Real politics

The statement last week from the Met Office that they were no longer going to rely on their seasonal forecasts provoked obvious responses, but one wonders whether the implications have fully sunk in.

While the headline "barbeque summer" predictions have provided endless entertainment, these forecasts have a strategic purpose. They are used by local authorities, power generators and others for planning purposes. And it was last year's optimistic forecast that contributed to the lack of preparedness for the hard winter, leaving many highway authorities short of grit and salt.

Thus, if the Met Office is no longer going to offer forecasts to public utilities and other commercial users, these will be "flying blind", and will either have to plan on a worst case scenario or risk not being able to deliver if we experience next winter anything like we have just suffered – or even worse.

No more so it this the case than with electricity generation. During the intense cold last month, reserve capacity was briefly down to seven percent. An outage by a major power station would have precipitated power cuts, leaving vast areas of the country in the dark and cold.

Delays and incompetence by successive administrations, and the slavish adherence to the "green" agenda means that we are already operating with inadequate margins. And, to that extent, we are already living on borrowed time. Our lights stay on in the winter entirely by luck, rather than judgement.

For sure, the utilities are responding to an expected shortfall by building new CCGT plants, which means that price rather than power cuts may be the future issue. But that does not rule out the possibility of major breakdown, or a deterioration in the political situation elsewhere in the world, that leaves us short of power.

Thus, the Booker column today is particularly apposite, with him pointing out that, in order of political priorities, the security of our energy supplies probably comes second only to dealing with the mounting deficit.

The specific issues that Booker raises have been rehearsed so frequently on this blog that they need no repetition, other than to point out that Mr Cameron seems to be on the brink of achieving what many might have thought impossible – delivering an energy policy which is even worse than Labour's.

What is particularly damning though is that the Tory response, as is so often the case, is simply to ignore the issue. One assumes that they hope that by not talking about it, it will not become a debating point during the election campaign.

However, that may be a forlorn hope. Last week, energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband – possibly sensing that there is political advantage to be gained - challenged Cameron to spell out his "renewable energy strategy", claiming that conflicting signals from Conservatives were "creating uncertainty for industry".

Miliband homed in on the inconsistencies in the Tory approach to wind power, where they are opposing onshore turbines, allowing free rein to Conservative controlled councils which have turned down 60 percent of applications for new wind farms.

This challenge, if repeated, may force Cameron out into the open, fronting a repost with his commitment (so far unpublished) to ramp up micro-generation. This stance could propel energy policy into the mainstream as the likes of Monbiot pitch in and tear the Tory plans to shreds. That will sour both the greens and the hard-headed realists, leaving the Boy with another political wreck on his hands.

One can see the Boy's problems though. The only short-term answers to this mess are to commit to lifting the closure threat to the coal-fired powers stations, imposed by the EU's large combustion plant directive, supporting the rapid development of new coal-fired plants, expanding the coal industry and ditching the renewable policy altogether.

In the longer term, he needs to put the nuclear energy programme on an emergency footing, with the sort of priority afforded to it that is usually only given in wartime.

Not only would that be personally impossible for Cameron to do – he is, after all, a sincere believer in the warmist cult – it would destroy his party's carefully nurtured, if fading, green credentials. Tellingly, it would also put him on a collision course with the EU. None of those things the Boy could even contemplate. The fact that a robust, no-nonsense approach might win him the election is neither here nor there.

Thus, it seems, the Tories will continue to attempt a fudge, skirting round the edges, trying to avoid a real debate. Labour will continue cherry-picking inconsistencies while studiously avoiding mention of their own, aided and abetted by the political claque and the media lobby correspondents who are completely out of their depths.

Yet, despite their self-important prattling, this time they may not have it all their own way. There is now the growing influence of the internet. Legend has it that president Obama's online presence and e-mail campaigning made a significant contribution to his electoral victory last year, and this is provoking discussion on this side of the Atlantic on the role the "new media" will play in the election.

Some pundits appear to be believe it will be quite limited, not least as the overtly political blogs have degenerated into poor replicas of MSM political diaries, concentrating on low-grade party political tat and personality politics.

But that is to ignore the wide range of "technical" blogs such as Watts up with that, which have readership levels which outstrip even the biggest of the British political blogs. They are dealing with highly political issues – real politics instead of Westminster bubble gum. And it is real politics, such as whether the lights are going out, which may increasingly call the shots and decide where votes are cast.

Unless Mr Cameron can answer satisfactorily the deceptively simple question, "how are you going to keep the lights on?", he may be riding for a fall.

COMMENT THREAD

Big "Climate" Brother

One of the more sinister aspects of the "climate change" miasma is the insistence of campaigners and governments that saving the planet requires personal sacrifice and significant changes in personal lifestyles. However, while we may be dimly aware of government exhortations along those lines, few people realise quite how much of our money is being spent on trying to make us change our ways.

A significant amount of that money is spent by one government department, DEFRA, on "behavioural research", and a record of its recent expenditure provides a chilling testament to the Orwellian world of climate advocacy, where every aspect of our lives is coming under official scrutiny.

The record, which starts in 2005, has the University of Surrey doing a project called "Choice Matters", exploring how to make sustainability "an automatic and primary part of producer and consumer choice, rather than a self-satisfying added extra." This cost a relatively modest £21,775.

For £63,017 meanwhile, the University of Westminster carried out an analysis of existing research relating to "pro-environmental behavioural change", aiming to contribute towards a better practical understanding of how DEFRA could influence behaviours.

Cranfield University, on the other hand, took on: "Sustainable development as a "collective choice" problem: theoretical and practical implications". The aim if this research was to explore thoroughly the potential of a highly promising and unique body of research, known as "collective-action theory", for achieving DEFRA's goal of finding new ways of motivating people to produce and consume in a sustainable manner. This cost a mere £23,333.

Exeter University was given the task of applying theories of behavioural change, using innovative techniques within the context of specific lifestyle groups. It employed a brand marketing approach to demonstrate how a model of environmental behaviour could be used to develop policies for change. The work cost us £21,000.

Other work went to the London-based "green" consultancy, Brook Lyndhurst, which was asked about "nudging the S-Curve". This shows an initial period of slow change; a period of acceleration, and rapid change; and a period in which change slows down as some sort of limit to growth is approached. This project sought better to understand the S-curve in order to promote pro-environmental behaviour change. For us, there was no change from £21,150.

Then, another consultancy, the National Centre for Business and Sustainability, got to do "Innovative approaches to influencing the behaviour of small businesses." This was to find out how existing mechanisms and approaches could be used innovatively" to influence the behaviour of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a pro-sustainable development policy context." For that, we paid £22,225.

This earlier period also saw DEFRA investing in a behavioural survey commissioned from the British Market Research Bureau. At a cost of £458,440, this sought to establish then current public attitudes, knowledge and behaviour in relation to the environment, in order to provide a baseline for further studies.

At the same time, the department was exploring a range of issues and public attitudes, wondering, for instance, whether invoking the concept of "social justice" might help to lock in the government's view of environmental policy. To that effect, in 2006 it commissioned a report from National Economic Research Associates at a cost of £77,361.

More than a little of the work carried overtly Orwellian overtones, such as the project carried out by the Policy Studies Institute entitled: "Pro-Environmental Behaviour: Risk, Innovation and Reward." This sought to identify "potential directions and options for research exploring innovation, demonstration and learning on ways to increase consumer take-up of sustainable consumption behaviours." The cost was £25,169.

Not a little money was spent trying to assess the effects of DEFRA's own initiatives. Thus we find the department Brook Lyndhurst £82,980 in 2008 to tell it whether its online "CO2 calculator" is actually having any effect.

Half a million people had accessed the site but, it noted, "relatively little is known about why these individuals are logging on, how they are understanding and using the calculator, what they make of the results and whether or not this has any long term effect on their behaviours, whether positivie (sic) or negative."

The department also spent £109,710 asking Brook Lyndhurst to report on "Public Understanding of links between climate change and energy and food consumption in the home".

It then commissioned a series of reports, all on the theme of "sustainability". Nottingham Trent University got £59,971 for examining the "Public Understanding of sustainable clothing", with a view to providing indications of how changes might successfully be made in our "clothing culture". Looking at the finished report, few would appreciate just how much it had cost.

A firm called Synovate then got paid £64,277 for a report on, "Public understanding of sustainable water". Ipsos-Mori was paid to look at "sustainable investment", getting paid £54,150 for the work. And then the Policy Studies Institute got paid £12,220 to write a synthesis report, pulling together the disparate work.

Another venture was to explore "innovative approaches to achieving sustainable consumption", paying Brook Lyndhurst £59,770 to carry out some research. AEA Technology, meanwhile, was paid £77,971 to look at, "Household and economy wide impacts of changing environmental behaviours."

Surrey University was set on to investigate motivations for change, using six identified pro-environmental behaviours, for which it was paid £110,000, while Brook Lyndhurst was hired to gauge the role of influential individuals in social networks, at a cost of £77,800.

AD Research and Analysis was asked to do some methodology development, for segmentation, getting paid £19,950 for its trouble, then being rewarded with a £89,275 project on, "Unlocking habits to enable pro-environmental behaviours." Later, it got another £12,000 for more development work.

The Policy Studies Institute was given £115,323 to find out what "further" short term actions the public thought the Government should take to mitigate climate change while the EPPI-Centre was paid £93,304 to research ways of encouraging "more pro-environmental behaviour amongst SMEs".

For £58,380, DEFRA dreamed up another study, commissioning the New Economics Foundation to carry out a project called: Moments of change as opportunities to influence behaviour". This research explored whether "moments of change" – times in a person’s life where existing habits and behavioural patterns are disrupted – provided a significant opportunity to encourage the take-up of pro-environmental behaviours.

Brook Lyndhurst was asked to explore "catalyst behaviours", the idea that taking-up a new behaviour (such as recycling) may cause people to start another, or many more, beneficial behaviours. These, it was suggested, could be closely related behaviours or exist across a broader range of lifestyle activities. That cost a mere £78,365.

A synthesis report on food related consumer behaviours cost the department £75,320, which went into the coffers of AD Research and Analysis. It synthesised the evidence on the factors driving consumer food behaviours and "applied the findings in the context of individual behaviour change for sustainability."

Once again, the Policy Studies Institute was employed, this time testing "innovative approaches for achieving pro-environmental behaviours." It was paid £111,380. National Union of Students Services got a similar project, testing out the thesis on students living in halls of residence. As this was the first time they had moved away from home, the "significant lifestyle change" was seen as an opportunity for testing the effects of indoctrination. That cost £126,602.

Over the years 2008 and 2009, DEFRA followed through with the 2007 attitudes survey, commissioning a tracker surve from TNS Social at a cost of £187,695.

Now, Brook Lyndhurst is currently undertaking a project which tests a variety of techniques for encouraging "pro-environmental behaviour" in schools in Peterborough. The findings from the research will provide evidence to support more widespread promotion of pro-environmental behaviours in schools in particular, and through social networks more generally. That is costing £149,655.

The consultancy is also assessing green claims in marketing, for a mere £109,510. Simultaneously, for £130,391, the Policy Studies Institute is carrying out a review to ensure that key social research findings from a broad evidence base are accessible to natural environment policy and decision makers.

All this amounts to a relatively modest £2,574,376 – a tiny amount compared with general government expenditure and just a fraction of what a big corporate might spend on consumer research.

Nevertheless, this is still a significant amount of money, and it is actually just the tip of the iceberg. Other government departments are also commissioning research, and the research councils are spending many millions. The EU is spending a huge amount of money and much of the international spending – particularly in the US – is also being employed. I'll have a look at some of this spending in another post.

Crucially, though, this research has "guided" an increasingly expensive advertising campaign. According to official figures, spending in the financial year 2005-06 was a mere £661,120 and remained roughly static in 2006-07 at £627,216.

In 2007-08, however, spending escalated to £4,491,921 on "public engagement", while £650,307 was spent on a campaign called "Climate Challenge". And on the 1 January 2008, another campaign called "Act On CO2" was started. For that financial year, it cost £695,497 but, over 2008-09, costs soared to £12,185,373, bringing the total outlay to £19,311,434. Add the research and the grand total is close to £22 million.

For warmists though, nothing here will be sinister. But, to the rest of us, the idea that our government is spending our money changing our behaviour – especially on such a contentious issue where there is no popular enthusiasm for the changes sought – is getting far too close to Big Brother for comfort.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

The dance of the seven veils

David Cameron, we are told, has promised to "make things better without spending more money" as he ramps up his general election campaign.

Attacking wasteful government spending, he pledged that a future Conservative administration would "get more for less". However, hopes that Mr Cameron would begin to spell out how and where he would cut spending were dashed for now. He is expected to unveil his proposals to cut expenditure in the coming weeks.

Instead, all we get it the rhetoric. "... the question in 2010 is this: who do you trust to make things better without spending more money? Today we certainly cannot afford more waste, more bureaucracy and more overspending from a Labour government," says the Boy King. "At a time like this you need the people with the grit, the determination and the new ideas to get more for less – and those people are the Conservatives."

What new ideas?

And the Tories wonder why they are doing so badly in the polls? It's this shimmering, tantalising "dance of the seven veils" that really grates. But when the veils come off, there's nothing there – just as we saw with the EU policy. "We will not leave it there", said the Boy, and then proceeded to do just that.

Talking with Booker et al on the very issue of cutting public expenditure, we reckon that we could cut at least a £100 billion from the budget without anyone noticing (apart from a rather large number of soon-to-be redundant public officials). Yet, after nearly five years as leader of the not-the-Tory-party, this is all the Boy has to offer. He deserves to lose the election.

COMMENT THREAD

The awakening

"To the greens who accuse me of treachery I say this: we do not have a moral obligation to support all forms of renewable energy, however inefficient and expensive they may be. We do have a moral obligation not to be blinded by sentiment. We owe it to the public, and to our credibility, to support the schemes which work, fairly and cheaply, and reject the schemes which cost a fortune and make no difference."

So writes Moonbat, defending his earlier position against the feed-in tariff for solar energy.

He is fighting his corner against Jeremy Leggett, chairman of the installation company Solar Century, a man who has a vested interest in promoting what one of the most expensive forms of electricity generation ever invented. And, although Moonbat doesn't say it, it is as plain as a pikestaff that this is money talking. Yet, if the sceptics are branded as terminally biased because they take money from "big oil", how is it that people who take money from "big solar" are given a hearing?

Interestingly, Moonbat also takes a tilt at the EU's carbon trading scheme – and his is not the only one. Sandbag, a British "non-profit" is also having a go, complaining about all the "carbon fat-cats" who are making a fortune out of the scheme. Like virtually everything else run by the EU, it simply doesn't work, so it is good to see a chorus of criticism building up.

Like Snow White being kissed by the prince, they are slowly waking up out of their entranced sleep. Only, unlike Snow White, it isn't a prince looking lovingly at them but the ghastly spectre of EU bureaucrats who never seem to tire of inventing ways of messing up peoples' lives and costing them a fortune.

But, when even people like Moonbat are beginning to recognise this, there is hope for us yet.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

Farting cows online

To relieve the tedium of churning though the endless lists of climate change research projects, it is rather fun to imagine these projects being up for sale on online, with some dry little civil servant picking them off the list and adding them to his (our) virtual shopping basket.

So, our little man from DEFRA is logged onto his computer and, with our credit card in front of him, he can start lining up the purchases from the website. First on the list is: "An appraisal of unaccounted sources and sinks of greenhouse gas, ammonia, and other emissions to air from UK land management, starting in April 2007 and finishing in September 2008" (AC0108). That costs a mere £49,906.

In the slightly higher price range, he now picks a project entitled: "Air quality measurements on cracking clay soils" (AC0111). Yes, strangely, that is climate change related. Starting in April 2008 and not finishing until March 2013, that costs us £2,046,516.

Something a little less pricey, but still rather in the high end, is: "Inventories of ammonia and greenhouse gasses from UK agriculture" (AC0112). Again for the period April 2008 to March 2013, we get it for £1,450,603. Our account now stands at £3,547,025. "Do you wish to continue, or go to the checkout?" the computer asks. Unfortunately for us, the civil servant wants to continue.

OK. Bargain of the week is: "Agriculture and climate change: turning results into practical action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - A review" (AC0206). A nice quickie, from June to July, it comes at a mere £30,000. That barely changes the running total, which now stands at £3,577,025.

From the bargain basin, our man now adds a "study of the scope for the application of research in animal genomics and breeding to reduce nitrogen and methane emissions from livestock based food chains" (AC204). For a mere £49,939, that was for June 2007 to January 2008. The shopping basket is now at £3,626,964.

In the mid-range price bracket now comes: "The translation of existing research outputs into actions that reduce pollution gas emissions from agriculture" (AC0207). That costs £150,000 for a period December 2007 to March 2009. If you purchase, "The limits to a sustainable livestock sector in the UK" (AC0208), that adds £226,943 to the account, covering the period April 2007 to March 2010. The shopping basket is now at £4,003,907. Sorry, there is no discount for quantity.

Next on the list is: "Ruminant nutrition regimes to reduce methane and nitrogen emissions" (AC0209). To stop cows farting and burping, a mere £746,495, with the study from April 2007 to March 2010. This comes as part of a matched set with, "Modelling nutritional effects on reproduction in dairy cows" (AC0218) - needed to make sure changes in nutrition do not have any untoward effect. For execution between October 2009 and July 2010, this comes at the knockdown price of £76,764.

Also part of the farting cow set is: "Methane emissions by individual dairy cows under commercial conditions" (AC0219), which started in October 2009 and finishes in June 2010. This comes at £174,451. And to complete the set is: "Extended lactations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from dairy cows" (AC0223), which started in November 2009 and ends this month. This comes at £68,481.

As a multi-part set, these items cannot be purchased separately. Thus the complete farting cow set comes in at £1,066,191 bringing the shopping basket to £5,070,098.

To complement this on the bookshelf, on offer is another first-class set. Thus, our man takes: "Economic and environmental impacts of livestock production in the UK" (AC0210), at £149,830, "Review of the Marginal Abatement Cost Curves for Agriculture produced for the Committee on Climate Change" (AC0216), at £19,404, "Scoping the potential to reduce GHG emissions associated with N fertiliser applied to arable crops" (AC0221) at £80,000 and "Feasibility of Green House Gas (GHG) mitigation methods" (AC0222), for £99,239.

To build the set, he also needs, "Vulnerability of UK agriculture to extreme events" (AC0301), at £214,618, "A Research and Innovation Network Supporting Adaptation in Agriculture to Climate Change" (AC0302) for £327,360, "Climate change and biodiversity in agri-environment schemes" (AC0304) at £75,000, and "Climate change impacts on the livestock sector" (AC0307), for £199,661.

Then, to complete it, he buys: "Ecosystem services for climate change adaptation in land management" (AC0308), for £103,766, a "Scoping study on the potential impact of environmental factors associated with climate change on major UK crops" (AC0309), at a mere £29,615, a study on "Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation - a Risk Based Approach" (AC0310) for £128,333, and "Direct energy use in agriculture: opportunities for reducing fossil fuel inputs" (AC0401), at £76,789.

The price of the boxed set is £1,503,615, which brings the shopping basket up to £6,573,713. To add bit of variety, our man then buys a survey on "The role of the Arctic in global climate change" (AE1222) for £553,825 – which was actually carried out between April 1999 and March 2003, bringing the basket to £7,127,538.

Having toiled hard and diligently, our man now takes a little time out for some modelling, buying up a 1999-2004 package on "UK Pollution climate modelling" (AQ01510) for £1,224,641, a 1998-2001 package on "Pollution climate modelling" (AQ02501) for £127,549, a 2004-2009 "UK Pollution Climate Modelling" (AQ0622) package for £2,550,258 and one covering 2007-11 entitled "Modelling tropospheric ozone - phase II" (AQ0704), for a mere £1,009,291. That adds £4,911,739 to the shopping basket, bringing it to £12,039,277.

With a good day's work done, our civil servant proceeds to the checkout, enters the taxpayers' credit card details and presses the "buy" button. Gift wrapping is free and there is no charge for delivery. He is a contented man. A million quid for farting cows and much else besides should earn him a nice bonus.

Meanwhile, the taxpayer is looking at a cumulative bill of £510.6 million for climate change research so far ... and our civil servant is back at work tomorrow.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

The ice floes of reality

The news of the shipping trapped by ice in the Baltic could not have come at a worse time for the warmists.

They are desperately trying to mount a counter-attack, with Peter Stott of the Met Office Hadley Centre asserting that there is an "increasingly remote possibility" that human activity is not the main cause of climate change.

Needless to say, Stott brings nothing new to the table by way of research, relying merely on a review of 100 or so previous studies that purport to track changes in the earth's climatic system. The recycled material, however, is dressed up in new clothes, labelled "optimal detection", which we are told shows "clear fingerprints of human-induced global warming."

Unfortunately for Stott, he relies on the usual poster children, highlighting not least Arctic sea ice cover, his bleatings having to compete with reports of ice-bound ferries and cargo ships.

Sceptics can, of course, make hay with these reports - as indeed the warmists have exploited any number of transient weather phenomena – but it is germane to note that the Baltic incident is partly the result of gale-force winds which are compacting the ice and making it difficult to navigate.

Something very similar happened during September 1983 in the Northeast passage, when an unusually early freeze-up and persistent northwesterly winds drove heavy multi-year ice into Proliv Longa and against the Siberian coast of Chukotka. Dozens of ships were trapped, creating a major emergency which lasted several months, a fascinating account of which was published in the journal Arctic in 1985.

This brings home the salient point that mass shifts in Arctic ice have more to do with wind patterns than they do temperature, something Anthony Watts helpfully confirms in a recent post. As a result, Arctic ice extent is recovering from its 2007 low and is currently within a million square kilometres of normal and increasing as peak coverage approaches.

Here, then, we have a complex, multi-factoral phenomenon, but it is one which the warmists have chosen to interpret almost entirely as evidence of global warming, claiming that temperature rises are the main if not sole cause.

In dissecting the warmists' claims, one does not need to go much further than that. Their style is to assert their a priori hypothesis as fact and then to "cherry pick" disparate information to support their thesis, ignoring confounding and conflicting data – to say nothing of flawed observation.

This, interestingly, they do in the name of science, but there is nothing scientific in their method. These people are not scientists but advocates of a political cause. Thus we see them reacting in precisely that way, seeking funding to advertise their beliefs in the New York Times.

Little perhaps do they realise that, as they shed the scientific mantles behind which they have been cowering, and enter more fully the political arena, they will find that they have a deal in common with the Baltic shipping. The wind has changed and the ice floes of reality are bearing down upon them.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

They just don't get it

If opinion polls are right, fewer people "believe" in climate change now than a few months ago, prior to the leak of emails from the University of East Anglia and the emergence of embarrassing errors in one of the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The science of global warming, it seems, has taken a severe hit in terms of the public's credulity.

So says The Independent leader. It then goes on:

Yet as the latest scientific research makes clear, the evidence is, if anything, stronger than it ever was about the role of humans in the observable increase in global temperatures seen over the past half-century. For scientists it is not a question of "belief", it is a question of observable fact and reasonable inference based on a wealth of scientific data. The latest study by an international team led by the Met Office's Hadley Centre reaffirms this position. The world is warming, it is observed on every continent, and there is no natural explanation that can account for it.

After all these years, they have been completely submerged in their own propaganda, to the extent that they cannot drag themselves free of it. Global "warming" is not and cannot be an "observable" fact. The very concept of a global temperature is an artefact, and the recorded figures are statistical constructs – of extremely dubious provenance.

The more they struggle to deny that their religion is a belief system, the more evident it becomes that that is precisely what it is.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

Five times the cost of the Manhattan Project

Joanne Nova gets an airing in the Australian media, taking on board the canard about the "deniers" getting big money funding.

Relying on her previous work, Joanne notes that the US government spent $79 billion on climate research and technology since 1989. Some of that funding paid for things like satellites and studies, but it's 3,500 times as much as anything offered to sceptics, she says.

It is self-evident that this "buys a bandwagon of support, a repetitive rain of press releases," and for the money you get the PR departments of institutions like NOAA, NASA, the Climate Change Science Program and the Climate Change Technology Program.

However, Joanna also notes that the $79 billion figure does not include money from other western governments, private industry, and is not adjusted for inflation. In other words, she says, "it could be…a lot bigger."

That, to say the very least, is something of an understatement – and it is something of a weakness that the sceptic "movement", such that it is, has not come up with a more comprehensive figure, covering all the major spending countries.

Readers will know that I am attempting to work out the level of UK spending over term. But the very attempt illustrates why that figure has not so far been forthcoming. Spending is hugely fragmented, between several departments of state, including DEFRA and DECC, with contributions from government agencies and quangos, including the Carbon Trust.

Then there are the devolved governments, the regional development agencies and local authorities, plus a very considerable input from the European Union, through the Framework research programme and also via direct contacts issued by the various Commission DGs.

Among the big spenders, though, are the seven UK research councils which collectively dispense billions into the research community each year. You might think that each of these would be able to pinpoint the amount dispensed on climate research, but that it very far from the case.

There is no standard definition of "climate change" and different search parameters yield different results. Furthermore, each of the Councils operate their own, differently structured databases, so the same search parameters yield different results on the various sites.

Furthermore, much of the spending on climate change comes within apparently unrelated categories, such as "energy" and "transport", as well as the ambiguous portmanteau term, "sustainability".

The situation is further complicated by the fact that much of the funding is directed at "research centres and groups" and groups, where the spending is not necessarily specifically categorised. The Councils also fund fellowships, "studentships" and a very substantial number of PhD studies, some in collaboration with other agencies (e.g. other research councils, government departments, the business, local authority and voluntary communities).

All of that probably means that the actual spending on climate change is not only unknown, but unknowable – without a huge effort and a considerable amount of time and labour. Any figure obtained is bound to be a very substantial under-estimate.

That said, I have been trawling through some of the more obvious funding agencies. We already have a figure of £243 million for the Met Office Hadley Centre and recently I looked at the Engineering and Physical Science Council (EPSRC). Its database records 114 university projects, dispensing a grand sum of £63,245,372. And then there are the 912 grants from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) on climate change, at £166,500,521.

Another big spender is the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), but to describe its database as shambolic is to pay it a huge compliment. There is no mechanism for extracting themes, global costs or even refining searches. Entries are duplicated, with different headings, and many "climate change" entries are falsely labelled, completely unrelated to the subject. Furthermore, details can only be obtained by opening each project file, individually.

Thus, I have been reduced, laboriously, to reviewing those individual files and so far have been through about 200 of over 5,000 files, finding details of 50 projects and research centre funding. Those 50 files yield £16,662,221.52 in grants, including £4.6 million for the Grantham Institute at the LSE. That centre also takes £3 million from Munich Re and £500,000 from Yorkshire Forward.

The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research is also funded to the tune of £1 million from the ERSC, but we have established that it is actually funded from multipe sources. Between 2000-2008 it was in receipt of £15.8 million. That brings newly identified spending to £40.9 million.

So far, that brings the grand total of the identified spending on UK research establishments and institutions to £498.6 million. To that, we can add a "bonus" of £25 million for a sustainable consumption institute at Manchester University pledged by Tesco. This centre is made up of one professor, five academics, some 20 PhD researchers and up to 30 PhD students. That raises the total to well over the half-billion mark.

But that is only scratching the surface. Given the time this is taking to tease out the details, I am not sure that I will ever get close to the real figure, although there is still a lot of low-hanging fruit to harvest.

However, at least I can add a reliable half-billion pounds to Joanne Nova's $79 billion – plus we know already that the EU Framework 7 programme includes €1.9 billion on direct climate change research. Framework 6 runs to €769 million. If we take all the Annex 1 countries, the sum expended must be well over $100 billion.

That, in terms of equivalent spending, is about five times the cost of the wartime Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb – then the most expensive ever project. It rather puts the current effort in perspective, especially as we seem to have very little to show for it, other than a very large number of academics bought and paid-for by the climate change lobby.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

Only another million

Shannon Love, over at Chicago Boyz picks up on the fatuity of basing our energy policy on "alternative energy".

"There exists no alternative energy source, no combination of alternative energy sources, and no system of combinations of alternative energy sources that can fully replace a single, coal fired electric plant built with 1930s era technology," he writes. "Yet many want to make this group of functionally useless technologies the primary energy sources for our entire civilization."

The theme is amplified by Wolf Howling, who makes more cogent points, referring also to this blog. We are voices in the wilderness.

Back in the "real" world, continuing my laborious (to say nothing of tedious) search on climate change spending, I happened on a press release from DECC. Of recent origin (18 January 2010), it tells us that "the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the United Arab Emirates have today announced £1m of joint funding for renewable energy policy research."

DECC and the Masdar Institute, it says, have agreed to co-fund research which draws on domestic experiences of policy designed to promote renewables deployment. The research will support the work of the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA) to advise nations on putting renewable energy legislation in place.

Eh? IRENA? Was is das?

And so, wearily, we track down a new monster, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). This article tells us about it, where we learn that:

After much hard work and advocacy by the German government and others, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is now a reality. The two most important decisions for getting IRENA off the ground were taken at a meeting of IRENA member Governments, held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, on 29-30 June 2009. The formal name: The Second Session of the Preparatory Commission of the International Renewable Energy Agency.

And this current little deal was put to bed during the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, 18-21 January of this year (pictured above). A taste of the stitch-up comes with the rest of the DECC press release, which tells that "DECC and the Masdar Institute are also launching a partnership made up of government bodies and private sector companies to be directed and hosted by the Masdar Institute."

We also learn that the partnership "will develop, support and guide small businesses as they look to deploy low carbon energy sources on a massive scale. London-based sustainable financiers Earth Capital PartnersT have estimated a potential investment opportunity for the private sector of up to £2bn." Money talks once again, and we pay. But hey! It's only another million - for now.

More to the point, while we win the intellectual arguments, the machinery of government goes on regardless ... all of which puts the polar bear garbage in perspective. We get assailed by vacuous stories in the media, while the real news goes untold.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

What sort of country is this?

Associated Press reports, via The Independent, 63 people dead and dozens more injured after a stampede that broke out in at a temple in Kunda in northern India, a small town 110 miles southeast of Lucknow.

The incident happened as thousands of people jostled each other to get free clothes and utensils being distributed during a religious ceremony. The crush of people also knocked down a gate at the compound of a temple that belongs to a popular religious leader. Thousands were gathering at the temple to receive free goods to mark the anniversary of the death of the wife of the leader, Kripalu Maharaj.

Deadly stampedes, we are told, are a relatively common occurrence at temples in India, where large crowds — sometimes hundreds of thousands of people — congregate in small areas lacking facilities to control big gatherings. In 2008, more than 145 people died in a stampede at a remote Hindu temple at the foothill of the Himalayas.

Now, compare and contrast. The Indian government, we are told, is planning to spend as much as $200 billion on defence acquisitions over the next 12 years acquiring state-of-the-art war planes, sophisticated helicopters, tanks and nuclear-propelled and nuclear-arm submarine.

An India Strategic defence magazine has reported that nearly half of the Indian defence funding, or $100 billion, will go to the Indian Air Force (IAF) which would need to replace more than half of its combat jet fleet as well as the entire transport aircraft and helicopter fleet.

Fine. And as we reported recently, this third-rate government cannot even enforce basic environmental standards in its own country, and is accepting handouts from international organisations aimed at improving basic amenities. Not least, the UK government is spending about £800 million a year in "aid", supposedly to relieve poverty.

This same country, India, we listen to in the likes of the IPCC, where its views are taken seriously as a basis for policy decisions which affect the economic well-being of billions. From a country that can't even manage basic sanitation standards, or even simple policing procedures?

It really is about time we stopped and thought about who we are listening to on the international stage, where our "aid" money is going to, and why these third rate countries can happily spend a fortune on high-tech weapons and cannot even look after their own peoples. A country which cannot even provide its own sewers is not one we should be taking seriously.

Not least, Dr Rajendra Pachauri needs to be taken with just a little pinch of salt. "Scientists must continually earn the public's trust or we risk descending into a new Dark Age where ideology trumps reason," he says. Take a ride round your own country, mate. You're still in the last Dark Age.

COMMENT THREAD - THIRD-RATE GOVERNMENT

Bird choppers

Too tired to write ... normal service in the morning.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

Making friends

"There have always been people accusing us of being fraudulent criminals, of the IPCC being corrupt," Dr Gavin Schmidt said. "What is new is this paranoia combined with a spell of cold weather in the United States and the 'climategate' release. It's a perfect storm that has allowed the nutters to control the agenda."

The great man, speaking in The New York Times. He certainly knows how to make friends and influence people.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

What is the point?

I missed yesterday's online article (pictured - click to enlarge) by the egregious Louise Gray – queen of all the press releases she surveys.

However, you could not miss it in the print edition - page 9, lead story with a large picture. It depicts poor little polar bears "stranded" on shrinking ice, written in a breathless style that conveys the impression that it had just happened. Yet, as one of my sharp-eyed readers notes, if you google the photographer Eric Lefranc you will find the picture of the two polar bears on the ice was taken in August 2007.

Another of my readers tells me I shouldn't be too hard on little Louise. But hey! She's an adult, and if she doesn't know what she is doing, she shouldn't be allowed out on her own.

One really does wonder what she thinks she is doing, though - and what she thinks she is trying to achieve. But one also wonders about the newspaper. This is news? There is nothing of importance happening elsewhere in the world? A nearly three-year-old photograph of polar bears is that important? For this and much like it, amongst an increasing constituency, The Daily Telegraph is becoming an object of derision. Progressively, it is destroying (has destroyed?) its own credibility.

Try this for an antidote.

NB: lightish blogging for a while ... I have to write a 2,000 word article on Pachauri for a Japanese magazine and the deadline looms. Normal service as soon as I've got it done. Meanwhile, read this on our wonderful, environmentally conscious EU. I’ll review the article properly later.

AND pop over to Biased BBC. More fingers in the till. This is "tip of the iceberg" stuff. How many BBC environment correspondents are taking money from the warmists – and how much are they getting?

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

Falling stars

Via Tom Nelson we get a report from the Fiji Times on the fatuous WWF Earth Hour campaign. This year, it aims to reach one billion people in more than 1,000 cities encouraging them to cast their vote for the earth by turning off their lights for an hour on 27 March.

As of 14 February, however, only 579 cities had signed up for what is already a toned down event. Nelson reports that 88 countries and 4,088 cities participated in Earth Hour 2009, ten times more cities than Earth Hour 2008, which saw 400 cities participate. The lights, it seems, are not going out all over the world. Perhaps the WWF had better stick to writing reports about glaciers and forest fires.

Another star on the wane, it seems, is our old friend Dr RK Pachauri. In a survey reported by the Hindustan Times and others, which lists the "100 most trusted Indians", former president A P J Abdul Kalam and industrialist Ratan Tata top the list. But, says the paper, among the other surprises in the list was R K Pachauri, who trailed at 61 along with TV anchor Rajdeep Sardesai.

And yet another of the mighty fallen is al-Gore. Forbes Magazine, in the persona of Henry I Miller, has him suffering narcissistic personality disorder. Amongst the signs he lists - taken from the psychiatrist's bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - is a: "pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts."

We also get, "A grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)" and, "Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love; believes that he or she is 'special' and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)."

Miller notes that Gore's Sunday op-ed column was entitled, "We Can't Wish Away Climate Change." Too bad we can't wish away Al Gore, he says. But ... you can always wish upon a falling star.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

Climate parasites

The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change is proudly touting its 40-page brochure on climate change in cities.

Cities, we are told, are concentrations of vulnerability to the harmful impacts of climate change. "They are also, directly and indirectly, responsible for the majority of the world's emissions of greenhouse gasses. 50% of the world's population lives in cities, a number that is set to increase to 60% by 2030. For all of these reasons, cities are on the front line in responding to the threats of climate change."

For further details, you must contact Professor Jim Hall, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Newcastle University. By some strange coincidence, that is exactly the same detail on a grant application to the Engineering and Physical Science Council (EPSRC), which just happens to have given him £124,385 for a project labelled SCORCHIO: "Sustainable Cities: Options for Responsing to Climate cHange Impacts and Outcomes".

SCORCHIO, it turns out, is a bit of a bun fight for academics. Not only is Newcastle University a beneficiary, Professor GJ Levermore of the University of Manchester has also done rather well out of it. He has scooped the jackpot of £319,234 for his part in the project. Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia also gets a look in, but is only given a measly £51,225.

And just to keep the other chaps happy and firmly on-side, we have another project in the running, called LUCID: The Development of a Local Urban Climate Model and its Application to the Intelligent Development of Cities.

Professor M Davies of the University College London gets £608,174 for his part in the project. Professor S E Belcher of the University of Reading gets a tidy £238,330 and Professor M Kolokotroni of Brunel University walks away with £179,953.

Just so no one feels left out, we also have SNACC: "Suburban Neighbourhood Adaptation for a Changing Climate - identifying effective, practical and acceptable means of suburban re-design". The big money goes to Professor R Hambleton, a cool £380,454. Runners up are Dr R Gupta of Oxford Brookes University, who gets £182,046, and Professor G R Bramley of Heriot-Watt University, who has to make do with with a mere £63,638.

Mind you, they must all be just a teensy-weensy bit jealous of Dr T Drage from the University of Nottingham. With "Step Change Adsorbents and Processes for CO2 Capture", he grabs first prize in the climate change lottery with a stonking £1,580,881.

However, there is plenty to go round. Altogether, under the "climate change" theme, the EPSRC is paying out on 114 lottery winners university projects, dispensing a grand sum of £63,245,372.

And, of course, all these dedicated, independent scientists are firmly convinced that climate change is a real and present danger. How could £63,245,372 be wrong? And then there are the 912 grants from the Natural Environment Research Council on climate change. At a mere £166,500,521, that also tends to concentrate a few minds – but that is another story.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

A third rate government

Imagine if you would, your locality plagued with a rash of small brickworks. They are primitive in design, belching fumes and befouling the neighbourhood, the smoke and toxins causing real health problems. What would you do?

Not in any way comparable in seriousness, in the tiny physical world inhabited by EU Referendum, we are faced with the unwelcome prospect of a take-away being opened up at the end of our street.

Before it can open, however, it needs planning permission, so Mrs EU Referendum has been busily consulting with local councillors and organising a petition, plus writing to local officials and the planning committee. Like as not, the development will be blocked – just as it has on the three previous occasions the same owner has made the same application for the same take-away.

The issue here, of course, is that to protect our local environment, we seek relief from government. By and large, it performs moderately well. Certainly, there is not the slightest chance of us ever being discommoded by a brickworks being planted at the end of the street.

But that is not the case in India. With the burgeoning economy and a building boom the like of which we have not seen in England for some time, the suburbs of many small towns and cities have been troubled, exactly as described, with a rash of small brickworks, the like of which would never be permitted or tolerated in any developed country.

Now, to develop a corpus of law, including planning restrictions and pollution controls, and an effective enforcement mechanism, is not exactly rocket science. We in England can trace such laws – and the enforcement bodies – back to the Public Health Act 1848, and the emergence of the "public health nuisance" as a statutory offence which could be dealt with by public officials.

Despite the benefits of modernity, however, the governments (federal and state) of India seems entirely incapable of implementing – or, at least, administering such basic controls over their own territories. And this is despite the fact that brickworks are one of the major causes of pollution in India and, being highly inefficient, are holding back rather than promoting development.

So it is that, with governments manifestly incapable of governing, we see the intervention of international agencies such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF), an offshoot of the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

This emerged into my consciousness while hunting the Pachauri millions, when I came across this project, costed at $2,792,593, part funded by GEF, utilising the services of our favourite NGO, TERI.

Headed, "Energy Efficiency Improvements in Indian Brick Industry", it is a worthy enough project, but only scratches the surface of a much larger problem. And, reflecting the priorities of the funding organisation rather than those of the local communities, its main objective is not the betterment of society (and industry) but the control of CO2 "pollution".

Whatever the merits or otherwise of the project, though, the very fact that the government of India allows it is remarkable. Put the shoe on the other foot and imagine how we might feel if, to sort out the takeaway problem at the top of the street, we had to wait for a United Nations agency to descend upon us, throwing money at a local NGO.

That such agencies exist or are allowed to operate – at least, in India – should be regarded by the citizens as an insult, an affront to national pride. To accept that national systems are so inadequate that the intervention of outside agencies for such basic services has to be a most abject admission of incompetence.

Furthermore, far from helping development, it actively undermines it. One can see the sense in calling on outside consultants to assist in identifying inadequacies in governance and administrative systems – although it is hard to accept that such an endeavour is beyond the capabilities of local talent.

Then, surely, the priority would be to introduce such laws as are needed (where they do not already exist) and then to develop the enforcement systems that make them work.

Yet it is the manifest inability of the Indian government to perform the basic functions of government that is holding the country back. Doing part of the job that the government should be doing can hardly help. It is not poverty, ignorance, or lack of resources, per se that is the problem. We were hardly blessed with the attributes and riches that India can now claim, back in 1848 when we started to deal with our own messes.

The problem is a lack of effective governance. We are thus forced to conclude that India is a third world nation because it has a third rate government. And our "development aid", it seems, is making the situation worse.

COMMENT THREAD

The system is broke

I would not be so bold as to assert that I am the only writer in the world who can see links between the death of Sarah Bryant and her colleagues in her Snatch Land Rover, and the proceedings in parliament yesterday over the "Climategate" e-mails.

Nevertheless, links there are at several levels and drawing them together provides graphic illustrations of the fundamental flaws afflicting crucial parts of our society.

In short, what binds Snatch Land Rovers and climate change together are four egregious failures – a failure of government, a failure of parliamentary opposition, a failure in the crucial system of select committee scrutiny and a complete failure of journalism.

To explore these in any great detail, however, would take far longer and require far more prose than the average reader could tolerate, so I need to rely on an outrageously short series of assertions, with the view perhaps returning to the issues and developing them in further posts – or not ... who knows.

First then, the Snatch Land Rover, the story of the tragedy outlined – completely unsatisfactorily in The Times and elsewhere - there is far more to this than we are being told .

Failure number one, in no particular order, is that these vehicles should never have been in theatre. The reason they were is a very long story, but stems from a series of procurement errors going back a decade or more, where the wrong vehicles we bought, money was wasted and massive delays occurred. Thus, on that fatal day, the 17th June 2008, five soldiers were in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong vehicle. Four of them died and one was very seriously injured.

That much was a failure of government. But, in as much as the events which happened that June were the consequence of not one but a series of poor decisions over a decade or more, the fact that the errors were not picked up and challenged puts the opposition in the frame.

Then, because many of the errors were technical in nature and required careful detailed scrutiny, this needed the sort of attention that only a select committee could give – in this case the Defence Committee. It too failed.

At any stage though, the failings of all three institutions could have been picked up by the media, explored, criticised, turned into a cause celebre and thus brought back to our parliamentary representatives, by which means ministers could be forced to take action.

That, in effect, was what happened in June 2006 and in the months following, when a campaign kicked off by this blog gained traction in the media and we got some improved vehicles into theatre, which saved lives and are still saving lives.

Those long-time followers of this blog know exactly what we did and will also know that I have worked very closely with Ann Winterton MP, who will be sorely missed when she leaves the House when it dissolves for the election.

Her effectiveness, based almost entirely on my research and the aid of a small, secret team that we have built up, was acknowledged yesterday in a defence debate by one of my least favourite MPs, Gerald Howarth. At least, though, he had the decency to state from the floor of the House that Ann:

... made her case with a stiletto-like performance on the need for armoured vehicle designs that are more likely to save lives than lose them, as she has done so effectively in the past, as has been acknowledged.

The point, though – which I have made many times – is that, confronted with a failure of government, the nexus of an informed media and a focused parliamentary opposition can effect change. If it is used effectively, despite its inherent limitations, it still works.

It might have worked better and quicker had the Defence Committee done its job properly and the Bryant tragedy most certainly could have been avoided had it performed, but at least on this occasion, we got some remedy – too little, too late, and it was not followed through. But at least we have the consolation that there are men alive, and many more uninjured, who would today be dead or terribly injured.

And so to global warming. In accepting the myth and responding to it, we have a long-term continued failure of government. It may be in a different league to the Snatch Land Rover, and a completely different policy area – but the mechanisms of failure are identical.

Arguably, confronted with forensic, informed and continued challenge from the opposition, backed by a similarly well-informed and properly focused media, much of what has come to pass by way of public policy simply could not have come to pass. Could either the feed-in tariff or carbon capture and storage survive a clinical, sustained and very public attack?

But in those specific issues, and many more, parliament has failed. And, perhaps for the first time, many people actually took the time out yesterday to watch a select committee at work, and were appalled by what they saw.

But if they saw ignorance, incompetence, blind prejudice and stupidity at large, it is mo more or less than what happens day-on-day, in other committees, not least in the Defence Committee, about which I have written many thousands of words. This is not a problem with one committee on one day - they are all as useless. The system doesn't work.

So it is that we are suffering across the board. Thus, while each of us tends to have our own specific interests and obsessions, and rail against the problems and vicissitudes in our chosen fields, we are all having to deal with the consequences of the same fundamental failures – what amounts to a multi-facetted system failure.

And that is what politics is about – and that is why Snatch Land Rovers, global warming, the European Union, schools, hospitals, policing ... you name it, are about politics. The system is broke and it needs fixing.

COMMENT THREAD

Consequences

Via the indispensible Climate Depot, we learn from AccuWeather that not a single tornado was reported in the United States during February 2010. Says senior meteorologist Henry Margusity, if the statistic stands, it would be the first tornado-free February in at least 60 years.

The warmists, however (some of them), are complaining about cyber-bullying, about which Morano is somewhat less than sympathetic. One wonders, though, why fragile little darlings like Gavin Schmidt are so surprised. Venture onto RealClimate - which Schmidt co-founded - and you will get a taste of the arrogance that is now triggering what amounts to a backlash.

Perhaps, though, they ought to be more worried about the first recorded case of climate suicide than their own personal circumstances. The unpredictable violence of nature may have abated temporarily in one corner of the world. The violence of man is altogether more predicable. The warmists are beginning to learn that, for their actions, there are consequences.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

A face of evil

Bishop Hill covers it - the select committee on "Climategate" – and does a creditable job under very difficult circumstances.

The Guardian also does it at some length, while Watts up with that? picks up on the report in The Daily Mail. The point that seem to have stuck is Jones's admission that not sharing data is "standard practice" – for climate scientists at any rate.

What has shocked us all, however, is how old Jones looks (pictured). Clearly, all the publicity photographs we've been using are long out of date. But it's probably not wrong to assume that the strain of the last few months is affecting him.

Nevertheless, I missed all the fun, having spent the best part of yesterday on the net, tracking down more of Pachauri's millions. I'm working on a theory that the predominant source of his funding is European, which seems to be the case, although it is early days.

There's a lot of Swedish money, quite a bit of German federal funding, some Spanish and some Italian. But he gets a lot of corporate funding as well, some US federal funding and hunks from charitable foundations, to say nothing of the Global Environment Foundation. Transparent it ain't, but one thing seems to be clear – by far the majority of his funding comes from taxpayers.

I also stumbled on a couple more EU projects, which brings the total found to date up to 19 in seven years, at a gross value of €58 million, of which TERI takes an unknown share. That is a remarkable success rate for an obscure Indian research institute. I've amended my earlier piece to take account of these projects.

Meanwhile, an e-mail from a tortured reader alerted me to Moonbat's latest piece - tortured because he found himself agreeing with the man. And, remarkably, so do I. Staggering, but there it is.

Moonbat is having a go at the government's feed-in tariffs, with the absurd allowances for the different types of input. He calculates that the money paid out to micro-generators by 2030 will cost £8.6 billion – a loss of £8.2 billion.

He also makes the point that this is a direct transfer of wealth from the poorer consumers, who will be paying for the tariff through their electricity bills, to the middle class who can afford the equipment, and also notes that the Tories (and the Lib-Dims) want even more. These are precisely the points I made in my piece.

What Moonbat also calculates is that, using solar panels, it costs about £430 to save one ton of CO2, by far the most expensive possible way of doing it. By contrast, it costs £8 a ton if you build a nuclear power station.

That the Tories want to up the ante (or so we are told by Channel 4), from the government's two percent to 15, is then even more bizarre than I earlier made out. Over term – if we rely on Moonbat's figures – that is around £60 billion, averaging £2 billion a year. Add carbon capture and you will be reducing half the population to rubbing sticks to keep warm.

Looking at Jones's picture, it is not easy to discern whether the man realises what he's been part of – the forces which he's contributed to letting loose. But that is the face of a man who will be responsible for no end of heartache as people struggle to pay their fuel bills, and suffer when they cannot.

Starkly, that is one of the many faces of evil. It never looks anything like you might imagine – although Pachauri gets close.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

A state of fear (not)

Almost exactly three weeks ago, the press release queen, Louise Gray, was prattling about early springs as a result of global warming.

Fortunately for her, her kindly employer has spared her blushes, not requiring her to write the piece today, which tells us: "For those celebrating St David Day on Monday, there will be a noticeable absence of daffodils as the country's growers say the cold snap has left their crops a month behind schedule."


Britain's "Arctic winter", incidentally, was officially declared the coldest in 30 years "as parts of the country were lashed by gale force winds and torrential downpours."

Strangely enough, almost exactly a year to the day, little Louise was writing under the headline, "Latest spring bloom at Kew for 20 years" – the strap reading: "After a succession of early spring blooms, flowers came out later this year than for 20 years because of the recent cold snap."


And this is why we're perfectly happy to assert that the global warming scare is in its end game. The basis of the scam relies on keeping the population (or a goodly proportion of it) in a perpetual state of fear.

As early as 2005, researchers – amongst them Nick Pidgeon from the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia - were noting that it was necessary to qualify the term "climate change" with the descriptor "dangerous". In this case, they noted that providing information, although the first step, would not alone "suffice to change behaviour".

Crucially, they noted that messages had to be "tailored" to reach "the diversity of interpretations of danger" otherwise they were "not likely to succeed."

Part of that calculus is to draw the marks' attention to changes in their own personal environments, and then relate them to the bigger picture. Not for nothing, therefore, have the warmists focused on issues such as early springs. As these are witnessed first hand, they can be exploited – quite deliberately - as a means of spreading the message.

Unfortunately for the warmists, Mother Nature is not co-operating, exposing the certainties and the dire predictions, willingly spread by the likes of Louise Gray, to ridicule. And while the journalists seem to have extremely short memories, there are always the blogs to remind them of what they wrote.

And this is why the bubble has burst. Al Gore has been reduced to a comedy act and Louise Gray has become an object of pity.

The warmists have lost their grip on the "fear button". They have been deprived of the one and only tool which could enable them to force through their agenda. The rest, like daffodils in spring, is only a matter of time.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

Keep the camp fires burning

Easily the main story in the British dailies is the Cameron speech, a path down which we do not want to follow, other than to note the comment of a fellow blogger who took the Boy to task for his faux patriotism, declaring of himself that it was his patriotic duty to push for a referendum on the EU.

There is little temptation either to have a go at the Gore op-ed in the New York Times.

When you are confronted with a man who tells you that the "climate crisis" is still growing because "we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere - as if it were an open sewer," you know immediately that there is no place to go. Dialogue here is an impossibility.

Much more sense comes from Richard Tol on the Klimazwiebel blog. He has ventured into WGIII territory, arguing that the costs of climate mitigation have been vastly understated. This allows us to put together a composite picture of AR4. The first part overstates the extent of warming, the second exaggerates the consequences and the third plays down the costs of dealing with it.

That apart, as Booker noted, there is something of a lull in the tempo of the campaign. There is nothing much new emerging and what is new does not have quite the same impact of the blizzard of revelations of the past few months.

Such in fact is the hiatus that the BBC manages to report the storms in Western France and elsewhere in Europe without once mentioning global warming or climate change. Despite unusually high winds and an unfortunate number of deaths, it is perhaps a measure of how things have changed that the warmists so far have not sought to exploit this event.

Even the polar bears seem to be coming out in our support, having refused to die out over the last 150,000 years as it got steadily warmer, something which little Al somehow forgot to mention in his overlong op-ed.

However, we still have a long way to go. Lancashire County Council, we are told, has launched a new educational resource pack for the Scout and Girl Guides, to educate them "about the modern threat of climate change through a series of fun and interesting activities linked to their existing awards and badges."

Presumably, that will include details of how to calculate the carbon footprint of the average camp fire, and the joys of sustainable camping, all leading to the awards of badges in climate change prevention - on proof of purchase of the requisite number of carbon offsets. One suspects that Baden Powell would not have been amused.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME