way, the people of the future will be like the Eloi, and be quite incapable of adapting.
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John, you obviously haven’t got the message: GLOBAL COOLING IS A CONSEQUENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING–so not even an ice age will dissuade the CAGW cult. When in the minds of CAGW cultists any and all future climates are the consequences of AGW, it is impossible to reach a climate state where they are proven wrong. It’s also impossible to extract information from their position. It’s similar to the Question/Answer: “If your mother is a sewing machine and your father is a five dollar bill, how may flapjacks does it take to cover the roof of a doghouse?” Answer: “Fourteen, because footballs don’t have fenders.” Good luck extracting meaning from the question/answer or proving the answer wrong.
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its not about the warming starting, stopping or remaining steady .its about whether or not CO2 emissions drive temperature. clearly there is no empirical evidence of that so your comment is again utter nonsense.
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I see John that your head is still firmly shoved deep inside your buttocks…
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Peter,the home planet for the CCC is the same one that the gangreens & A L P comes from.If found we could organise a return flight
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I see on WUWT a couple of minutes ago that the American EPA which is up to it’s eyeballs in this climate scam now has it’s own case of a massive rip off and fraud from one of it’s highest paid officials.
Massive fraud at the EPA from agency’s top paid climate official
I suspect that there is lots more of a similar nature to come yet and they will be from some surprising sources.
The end game to the great global warming scam and all the the monstrous fraud surrounding it is well and truly in play
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The debate over at WUWT is whether he did more harm with the fraud, or less over all since he was NOT at the EPA.
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Names noted.
A certain global legal firm will be very interested when the scam is finally exposed without a doubt.
Unlike George Bush senior…no withdrawal from the battle when the foot was on the throat. Cut the heads off to ensure that any that want to perpetuate a fraud on mankind the same future!
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Jo You say ” The public are going to be angry when the shonky donkey that is green activism is exposed properly.” You misunderstand the British system of Government which is designed to enable Politicians and their friends relatives and corporate rent seekers to write laws to enrich themselves. All these obvious conflicts of interest ( Corrupt Practices if carried out outside the UK) are deemed legal if they are openly declared in speeches to the House or before testifying before committees. The Governments Climate and Energy Policy is an Orwellian joke. Everybody except the useful idiot chattering classes understands that whatever the UK does re CO2 emissions will produce zero measurable effect on Temperatures in 2100 and the Energy policy is designed to transfer money from the Public at Large to the Politicians and their Landowning friends and to the corporations who reward the Politicians with Directorships,shares and lucrative consultancies. All these goings on are public knowledge available to anyone who cares to investigate. The Ecoleft and their propagandists in the BBC and the Guardian are happy to let the Politicians get away with their loot on the way to a centrally controlled Stalin – type economy as envisaged in the new Energy bill in which some government flunkey is going to decide in her infinite wisdom on a carbon price which essentially gives her control over the energy mix of the economy as a whole and by extension the price of everything produced in the UK.
The public as a whole mostly doesn’t think about these things at all and those that do adopt the typical British serf like approach to those they think of as their class betters who must obviously know more than they do. CAGW is a wonderful enabler for this massive transfer of wealth and will not be abandoned until perhaps hell freezes over.
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Much as it pains me, I have to agree with you.
I was born in the UK and spent about half of my life (so far) there. The corruption has been present for decades. Corrupt money transcends all class and social boundaries, the thieves can be found in the right, left, centrist and politically uninterested quarters. Money is a fabulous leveler.
The UK general public knew, vaguely and instinctively, what was going on. But as you say, decades of a “Yeah, we know, it’s been going on forever, but what the hell can we do about it?” has accustomed them to a weary fatalism that Australians must be mightily puzzled by (at least, I hope so). But of course you can only bend a reed, however pliant, so far until it finally snaps. The reaction in the UK, if any, will be most interesting.
Now to home. I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that much the same thing is going on in Australia. But of course it’s not as obvious because the moneyed and connected thieves in the UK have learned through decades of experience they can be disgustingly blatant and bare-faced without retribution. We all know the whole thing is a multi-billion dollar scam here just as much as in Britain, but I believe we have a more finely developed sense of outrage. It needs focussed.
It shouldn’t be to hard to uncover our own carbon criminals, I just wonder which newspaper will be the first to name names.
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The Green’s love it, handing out money to people to motivate them to implement policies that in the end will destroy the economy? And with Agenda 21 private property, among many things, no longer exists. Do they understand and do this out of ideology or are they just stupid?
50
For a forecast of when hell will freeze over check my blog at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
see also @norpag
50
LevelGaze wrote:
“It shouldn’t be too hard to uncover our own carbon criminals, I just wonder which newspaper will be the first to name names.”
Yes, someone should pick up this ball that Delingpole served a couple years ago, and run with it:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100106974/global-warming-the-guilty-men/
00
“A CCC spokeswoman said it had ‘rigorous checks and balances to ensure that there are no conflicts of interests for committee members’.”
She is right. All interests of the CCC members are well aligned in the same direction and supporting each other, no “conflicts” at all.
150
Excellent article. There’s nothing as good as this in the British blogosphere.
And don’t forget the comments under the Mail article. Only 57 so far due to slow moderation on Sunday, but they are very very angry. And Mail readers are normally loyal government supporters.
150
It is generally disloyal governments they have a problem with, which includes most of present administration, which is a coalition.
There are very few in parliament however who speak against this nonsense, on either side, although a growing number of conservatives are beginning to fear electoral backlash over rising fuel bills, which the left chose to make an issue of, blaming big business profiteering, rather than it’s own incompetence while in government.
That political opportunism is proving to be the catalyst for the undoing of its Green dream.
30
Geoff you hit the nail right on the head. The reality is that the majority of hard working Poms have been taken for a ride. There is only one way that middle and low income Pommie tax payers can get “pay back” for the pain that they are currently suffering – by spiralling energy costs – and that is by voting for UKIP in the 2015 Federal Election. UKIP have an energy policy (“Keeping on the Lights’) that rubbishes RE (mainly wind power) because it is “Economic Lunacy”, ie too expensive by a factor of 4-5 times. UKIP promotes the return to more cost effective “fossil fuel” energy generation mainly by exploiting it’s vast “shale gas” reserves, which at present cannot be touched because the “Green Coalition Govt” is so obsessed with non-existent “AGW” and considers reducing their “carbon footprint” as paramount no matter what the cost. The BGS (British Geological survey) estimate “shale gas” reserves in the UK at ~ 1329 TCF. As an Oil & Gas geo, believe me that is a lot of gas but the amount of gas that can be produced will be far less than that figure but still very substantial, enough to keep the UK’s base load energy supply fulfilled for 100’s of years. Are the Pommie voters smart enough to save the UK from “Economic Collapse”?
90
And people like Philip Adams and Naomi Oreske have the hide to suggest people like Ian Plimer are “on the take” or just scared old white guys with technophobia or massive investments to protect.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/darwin-and-climage-change-denial/4852912
http://youtu.be/7ZQNiDIBxO4
The simple fact is everyone has a price, even Phillip and Naomi and some of us find ourselves in fortunate positions from time to time. These people are just opportunists and not particularly imaginative ones at that. They are fairly typical British upper middle class who grasp the realities of the issues Dr Norman Page (above) has pointed out. Basically they were sitting around minding their own businesses when some people from the Government and some random citizens asked them if they knew where they could buy a large bridge. Its Oceans 11 with posh British accents and all completely above board.
Its a great example of one of the myriad of tiny “conspiracies” another poster eluded to in response to a troll assertion that we are all “conspiracy theorists”. But they are not conspiracies, they are just business transactions conducted by cynical opportunists who know a sucker when they see one. As you go trough the AGW industry, the only thing that changes is the number of dollars involved, the scam remains the same. “Give us lots of money or the world is doomed”. Yawn….
What I find amusing is along with the terms “peer review” and “scientific method” the term “independent body” has also suffered the revisionist treatment. In the debate in the Senate last week regarding the bill to terminate the Climate Authority Labour and The Greens must have said “independent body” or “independent authority” 100 times and that’s a gross underestimate.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/labor-and-greens-join-forces-in-bid-to-save-climate-agencies-20131203-2ymsr.html
The debate was pathetic it was one of the most cynical perversions of the English language I have heard in some time. The notion that an organisation which receives 100% of its funding from one donor is “independent” is questionable at best. I do not want to cast doubt on the credentials and ethics of anyone running an organisation that is funded. However the question always hangs in the air “if the market was tasked with funding this thing, what would happen?” I think its pretty doubtful the Climate Authority would exist if it was not for the deals between Julia Gillard and The Greens in the lead up to resolving the hung parliament. I don’t even think it would exist if Labour took power alone, it is the deformed bastard child of a dirty deal for power along with it’s siblings the carbon tax and the clean energy fund.
Coincidentally enough, the deal between Labour and the Greens was not a conspiracy either. It was just another opportunistic happenstance where people who saw an opportunity, seized it. Ironically it was perhaps the first and last decent decision any of conspirators had made in some time, in terms of their own trough supplies. The fact that our country is paying dearly for the suppressed economic environment that it created is just detail to The Greens, but hey you cant make a decaf, fair trade, soy, sustainable, light, latte without breaking a few economies right?
The greater good baby….. the greater good…
170
Safetyguy, I’ve had the pleasure of talking to Ian on occasion and unlike Adams, Ian is not a dinosaur, not on the take and is a warrior fighting this socialist scam.
My rule of law…the greater the attack on the warrior indicates that the extent of the truth that they fear will destroy their gravy train. Also, can’t reason with warmists because their logic is right up there will two year olds.
This global village thing has produced a surplus of idiots. “Bring back the stocks,” I say!
130
Plimer has just got emeritus syndrome. Like dementia it is more prevalent in the elderly.
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And Philip Adams is the Frank Thring of radio, and Naomi Oreskes looks like a bad drag act. Your point is?
160
I got snipped some time ago for calling Oreskes an [snip].
So I will now refer to her as an [snip] act.
[And you get moderated this time as well – it is still a personal Ad Hominem] -Fly
[released with snips brought to you by ED] ED
10
John,
When you have just one published book, then put down Ian Plimer. He may not be a good spokesman for the skeptical cause — and I admit that — but he beats you by a hundred km for worthwhile knowledge.
80
Wow John I haven’t seen you so snide and relentlessly negative in um… I cant remember when. Of all the people who visit this site to argue the contra. I have always regarded your posts as pretty well informed.
If I descended to the level you were mentally at when you posted your thoughts in this thread, Id say this story has hit a nerve. You have found yourself associated with a cause that looks little more like a complete snake oil world tour ever single day and I do believe its starting to upset you.
But I wont, I will just say Ian Plimer like many considered and appropriately credentialed contributors to the AGW debate (such as John Christy) just have to take what gets dished out by people like you and Phillip Adams. I have posted a number of times on the LNL blogs and I have emailed Adams asking him to have John Christy on his show. But Phillip chose to invite a historian to compare Plimer with the Christians and creationists of Darwin’s era in an ad hom. attack that was unworthy of even Phillip.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/darwin-and-climage-change-denial/4852912
The irony being of course that Plimer is a far better analogy for Darwin in this debate than as a creationist. After all as warmists are quick to point out, the vast and overwhelming majority of credible scientists believe in the whole apocalyptic AGW bundle right? Well in Darwin’s time that would have been the “creation scientists”, those that had embraced a measure of scientific thought and methodology, but still carried the superstitious baggage of belief in the super natural. Sound familiar?
10
Still bullying your elders eh John Brookes? You don’t look like a spring chicken either. So when should I stop listening to what you say? Too late…..
00
Comments at the Mail were stopped after 57, something quite common with David Rose articles. His previous article only had one comment allowed before the chop. Pressure from on high, no doubt. Note how much agreement there is with the commenters re use of words such as ‘scumbags’, ‘snouts’, ‘vote UKIP’ etc.
110
I am reading The Age of GLOBAL WARMING: A History by Rupert Darwall which gives a good insight to the rise of the fatcats. As pointed out above this has been going on for a long time.
140
And in the funniest post of the day category… I lol’d
ComputerSays, Melbourne, 1 day ago
Children won’t know what corporate accountability is.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2523726/Web-green-politicians-tycoons-power-brokers-help-benefit-billions-raised-bills.html#ixzz2nca9UGQI
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SG
20 thumbs up!
Unfortunately true.
Dave
70
“The climate troughers committee, recommends that Britain will commit to strict emissions targets, so that our mates, cronies and father-in-laws can retain their nice little earners!”
Keep your hands in the till lads!
Toodle oo
luv and xxx’s
John Gummer.
90
I hope this isn’t taken the wrong way but perhaps, at least from the perspective from across the pond, it looks more like, keep your hands on your guns lads!
There is a terrible clash brewing. I hope we all can survive it.
30
Where was the BBC ? Well, they are also doing OK thank you 🙂
70
No doubt the staff at Auntie ABC will sympathise with these ‘climate dignitaries’ at having their pecuniary interests revealed.
130
Imagine how inept Peter Gleick must feel!
50
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the USA and the only General to have been elected President of the USA in the 20th century.
His short, less than ten minute long farewell speech on the 17 Jan 1961 is famous for it’s warning on the power of the Military-Industrial complex.
But there was another lesser known but remarkably prescient warning in that speech, a warning that followed the military-industrial complex warning and a warning that in today’s world is far more relevant to our times than the military industrial complex warning .
There are three versions of this speech, the spoken [ audio transcript ] version , the reading copy and the press version
The following is the relevant quote from the press version;
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system– ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
[end quote]
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The end game in the whole global warming scam and the science that is claimed to underpin it is now under way.
The total and blatant corruption of the science and those promoting the so called science of the catastrophic global warming is being stripped naked and is showing the true ugliness and abject kleptocratic corruption of those who are promoting this scabrous excuse for science.
Nobody can predict the future but with rapidly rising energy costs, increasingly colder winters in the NH, increasing levels of death from cold related disease and hypothermia amongst the poor and elderly across many nations in Europe, the UK and Germany being the most prominent, as they can no longer afford to heat and eat and must choose one or the other.
[ Don’t feel smug. In one of my WZ forum posts I go into the numbers from the various organisations and NGO’s that cater for these poor, lonely and destitute in Australia a lot of whom have been cut off from power as they can no longer pay their energy costs. We also have a quite distressful percentage of our citizens who cannot afford to both heat and eat.
And as one of my” food on wheels” friends in this western Victorian rural city told me, you haven’t seen poverty until you see a little old widow in a large house she has lived in all her life trying to find the money to pay the rates, taxes, electricity costs and etc and still find money for food all on only a single person pension.]
I will hazard a guess that the fall out from these UK revelations will destroy the remaining vestiges of respect for climate science and those who purport to support it’s claims of an imminent climate catastrophe due to the so called and unproven, unmeasurable and modelled only CAGW.
The political repercussions could be extreme for science of any sort connected with any supposed global warming science.
The politicals are now in the situation that they will try to cover up and consequently get destroyed at the next election;
Or
In order to survive politically they will completely disown everything they have done and proposed to “stop” CAGW and blame it on the scientists who both advised them on the actions to be taken and those who promoted the whole dreadfully debasing to science, scam.
And that means some politicians go / leave / pushed/ shoved / kicked out as well.
It may also mean a massive legal class action against some members of parliament probably possible in the UK as MP’s are allowed to have outside business intersts in which they can actively participate. As well as some scientists and advisory board members might also be right in the legal firing line for the advice they have been giving to the government if FOI requests reveal a whole saga of deliberate misinformation and fraud has been committed in the name of CAGW science.
Either way with the revelations of this truly kleptocratic adjunct to climate science means that climate science will get hit very heavily by the anger of the public which the politicals will have to recognise if they want to survive politically.
The politicals consequently will in the most likely case just drastically cut funding to climate science and all it’s running dogs in a way that will shock the whole of science and academia
. We might even be on the cusp of a massive clean out and restructuring of science and academia over all , something that Judith Curry in her latest post today is in a round about way is already suggesting.
Politically it won’t be blatant and open but it will be harsh nevertheless.
Abbot when he gets the news will be blessing his foresight in moving rapidly from any further imposts on the Australian people in the name of “doing something” which as in the UK’s situation was also along those same lines here in Australia under Gillard and the greens,
In the UK it was all just to support a small group of criminally minded political kleptocrats that have maneuvered themselves into a position of political power with the now readily seen objective of acting entirely for their own narrow, utterly selfish, totally callous self interest and to hell with any compassion or honesty towards the people they purport to represent.
All of the above is pure speculation but I would be amazed if this just passes by.
A lot of people have been looking for good reasons to hang some very serious accusations onto some very powerful and corrupt political and science high flyers in the whole monstrous CAGW scam and this could provide the ammunition and the trigger to do so.
Buy pop corn futures as the yanks say;
160
I’ve read that the BBC pension scheme is invested in the “Big Green”
http://www.climategate.com/follow-the-money-bbc-exposed-in-biggest-climate-racket-on-planet
“The BBC’s handsome pension pot is invested in the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) alongside another 50 plus member funds. The total assets of this consortium is around €4 trillion (Euros), that in turn are invested in a larger consortium known as ‘UNEP FI’ worth about $15 trillion (US)”
40
Ya know, all I can say is after coming across all types of criminals in my time I would have to say the most damaging are con artists, and looking at this line up they are no different to a common back door grifter, I really dislike con artists.
50
The worst thing you an do is to lie to someone. Whether it’s a lie of commission or a lie of omission the end result is the same, betrayal of trust. And that is a despicable thing. So, Yonnie, feel free to not just dislike but despise what is despicable.
50
Roy I was trying to reign it in a bit for Jo’s blog but yes I do despise them, any crime committed against another person involves deception and causes all kinds of damage down the track but I believe con artists do the most damage, it was a retired policeman who pointed this out to me and in short he likened con artists as psychopaths who caused emotional and social damage their entire lives as this was how they are wired.
I can only hope these people are bought to justice in some way eventually.
30
I’m worried that it might fall to us to bring them to justice. That kind of justice is terrifying to contemplate and yet there’s no real hope on the horizon. They no longer appear to fear that anyone will stop them.
This is off topic to be sure but it strikes right at the heart of the matter. It talks about gun control here in the U.S. but it’s really about the war now being waged against real freedom, productivity and success.
Let me know what you think.
50
This is the gun arguement that is not used enough.The big govt,big business conspiracies of Glenn Beck dont seem so far fetched a few years on.
30
They never were far fetched. He was digging for answers before others even knew what questions to ask. Many still don’t know what questions to ask but his predictions come true before his critic’s eyes and still they don’t understand it.
50
From Glenn Beck:
You decide for yourselves but this kind of thing chills me to the bone. Glenn Beck is not one who simply invents things.
40
The sad part is the whistleblower thought (and probably rightly so) that he could not trust any US Media outlet to print his story, so he went to a Canadian one.
00
Thanks for that, Roy.
Probably the best thing I’ve seen on the subject since I first got involved in fighting Big Brother in the mid 1980’s.
30
MV,
It arrived in my inbox this morning and the thanks should go to Yonniestone who’s comment prompted me to post it. The match up between the video and what I see going on in this country is astounding to say the least.
30
Great link Roy, I’ve already sent it around to what will be thousands. I got really ticked off at some of the idiots in the video comments though.
00
Mark,
I guess we need to allow them their freedom of speech. I didn’t bother looking at the comments, knowing that many of them would be mindlessly following the party line.
I too sent that video to everyone I know. I’ve never seen a better presented argument as to why the people should be allowed to be armed. It’s not really an argument against gun control but an argument against the tyranny now developing.
I have a couple of things to say to both scaper and Yonniestone that you might appreciate too. Not sure but thought I’d point them out (take me a few minutes to type them in).
10
Roy, I’ve been following/researching the proposed take over of the USA for two months.
Being a sceptic I have been searching for some evidence to counter the conspiracy theory and thus far found nought.
Found evidence of hundreds of empty FEMA concentration camps, massive underground bunkers/control centres, large scale grave sites been excavated, massive military hardware movements internally, training on the American streets utilising black choppers, DHS purchases of weapons and hollow point 223 shells (over a billion), the evidence is overwhelming that something is on!
It has gone mainstream, FOX and other media are onto it. Ron Paul, the police and several whistle blowers have pretty much said the same story.
The preppers are arming themselves to the teeth to the extent that the ammo manufacturers can’t keep up due to the demand.
If I lived in the USA I would seriously consider taking an overseas vacation for a few months from February as all pointers are indicating that it all might go down in March.
Australia is a safe haven due to our geological location and the fact that our government is not a part of the alleged New World Order.
The last government??? Open borders, bringing our finances into debt and deficit and creating class and gender divisions. Same modus operandi.
I hope it doesn’t happen but am prepped to defend my family and country, just in case.
10
scaper,
I don’t know your sources or their reliability and frankly I don’t know the reliability of my sources either. But clearly there’s something going on and it doesn’t look good. At best it’s a paranoid administration trying to be prepared for any breakdown in U.S. society that threatens violence on a wide scale or threatens its political dominance. At worst it’s what you describe. And I can’t tell what the real truth is.
I do know this, however. There is no way for the citizenry to defend against military grade weaponry and succeed. That doesn’t lead me to conclude that people should not be armed but it does lead me to conclude that while we still have any chance at all of succeeding by the means the Constitution prescribes, elections, freedom of speech and the right to petition our representatives for redress of grievance, we should avoid violence at all costs. It will tear the country apart without a doubt and end badly.
I’m not sure why March should be the month in which it all goes down. I lose a lot of sleep over what’s happening to my country but I’m in doubt that a military like takeover of things is in the near future. Creeping takeover, little by little, as it’s already been going, is more likely.
00
Roy sorry for the late reply but what a fantastic and well done video, girls n guns eh? ;), seriously though as Bones said it’s an argument never heard from the PC obsessed MSM today.
You would remember the great Charlton Heston and this speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ju4Gla2odw which pretty well sums up what many true patriots would like to see put out there and let others make an informed decision.
Many years ago I served in the Australian Army Reserve and later was a security guard licensed to open carry and I was taught to respect the safety and danger aspect of firearms for myself and others, a far cry from being desensitized by the internet and games as young people are today.
Firearms will always be an evil necessity as long as there are evil people in the world.
00
Yonnie,
That’s a real déjà vu comment. As a child we played with toy guns and if we didn’t have a cap pistol or water gun, a finger and thumb made a good substitute. What kid didn’t?
My grandfater was a lifelong hunter and marksman and a member of the now much reviled NRA (National Rifle Association). He disapproved rather strongly of our playing such games with guns, even toy guns and I remember many stern warnings that a gun was not a toy and we shouldn’t do what we were doing.
As that video unfolded I had an immediate flashback to my grandfather telling me almost word for word what the narrator was saying: A gun is dangerous, you never point it at anyone or anything you don’t intend to shoot, etc. None of that made much impact on me until I was in basic training and had a loaded M1 in my hands for the first time and I squeezed off the first shot. A 30 caliber round kicks hard and you suddenly realize you have something deadly in your hands.
When I was in Saigon I worked the second shift in a nice air conditioned ops building. We went back and forth to work on an ancient old bus through the streets of Saigon. The shift ended at about 1:30 AM and the return trip was through nearly abandoned streets.
But then there was a night when someone tossed a bomb over the wall at the battalion commander’s garden party. That night four of us were handed carbines and several full clips as we went out the door. So there we were, a bunch of technical types armed with not much and expected to protect the bus from anything on the way home. I was in the front with one other guy and two were at the rear. I remember a certain sense of excitement about it. But thankfully nothing happened, nothing was even moving. Which was good because if anything had even come near that bus we might have opened fire — a really bad tragedy in the making.
When you’re young you think you’re invincible. And maybe that’s a good thing, at least sometimes. But I’m as bothered as you are about the violence in games and entertainment. As a kid I thought my grandfather was a pain in the ass. But now I wish I had him back. He never was afraid of a gun in his life. But he sure did respect them. His example, as much as I ignored it then, has stayed with me all these years.
As I see it there are just three types of people with regard to guns.
1. The bad guy and the mentally incompetent who should never be allowed to get their hands on a gun. Unfortunately no amount of lawmaking prevents these people from getting a gun if they want one.
2. Those who are afraid of guns, do not understand or respect them and think more lawmaking will make them safer. They always fail. Just the idea of gun free zones like schools is a big flop. You cannot carry a gun onto almost every school campus in the country, at least not legally. Yet we just had another school shooting a few days ago. Someone bent on shooting someone goes where he’s not going to be opposed. He doesn’t go into a place where he knows that his fire will be returned.
3. The rest of us who aren’t afraid of guns because we understand and respect them, train and practice regularly in their use.
One statistic I have read goes like this:
1. shooter in a gun free zone — average killed, 22
2. shooter in a place where someone is allowed to be armed — average killed 2
That’s a powerful argument for being armed. And it doesn’t even have anything to do with protecting ourselves from our government.
10
Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences with us Roy.
I appreciate it.
10
I direct readers to the Arapahoe shooter and the Newtown shooter. Both took their own lives. It is how many were taken before then and what the difference was.
Excellent post.
00
Phil,
That raises another important point. Both times the shooters were on a suicide mission. And both times there were numerous signs of serious problems in these boys lives. But no one was paying attention or if someone did see the signs they were shrugged off and ignored.
There’s nothing like someone with a grudge he takes seriously for potential danger. Had teachers and parents been more educated about the signs of mental instability and if our laws weren’t so stupid about such things, maybe those boys would be alive today along with their victims.
We need to do a better job. Unfortunately I don’t see a good clear path to get there. Too much inertia and too many vested interests spoil the soup.
I’d be interested in your take on this if you’ll take a few minutes to respond (anyone else too).
00
@Roy
Unlike the 17 year hiatus in Warming, this really is a conundrum. On the one hand, in order to guard more effectively against the crazies, we would have to deprive them, and others, of basic human rights. In other words, you are asking for people to make judgement calls, that the end results will be the restriction of freedom for many, to catch the few.
So many are exactly like these 2 on the outside. And never lift a finger to take a life, their own or another. But then that 1% (or .1 or .01) do act and the results are a tragedy.
I have no pat answer. I plain do not know. If it comes down to the rights of 100, a thousand or a million to save 1 person from this fate, I have to side with the rights, not saving the one person (and their potential victims).
I do see some small things that can be done (like the sharing of information that may have stopped Seung-Hui Chou), but no panacea that would be able to identify all the Lanzas or Piersons out there.
00
Just to get totally off this serious topic and for a change have a thoroughly good giggle at some inane humor, go to Lucia’s “Blackboard” where her denizens are indulging themselves in some very clever, wise cracking, rib tickling one liners in the comments to her latest post.
If you have read Tolkien you will appreciate it even better.
Indisputably Correct Climate Model Results!
10
Love it 🙂
00
The Mail on Sunday deserves credit for allowing Rose a sufficiently high-profile platform….BUT comments on the Daily Mail’s website are ‘stuck’ at 57, where they’ve been virtually since the article broke.
Judging by the responses the article has struck a chord, and has also clearly upset some of those high ‘n mighty folks – and the Mail has had to suspend reader comments.
Almost Guardian-esque. Yet again the legacy / MSM media is humiliated by events driven by the blogosphere.
40
CheshireRed
December 16, 2013 at 9:42 pm
How right you are.
It doesn’t seemed to have filtered through to most of the more arrogant MSM yet that they are being publicly humiliated and then torn to shreds everytime they fail to tell the unbiased truth and try to use spin to try and implement their own particular agenda or that of the particular and usually bigoted “cause” they are supporting at the time.
The power of the blogsphere is rapidly increasing and it is at the expense of the MSM who have nobody to blame except themselves for the public humiliation they are increasingly suffering at the hands of the blogsphere due entirely to their own editor’s policies of regularly trying to hood wink the pubic to push their own particular slanted agenda’s.
30
Phillip Bratby December 16, 2013 at 5:25 pm
Did you also notice that David Rose’s other Article on the same day on a very similar subject, also naming names was not allowed any Comments at all.
This is CENSORSHIP of the worst kind, they are really running scared.
See this article
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2523758/MPs-Lords-lobbyists-advise-Ministers-eco-policies–cash-in.html
10
I can’t be bothered reading David Rose’s articles, but its likely they are riddled with errors. A less inspiring writer is hard to imagine. Actually, no its not. Janet Albrachtsen. Greg Sheridan. Angela Shanahan. Judith Sloan. Actually just about anyone writing for Rupert. Actually, does Rose write for Rupert? Or are there independent loonies out there?
130
Another random thought, John?
But then, what do I know? However, I do read what someone wrote before I criticize it. And that turns out to be a wise policy. I recommend it to you without hesitation. It should improve your standing around here quite a bit.
60
John, I don’t know you, but judging by the posted image, Your head is not screwed on right.
70
Definitely flopping hard to the ‘left’, though… look at that tilt !!
If he was a pin-ball machine he would be totally non-functional….
30
i actually know of a cure for that ….. such head positions if permanent and not due to a one off pose interfere with the blood supply to and from the brain …
20
It is a common condition known as “Pigeon syndrome” where one of the two pieces of string that attaches one side of the head to the shoulder shrinks and causes the head to tilt.
The cause is unknown however model simulations suggest it is a mental disorder possibly related to the FIGJAM family of illnesses.
20
It seems John Brookes that it hasn’t yet come home to YOU and your fellow believers in the CAGW meme that it is YOU who are now on the defensive and it is YOU who now has to try and defend your failed intellectually bankrupt climate science and it is YOU who have to defend the nefarious and totally ineffective and deleterious imposts inflicted at the behest of your fellow ideological straitjacketed believers on the citizens of so many nations all in the name of “saving the planet”
Remember when the “science was settled” and “” no further debate would be tolerated”, terms rarely heard these days but which are very clearly remembered by the skeptics.
Yet once again we have just had the bible of global warming, the IPCC’s Assessment Reports issued for the fifth time, the AR5, to update and redefine the ideology of catastrophic global warming.
So much for”the science is settled” when even the believers in the ideology have to keep on issuing new updates on the so called CAGW climate science.
Then there was the shrill and constant claims that the skeptics were being financed by BIG OIL, a claim for which no evidence of other than a few tens of thousands of dollars paid by Big Oil to a couple of skeptic organisations was ever proven
Instead it turns out that BIG OIL was actually paying tens of millions of dollars to the CAGW ideologists to buy them off and to look Green and almost nothing of any perceivable consequence was being paid to the skeptics.
Now the science, that “science that was settled and no further debate was needed”, is being taken to new levels and into the realms of increasing uncertainty about the future trends in the global climate as the totally unpredicted by the climate models and misnamed global warming “pause” continues on after some 16 years, a “pause” increasingly acknowledged even by the warmist IPCC AR5 climate catastrophe bible.
YOU and your ideological ilk have the new problem of explaining away the newly revealed but long suspected by the skeptics, the gross corruption in carbon credit trading , the increasingly opening up and revealing of the gross corruption in the scientific and political structures surround the CAGW meme, all acting to corrupt the science and to enhance their own wealth and power and influence at the expense of the ordinary tax payer and citizen.
YOU now have to explain away why your imposts on the public and the citizens that were implemented at your fellow ideological believers behest and all based on nothing more than some unproven, unvalidated, unverified climate models which is the only basis for your climate catastrophe climate science, all of which has failed completely to make the slightest perceivable difference let alone measurable difference to the release of anthropogenic CO2 [ if it actually means anything to the climate ] but which has imposed dire effects from those same schemes on so many lives of the less well off .
Plus YOU now have to explain why your immensely costly ideologically based schemes have both achieved nothing at all but instead have led to the destruction of so much wealth and treasure that could have been used far more constructively for the good of the whole populace.
You are probably too deeply entrenched in your ideological blinded beliefs John Brooke to ever realise that it is now YOU who have to explain to the world all that has gone wrong with your ideological based Climate Catastrophe stand and why people were made to suffer so much on behalf of your now increasingly being seen as a failed climate catastrophe ideology.
And it is YOU who now have to explain to the populace the why’s of the deliberate gross corruption that is increasingly being seen as an integral and inseparable part of your whole climate catastrophe ideology.
The great wheel of human affairs has turned again and another debased and corrupt ideology, that of the anthropogenic catastrophic global warming ideology , slowly sinks into the morass of corruption and debasement where all such nefarious, debased and corrupted ideologies eventually finish up.
It is no longer the skeptics who have to prove anything. The science or the increased uncertainty of the science of the climate is doing that for them.
Copenhagen was the high water mark for the ideology of the CAGW belief.
The fact it failed and Climate Gate with it’s revelations on the corruptness of the claimed science underlying the CAGW ideology was the start of the dismantlement and ultimate collapse of the whole global warming ideology.
Yes, John Brookes, despite all your bluster YOU and your ilk are now the ones who have to do the explaining and provide the indisputable justification for your increasingly intellectually and scientifically bankrupt catastrophic climate ideology
And the betting is that you also will frail completely in this.
80
John Brookes is a dick.
01
Hmm Richard John Brookes.
Has a certain stuffy hoity – toity sound to it. Almost like a Sir should be added like: “I see you are a Dick Sir.”
00
Why thank you James!
02
Your welcome.
00
Maybe the comments at this DM post have stalled but the voting was still enabled when I looked earlier.
Maybe worth casting your votes while their is still time!
30
Jo,
It is all about programming societies…
They make anything against their stance to be outside our normal society program and hence a danger that should be attacked.
I have been fighting our scientists for years now on their mistakes and narrow minded views…and still the programming goes on.
10
G’day Jo,Im a little confused.Last weeks story of large banks cutting back on their carbon trading sectors and the drop in carbon credit value,does it then follow that these pention funds are in danger disappearing into the warming void,for the greater good.If so that should get a lot of contributors rather peeved
10
Bones,
No, only some of your pension funds are earmarked to disappear into the void of “warming”. The great bulk are destined to disappear into the void of “infrastructure spending”.
I have just finished writing at length about it over on Cattalaxy, so rather than repeat myself, here is the link. Scroll up a bit to get the background info.
30
Thank you,MV,pointing out where these investors put other people money,for their own agenda,can only be a good thing for the average person(workers are’nt dumb,just gullible).I’ve always looked at super funds as giving control of my money to others,who only see it as a 9 to 5 job,most with a care factor of nill
10
No doubt the “Professor of Sustainable Energy” will soon be announcing his recommendations of huge R and D investments in Thorium and Cold Fusion to provide viable alternative energy sources.
I would also be interested in his specific grant allocations to water-driven and compressed-air vehicles.
30
The BBC is here, and on the case…
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2013/12/16/the-windmills-of-your-mind/
Merry Christmas Jo, and to who contribute to the Jo Nova blog. From the BBC (Obviously.)
70
Once again we learn the lesson Eisenhower tried to teach us. If you have the ear of someone in government and are willing to do a little quid-pro-quo, you’ve got it made.
And by the way, my cat objects. She isn’t fat, is a princess and she owns the place outright. She wants to know how there could possibly be any conflict of interest on her part when the only interest she allows is hers in the first place. 😉
20
Well, we have all been treated to the yowls of “big oil”. Now I guess we see “big green”. However I still like the term Watermelon. So now it is “big watermelon”.
But one thing is constant. Follow the money.
30
Looks like we already have the mugshots. Send out the all-points bulletin:
“Wanted on suspicion of insider trading and selling a climate Ponzi scheme. If you see this man do not approach him, he is dangerous to superannuation funds, birds, eco-tourism, and the free world.”
Even Clive Palmer’s business interests look clean by comparison.
40
I’ve – occasionally – been to places where these people shmooze, so I have some idea of the mindset. This is simply how things work. Once in a while the sheer dishonesty of it becomes public, and then they are shocked absolutely shocked to realise that the life they have been living is, in fact, a criminal life. They are not criminals. They are the right sort of people.
This, basically, is where the whole global warming scam comes from. The right sort of people living the right sort of lives and saying the right sort of things to get the big jobs and rake in the moolah. Whether or not the things they say are true is beside the point. It’s the sort of thing people worry about, who don’t understand how it all works.
50
Also happening in the US EPA.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/16/massive-fraud-at-the-epa-from-agencys-top-paid-climate-official/#more-99340
20
Jo, nothing will happen at all as Phil Bratby said it has been buried by the Mail, along with 2 other anti green stories, probably by order of those involved.
10
there is more to it than that, otherwise the story would not have appeared in the first place – see my later post.
10
“A CCC spokeswoman said it had ‘rigorous checks and balances to ensure that there are no conflicts of interests for committee members’.”
Shouldn’t that be cheques & balance , maintainjng a line of patronage that ensures noone who disagrees gets onto the committee.
20
Jo,it is interesting that the Veolia name also popped up in Victoria with the North/South pipeline and the desalination plant and the upgrades to irrigation infrastructure in the Goulburn Valley in Northern Victoria.All this was linked and in some cases no tenders were called for by the Bracks/Brumby government.Billions of dollars were wasted.
20
Good post Jo, great to see this rogues gallery named and shamed.
BTW Gore’s Artic ice con has been disproved.Was this numbskull correct about anything?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/16/nature-proves-al-gore-wrong-again/#more-99349
20
Yes indeed it’s time for the global warming scam artists to face the consequences of their bad deeds. I just hope for their sakes the public don’t become too angry and start dragging them into the streets and doing them harm, like they did to bankers throughout history when they were hung. A prison sentence would be sufficient, just as in Iceland where they actually imprisoned the top four bankers who were called the “financial terrorists” that ruined the country: http://rt.com/op-edge/iceland-bank-sentence-model-246/
30
AGW has turned into a giant international booty call, and most so-called NGOs and ‘progressive’ orgs are in on it. Notice that unlike an oil boom, or a new type of chip or software, they do not actually do anythign productive. They are parasites, living off, and damaging, the healthy victims.
40
What you are witnessing here is the polite english version of the execution of Kim Yong-Uns’ uncle Jang.There is a discrete policy change as a Tory faction around the Chancellor and Energy minister Michael Fallon have realised that “sustainable” energy is unsustainable and will definitely lose them the next election, and have convinced Cameron. The Autumn budget statement therefore is now tax discounting fracking for shale gas and has subtly altered the feed in tariffs for onshore wind and solar to curb expansion, citing that “we have enough onshore” and recognising the pending problem of noise pollution and other unpopularity of bird mincers. Developers have started to off-load wind farms to gullible marks. At the same time subsidy is transferred offshore but insufficient to oil the wheels hence the recent cancellation of two large projects as the big players tke to the hills.
Then the CCC last week publicly states that no easing of the “renewables” targets must take place – hence the hatchet job on old Gummer and his gang of eight, which could have been done at any time – none of this was new to the blogosphere. It is a prelude to
their despatch down the memory hole – like uncle Jang.
The Green agenda and the implementation of the climate change act was the price of coalition – the Lib Dems jettisoned the rest of their programme, along with their credibility over student fees. Now Green is so last year – a political liability. The UK is about to join the rest of the world – they will still talk the climate narrative but will do the same as most of the real world – that is nothing, the tory partys’ most constructive talent.
60
There are quite a lot of posters and no doubt lurkers on this, Jo’s forum, who are quite rightly very cynical and very dubious as to whether anything will happen at all following these latest revelations on the abject corruption in climate warming science and amongst it’s promoters. Everybody is starting to realise that a ruthless clean out one of the most shameful and corrupt episodes in all of the history of science must be initiated if science as a profession is to retain a modicum of public respect and support.
I guess I am too much of an optimist and hope for the barely achievable outcome against a very deeply entrenched meme of exploitation of the public and it’s limited resources by a kleptocratic class of high flying politicals, of an equally kleptocratic but small group of psuedo climate scientists and all the green left wing watermelon camp followers who have their greedy snouts up to their eyeballs in the public trough.
But the straws of change and retribution from the long suffering paying public are in the wind and they are very prominent straws indeed.
Via the GWPF site this morning.
From the hard left, renewable energy supporting regardless of cost Guardian of all places;
Government urged to cut cash to green energy in order to reduce bills
From the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming supporting Bloomberg the big shift under way in the Merkel’s German government’s policies re renewable energy and by implication the serious watering down of it’s former hard line CAGW policy support .
German Energy Brief Move Shows Merkel Focusing on Economy
From Reuters and this seems interesting as it apparently is a case of even more demands being placed on major German energy consumers leading to the politicians getting very jumpy at the prospects of major industries closing up shop leaving the politicians with a lot of explaining to do to their voters as to why their voters no longer have jobs.
The obvious let out for the nationalistic politicals which when scratched hard enough to get under all the surface crap and verbiage they all are, is to tell the EC regulators to go take a running jump and to p#ss off.
Regulators pose threat to EU green energy and industry
&
It is all coming apart and at a rate few would have anticipated less than a year ago.
60
Yes, it appears to be. However, I doubt the pro-Green and other movements in the scam will give up without a real fight. I expect violent actions from such scum.
30
This should be read by EVERY AUSTRALIAN, especially those now in government.
A good start would be a copy of this link to acquaintances and the MP of every reader.
50
re the EPA/John Beale scandal.
Brandon Shollenberger commented that the story is not new – Anthony said it was new to him – but Shollenberger also said:
“I get this story may be new to a lot of people, and there’s definitely a story to be told about how little attention this has gotten”
do a google search – john beale epa – click ‘news’ & u r lucky if u get just over 200 results, almost all from fringe media, yet this is a scandal of great interest, one which would eat away at the CAGW narrative, & therefore is suppressed by the MSM.
to be continued next comment:
50
Christmas Time, and the sound of exploding green heads is like Christmas bon-bons:
North America to Drown in Oil as Mexico Ends Monopoly
Pop! There goes another one!
30
These allegations should be seen in their appropriate context, of which non-Britains may not be aware. The last Labour Government pushed through the Climate Change Act 2008. The current Labour leader, Ed Miliband, was then the Environment Minister. The Act had cross-party support with 80% of MPs voting for, and less than 1% voting against. Since 2010, The consumer cost of electricity and gas has risen by around 30%, but the wholesale price has remained pretty much the same. In September Miliband promised a price freeze if returned to power. The recent implication by the Labour Party is that this is all down to profiteering by the six major energy companies.
Since 2009 all these six companies have been required by OFGEM to produce annual “consolidated segmental statements” for generation and for four categories of supply. They can be accessed from on OFGEM pdf here. I have done a bit of number crunching on the cost of supply. From 2009 to 2012
1. Revenue is broadly the same, though average cost per unit to the customer has risen as volumes sold have fallen. 2009 £44.1bn, 2012 £43.9bn
2. Similarly, although the wholesale price of electricity & gas (without the subsidy for renewables) has remained roughly the same, as a proportion of revenue it has fallen, 2009 65.7%, 2010 59.4%, 2011 57.3%, 2012 55.7%
3. Profits have increased – very slightly from 1.8% of revenue 2009 to 3.8% in 2012. (2009 was a year of volatile wholesale prices – and gas supply made a loss)
4. Amortization is tiny.
5. Other costs are the big factor. Relative to revenue. 2009 32%, 2010 36%, 2011 39% and 2012 40%. In money terms that was a £3.6bn increase (or 25%) in four years. Six fiercely competitive companies “allowed” their costs to increase 25% when wages and prices rose by 10% or less. These other costs (along with national grid charges and metering) also include the renewables subsidies that the end user bear.
Now in the UK, the value of subsidies for renewables is a secret, along with the cost of connecting the wind turbines up to the National Grid. It is well over £2bn (A$4bn) and rising rapidly. Given that a single 2MW offshore wind turbine has currently a guaranteed price of £140MW or £700k a year, and that any changes in rates are at the whim of the Secretary of State, there are huge incentives for corruption here. The amounts paid for directorships of businesses are chicken-feed.
There is also another story here.
The Labour Party are saying they will impose an energy price freeze if returned to power. This short video suggests that the 9% average increase in the last three years is solely down to profits.
http://action.labour.org.uk/page/content/energy-calculator-video/
With domestic energy prices going up by 30% in the last 3 years, how long before the energy companies make a loss? (NB 5 of the 6 has little or no gas interest, and the total profits from generation and supply of electricity are about 10% of revenue.)
10
last nite i listened to bbc’s “business daily”. lengthy story on new IEA report saying, basically, coal is king, consumption will increase by massive 2.3 percent for years; interviewed IEA’s Maria van der Hoeven plus Andrew Sims (freaking out) from New Economics Foundation (tho i only recall the presenter saying “New Economics”, perhaps to give the impression it wasn’t a CAGW foundation of sorts!
well, here’s the program – certainly has other items i heard last nite – but the coal story has completely disappeared & has been replaced, it would seem, by a Japanese Abenomics story:
16 Dec: BBC Business Daily – 25 mins
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01n1dt8
do search – IEA coal – click “news” & u immediately get multiple results stating:
Coal demand to slow: IEA – Business Spectator
IEA forecasts coal demand to slow – Sky News Australia
until u reach NYT –
Global Coal Use Predicted to Keep Growing
New York Times-13 hours ago
LONDON — Global consumption of coal, a major source of the … The report, released Monday by the I.E.A. in Paris, underscores the dilemma
confirmation the above was on NYT –
16 Dec: InsideClimateNews: NYT: IEA Report: Global Coal Use Predicted to Keep Growing
Global consumption of coal, a major source of the greenhouse gases blamed for rising global temperatures and other pollutants, is likely to continue to grow at “a relentless pace” through 2018, according to a report by the International Energy Agency.
“Like it or not, coal is here to stay for a long time to come,” said Maria van der Hoeven, the agency’s executive director, in a statement…
http://insideclimatenews.org/todaysnews/20131216/iea-report-global-coal-use-predicted-keep-growing
HOWEVER, LINK TO THE NYT STORY AND U ACTUALLY GET THE FOLLOWING, WITH THE COAL STORY WAY DOWN AT PARA 7***:
16 Dec: NYT: Clifford Krauss/Stanley Reed: U.S. Oil Production Is Projected to Surge
The annual outlook by the department’s Energy Information Agency was cited by experts as confirmation that the United States was well on its way to achieving virtual energy independence.
The report predicted that the increase in United States production would contribute to a decline in the world oil benchmark price over the next few years from a 2012 average of $112 a barrel to $92 a barrel in 2017, which should translate into lower prices at the pump for consumers…
***But according to a separate report by the International Energy Agency, also released Monday, global consumption of coal, a major source of the greenhouse gases blamed for rising global temperatures and other pollutants, is likely to continue to grow at “a relentless pace” through 2018.
The report, released in Paris, underscored the dilemma facing the world with regard to coal. Because coal is relatively inexpensive and abundant, it remains the dominant fuel for the generation of electricity, especially in developing countries like China. Yet burning coal is also highly polluting, both in producing smog and greenhouse gases that have been linked by many scientists to climate change.
“Like it or not, coal is here to stay for a long time to come,” Maria van der Hoeven, the agency’s executive director, said in a conference call with reporters on Monday.
The agency said that the consumption of coal for electricity generation and heat accounted for more than three-fifths of the rise in global carbon dioxide emissions since 2000. Coal use increased by an average of 3.4 percent per year between 2007 and 2012, faster than the increase in either oil or natural gas. Consumption through 2018 is expected to increase by 2.3 percent a year, the I.E.A. said.
The agency, which represents 28 member countries, said that technology existed to make coal-fired power plants less polluting, but that a large proportion of the installations being built in emerging markets like India and Indonesia were inefficient…
In addition, progress has stalled on carbon capture and storage, a once-promising technology that strips out greenhouse gases from the emissions of power plants and other polluters and injects them into abandoned natural gas wells and other storage locations, the I.E.A. said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/business/international/global-coal-use-predicted-to-keep-growing.html?_r=0
feeling smug, bbc & nyt!
30
btw note nyt url still has “global coal use predicted to keep growing”.
re Andrew Simms, New Economics Foundation: naturally, one would expect to find him on ABC as well:
April: ABC World Today: IMF says green strategy key to recovery
Andrew Sims, policy director at the New Economics Foundation, wants to know what the IMF is really talking about in terms of being green.
ANDREW SIMS: Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear her unpack exactly what she means by that because when you heard this sort of general plea for greater global growth, you know, there’s all the stuff that is talked about elsewhere about how already with the size of the global economy we have been putting enormous pressure on our ecosystems. We have runaway carbon emissions still. She’s talked about inclusive and sustainable. Let’s see some detail…
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2013/s3740721.htm
New Economics Foundation – What we do
nef (the new economics foundation) is the UK’s leading think tank promoting social, economic and environmental justice. Our purpose is to bring about a Great Transition – to transform the economy so that it works for people and the planet.
The UK and most of the world’s economies are increasingly unsustainable, unfair and unstable. It is not even making us any happier – many of the richest countries in the world do not have the highest well-being.
From climate change to the financial crisis it is clear the current economic system is not fit for purpose. We need a Great Transition to a new economics that can deliver for people and the planet.
nef’s mission is to kick-start the move to a new economy through big ideas and fresh thinking…
nef is fully independent of any political party. We rely on donations and help from our thousands of supporters to effect social change.
http://www.neweconomics.org/pages/what-we-do
NEF: Fellows & Trustees
includes Fellows: Andrew Simms – no bio
http://www.neweconomics.org/pages/fellows-trustees1
sure to be some interesting connections here:
NEF: Who funds us
nef’s total income for 2011/12 was £3,286,061. It was derived from 3 sources:
1. Major Grants and Donations
Tubney Charitable Trust – £400,000
The Hadley Trust – £249,769
Network for Social Change – £155,172
AIM Foundation – £135,000
European Commission – £133,603
Freshfield Foundation – £109,280
Paul Hamlyn Foundation – £92,000
The Ford Foundation and the Villum Foundation, through a partnership with Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future – £79,540
NESTA and the Cabinet Office – £77,625
The Tudor Trust – £77,400
People’s Health Trust – £67,500
OAK Foundation Ltd – £62,000
The City Bridge Trust – £40,000
Social Care Institute for Excellence – £35,160
Barrow Cadbury Trust – £34,000
New Economics Institute – £32,300
LankellyChase Foundation – £30,000
The Royal Academy of Engineering – £25,393
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation – £24,500
R H Southern Trust – £23,000
Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister – £20,863
Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust – £20,000
Sheepdrove Trust – £17,000
Nic Marks – £15,000
Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation – £15,000
Sherwood Forest Fund – £5,000
We would also like to thank the Roddick Foundation for a generous and completely unrestricted grant…
2. Individual Supporters
Our individual supporters gave a total of £121,860 this year. No individual gave more than £5,000.
http://www.neweconomics.org/pages/who-funds-us
Guardian Bio: Andrew Simms
Andrew Simms is chief analyst at Global Witness, a fellow of the New Economics Foundation, and the author of Ecological Debt, Tescopoly and Eminent Corporations
http://www.theguardian.com/profile/andrewsimms
00
Sorry to go off topic (again Tony, you naughty boy) but this is bubbling away in the last hour.
Rudd deflects talk he has UN ambitions
Say, didn’t I mention something like that way back in February at this comment here at Joanne’s site.
Lucky guess eh!
Tony.
40
Andrew Simms latest garbled mess at The Guardian:
3 Dec: Guardian: Andrew Simms: Rewrite the aims of the economic revolution – word for wordRising environmental and economic instabilities make it imperative to redefine old plans on our own terms
COMMENT BY BARPROPPER: i look forward to Andrew’s pieces at the start of every month but this one and last month’s effort are way above my head. I really don’t understand what you are on about, Andrew.
I’m not quite sure but it seems to me that you’ve gone off topic?
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/dec/03/economic-revolution-environmental-plans
Wikipedia: Andrew Simms
He was a Principal Speaker of the Green Party(4)…
A political economist and environmentalist, Simms studied at the London School of Economics…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Simms
link to Green Party reference is to NEF’s biography page for Simms, except when u link to it, u get:
Oops. The page you are looking for cannot be found
http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/z_sys_contactdetail.aspx?page=877&folder=142&cid=8
why should this guy even be asked by BBC to comment on the IEA coal will remain king story? obviously a CAGW go-to-guy.
20
Please note that apart from employing David Kennedy, the World Bank also employs Robert T Watson who was IPCC head prior to the current head, Rajendra Pachauri.
40
REALITY TO THE MAX. THIS SHOULD BE REPORTED IN FULL ON ALL MSM. YES, IT GOES OFF INTO SOME CAGW WISHFUL-THINKING ON CCS, BUT THIS IS ALMOST THE ENTIRETY OF HER SPEECH:
Launch of the Medium‐Term Coal Market Report 2013
Maria van der Hoeven
Paris, 16 December 2013
There is no denying the controversial reality of coal, and its dominance of power generation worldwide. No fuel draws the same ire, particularly for its polluting qualities both locally and in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
***And yet no fuel is as responsible for powering the economic
growth that has pulled billions out of poverty in the past decades.
As we look to the long term, we must ask what role coal has to play in the energy mix that we want to achieve – because there will be a role…
But even in this “bad” year in the US and China, coal continued to maintain its substantial share in the energy mix globally, and increased its worldwide share among fossil fuels. Indeed, its growth rate comfortably exceeded that of oil and natural gas in 2012.
Moreover, the factors leading to the slowdown in China and the US are probably temporary – at least in such severity. As gas prices recover in the United States, coal is growing again there. And 2013 saw the renewed acceleration of energy demand and investment in China. As a result, our projections show coal demand to pick up in both countries.
Over the next six years, additional coal production capacity of a half‐million tonnes per annum will be added worldwide … each day. That will be necessary to meet a worldwide demand increase of 2.3% per year on average until 2018.
And while it is true that demand growth is concentrated in non‐OECD countries, coal does not decline in the OECD…
The second point relates to the contribution of coal to energy security, and specifically, to electricity security.
Coal is abundant and geopolitically secure, and coal‐fired plants are easily integrated into existing power systems.
Modern plants are also flexible, providing affordable, base‐load power while backing up variable renewable generation.
If coal‐fired plants are well‐designed and well‐operated, emissions of local pollutants can be minimised.
The ability to switch relatively quickly between coal and gas also reinforces gas security.
Extraordinary gas requirements in Korea and Japan are diverted from European LNG imports thanks to European coal capacity…
While gas has substantially reduced coal generation in the US, coal demand still represents double the generation potential of shale‐gas production. In Japan, Korea and Taiwan, switching from
Australian and Indonesian coal to LNG from the same countries would have increased the import bill by $40 billion in 2012.
And in China, the scale of coal in the economy is simply incomparable to fuels elsewhere. Replacing coal with gas in Chinese power generation would require twice the volume of all global LNG trade.
Coal therefore continues to play an important role in economic growth and energy security worldwide…
Progress on CCS is effectively stalled, and a meaningful carbon price is missing.
http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/speeches/131206MCMR2013LaunchRemarks.pdf
compare to the cherry-picking of Sky News:
16 Dec: Sky: IEA forecasts coal demand to slow
http://www.skynews.com.au/businessnews/article.aspx?id=934710
10
Sorta says it all really.
And here in Oz, our plants are aging fast with nothing to replace them, and the bulk of the coal going to export.
Tony.
50
HOPEFULLY MY FINAL COMMENT ON COAL TODAY!
naturally, none so deceptive as Reuters Point Carbon. they don’t have the IEA report at all. they substitute the new EIA ‘forecast’, just as NYT overrode the IEA story with the EIA one. surely that isn’t meant to confuse?
nicely timed, though. EIA is part of the US Dept of Energy:
Natural gas to dethrone coal as top electricity source by 2040 -EIA
WASHINGTON, Dec 16 (Reuters) – Natural gas will overtake coal to become the largest source of U.S. electric generation by 2040, when it is expected to account for 35 percent of domestic electricity, according to a new forecast by the Energy Information Administration…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.3408444?&ref=searchlist
hmmm! EIA’s ‘forecast’ is an ‘EARLY VERSION”, SO EVEN MORE WELL-TIMED THAN I SUSPECTED:
16 Dec: Forbes: Christopher Helman: U.S. Energy Outlook: More Oil, More Gas, Less Carbon. Yay America!
The federal government’s Energy Information Administration is out today with an early version of its Annual Energy Outlook for 2014…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2013/12/16/govt-energy-outlook-more-oil-more-gas-less-carbon-yay-america/
00
final final word on iea/coal:
Bloomberg is cute as ever: “demand growth will slow”:
16 Dec: Bloomberg: Marek Strzelecki: Coal Demand Growth to Slow in Next Five Years on China, IEA Says
Global coal demand growth will slow through 2018 as China, the world’s biggest consumer, seeks to cut its dependency on the power plant fuel, according to the International Energy Agency…
China’s coal use will rise 2.6 percent a year to 3.28 billion tons in 2018 while India will see annual growth of 4.9 percent to 657 million tons, according to the report…
Coal in its current form is “unsustainable,” even assuming that more efficient heat and power plants will be built, as it will contribute to pushing global temperatures above the agreed target of a long-term increase of by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the IEA, said in a foreword to report.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-16/coal-demand-growth-to-slow-in-next-five-years-on-china-iea-says.html
did multiple variable searches on BBC/coal/iea/eia/Maria van der Hoeven/Andrew Simms and got NOTHING. so they didn’t just disappear the Business Daily report, they aren’t reporting on the subject at all.
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Meanwhile we see plenty of reports saying the exact opposite, such as China Will Increase Coal Consumption Despite Efforts To Reduce Carbon Emissions, A New Report Finds
Even if it were true that their rate of increase in demand is slowing down, in absolute terms it will be still climbing significantly, sucking more and more coal from anywhere they can get it. There’s plenty around; anything from several decades to centuries of supply left depending on who you believe. Sometimes I wonder if the Greens movement and those aligned with them such as the ALP actually hate Australia more than the terrorists of the world, in which case they ought to be treated as enemies.
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[…] Climate Fat Cats exposed with naked conflicts of interest. Where was The BBC? Another cycle of the Climate Change Scare Machine is laid bare. David Rose explains how those lobbying and advising the government on green policies are benefiting from green projects. It’s all in the Daily Mail. The Green Industrial Complex has simply bought everyone off, and, cleverly, done it with your money. […]
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i lied; i’m back on coal.
yes, TonyfromOz….EACH DAY.
IEA’s Maria van der Hoeven on BBC last nite was too REALITY-BASED for BBC, believe me. she emphasised that very point.
btw the Sky News IEA/coal story is identical to the one attributed to AFP in Business Spectator. Sky does not attribute the piece & Sky also left out these highly relevant lines, which are published in BS:
16 Dec: BusinessSpectator: AFP: Coal demand to slow: IEA
For the rest of Asia, coal demand is forecast to stay buoyant through 2018.
“India and countries in Southeast Asia are increasing consumption, and India will rival China as the top importer in the next five years,” the IEA said.
Indian consumption has grown an average 5.7 per cent a year since 1995, from less than 300 Mt to an estimated 753 Mt in 2012, the second-largest volume increase after China for this period, said the agency…
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/12/16/energy-markets/coal-demand-slow-iea
IEA forecasts coal demand to slow
http://www.skynews.com.au/businessnews/article.aspx?id=934710
Ninemsn & MSN in NZ have the same article attributed to AAP. are AFP/AAP one and the same now? both MSN sites carry the full text.
http://finance.ninemsn.com.au/newsbusiness/aap/8772147/iea-forecasts-coal-demand-will-slow-down
http://money.msn.co.nz/businessnews/other/8772145/iea-forecasts-coal-demand-will-slow-down
AND NOW THE KIND OF STORY AAP LOVES TO REPORT:
17 Dec: SMH: AAP: Protestors vow to save ‘beautiful forest’ from Whitehaven coal mine
Opponents of a northwest NSW coal mine have vowed to continue protesting, after human barricades stopped tree-clearing bulldozers entering the site.
Among them was first-time protester Raymond McLaren, who was fined $420 after spending most of Monday chained to an old car blocking a road at Whitehaven Coal’s Maules Creek project, near Boggabri.
Police eventually cut the 75-year-old free at about 8pm (AEDT).
Mr McLaren opposes the mine despite the fact his Tamworth engineering firm builds equipment for the mining sector.
Mr McLaren described his brush with the law as “a bit terrifying” but worthwhile if it raised awareness of the precious forest.
“It was a very meaningful thing we did there,” he said.
“This environment is just so valuable.”
Julie Macken of Greenpeace, one of the groups behind the protest, says there were six arrests at the blockade, with three of the protesters charged, and two fined.
Police confirmed the three have been charged with hindering with mining equipment were a man, 50, and two woman aged 21 and 22.
All three were granted conditional bail to appear in Narrabri Local Court on January 28.
Greenpeace will next target the ANZ AGM in Brisbane on Wednesday, over the bank’s involvement in the Maules Creek project.
In the most high-profile protest against Whitehaven to date, activist Jonathan Moylan will stand trial next year accused of issuing a hoax media release that wiped hundreds of millions off the company’s value.
A Whitehaven spokesman on Monday said the Maules Creek project had passed a comprehensive, independent assessment process and protesters should respect the final judgment of authorities.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/protestors-vow-to-save-beautiful-forest-from-whitehaven-coal-mine-20131217-2zi1d.html
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cricket-time, but just want to say for each David Rose article published by the Mail questioning the science & the politics of CAGW, the Mail publishes at least ten of this ilk:
16 Dec: UK Daily Mail: Victoria Woollaston: Climate change is causing Earth’s poles to DRIFT, claim scientists
Since 1899, the North Pole has been drifting southwards by 10cm a year
In 2005 the pole suddenly began moving east towards Greenland
In that time, the pole’s position has shifted by approximately 1.2 metres
Researchers used Nasa satellites to discover 90% of this shift has been caused by climate change
This includes the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and mountain glaciers
Scientists hope that discovery will provide scientists with a new way to measure the extent of ice sheet melting
Using Nasa satellite data, University of Texas researchers found that climate change, and in particular melting ice sheets, was to blame…
Chen presented the findings at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2524582/Climate-change-causing-Earths-poles-DRIFT-claim-scientists.html
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[…] Climate Fat Cats exposed with naked conflicts of interest. Where was The BBC? […]
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