EU Car CO2 reduction fiasco.

According to the European Parliament website:

There are a staggering 220 million cars on Europe's roads and that number is growing all the time. The CO2 they emit is 12% of the yearly total for the whole European Union. This week MEPs debated proposals by the European Commission to increase fuel efficiency and substantially cut CO2 emissions within 4 years. In October Members called on Europe's car makers to meet even tougher CO2 emissions targets. In the mid-1990's voluntary targets on CO2 emissions from cars were set at 120g of CO2 per kilometre by 2012. Since then heavier and more powerful cars have made that target unrealistic. At present average levels are 160g of CO2 per kilometre. The Commission is proposing penalties of up to €95 per gram, per kilometre for manufacturers who don't meet the targets. The European Parliament approved a target of 125g CO2/km by 2015 and a long-term target of 95g CO2/km by 2020 last October.

This all sounds great, even if you are a climate change sceptic, cars with greater fuel efficiency are going to be needed with the predicted rise in fuel costs. However there is one glaring problem with the EU's proposal - and that is that it is in direct conflict with one of its own directives which requires all new motor vehicles (from 2011) to be fitted with daytime running lamps. Research undertaken for the Department for Transport indicated that the requirement for new types of motor vehicle to be equipped with dedicated daytime running lamps would result in an increase of about 5 per cent in fuel consumption. We have 5 million new vehicles on our roads each year, God alone knows how many new cars there are across the EU each year.

So that's every new car in the EU burning five per cent more fuel - just how exactly is that going to fight climate change?

Nick Clegg should Apollo-gise for this rubbish.

Nigg Clegg, the true master of talking out of your arse is off again, this time he says we can be self-sufficient in energy by 2050 without building new coal-fired or nuclear power stations. He has announced a massive five page (yes five full pages!) ‘Apollo Project for UK Energy Independence’. The main thrust of his brilliant plan is to "Source all energy requirements from within the EU by 2030 so that the country does not need to import energy from unstable regimes." Sounds good but if Clegg were to pay a visit to this planet for a short while he would realise that the idea of sourcing our energy requirements from within in the EU by 2030 is a work of science fiction:

From the EurActiv Site:

Oil and gas reserves are unevenly distributed around the globe, and the largest reserves are situated in politically or economically insecure regions (Middle-East, Russia). North Sea oil and gas fields have already been exploited beyond their peak, leaving Europe dependent on non-EU countries for future supply.

The Commission Green Paper on security of energy supply (November 2000) drew a sobering picture of the EU's energy situation. If no action is taken, it predicted, the EU's energy dependency will climb from 50% in 2000 to 70% in 2030. The particular situation for the main imported fossil fuels was described as follows:

Oil:

45% of EU oil imports originate from the Middle East;
by 2030, 90% of EU oil consumption will have to be covered by imports

Gas:

40% of EU gas imports originate from Russia (30% Algeria, 25% Norway);
By 2030, over 60% of EU gas imports are expected to come from Russia with overall external dependency expected to reach 80%.

Coal:

By 2030, 66% of EU needs is expected to be covered by imports.

To back up this massive five page document, Clegg points us to his Liberal Democrat policy paper 82 (2007) in which he claims that the Lib Dems will Increase the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation to require at least 10 per cent of all fuel sold on UK forecourts to come from renewable sources by 2015. Isn't this just another example of the Lib Dems living in cloud cuckoo land when we know the damage Biofuels are causing?

Climate change storm troopers claim police smear.

Why is that some people believe that it is their right to break the law to show protest?

The bean eating soap dodgers (a little unfair as the police confiscated 10 kg of handmade biodegradable soap) are not happy at the Camp For Climate Action 2008. The police have found a stash of equipment near to the camp and other items in the camp itself. Gary Beautridge, the assistant chief constable of Kent police, said that while most of the people at the camp were peaceful, it was "clear" a minority intended to use the equipment for "criminal purposes". The happy campers say that they are fighting battle against Climate Change. They intend to carry out a "mass action" to shut down Kingsnorth coal fired power station - Saturday, 9th August, 2008.

One camper Isabelle Michel said "This in no way justifies the way the police are treating the camp," she said. "It is disgraceful to suggest that the campers have criminal intent. "This is obviously an attempt by the police to distract us from raising issues about climate change." No Isabelle, they are trying to prevent some of the more radical members of your camp breaking the law and putting themselves and EON employees at risk.

Here is a list of the equipment found:

An adapted knife,
A knife block containing knives,
A large chain with a padlock,
Bolt croppers,
Climbing ropes
Padded suits.

This is not the equipment you would gather to hold a lawful protest.

OK, let's see what the ClimateCamp website has to say:

Join with thousands in the battle against Climate Change, Mass action to shut down Kingsnorth coal fired power station - Saturday, 9th August, 2008. This summer, the Camp for Climate Action will be located near Kingsnorth, a coal-fired power station that pumps 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. We chose Kingsnorth, because while the current power station is scheduled to be knocked down, owners E.ON plan to build a brand new coal-fired plant in same place! Could there be a clearer case of business-as-usual, despite all the talk of climate change being the most important threat facing humanity? On Saturday August 9th, the climate camp will go beyond talk and culminate in a spectacular mass action to shut down Kingsnorth. Permanently!

What really gets me about this whole kerfuffle is the reasoning behind targeting EON and the Kingsnorth coal fired power station. I just don't get it. EON are demolishing a Power station that produces 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, and they are replacing it with one that will reduce that figure by 40%. While this is not a complete solution, surely to God it is a massive step in the right direction?

Why Climate Change Sceptics are doomed to failure.

You could think that the title of this post sounds incredibly defeatist coming from a climate change sceptic. And you'd be right. In a way climate sceptics have to accept defeat. No matter what the weather does, it can be attributed to that elusive Global Warming (It has been missing for 11 years, but we are assured that it is still out there). If we have a wet summer it's all down to Global Warming. If we have a dry summer it's all down to......yes you guessed it..... Global Bloody Warming. No matter how many Global Warming theories are debunked the monster just keeps on growing. No matter what public opinion may be, the monster's momentum is relentless.

Governments are hot for Global Warming as it opens all sorts of new tax possibilities (especially in the UK). There's the increase in road tax on gas guzzlers, road tolls, bin taxes, fines on businesses, air travel tax and landfill tax. Landfill tax is a real money spinner for the government. In 1996 landfill tax was set at £7 per tonne. It is now £32 per tonne and will increase by £8 per tonne each year from April 2009 until at least 2010/11). There's a lot of money to be made out of Global Warming by greedy governments with an eye on our money (£1bn/year from landfill alone - and rising fast).

However, the main reason for an imminent defeat (at least on the argument of whether it is actually happening) for me and other climate change sceptics is this: If the global temperature does eventually go up (no sign yet) then the Global Warming alarmists will be proved right. But more crucially (and here's the irony of it all), if the global temperature fails to climb over say, the next twenty years, then the alarmists will throw their arms up in the air and claim in triumphant voices: "We did it! - we stopped Global Warming!"

That said, I still believe we should and must oppose the alarmists. The more we fight, the harder it will become for governments to pass Green Tax legislation.

The Great Wind Farm Swindle - Seven Thousand White Elephants.

This is a post I wrote a while ago, and now seems like a good time to put it back up:

The government has blown (excuse the pun) half a billion pounds subsidising the wind turbine industry. "So what, it's a worthy cause" I hear you say. Well, it turns out that it is anything but worthy and more worryingly, it is a total waste of our tax money. It is alleged that energy companies are receiving subsidies for wind farms that will never make any money, because they have exaggerated the potential of sites with not enough wind.

The government are miles away (or kilometres as our EU friends prefer) from achieving the target of providing 20% of our energy from renewable sources by 2020. Despite blowing (there I go again - sorry) half a billion pounds of our money, the energy companies have failed to provide even 0.5% of our requirements. For a wind farm to be viable it must have a load factor of 30 per cent. But Jim Oswald, an engineering consultant, found that the average across the country was 28 per cent.

Michael Jefferson, policies chairman of the World Renewable Energy Network believes that the subsidies are encouraging energy companies to exaggerate the amount of potential wind energy a farm can supply. Mr Jefferson said: "We should be putting our money where the wind is and that is quite often not where the development pressure is."

In a previous post about nuclear power’s life-cycle emissions it turned out that the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions for nuclear plants are lower than that of wind farms. Now it turns out that on average these farms are not even financially viable.

For God's sake (and ours) let's stop pandering to the EU green brigade, and get some nuclear power plants built.

Climate Change Part 26 - Sea levels (again).

Iain Dale is not too happy about the BBC's article which tells us that sea levels could rise by up to one-and-a-half meters by the end of the century. I can't blame him. I was starting to think that the tide was starting to turn (excuse the pun) on all this Global Warming nonsense. Surface temperatures have not risen since 1998, sea temperatures have actually decreased and we are being told that this year will be particularly cold. I think the Man made global warming gig could be up very soon and we will see a desperate increase in outlandish claims of doom from those who make a living from it. As Iain points out, the BBC article is reporting on data that has not been published in any scientific journal. There's more to that than meets the eye - the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2007, was published without any real peer review.

On the sea level front, here is the opinion of a real scientist, using real science not fudged climate models:

Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner is the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. Dr. Mörner has been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. He was interviewed by Gregory Murphy on June 6 for EIR.

This is what Dr Mörner had to say about the IPPC method for measuring sea levels:

Another way of looking at what is going on is the tide gauge. Tide gauging is very complicated, because it gives different answers for wherever you are in the world. But we have to rely on geology when we interpret it. So, for example, those people in the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], choose Hong Kong, which has six tide gauges, and they choose the record of one, which gives 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level. Every geologist knows that that is a subsiding area. It's the compaction of sediment; it is the only record which you shouldn't use. And if that figure is correct, then Holland would not be subsiding, it would be uplifting.

And that is just ridiculous. Not even ignorance could be responsible for a thing like that. So tide gauges, you have to treat very, very carefully. Now, back to satellite altimetry, which shows the water, not just the coasts, but in the whole of the ocean. And you measure it by satellite. From 1992 to 2002, [the graph of the sea level] was a straight line, variability along a straight line, but absolutely no trend whatsoever. We could see those spikes: a very rapid rise, but then in half a year, they fall back again. But absolutely no trend, and to have a sea-level rise, you need a trend.

Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in their [IPCC's] publications, in their website, was a straight line—suddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn't look so nice. It looked as though they had recorded something; but they hadn't recorded anything. It was the original one which they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a “correction factor,” which they took from the tide gauge. So it was not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside. I accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow —I said you have introduced factors from outside; it's not a measurement. It looks like it is measured from the satellite, but you don't say what really happened. And they answered, that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten any trend!

That is terrible! As a matter of fact, it is a falsification of the data set. Why? Because they know the answer. And there you come to the point: They “know” the answer; the rest of us, we are searching for the answer. Because we are field geologists; they are computer scientists. So all this talk that sea level is rising, this stems from the computer modelling, not from observations. The observations don't find it!

Climate Change part (Ocean Temperatures).

Apparently (so the climate experts say) 80 to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters because they hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. Obviously this would mean that if you had recorded Ocean temperature over the last five years of devastating Global Warming you would expect to see a rise in Ocean temperature, right? Well it turns out that you could be wrong. Ocean temperatures have in fact been recorded in a world wide survey involving 3,000 scientific robots, and guess what? the oceans have cooled.

This shocking (not) news coincides with reports (using the latest US satellite figures) that surface temperatures have not increased since 1998, in fact they have also cooled. 2007 saw global temperatures at the same level as those last seen in 1983. It has now been established that the hottest decade in the last century was in fact the 1930's, with 1934 holding the record for the hottest year.

When I come across these figures, it does make me wonder if Gordon Brown (Or should I say the EU's middle man) is using Global Warming to steal my money. Nah, he wouldn't do that - would he?

Climate Change Part 24 (Green Tax Swindle).

The chart shown on the top left of this post depicts the results of a "Green Tax" poll carried out by YouGov. The poll was held shortly after Alistair darling's budget speech. It seems that like me, the majority of the British public believe that Gordon Brown's so called Green Taxes are not going to be spent on environmental issues. In fact only ten per cent trusted the government to spend all the money raised on Green projects.

David Cameron would do well to take notice of this Poll. Whilst the media may be in love with the man -made climate change theory, the public are far more sceptical - especially when it comes to taxation. How the hell can we trust politicians about climate change, when it's obvious that they are using it as an excuse to fill the treasury coffers?

Climate Change Part 23 (Carbon Credits - Kerr Ching!).

Apparently a Mr (I'm in the money) Sandor is doing quite well from his company - Climate Exchange PLC. The company facilitates the buying and selling of "Carbon Permits" which the Wall Street Journal describes as: "buying and selling the right to pollute." This is another great idea from the EU, who require polluters to cut emissions or buy carbon credits and pollute to their hearts' content. It turns out that a great deal of this buying and selling happens on an exchange set up by Mr (show me the money) Sandor.

From the Wall Street Journal: LONDON -- The planet is getting warmer. Richard Sandor, a 66-year-old economist, is getting wealthier. Last year, the total value of carbon permits changing hands -- whether on public exchanges or in private, off-market transactions, where most still occur -- nearly doubled to €40 billion, or about $60 billion, according to Oslo-based Point Carbon, a market research firm. Yesterday, Climate Exchange's stock jumped 16% after the firm reported a tripling in 2007 revenue to £13.6 million, or about $27 million. That gives the company, which handles about 90% of the trading on carbon exchanges, a market capitalization of roughly $1.31 billion. Mr. Sandor's 20% stake is worth more than $260 million on paper.

Nice work if you can get it.

Climate change part 22: Turning off street lights.

A nearby council (Romsey) has come up with the fantastic idea of turning off the street lights after midnight to save the planet from global warming. The cretin of a councillor who came up with stupidity claims that if the lights are not being used - then why have them on? Let's put it this way: It took years and a whole lot of money to get those lights fitted. They were fitted for road and personal safety.

When will this idiot of a councillor realise that he is talking out of his backside? How many car accidents, rapes and assaults will it take to end this stupid trial? Were the residents asked about this? - I doubt it. Just like our government, local councils think they can do anything they like and sod the people who are paying their wages.

If I was a resident of Romsey I would be demanding the lights to be left on. After all, they are paying for them.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Climate Change Part 21 (Polar Bears).

I've heard before that the Iconic picture of polar bears stranded on floating ice was used totally out of context by the global warming Nazis. Al Gore seems to be the self proclaimed fuhrer of the Fifth Reich. For a man putting himself forward as savior of the planet, he seems to be doing his best to destroy it (if you believe that CO2 is causing Global Warming). It should also be noted that Big Al is making a tidy profit (excuse the pun) out of forecasting the planets doom.

The EU Referendum Blog have a post on this subject that is required reading for all those who wonder if the propaganda peddled by Global Warming alarmists can be believed. I'm sick and tired of being bombarded by adverts an certain elements of the media telling us that man made global warming is a fact - Just like when we were all assured in the seventies that we were heading for an Ice Age. Well they were wrong then and there's a damn good chance that they are wrong now.

Climate Change Part 20 (Record Snow in Toronto).

The following is an excellent post from Stephen McIntyre of Climate Audit:

The National Post reports:

A winter storm dumped more than 30 centimetres of snow on the Toronto area yesterday, with some parts of southern Ontario receiving as many as 50 centimetres of snow. Toronto usually receives approximately 30 cm of snow during the entire month of December. Yesterday’s snowfall likely trumped the previous record of 28 cm set on Dec. 11, 1944.

I can confirm that this storm was real.

In a statement from Bali, Al Gore warned:

If Canada did not immediately change its ways, it would be hit with more winter storms.

Gore added that climate models showed that global warming would lead to more Canadian snowfall or less snowfall or about the same amount of snowfall or all three and that the need for change was urgent.

Stephen McIntyre of Climate Audit was unable to comment because he was shoveling his driveway. From poolside in Bali, the Canadian delegation said that McIntyre could shovel out their driveways when he was finished.

You can read another excellent post, this time by Melanie Phillips on how cold it seems to be in the so-called period of Global Warming.

Climate Change Part 18 (What is Normal?).

This video has already been posted by the Devil's Kitchen and a few others, but I felt that it should be seen by as many people as possible. If you believe in man made climate change, I would ask you to please try and view this with an open mind, and then come to your own conclusions.

This video outlines man-made global warming theory due to greenhouse gasses. It then proceeds to demonstrate, mostly using historical evidence and actual data from the UN climate panel, why man's impact on world temperatures is unlikely to reach catastrophic levels. It concludes by showing the tremendous costs involved in reversing carbon dioxide production, and demonstrates why these costs may well outweigh impacts of man-made warming.