Since this Government came to power, investment in renewable energy hasn’t gone up, it hasn’t even stagnated – it has halved.

I think he meant “subsidy to renewable energy” but I’d need to see the statistics to be convinced that’s true.

We all have a responsibility to act now rather than expect our children to suffer the consequences.

I think we should all agree that any proposed policy that involves an invocation to “think of the children” should lose the argument automatically.

We could call it “Saviles Law”.

Well said, pagar. Two good points.

I would add only that being a ‘sceptic’ about everything – even those I agree with – is generally considered a virtue. Except for ‘global warming’ – sorry, ‘climate change’ (which, unlike global warming, is unverifiable).

Wel the righty twunts are crowing because their lies have the media eye but I think the tide is turning. Labour may look good compared with the Tories but that really isn’t saying much.

@ 3 Cherub,

I think the tide changed a while ago, when people starting thinking the global warming apocalypse thing had been a tad overdone.

“being sceptical” is indeed laudable.

Being a dogmatic conspiracy theorist who ignores the weight of evidence, assumes all leading experts in the field are corrupt, and takes all evidence against their position as proof the people releasing the evidence are corrupt, is not the same as “being sceptical”. In fact it’s the opposite.

This is why the term ‘denialist’ is far superior.

Exactly what John B said.

Also, pagar says: I think we should all agree that any proposed policy that involves an invocation to “think of the children” should lose the argument automatically.

You mean how right-wingers go on about how much debt we’re leaving to children?

@ John B / Sunny,

I don’t think people are buying that kind of rhetoric any more. There’s only so long you can try to keep a panic going, and I think the time has passed.

It would be difficult to deny that overall our species has had a massive impact on the world we share with others.
On balance not all of it positive.

“But no town, region, country, or continent can solve the challenge of climate change alone. We have to work together. And that is true of the UK too.

1. I’m not aware that India, China and America are sacrificing much in the way of industrial production to save the world for their children or mine.
Since we’ve had our industrial revolution it might now be thought churlish to deny another country theirs’.

“We are better off working together. We are better off building the green economy together. And we are better off rising to the challenge of climate change together.”

I keep re-reading that quote and it seems to me complete and utter political b#ll#cks speak, straight out of the top drawer of some policy wonk who’s most challenging task of the day would be to remember whether his/her boss wanted a single or double Latte.

2. Who do I work with?
3. How do ‘we’ build the green economy?
4. In what way are we better off, rising to the challenge together?

It’s certainly becoming a challenge to meet the ever increasing demands made of our ‘household purse’.

The energy companies demand more of our money.
The ‘green lobby’ demands more of our money.
Politicians demand more of our money,
Insurance companies demand more of our money.
Supermarkets demand more of our money.
Transport demands more of our money.
Childcare demands more of our money.
and pretty soon so will healthcare.

There are more and bigger straws sucking with increased greed from the same pot.
At the core remains the need to keep warm and fed, so there must be enough left in the pot to satisfy those basic needs.
Over the last twenty or so years we have seen a substantial increase in the cost of food and fuel and a similar increase in the salaries and remuneration of CEOs of the associated companies.
Green subsidies and allied taxation are never far from the headlines and we see far too many of our legislators with financial interests in the energy companies – whether green or fossil.
Politicians neither worry about keeping warm or exceedingly well fed, because the taxpayer provides.
Equally, the rich don’t bother themselves too much since food and fuel form a very small percentage of their income.
Our M.P.s only see as far as the next election and have no strategy more carefully planned than the purpose of getting re-elected.
Election = Power = influence = wealth.
So Mr Miliband and Mr Cameron will say and promise anything to achieve that end.
Like our political elite I too am having difficulty balancing my long and short term needs.
I would like to comfortably see my granchildren prosper in a healthy and balanced environment and would hope that their grandchildren would also do so but for that I need to be able to adequately feed myself and keep warm.
It is going to be difficult to concentrate on the long term goal if the short term one provides an increasing problem.
Every year there is less in the pot and naturally enough the ‘johnny come lately’ green lobby want as big a share as it’s possible to suck up.
Certainly, ‘Green’ is good but let’s not fool ourselves that this is about anything other than profit.
I can see the bottom of the pot.

8. Barrie J

‘I would like to comfortably see my granchildren prosper in a healthy and balanced environment and would hope that their grandchildren would also do so but for that I need to be able to adequately feed myself and keep warm.
It is going to be difficult to concentrate on the long term goal if the short term one provides an increasing problem’

Yes, well that a sentiment that I can go along with. The problem is that you wont unless action is taken on the green energy. Tell me would you rather pay a subsidy on energy or get cheap coal and gas and get youre kids and grandkids pay the cost of food shortages war and global devastation.

In terms of subsidies maybe you should consider the huge subsidy of nuclear power that we may well be saddled with.

‘Every year there is less in the pot and naturally enough the ‘johnny come lately’ green lobby want as big a share as it’s possible to suck up.
Certainly, ‘Green’ is good but let’s not fool ourselves that this is about anything other than profit’

Why is Green good if its only about profit? I thought green was good because there are limited externalities on the wider environment. Naturally there is a price to pay for that but there is always a price to pay. For some killing the planet isn’t the price they want to go for.

The Buddhist tale of the four kinds of horses:

The first runs at the shadow of the whip.
The second? only when the whip cuts the skin.
The third? only when the whip cuts into muscle.
The fourth? only when the whip cuts through the bone.

And we elect #4? Why?

The only joy I foresee is, when 1/3 the Earth’s land mass is covered with a dead, acidified ocean, the denialists just may, by then, STFU.

1 Pagar

‘I think he meant “subsidy to renewable energy” but I’d need to see the statistics to be convinced that’s true.’

Is that the same as a ‘subsidy to nuclear’?

‘I think we should all agree that any proposed policy that involves an invocation to “think of the children” should lose the argument automatically’

I think Gove would agree with that one.

By the way you may or may not know but that ‘den of seething communism’ otherwise known as Price Waterhouse Cooper has just released a report into the thing you dont believe in. A snippet is below.

Burning fossil fuels could raise Earth’s temperature by 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius) within 88 years, according to a new report by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. That’s triple the goal of the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, a nonbinding U.N. treaty in which 141 nations pledged that “the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius” (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

“It’s time to plan for a warmer world,” PwC partner Leo Johnson writes in the report’s introduction. “Even doubling our current rate of decarbonisation would still lead to emissions consistent with 6 degrees (Celsius) of warming by the end of the century. To give ourselves a more than 50% chance of avoiding 2 degrees (Celsius) will require a six-fold improvement in our rate of decarbonisation.”

That’s not impossible, but as Johnson points out, it’s unlikely. Humanity reduced its collective carbon intensity by 0.7 percent in 2011, yet Johnson says we now must decarbonize by 5.1 percent annually to meet the Copenhagen Accord’s target. “[N]ot once since World War 2 has the world achieved that rate of decarbonisation,” he writes, “but the task now confronting us is to achieve it for 39 consecutive years.”

The main reason why decarbonization isn’t happening quickly enough, the report adds, is widespread reliance on fossil fuels. Even though global carbon intensity is down, energy-related carbon emissions grew by 3 percent from 2010 to 2011. Too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, along with other greenhouse gases such as methane, contributes to global warming by trapping solar heat on the Earth.

Could be time to plan that sunny break eh. Maybe take TONE with you!

10. Jan

Do you get less emissions from burning a Buddhist than a Presbyterian I wonder?

5. John b

I would take any notice of TONE if I were you.

He makes out he’s an empiricist but really he’s just a very naughty boy!

Good News on the environment.
The government is to allow energy companies to charge the consumer another £7.6 billion to invest in renewables etc.
It is thought that this will cost the consumer about £170 extra a year (plus whatever extra profit the City demands of them).
I wonder how much of that will find its way back into Party coffers?
Does anybody think that the extra tax (subsidy) incurred will be stated separately on our bills?
If we are all so convinced of our government’s green and transparent credentials, write to your M.P. and ask him for a list of ‘green’ projects that have been funded by the tax on air travel.
Then we can all compare the replies.

Let’s throw thousands of people into fuel poverty because it’s the right thing to do. I’ll tell the old lady across the road that whilst Blighty is replete with fuel that her interests are best served by freezing to death on the back of manipulated data, dodgy baselines, vested interests, 2nd rate polytechnics and brown envelopes – that’ll perk her right up.

@ man on bus

“In terms of subsidies maybe you should consider the huge subsidy of nuclear power that we may well be saddled with. ”

It’s the hysteria of the green lobby which, if anything, has revitalised nuclear power. If we could be sensible about energy production we would continue to use gas and coal, whilst other technologies were developed, possibly including safer, cheaper nuclear power.

@DtP #15:

I’m sorry, the subtlety and brilliance of that argument – indeed its very substance – just passed me by. Could you repeat a little slower why oil companies with trillions of pounds at stake are right on AGW and the physics built up over nigh on 200 years is wrong?

@ Robin,

“Could you repeat a little slower why oil companies with trillions of pounds at stake are right on AGW”

The oil companies are no mugs, they’re balls-deep in the green ‘investment’ (subsidy) lobby. Check out e.g.:

http://www.bp.com/modularhome.do?categoryId=7040&contentId=7051376

“the physics built up over nigh on 200 years is wrong?”

If all the scientists were as certain as you make it, it would be one thing, but even if they were, physics should be, as science in general should be, value-free. Therefore a physicist cannot use physics to explain why DtP’s little old lady should freeze to death, so ‘green’ ‘investors’ can prosper.

16. Richard Carey

It’s the hysteria of the green lobby which, if anything, has revitalised nuclear power.

I’m not understanding why its hysteria .please explain.

If we could be sensible about energy production we would continue to use gas and coal, whilst other technologies were developed, possibly including safer, cheaper nuclear power.

I think you’ll find that is what is happening. We are using gas and coal and we are developing and exploiting wind technology including the possibility of nuclear.Sadly we are also building fossil fuels into the equation which will make it nigh impossible to meet the co2 emission targets.

18. Richard Carey

If all the scientists were as certain as you make it, it would be one thing, but even if they were, physics should be, as science in general should be, value-free. Therefore a physicist cannot use physics to explain why DtP’s little old lady should freeze to death, so ‘green’ ‘investors’ can prosper.

Never read so much bollocks in my life. The science is as sound as it can be. Physics doesn’t extend into the lives of old ladies unless they fall off of buildings or fired into space etc.

I think you might find that the issue you are attempting to address is the idea of redistribution so that everyone has enough to survive comfortably. Your lucky day! This is the site that discusses that!

4. Richard Carey

Yes I’m certain that all the folks on the eastern seaboard think global warming is a tad overdone.

@21 – so a bit of a storm gives certainty that global warming is man made does it? Well, good. I don’t particularly care, i’ve got a wood burning stove and don’t have to piss all my money to NPower. It’s the fact that the lobbying comes from the left – that the poorest, the unemployed who stay at home, the parents who need to have their heating on, the retired, the single folks are gonna pay for this – are gonna pay for inefficient and costly crap based on a corrupt polytechnic’s effluent. The very people you espouse to care about will watch their quality of life ruined whilst the energy companies, the taxpayer and the punter pay handsomely to force people into life threatening penury. Ofcourse you don’t care, it’s winning the argument that matters to people like you and to hell with the consequences. Well, take a bow – you’ve won – huzzar!

@ bus man,

“Sadly we are also building fossil fuels into the equation which will make it nigh impossible to meet the co2 emission targets.”

Not enough, thanks to our gutless, lemming politicians. As for the emission targets, I hope the government abandons them completely.

22. DtP

@21 – so a bit of a storm gives certainty that global warming is man made does it? Well, good. I don’t particularly care.

Pretty much sums you up then doesn’t it.

Actually, a Republican made the connection and probably was thinking of you when he penned the headline.

I think the connection you might be making with the left and environmentalism is actually a difference between the informed and the downright uninformed .

But that apart I applaud your left wing desire to protect the vulnerable and needy in the society and would suggest that this is an issue of redistribution rather than climate.

@24 – (on home ‘pute now) – i’m a guy who sits next to a guy who does weather, it’s his thing, he goes on blogs and forums and stuff, dynamic maps and projections – seriously, quite impressive. To confuse meterorology with climatology, geology or even basic arithemetic is a school boy error and 1 swallow does not a summer make. To assign any empirical relevance to a storm in the Atlantic is absolute bollox and you can see the graves in any port town.

The fuel poverty thing is blame-shifting nonsense. If you have a decently insulated home, maintaining reasonable temperatures at current energy prices is absolutely not a problem. If you own a home and are old, the government will even pay to insulate it. Councils and HAs are obliged to do the same.

The problem, as ever, is unscrupulous private landlords providing tenants with outmoded draught-ridden properties (obviously the landlord couldn’t care less, he doesn’t pay the gas bill). Blaming that regulatory failure on efforts to reduce co2 output is completely stupid, so it’s not surprising that it’s a favourite tactic of denialists.

Bored shit less of this crap and the people who push it

@26 – ‘If you have a decently insulated home, maintaining reasonable temperatures at current energy prices is absolutely not a problem’. Err…did you miss the memo, fuel inflation is 9% per year and tilting at windmills is to add another £170 per year. You happily promote ruining lives for absolutely no point at all when China is building coal fired power stations every week and will do for another 20 years. Global warming may exist but this route of alleviating it won’t work, will affect the poorest more, makes no contingency for greater flood defences, feeds corporate wealth and is corrupt.

You’re like the guys who shut down CAFOD, it’s only the principle that matters and the consequences are someone else’s problem – just sour grapes from the less enlightened. Well, bravo – congratulations, they can all go fuck themselves now and stop their incessant whinging, it’s so tiresome.

28. Dick the Prick

What you don’t seem to appreciate is that all forms of energy creation will be subsidised by the tax payer because many of the older forms of generation are coming to and have come to an end and need replacement. I assume you understand that nuclear will be heavily subsidised as it has in the past. At least with wind the price will fall over time whilst with nuclear the subsidies will have to continue because the tax payer will in the end be left to clear up the spent fuel. This is quite apart from the energy companies ripoffs and the failure of Ofgem.

I think its particularly sad that green targets havent been established with the that green jobs will not be created in GB to the extent they might have been.

Its simply not true that China is unperturbed by Global warming and hopefully if the US is on board the next climate summit may see linkage between all Nations in tackling climate change.

Finally I wouldn’t underestimate what the future can and will bring if action isn’t taken,and swiftly.

If you think this is all based on the findings of ‘one polytechnic’ (in the UK? shurely not)then you are sadly mistaken. The predictions being made are the result of extensive modelling and peer reviewed research.

@Dick #28:

China is building coal fired power stations every week…

…and is installing wind turbines like there’s no tomorrow. Its wind generation capacity is higher than any other individual country, and is expanding faster than any comparable country.

@ 7. Richard Carey

I don’t think people are buying that kind of rhetoric any more. There’s only so long you can try to keep a panic going, and I think the time has passed.

This reminds of the parable of the man falling from a 100-story building who, when asked how things are going as he passes a 50th-floor window, replies: “Fine, so far.”