Climate Change Part 5 - Guest Post

Climate Change V

“WIND TURBINES KILL PENSIONERS” by Edward Spalton

There is a well established connection between the price of domestic power and fuel and the number of elderly people on low incomes who die each winter because they cannot afford to keep themselves warm. Various charities will provide the figures if you ask them.

I first heard this being furiously debated in Parliament when the Conservatives introduced VAT on domestic fuel, electricity and gas. It was a set piece affair, full of sound and fury. Denis Skinner, the Beast of Bolsover, was well to the fore, denouncing the wicked, evil Tories who were going to freeze all the pensioners to death. A violin accompaniment would not have been inappropriate. There was considerable passion on both sides of the House. I am sure the headlines in local papers were gratifying to the protagonists in their constituencies.

It was a ridiculous charade. The leaderships of both main parties were agreed on British membership of the EU and the introduction of VAT on domestic fuel was simply part of that arrangement. So, in my view, the MP s parading their class war credentials were first class hypocrites, putting on a show for the folks back home to prove that they “cared”. The leadership of the Labour party was even worse. They pledged that they would repeal the tax if they got into government. They, at least, must have known that once a “competence” is passed to the EU, it can never be reclaimed. So they knew they were lying and we still have VAT on domestic fuel to this day.

I subsequently found that many MP s simply do not know how many of Parliament's powers they have outsourced to the EU. The ignorance is long continued and quite wilful. Their response is often like that of an old time comedian “I don't wish to know that. Kindly leave the stage”.

So many are not really true hypocrites, just wilful ignoramuses.

A Tory MP, Mark Harper, introduced a Ten Minute Rule Bill which would have put this right and made the government declare when a Bill or clause in a Bill was an EU requirement. It would have required a statement on the face of the Bill “Pursuant to EU Directive xyz” but the House voted to keep itself in blissful ignorance of the times when Queen, Lords, Commons and Courts are mere marionettes, dancing to Brussels' tune. People who tried to congratulate Mr. Harper on his attempt afterwards found he had gone to ground. Mr. Cameron does not like his party to “bang on about Europe” and he has the personal power to deselect any Conservative MP or candidate whenever he wishes.

The power produced by wind turbines is very expensive. Nobody would buy it without legal compulsion. Power companies have a legal obligation to buy a given portion of their electricity from “renewables” . This is an EU directive, enforced by a seemingly British statute, made in the Westminster poodle parlour. It is difficult to find out exactly how much this is costing. It will certainly increase as wind turbines increase to meet EU requirements.

People put up wind turbines because their profitability is guaranteed. Their expensive, unreliable power is fed into the grid and the extra cost appears, concealed in your electricity bill. Power companies which fail to meet their “renewables obligation” are fined heavily and, of course, that cost too will be passed on to you .

In an age when politicians bleat about “transparency” , this is one piece of information they keep very quiet about. I suggested that, like VAT, the extra cost of “renewables” should be itemised on everybody's electricity bill. Environmentalists could feel proud about their contribution towards reducing their “carbon footprints” and others could form their own judgements on the matter. It was in connection with this proposed campaign that I suggested the slogan “Wind Turbines kill Pensioners”. Turbines also chop up a great number of birds but the RSPB and other wildlife groups have been remarkably reticent about that. They are in the “green” camp and greenery trumps all.

The great defect of wind turbines is that they depend on wind which is never constant and sometimes entirely absent. This often occurs during cold weather when there can be an area of high pressure and relatively still air covering the whole of the British Isles. So they have to be backed up by conventional or nuclear power stations already fired up, which offsets much of the supposed saving of carbon “emissions”. The grandfather of the environmental movement, James Lovelock, propounder of the Gaia hypothesis, became a reluctant convert to nuclear power, saying that wind turbines were “mere gestures”. He is right.

Consult www.eureferendum.blogspot.com

This well-researched blog has fresh articles daily. With regard to wind farms, its reports show that the local administrations in London and Edinburgh continue to follow or even outrun the Brussels directives, which will put us in the dark and in the cold. Even gas central heating depends on electricity to run its pumps and timers. To get an overview of the potential catastrophe of large-scale dependence on windpower, please look at the following two posts. Just over a year apart on 1^st January 2009 and 4 January 2010 they show just how useless this method is for reliable, base-load generation. The articles report actual weather conditions at the coldest times of the years – not theoretical situations. Go down the list of topics on the left hand side and click on “wind farms”. This will save scrolling back through reams of reports. The “blog roll” also contains links to other high quality blogs, such as this.

ARE WE FEELING WARMER YET?

High Jinks with “Adjustments” Down Under.

The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition www.climatescience.org.nz made a comparison between the official temperature record provide by NIWA (National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research- more or less the Met. Office) and the actual record, as noted down at the time since the 1850s. The official graph showed a rising trend which has been used to justify various official means to “combat climate change”. As New Zealand's livestock industry is responsible for considerable methane emissions from sheep and cattle, the government proposed a levy per head to finance research. New Zealand's farmers responded with their own campaign

Farmers

Against

Ridiculous

Taxes

The real temperature record showed a different story with no clear trend of rising temperature – something less than 0.06 degrees C per century since 1850. The rising trend had been manufactured by the simple expedient of adjusting earlier temperatures down and later ones up. About half of the “adjustments” actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.

NIWA did offer an explanation with regard to one station which had been moved from near sea level to a higher altitude but has so far been unable to produce the actual calculations by which the adjustments were made. Like the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, it appears that “global warming ate their homework”. Some “warmist” sites allege that NIWA has provided explanations but this appears not to be the case. The full paper appears under this title in the list of publications on the site.

There are many interesting papers on this website. That distinguished ecologist, Professor David Bellamy, is helping their campaign. He disappeared from our screens in Britain because he is a non-believer in man-made global warming and thus an unperson. The BBC, with much of its pension fund invested in “green” projects dependent on maintaining the global warming scare, denies a fair hearing to anyone they consider heretical.

PEER REVIEW

I added a comment to my last post on this subject. The idea is that independent scientists in the same field review a paper for the editor of a scientific journal to give it prima facie approval as a worthwhile piece of work for publication. It does not mean that they necessarily agree with or approve of everything in the paper. However, scientists are not demi-gods in white coats. In small fields of speciality, people are often called upon to review papers by people they know well. I have heard stories in fields as far apart as social work and agricultural science and there is a fair consensus that people, in general, will not be over-critical of their colleagues – except in known cases of serious personal dislike and disagreement. Book reviews are notorious in this respect. Authors will mostly say how marvellous somebody's new book is and hope that the compliment is repaid when it is next their turn.

In fierce scientific controversies things are a little different. The “Climategate” emails, leaked from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, disclose considerable manoeuvring to ensure favourable peer reviews and to freeze out reviewers and publications who were not within the charmed circle of true believers in global warming. Several books have been written on this subject.

For anyone who wants to look into this on the internet , I recommend “Climategate Analysis” by John P Costella, B.E.(Elec), B.Sc.(Hons,) Ph.D (Physics), Grad.Dip Ed

This is a series of annotated extracts from the emails (182 pages) with links back to the full emails so that you can check whether the extracts are being dealt with fairly in context. You can find it at

http://assassinationscience.com/climategate

PERHAPS IT IS A RELIGION

“.....the plain fact is that we surely need a prophet, not yet another committee. We need one passionate, persuasive scientist who can connect and convince – not because he preaches apocalypse in gory detail, but in simple, overwhelming terms. We need to be taught to believe by a true believer in a world where belief is that fatal, missing ingredient”.

Peter Preston in The Guardian, bemoaning the lack of public commitment to “climate change”.

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