And Korea - by Richard... Monday, January 04, 2010

And Korea - by Richard... Monday, January 04, 2010

After China, we now get a report from NPR that Seoul residents are battling the heaviest snowfall in modern Korean history after a winter storm dumped more than 10 inches on them today, forcing airports to cancel flights and paralysing traffic in South Korea's bustling capital.

The snowfall, which began about 1 am (1600 GMT Sunday) and continued through the afternoon today (their time), was the worst since Korea began conducting meteorological surveys in 1937, the state weather agency said.

Note ... "the worst since ... 1937". If this is global warming, then God help us if we actually get a cooling cycle.

CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD

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A monument to folly - by Richard...

This time last year we were remarking on a not uncommon phenomenon in the UK – an almost total lack of wind. And here we are again, with the temperatures struggling to get above freezing and we have, effectively, a zero wind state - see below right.

The effect of this on the electricity generation system is evident from the latest status report (see above) which shows a predominant reliance on gas, which accounted for nearly half of total production in the last 24 hours, followed by coal at nearly thirty percent and nuclear at just under twenty percent.

Wind, in all its glory, managed to deliver a risible 0.4 percent – which is hardly even a rounding error and amounts to an insignificant contribution to the national electricity supply. Producing a mere 163 MW at around midnight last night, against an installed capacity of just over 4 GW, that represents a load factor of four percent.

What price, therefore, The Guardian prattling away in June last that "Offshore wind farms could meet a quarter of the UK's electricity needs" – a claim made by this fatuous government of ours.

Thus we have this week that utter fool Gordon Brown, masquerading as our prime minister,announcing this week the launch of a "£100 billion green power revolution" with the awards of a raft of development contracts to build a new generation of offshore wind farms.

Sustainable only with a massive subsidy, extracted from the electricity bills of unwitting users via the Renewables Obligation, these monuments to folly can no more deliver the goods when needed than can Mr Brown – a fitting monument to his obsession with (non-existent) global warming.

Needless to say, the obsession is shared by the wannabe prime minister David Cameron so, if these ridiculous fabrications are ever built, it will be on his watch that they are built, the first batch not due to come into production until 2015 - if then.

With a theoretical capacity of 35 GW – but an actual load factor a third of that – this puts the construction cost at about ten times that of nuclear. And then there is the cost of the back-up generation.

There can be no greater monument to the folly of our current batch of leaders who are prepared to countenance this absurdly expensive and unreliable scheme, saddling us with massive costs which we can ill-afford to pay. There should be a special place in Hell for these people.

CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD

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Pachauri: nose in the honey jar - by Richard...

"Climate change has become a multi-billion dollar commercial sector," proclaims the brochure from a leading finance house, and it is not wrong. 

Nowhere are the opportunities more "exciting" for the business community though than in the burgeoning "carbon" market. And there, potentially one of the biggest players is a company calledClimate Exchange PLC which operates three businesses, the European Climate Exchange (ECX) the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX ) and the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFE).

Although its last year's revenues were a mere £22.7 million, with pre-tax profits of £2.8 million, it is a company with global ambitions, with plans already well advanced to set up similar operations in China, Canada and Australia.

But another of its enterprises is to create an entirely new exchange in India, called the India Climate Exchange (ICX). With outline plans announced in India in June 2007, the company then announced on 14 January 2008 that it had established a "founder member group" which was working to create a system similar to that operated by the Chicago Climate Exchange.

With a distinguished Indian member, by the name of Dr R K Pachauri, already on the ChicagoExternal Advisory Board, it comes as no surprise to learn that the new chairman of this founder member group was to be Pachauri.

To assist him in the development of this enterprise, there was also created a Technical Design Committee, attracting a number of India's "leading industrial companies" and "think-tanks" who had "committed" to be part of the committee. And, amongst those were Tata Motors, Tata Chemicals and Tata Power, as well as TERI India, of which Dr Pachauri just happens to be Director-General.

Interestingly, the Chairman of the entire Climate Exchange PLC group, Dr Richard L Sandor, is a member of the TERI School of Management Advisory Committee in India.

All this puts Pachauri, with his institute, as a direct player in the creation of a lucrative carbon trading market in India, alongside direct evidence that he was using his position as chairman of the IPCC to advocate a "definite agreement on placing a price on carbon" at the Copenhagen COP15 Summit.

Acting with a coterie of other UN officials, when it comes to conflicts of interest, they do not come any stronger.

As it stands, TERI India has already received development funds to assist it in the process of establishing the exchange and, as has so often been the case before, the generous donor is the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

And nor has the FCO largesse stopped there. It is currently running a Low Carbon High Growth Programme for which £19m in funding was available in financial year 2009-10. 

Interestingly, this included a project for the "establishment by March 2011 in India of an effective mandatory trading scheme in energy saving certificates," where specific reference is made to the India Climate Exchange scheme.

Thus, it seems, not only has Dr R K Pachauri got his nose firmly stuck in the honey jar, Her Majesty's Government is supplying some of the honey – at the British taxpayers' expense.

PACHAURI THREAD

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Now it's Peking's turn - by Richard... Sunday, January 03, 2010

It isn't only the UK, Europe in general and the USA which has been hit by accumulations of global warming. Having been hit just before Christmas - the earliest snow in 13 years - the white stuff is back again with a vengeance. this year

China Daily reports that motorways have been closed off, flights delayed and bus services disrupted. An army of 960 workers with 193 snow-clearing vehicles had been working for more than 12 hours to ensure traffic in the city's main roads and 2,175 tons of "snow-thawing agents" had been used on roads.

It is, we are told, the second snowfall in the three-day New Year holiday, and the temperature is set to plummet by 7 to 8 degrees to minus 16°C in the next three days. This will be the lowest since 1980s. And such is the extent of the snow that even the BBC was moved to remark that "Beijing has suffered heavier snowfalls than usual this winter."

Meanwhile, The Times of India is telling its readers: "Climate change far worse than thought before", despite cold weather and dense fog having caused more than 30 deaths in northern India over past 24 hours. Even Delhi is suffering from unusual cold, with dense fog conditions playing havoc, bringing rail and air traffic to a standstill. 

One assumes, though, that the multi-million dollar residence at 160 Golf Links has central heating so, once the servants have turned it on, Dr R K Pachauri will not be unduly discomforted.

CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD

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Driving us into poverty - by Richard...

"Household gas and electricity bills are expected to rocket fourfold to nearly £5,000 a year by the end of the decade to meet Government-imposed green targets. And the price heavy industry will have to pay by 2020 is so high that energy-dependent firms could be wiped out, causing thousands of job losses ...".

That is the opening of a piece in The Daily Mail business section from yesterday, painting an apocryphal picture of the future we have waiting for us.

The story goes on to note that officials at regulator Ofgem now privately admit that a report they issued only last year severely underestimated the cost of cutting carbon emissions by building a new energy infrastructure for the UK. Ofgem's earlier report suggested that gas and electricity prices could double to £2,000 by 2020 to meet the £233.5 billion cost of "going green" 

The paper also does something we rarely see, listing the charges already loaded onto energy bills, telling us that we are "loaded up by five separate charges to help fund the battle to combat climate change and become greener." They are the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target, the Renewables Obligation, the Community Energy Saving Programme and shortly there will be a levy on investing in clean coal projects. 

Illustrating the fatuity of these schemes, it was the Community Energy Saving Programme which led to the "wasteful avalanche of 12 million light bulbs", reported in The Times and elsewhere, when that number of low-energy light bulbs were posted to households over Christmas by Npower – all on the notional basis that energy savings would necessarily accrue from their distribution.

But, if the £5,000 figure shocks, it is only part of the equation. Higher energy costs feed through into the price of every home-produced commodity and service, while the added costs of benefits paid to redundant workers, the loss of tax income as firms close down, and the fall-off in economic activity will impose their own substantial costs.

Tied in with the way we are miss-managing our energy supplies and we are looking at a slow-motion economic catastrophe far greater than the economic crisis we are weathering, the overall costs of which are set to exceed the entire tax bill for the average household.

And that is the perplexing aspect of this whole charade. The political classes – not without merit – bang on about public expenditure, but they seem to be blind to the eye-watering additions to our private expenditure, forced by governments working to their "green" agendas.

What they do not seem to appreciate it that, in real terms, there is no difference between money coming out of the wage packet to pay taxes, and money having to be paid to meet government requirements. And it is the latter – on top of the former – that is going to drive us into poverty. It is about time our political classes woke up to that fact.

CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD

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Pachauri: follow the money - by Richard...

An interesting piece in New American headed: "Pachauri's Lucrative World of Climate Change".

It has Pachauri talking about the "business opportunities" afforded by climate change, citing theBooker column and our article in The Daily Telegraph.

They also cite an interesting piece in The Daily Express, which I missed – which explores the murky world of carbon trading and Tata Steel. I wonder if they have also received a letter from Diana's favourite solicitor.

The New American concludes with a tantalising reference to Obama, and his enthusiasm for going "above what is going to be legislated," when it comes to climate change. This is not unconnected with the Chicago Climate Exchange, for which Pachauri is currently a member of the external advisory board.

Therein lies a dark and dirty tale. The Pachauri angle is just the tip of the iceberg. Serious money is involved here, to say nothing of corruption on an industrial scale, which goes all the way to the top. We have only scratched the surface so far. 

PACHAURI THREAD

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Right name this time - by Richard...

After the false start just before Christmas, the Mail on Sunday has got the right Richard North this time - with a long piece on the failures of the Met Office.

And it doesn't matter how old and cynical you get, there is still a certain buzz when you see your own work up on the net under a familiar brand name – and more of a buzz reading it in the flesh. I shall enjoy going to the newsagent to pick up a copy.

By complete coincidence - honest Guv! - Booker has chosen the same theme for his column. His is entitled: "The Met Office gives us the warmist weather".

This must be a first – the Booker/North team writing on the same subject, in different newspapers on the same day.