The BBC have gone strangely quiet on this story from think tank ‘Cambridge Econometrics’:
‘Large-scale investment in offshore wind would generate more wealth for the economy and create more jobs than relying on gas-fired power plants, a report suggested on Tuesday.
Substantial deployment of offshore wind by 2030 would have only a marginal impact on electricity prices but would boost growth, cut dependence on gas imports and reduce emissions, the report for WWF-UK and Greenpeace said.’
Maybe they are being extremely careful as the report was funded by WWF and Greenpeace…..it was on BBC Radio(no link) once this morning in an interview with Prof. Ekins from Cambridge Econometrics but haven’t heard a whisper since….and the BBC did mention the lobbyist’s funding…to Ekins’ embarrassment…..’Got to earn a living somehow‘.
The best their website comes up with is this link to the story.
As Holmes might conclude the dog that doesn’t bark raises suspicions about the story’s merits…if even the ardently pro-AGW Harrabin & Co don’t bite is it any where near credible? …..Harrabin doesn’t even Tweet it.
Has the BBC got cold feet over global warming as the warming has all but stopped for nearly 16 years as CO2 levels rise ever higher?
Probably not as Harrabin does come up with this nonsense ….read it and you get the distinct impression of a knife being slowly shoved through Osborne’s ribs by Harrabin…..the sole intent of the piece is to rubbish the ‘dash for gas’ and suggest Osborne has been swayed by malign influences…….
Here Harrabin is suggesting that the public outcry over wind farms will be repeated over Fracking….he hopes…..
‘DECC said it was “ridiculous” to suggest that two thirds of England would be fracked, adding that the British Geological Survey was still investigating how much shale gas might realistically be exploited.
But with constituents of some rural areas complaining that they do not like wind farms, the prospect of gas drilling in nearby fields may prove equally politically sensitive.’
His personal take:
roger harrabin @RogerHarrabin
Don’t want to be waved at by windmills? Why not feel the earth move with shale gas? We all like energy so long as its nimby…
Harrabin’s description of a Greenpeace film obtained covertly is interesting…..a ‘sting operation’…’secretly filmed’…..funny how he doesn’t say that the film or ‘footage’ was ‘stolen’ or obtained in any way illegally or immorally….unlike his response to the CRU emails being hacked…or stolen, as he and his BBC colleagues like to call it.
‘Greenpeace claim that the chancellor has been over-influenced on the issue by his father-in-law Lord Howell, who was a government energy minister before climate change was a concern.
In a sting operation Greenpeace secretly filmed Lord Howell warning that the UK was dependent on gas from Qatar so that, “if jihadis took over Qatar we would be up shit creek.” ‘
Harrabin is in Doha at moment enjoying the sun at the climate conference….here is an interesting tweet:
roger harrabin @RogerHarrabin
Bumped into a veteran #climate campaigner in #cop18. He said talks so far from scientific reality, its better to allow meeting to collapse.
Wonder just whose ‘scientific reality‘ we are talking about?
‘Breaking windows would generate more wealth for the economy and create more jobs than relying on gas-fired power plants…’
Can the BBC/lefties/greenies/TUC/NUJ not get it into their tiny tiny tiny brains that *any* spending generates ‘wealth’ but, and this is very radical, why not spend the money on something useful like a railway or god forbid a tax-cut rather than a series of very expensive follies miles out to sea.
They are infected by a collective madness.
What other explanation can there be?
Bumped into a veteran #climate campaigner in #cop18. He said talks so far from scientific reality, its better to allow meeting to collapse.
Interesting: could mean that attendees are finally questioning that ‘the science is settled’ and veteran climate Nazis don’t like it.
‘it’s better to allow meeting to collapse’
In a purely Gaiain sense, if reducing GHGs is seen as a good thing, maybe flying a scag load of science-inept blowhards around the planet just to collapse meetings is a teensie bit less than optimal on the offsetting front?
So, and here’s a wild idea… don’t have ’em at all in the first place.
My kids would thank you.
“Veteran”, or not, “climate campaigners” are usually about as far from scientific reality as it is possible to be. I find this very heartening, though, because it sounds like Rog is preparing the ground for the latest junket being a massive failure. Tragic…..
I only wish this ragbag of misanthropes and doom merchants would get off the public payroll(as if the EU would allow that) , find themselves a sandwich board, and stand outside the footie grounds as their predecessor loons used to do in the late 60s…it`s the end of the world, yada, yada.
If they stood out here a bit more-stopped stuffing their whey faces in BBC studios-they could do so much more to help with “climate change” ,by telling us how the earth is warming up, this freezing December day.
Barking, unscientific trough surfers…sails billowing in their own self-regard and virtue.
As usual, a study funded by Greenpeace and WWF is kosher, but anything with even a tangential connection to “Big Oil” or the like is immediately discredited because of who might have paid for it. One side is agenda-driven propaganda, while the other side is of the angels. Double standards at the BBC as usual.
It is amazing that the global cooling deniers still use the “big oil” meme to smear, or discredit the opinions of, those of us who are somewhat better informed. The likes of Shell, BP and even the oil equivalent of News International, Exxon (boo, hiss), are up to their collective nuts in the guts of the “climate change” industry.
“Scientific Reality” according to Roger Harrabin
BBC CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY
(1) Censor Scientific Debate
(2) Censor Scientific Disagreements
(3) Censorship Training for Journalists
(4) Censor Scientific results and facts
(5) Censor Politically incorrect Scientific facts so that the public respond dutifully.
(6) Censor Sceptics with the relevant scientific knowledge and qualifications in Climate Science who contradict the suggestion that there is a consensus.
(7) Censor sane Climate Scientists.
(8) Censor the science by ignoring it, and instead, talk to economists, historians, politicians, social scientists and businessmen about the political consensus.
(9) Censor the truth by using propaganda in dramas, history and wildlife documentaries, etc.
(10) Censorship of any future findings is essential because the Orthodoxy is that there are no more facts to be found and the science is settled.
Signed
Roger Harrabin (on behalf of Lord Reith)
BBC
The BBC’s Orwellian mission may be to become “DEFINERS of REALITY” but somehow I prefer the debate within Mensa leading to the scientific TRUTH.
The calibration of CO2 warming in the Earths Atmosphere using the CO2 Atmosphere of Mars as a proxy or the use of the Unified Theory of Climate.
The Calculation for C02 (including AGW) warming in the Earths Atmosphere using these methods produces a result too small to be detectable.
But then the solution to the 20th Century warming problem seems to be found in Cosmoclimatology.
Well, since dads-in-law are in play, it’s worth remembering that The Dave’s very own FiL scores £1000 per day via his wind farms.
A filthy rich landowner coining it in thanks to subsidies pushed by a member of his family? That used to be what was known as a ‘story’ but the BBC has clearly ‘moved on’ from the whole journalism thing.
Does Harrabin work for BBC or for ‘Greenpeace’?
There are many political propagandists at BBC (not least the BBC Democrat Washington Bureau, especially at Presidential election time), but overall Harrabin takes the biscuit.
The longevity of Harrabin’s sustained ‘Greenpeace’ political line against natural gas, shale gas, coal, nuclear power is part of his pro-climate change and pro-wind-power propaganda.
Harrabin’s freedom to propagandise so blatantly and for so long a time indicates approval at executive level of the BBC.
Well, WWF would spend their European Commission money on a survey by the fake charity “Cambridge Econometrics” (aka The Cambridge Trust), wouldn’t they? This mission statement is from one of their websites –
“It is vital that two social problems be solved. The first is the obvious degradation of the planet and its atmosphere by over-consumption and over-production through the exploitation of resources in pursuit of monetary gain. The second problem is the toxic pollution of the global money supply, also obvious, caused by financial practices over the past twenty years, led by the investment banks of Wall Street and the City of London. The problems are related: both arise out of the pursuit of self interest”
http://www.neweconomicthinking.org/index.htm
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2011/06/fun-finding-the-eco-lobbys-funding.html
Re: Cambridge trust and their “new thinking in economics” –
” instead recognises the inherent uncertainties in the understanding of behaviour and accepts that nearly all economic activity is social in nature”
Isn’t that Marxism dressed up in post-modernist gobbledygook? So 150yrs ‘new’ then
‘Large-scale investment in offshore wind would generate more wealth for the economy and create more jobs than relying on gas-fired power plants, a report suggested on Tuesday’.
Gas-fired power plants are needed as standby when the wind isn’t blowing, which means, in simple terms, they have to be kept fired-up thus making the windmills a very, very expensive irrelevance.
Pity the world’s greatest investigative journalists haven’t uncovered that one yet. Or maybe they have but don’t want an inconvenient fact to get in the way of their eco-socialist agenda a.k.a. destruction of the industrialised western economies.