Germany’s Energy Poverty: How Electricity Became a Luxury Good
Germany’s aggressive and reckless expansion of wind and solar power has come with a hefty pricetag for consumers, and the costs often fall disproportionately on the poor. Government advisors are calling for a completely new start.
Bob Ward’s paymaster, Jeremy Grantham (investor in Big Oil) doesn’t like climate sceptics:
The [Sceptic’s] misinformation machine is brilliant. As a propagandist myself , I have nothing but admiration for their propaganda. [Laughs.] But the difference is that we have the facts behind our propaganda.
We can try to bypass them on one level and we try to contest the political power of the sceptics.
They are using money as well as propaganda to influence the politicians, particularly in America.
We also fund old-fashioned style investigative journalism which is dying out in newspapers because the newspaper industry has become incredibly tough.
All we were interested in was the net result of whether it could produce a more effective presentation of the facts.
So that sets the scene…now you know not only who pays Bob Ward but what his mission is…to destroy the Sceptics and deny them an outlet in the Media.
And he goes about it with considerable vigour.
On the 4th of October the hyperactive climate activist and propagandist Bob Ward released this into the wild:
Lord Lawson’s campaign group for climate change sceptics, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, has been executing a carefully co-ordinated campaign with its media and political allies to discredit and misrepresent the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
On the 11th of October the BBC’s Roger Harrabin, caught and tamed the feral press release and re-shaped it so that it could introduced into civilised society….but instead of crediting the alarmist spinner Bob Ward with being the author he re-attributes it to the more statesmanlike Lord stern, thus giving it gravitas and authority…he hopes…..
Lord Stern says energy and media firms ‘mislead’
Climate-sceptic newspapers are conspiring with energy firms in a campaign of misinformation on bills, says the former head of the government economic service, Lord Stern.
He says they want to shift blame for rising bills on to green taxes.
It is clear, he says, that the real culprit for bill increases has been the soaring price of gas.
More than likely it is merely a coincidence that ever since the IPCC published it’s AR5 Summary for Policy Makers Ward, of The Grantham Institute, has been attacking the BBC for daring to invite a couple of climate Sceptics to comment….and all of a sudden Harrabin publishes one of his articles, essentially a press release….claiming it is a ‘news report’…attacking the Sceptics.
Ward of course is not the only one criticising the BBC, the passed over scientist, Steve Jones, rescued from obscurity by the BBC, put in his two penneth worth, as did John Ashton, formerly the top climate-change official at the Foreign Office:
“The BBC should now explain how its decision to give a platform to Carter [Sceptic] serves the public interest. Otherwise, it will be undermining its friends when it needs them most and throwing the scavengers a piece of its own flesh.”
This surely demonstrates not their certainty about the science but that their case is so weak that they need to silence even the few critics that get the slightest bit of airtime.
And what exactly does Ashton mean by…‘it [the BBC] will be undermining its friends when it needs them most ‘?
Is the BBC not so independent as we thought? Climate scientists and activists are the BBC’s ‘friends’?
On the day the SPM was released I know of only two sceptics who were brought in to 5Live during a whole day devoted to climate change and the IPCC report…one was Andrew Montford, aka Bishop Hill, who was given a couple of minutes on Sheila Fogarty’s show and then Professor Bob Carter on 5Live Drive ….but the tone of the presenter contrasted starklywith the obsequious, deferential treatment pro-AGW scientists or advocates received.
Carter was told that he possessed a ‘dangerous state of mind’ ….and asked ‘Don’t you worry about the future?’.
From that you can see that the presenter was not there to listen and weigh up information, he had already made up his own mind…the world is in danger….and sceptics are ‘deniers’.
Despite the bare minimum of time and the dismissive, accusatory attitude of the BBC towards the critics it seems that that was still too much exposure for Ward to accept….despite himself being a bit of a climate sceptic…….
“We don’t really know yet what the explanation is for the slowdown,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of economics.
Harrabin himself isn’t well disposed towards climate sceptics who upset the applecart:
The BBC’s Roger Harrabin — one of the Beeb’s army of die-hard Warmists — has noticed too. ‘What’s a know-nothing like Delingpole doing on a science panel?’ he has asked the organisers, as if this simple fact alone is enough to render the entire conference invalid. (Moments later, when I introduce myself, he says he’s quite tempted to punch me because of all the lies and disinformation I put out — though he later apologises and puts it down to jet lag.)
Let’s have a closer look at Ward’s attitude towards Sceptics, here dismissing a well known scientist as irrelevant to the debate:
Bob Ward Bob Ward ?@ret_ward .@mehdirhasan But why have you made Lindzen the focus of the debate? He no longer contributes to the science and is irrelevant to policy.
However:
Richard Lindzen – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940) is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and books.[1] He was a lead author of Chapter 7, ‘Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,’ of the IPCC Third Assessment Report on climate change.
Here is Ward attacking Bob Carter after his appearance on the BBC:
Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, based at the London School of Economics, said: “The BBC’s coverage of the new climate-change report was variable, with some excellent reporting by its science and environment correspondents, but some very poor contributions from presenter-led programmes.
“In particular, the World At One on Friday provided a stunning display of false balance when it devoted less airtime to IPCC scientists than it did to Bob Carter, a sceptic who is funded by a free-market lobby group in the US, the Heartland Institute. Carter was allowed to make a number of inaccurate and misleading statements unchallenged.”
And in the Guardian fellow alarmist John Ashton keeps up the attack:
The BBC has been criticised for its coverage of the most comprehensive scientific study on global warming yet published. Prominent climate experts have accused the corporation of bias towards “climate sceptics” at the expense of mainstream scientists.
According to John Ashton, formerly the top climate-change official at the Foreign Office, the BBC’s coverage of last week’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was “a betrayal of the editorial professionalism on which the BBC’s reputation has been built over generations”.
Writing in the Guardian on Wednesday, he says the BBC had given “the appearance of scientific authority to those with no supporting credentials”.
Ward and Co try to paint Carter as a non-scientist…in fact he was a practising geologist……unlike Bob Ward whose scientific credentials are that he has a …geology degree….but he has not actually worked as a scientist…and is definitely not a ‘climate scientist’, he has worked in PR for most of his career…….
Bob joined the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) from Risk Management Solutions, where he was Director of Public Policy.
He also worked at the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science, for eight years, until October 2006. His responsibilities there included leading the media relations team.
He has also worked as a freelance science writer and journalist.
Bob has a first degree in geology and an unfinished PhD thesis on palaeopiezometry.
He is a Fellow of the Geological Society.
Ward’s other line of attack is to try and discredit the Sceptics by claiming they are funded by ‘Big Oil’ or some such vested interest….needless to say he doesn‘t apply the same critical criteria to people such as himself pushing the climate hoax.….
Here he is in the Guardian again attacking Carter…
The BBC jumped at the chance and Carter and Singer were soon touring the studios at Broadcasting House giving back-to-back interviews. Radio 4’s The World At One even gave Carter more airtime than the IPCC.
BBC editors appeared to be unaware that Carter and Singer are paid by the Heartland Institute
The BBC are ‘unaware carter was paid by the Heartland Institute’….really?
Let’s see if Bobby is right, this is by the BBC‘s Harrabin:
For anyone who doesn’t spend every week up to their waists in the ordure of climate politics, the Heartland Institute is a US-based organisation with an overtly libertarian bent to its work.
To itself, it’s a think-tank; to critics, it’s a lobby group, paid to oppose regulation on a number of fronts – including climate change.
The institute says it retains the services of several “high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist AGW message”.
These include the US-based Craig Idso ($11,600 per month) and Fred Singer ($5,000 per month plus expenses), and Australian Bob Carter ($1,667 per month).
Heartland is not unique. We still have no idea, two years after its formation, of who funds the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) in the UK, nor what the funders’ motives are.
Who’s raising a flag now for openness in the lobbies of climate change debate?
And this:
More from Heartland
May 18, 2010 BBC Climate: other
Another Roger Harrabin report from the Heartland Conference, this time looking at the question of whether sceptics are all right-wingers.
If who finances who is so important you might be justified in asking who funds Bob Ward? Bob Ward doesn’t want you to ask that though…because the answer ain’t pretty…it’s Big Oil…….
Ward works for the Grantham Research Institute, a “research department” at the London School of Economics (LSE)funded by an American hedge-funder called Jeremy Grantham and headed by the economist and former treasury official Lord Stern.
This is what Jeremy Grantham, Bob‘s ultimate boss and paymaster said about how he makes money:
Jeremy Grantham on how to feed the world and why he invests in oil
On whether there’s any conflict in him (via GMO and/or his foundation) investing in oil and gas companies?
The first point is that each fund we have at GMO – maybe 80 or so – is run by its own team. I don’t think that money management can easily have too many rules coming down from the top. Our first responsibility is to make money for our clients….and nothing is more important than oil.
His first responsibility?…not to the Planet…but to make money.
How big is Grantham’s company GMO?
GMO is a global investment management firm committed to providing sophisticated clients with superior asset management solutions and services. Investment management is our only business. As of June 30, 2013, we managed $108 billion in client assets, $50 billion of which was in asset allocation strategies.
How much cash does it provide for climate activism?
As a Sunday Times article revealed recently:
So concerned is Grantham, 70, over this issue that he has set up the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, endowed with £165m of his own money, to fund environmental research and campaigns. From it he is funding the LSE and Imperial donations, and other grants to American groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund.
Impartial?
Taking its lead from Lord Stern’s (tragically flawed) report, it is committed to the ideological position that man-made “Climate Change” represents a major, immediate threat which must be dealt with urgently through costly intervention. There is not much tolerance for “climate scepticism”, let alone “denial” at the Grantham Institute.
But Ward not only works for the Grantham Institute he also, and so does Lord Stern, work at the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy…which is essentially yet another climate change propaganda outfit:
Nicholas Stern – Chair of CCCEP and Management Board
Bob Ward – Policy and Communications Director
Our mission is to advance public and private action on climate change through rigorous, innovative research into economics and policy
The Centre is hosted jointly by the University of Leeds and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and is chaired by Professor Lord Stern of Brentford.
It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
The ESRC tells us:
We are a non-departmental public body (NDPB) established by Royal Charter in 1965 and receive most of our funding through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).
Funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills…government then…the same government that is trying to flog us wind farms and carbon taxes?
And of course government is providing funds elsewhere to drive the ‘consensus’:
Bishop Hill, which in turn came from Not A Lot Of People Know That:
I can…reveal that, during the financial year 2009/10 (the most recent for which the data is available), Research Council spending on “climate change research and training” amounted to £234 million. This analysis was provided by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) on behalf of Research Councils UK (RCUK).
The government could of course think such messages could be easier if we, the Public, were more amenable, more in tune with the message….perhaps the ESRC could help…via Bob Ward & Co:
Influencing behaviour and informing interventions
We need better understanding of the behaviour of people, social groups and organisations, and how to influence them. ESRC-funded research throws light on the underlying reasons for different behaviours and therefore how people and groups might respond to different interventions. This could help rethink the delivery of public services, influence consumer and corporate behaviour, and enhance wellbeing.
How to understand behaviour and risks at multiple levels and a variety of contexts?
The ESRC shapes and defines society’s sense of itself, guides the creation of new social knowledge and collaborates with those who make policy and executive decisions in government, business and the third sector.
But of course there is that other big institution that can be relied upon to push the right message:
The BBC foists on us a skewed version of reality
The news media are engaged in a political argument about whether the purpose of journalism is to report the world as it is or to purvey an idealised view
So this is where the bigger question comes in: what is the dissemination of news for? For the BBC – by which I mean, for those who decide these things at the corporation – there is little doubt that the function of news broadcasting is to enlighten the public. I use that word advisedly, in its specialised sense, meaning not simply to inform but to “free from prejudice and superstition”.
BBC news output is specifically designed to counter what it sees as ignorance and popular prejudices. Its coverage of issues in which it believes such prejudices to be rife – immigration, for example – is intended to be instructional and, specifically corrective of what its managers think of, and describe openly in conversation, as the influence of the “Right-wing press”.
The unabashed dissemination of this highly political official viewpoint is justified on the grounds that it is needed to balance the influence of scurrilous newspapers.
A perfect example of that is this recent BBC ‘report’ that pumps up the alarmism by saying El Nino will be intensified by global warming (If there is any)
WUWT begs to differ:
As well as funding by the ESCR the CCCEP is also funded by a large insurance company, who might obviously have a vested interest in creating some alarm about climate change:
‘Generous support for the Centre’s work is also provided by Munich Re’
The Munich Re programme
Evaluating the economics of climate risks and opportunities in the insurance sector
This research programme is funded by Munich Re and benefits from research collaborations across the industry and public sectors. It is a comprehensive research programme that focuses on the assessment of the risks from climate change, and on the appropriate responses, to inform decision making in the private and public sectors.
Now surely just a coincidence but Bob Ward used to work in the insurance industry:
Director of Global Science Networks at global risk insurance firm RMS.
While Ward’s employment is ostensibly with the Grantham, he also doubles up as PR man for the CCCEP. The CCCEP is funded jointly by the UK’s research councils and risk insurance giants Munich Re.
The close association between climate alarmists and the insurance industry is no less natural than that between ‘sceptics’ and Exxon. Just as Exxon might be expected to play down the threat of climate change when it suits them, Munich Re can be relied upon to overstate the dangers. Fear of risk is to the insurance industry what oil is to Exxon.
The difference is that Bob Ward doesn’t write letters of complaint to Munich Re insurers or articles for the Guardian when Munich Re disseminates ‘misleading and inaccurate information about climate change’ – which they surely do.
And Ward writes papers about climate and insurance risk:
Herweijer, C., Ranger, N., and Ward, R.E.T. July 2009. Adaptation to climate change: threats and opportunities for the insurance industry. The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance: issues and practice, v.34 pp.360-380.
Ward, R.E.T., Herweijer, C., Patmore, N., and Muir-Wood, R. January 2008. The role of insurers in promoting adaptation to the impacts of climate change. The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance: Issues and Practice, v.33, pp.133-139.
Ward, R.E.T., Muir-Wood, R., and Grossi, P. 2007. Flood risk in New Orleans: implications for future management. Geophysical Research Abstracts, v.9, 04542.
Oh and look….more ‘vested interests’ at the Grantham Institute:
Glancing down the profiles of Grantham’s management team, we spot another corporate Green to have found a new home among academic foliage. The last time we looked, Sam Fankhauser was Managing Director of IDEAcarbon:
IDEAcarbon is an independent and professional provider of ratings, research and strategic advice on carbon finance. Our services are designed to provide leading financial institutions, corporations, governments, traders and developers with unbiased intelligence and analysis of the factors that affect the pricing of carbon market assets.
IDEAcarbon’s parent company is IDEAglobal, where Stern is Vice President.
Ward, the geology graduate turned PR spinner, continues his attack on the BBC…apparently its presenters, not being scientists, can’t possibly understand what the issues are….unlike himself of course…..
Here he launches into Andrew Neil:
He [Andrew Neil] falsely claimed that Professor Hans von Storch, when discussing the recent slowdown in the rise of global surface temperature in an interview with a German newspaper, indicated that “if there is a 20 year plateau, then we’ll need to have a fundamental re-examination of climate change policy, not to abandon it, but to wonder whether we should be doing it so quickly and in the way we’re doing it”. In fact, Professor von Storch did not make any such statement.
Unfortunately Storch did make such a claim….this illustrates perfectly the arrogance of people like Ward….who claims non-scientists can’t possibly understand the science….but then of course how do politicians make decisions based upon that science if they don’t understand the concepts?
Bishop Hill suggests that it isn’t necessarily the politicians who are at fault…but those scientists who give the advice:
On advice to government
Reasonable people might wonder why the Government Chief Scientific Adviser is basing his briefing of the Cabinet on data that is known to be erroneous.
Is Ward saying we are implementing billions of pounds worth of climate programmes on a politician’s hunch…or is the truth that scientists are misleading the politicians…some politicians happy of course to be led by the nose as they have vested interests in green technology?
Here von Storch is interviewed by Der Spiegel:
Climate experts have long predicted that temperatures would rise in parallel with greenhouse gas emissions. But, for 15 years, they haven’t. In a SPIEGEL interview, meteorologist Hans von Storch discusses how this “puzzle” might force scientists to alter what could be “fundamentally wrong” models.
Storch: I’m not aware of any studies showing that floods happen more often today than in the past. I also just attended a hydrologists’ conference in Koblenz, and none of the scientists there described such a finding…..since there has been only moderate global warming so far, climate change shouldn’t be playing a major role in any case yet. [Compare with Met Office’s Peter Stott’s claim that the risk of flooding has doubled due to climate change (despite there being no apparent trend in rainfall statistics)]
Storch: Unfortunately, some scientists behave like preachers, delivering sermons to people. What this approach ignores is the fact that there are many threats in our world that must be weighed against one another. If I’m driving my car and find myself speeding toward an obstacle, I can’t simple yank the wheel to the side without first checking to see if I’ll instead be driving straight into a crowd of people. Climate researchers cannot and should not take this process of weighing different factors out of the hands of politics and society.
Storch: If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models. A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario. But even today, we are finding it very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations.
SPIEGEL: That sounds quite embarrassing for your profession, if you have to go back and adjust your models to fit with reality…
Storch: Why? That’s how the process of scientific discovery works. There is no last word in research, and that includes climate research. It’s never the truth that we offer, but only our best possible approximation of reality. But that often gets forgotten in the way the public perceives and describes our work.
SPIEGEL: Does this throw the entire theory of global warming into doubt?
Storch: I don’t believe so. We still have compelling evidence of a man-made greenhouse effect. There is very little doubt about it. But if global warming continues to stagnate, doubts will obviously grow stronger.
If the models are wrong, then the science is wrong and the politics based upon that science is wrong….and Ward is wrong.
So that’s Bob Ward….not a scientist but a peddler of a very one sided view of the world, funded ironically by ‘Big Oil’ and his boss’s huge financial empire built on exploiting the planet’s resources.
He attacks the Sceptics for being funded by business and yet he is himself funded by big business, not to mention by government. He criticises them for being non-scientists…when in fact often they are scientists…whilst Ward himself is not. He criticises them for not having the facts…but then the facts seem to elude him also.
In fact all these criticisms are the very same ones that Harrabin frequently raises about the Sceptics….the very Sceptics he has also tried to silence and smear.
Any coincidence that Ward seemed to be a favourite source of quotes for Richard Black….has Harrabin ‘inherited’ him?
Perhaps Ward was doing Harrabin and the BBC a ‘favour’ by claiming the BBC were giving too much airtime to the Sceptics….maybe the whole charade was designed merely to suggest that the BBC was ‘impartial’, listening to all sides to blunt the attacks on the BBC for having decided that the ‘science was settled‘ and was no more than a climate propagandist.
Whatever, Harrabin and Ward seemed to have kissed and made up…which is why Ward’s (or Lord Stern’s if you prefer) message trying to damn Sceptics was so readily given such prominence by Harrabin….a ‘more effective presentation of the ‘facts”?
