From Benny Peiser's Global Warming Policy Foundation

UK Carbon Tax Threatens Blackouts

Calls To Axe UK Carbon Tax To Keep Lights On And Cut Energy Bills

The American Meteorological Society seems to be upset by a survey that shows that only 52% of their members believe that global warming is mostly man-made. I am sure that is jolly inconvenient for them, but it is exactly what the results of their survey show. --Paul Homewood, Not A Lot Of People Know That, 6 December 2013

Despite the fact that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) apparently provided a significant portion of the funding for the recently concluded International Forum on Conservation of Polar Bears (December 3-6, Moscow), it appears in the end they and their NGO cohorts were prevented from having an undue amount of influence at the meeting. For that we can thank the delegates of the five Arctic nations: three cheers for common sense! --Susan Crockford, Polar Bear Science, 8 December 2013

Britain’s unilateral carbon tax should be scrapped before it causes blackouts, pushes up household bills and makes the UK uncompetitive, ScottishPower argues. Keith Anderson, chief corporate officer, warns that the “carbon price floor” (CPF), which taxes companies for burning fossil fuels, will make Britain’s remaining coal plants “largely uneconomic by around the middle of the decade”. With Britain’s spare power margin already forecast to fall as low as 2pc by 2015, the carbon tax will force more closures and “threatens to make us even more vulnerable to the risk of blackouts”, he warns. --Emily Gosden, The Daily Telegraph, 9 December 2013

Most draining for [deputy Prime Minister] Nick Clegg has been keeping the Coalition on — as he sees it — the straight and narrow on green issues. George Osborne, eager to remove barriers to recovery and much influenced by Nigel Lawson’s sceptical writings, has grown increasingly impatient with the green agenda. Yet even this, Clegg presents as an example of how the Coalition works successfully. --Matthew D'Ancona, The Sunday Telegraph, 8 December 2013

The heightened political risk faced by the UK utility sector following the announcement of the Labour Party’s price freeze has materially impacted on the valuation of the sector and reversed the five year utility sector trade of Long UK / Short Europe. Total shareholder value lost so far amounts to between £7bn to £11bn. In our view, if the UK government is successful in politically neutralising Labour’s price freeze policy then some of this loss, but probably not all, could be regained. Some of the loss is likely to be permanent in our view because it is now apparent that UK politicians (like those in Europe) are unwilling to stand by the logic of their own energy policy and enforce the higher costs onto consumers that naturally follow from their de-carbonisation strategy. --Peter Atherton & Mulu Sun, Liberum Capital, 5 December 2013

It has long been obvious that by far the most delusional element in the Government’s shambles of an energy policy is how it subordinates all else to an obsession with building thousands of hopelessly inefficient and absurdly oversubsidised windmills. This is now only made worse by George Osborne’s bid to appease his backbenchers by transferring a fraction of the 100 per cent subsidy paid to those increasingly unpopular onshore wind farms to the giant offshore wind farms, which already receive a 200 per cent subsidy, making such electricity as they produce six times more expensive than that we get from coal. --Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 8 December 2013

The government will break the law if it waters down its plans to reduce greenhouse gases, its advisers say. The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) says there is no legal, environmental or economic case for lowering the fourth UK "carbon budget", set in 2011... Benny Peiser from the climate sceptic group GWPF told BBC News: "Given the EU's manifest reluctance to follow Britain's lead, there is no chance that the government will adopt new unilateral targets until and unless there is a legally binding agreement at the 2015 UN climate summit in Paris." --Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 11 December 2013

The Committee on Climate Change mistakenly believe that the UK’s post-2022 CO2 targets are legally binding under the Climate Change Act. This is not the case. When the fourth carbon budget was agreed in 2011, the government confirmed that these targets were conditional on the EU adopting similar targets. George Osborne has stated categorically that Britain will not “cut carbon emissions faster than our fellow countries in Europe.” Given the EU’s manifest reluctance to follow Britain’s lead, there is no chance that the government will adopt new unilateral targets. The decision on post-2020 CO2 targets is likely to be postponed until and unless there is a legally binding agreement at the 2015 UN climate summit in Paris. –Benny Peiser, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 11 December 2013

Will temperatures on Earth be dropping until the year 2100 to Little Ice Age levels, as Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, a scientist at Germany's Saarland University, predicted last week? Or will the temperatures only plunge until 2060, as Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of Russia's Pulkovo Observatory, recently predicted? Or has the cooling already begun, and might it end as soon as 2030, as claimed by Anastasios Tsonis, head of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at the University of Wisconsin? --Lawrence Solomon, Huffington Post, 10 December 2013

Spain changed environmental rules to speed approvals on industrial projects from pig farms to oil rigs and for the first time will regulate shale drilling. “This is a step in the right direction,” Lars Hubert, exploration manager for shale at San Leon Energy Plc (SLE), said by telephone from Poland. “It should make permitting easier.” The Dublin-based company has four Spanish licenses to prospect for shale rock and six more awaiting approval. --Todd White, Bloomberg, 10 December 2013

China’s Renewables Industry Is Headed For Collapse

China’s aggressive push to “green” its economy and become the world leader in renewable energy is admired by many commentators in the West. Those admirers need to look again. The country’s solar panel industry, which went from zero to become the world’s largest in five years, has crashed, with most producers now suffering from negative profit margins, soaring debt levels and idle factories. China’s experience with wind power is little different. China’s green crash is a textbook example of what happens when central planners substitute their economic decrees for the complex supply and demand decisions of a market. --Patricia Adams and Brady Yauch, Financial Post 9 December 2013

China issued its first nation-wide blueprint for adapting to climate change, as governments around the world shift their efforts from focusing solely on curbing global warming to minimizing its impact on people and the environment. “The government needs to decide what are the most cost-effective measures and which measures will produce the most significant impact. China doesn’t have that much money or resources to address everything on this list.” --Wayne Ma, The Wall Street Journal 10 December 2013