The end is nigh!

Nearly half of Americans – 48 percent – now believe the threat of global warming has been exaggerated. This is the highest level since polling began 13 years ago says a recent Gallup poll.

That category does not seem comparable with a poll in February when 47 percent thought long-term planetary trends rather than human activity was the primary cause of global warming up from 34 percent in April 2008.

However, both polls show the same downward trend in the willingness to accept climate alarmism, a significant factor in the US where climate measures are still live political issues and need popular assent for legislation to be enacted.

Imperfect though the US system might be, there is at least some check on the madness, as opposed to the UK and most of the rest of Europe which is saddled with EU law.

One has to believe, though – almost as an article of faith – that the madness must be running its course, although there is no sign of that some time yet. Going through the system this week is a consultation document on planning guidance for local councils, aimed at increasing the amount energy produced from renewable sources.

This is the handmaiden to the feed-in tariff which will effectively prevent councils and local residents blocking a rash of solar panels and micro windmills installed by granny robbers keen to get their snouts in the renewable energy trough.

The Scottish government has also unveiled its plans for carbon capture in the region, announcing its intention to have quarter of Europe's CCS plants by 2020. On top of its ban on nuclear power plants and its rush to disfigure the countryside with giant bird choppers, Scotland seems to be in a race with England to see which can run out of electricity first.

And despite the great slaughter of birds done by these windmills, the alarmists are still out in force. In a conference in Houston, Texas, they are claiming that global warming threatens some migratory birds with extinction. Never mind the icy conditions and the deep snows that have been covering most of the northern hemisphere. It's global warming wots going to get 'em – and if that doesn't the windmills will.

Meanwhile, in Chicago the US Global Change Research Programme has it that heat-related deaths, the spread of infectious diseases and the threat of natural disasters in Chicago could skyrocket in the coming decades unless greenhouse gas emissions are curbed.

The Daily Mash has had enough though. The March quota of global catastrophe warnings has been reached with almost two weeks to go, it was confirmed last night, it reports.

The monthly total now stands at 240 meaning scientists, politicians, clergyman and the Daily Mail will have to apply for an extension or face a reduction in the April quota of terrifyingly apocalyptic, certain death scenarios. The quota system was established last year so that frightened citizens do not lose track of what is going to kill them by 2030, we are told.

Through the gate before the quota kicked in was UK government science adviser professor John Beddington, warning that the sky shall be filled with Dragons "and they shall devour our crops, befoul our cattle and drink dry our lakes and ponds."

"They will hover above your house and just when you think they've gone, you'll open the curtains and there will be this great big eye staring back at you. Then the Dragon will rip the roof off your house and eat you like a Creme Egg and all because you didn't listen," he says.

Professor Beddington is calling for a multi-billion pound anti-dragon gun to be paid for by increased taxes on Range Rovers and patio heaters.

Frankly, that sounds a great deal more credible than some of the guff the warmists are trotting out, but there may come a time when there has to be a scare quota. However, as we are finding, there is no known means of putting a quota on stupidly. It is not only a renewable resource, this country seems blessed with an inexhaustible supply, especially amongst the political classes.

But when we now hear that environmental changes brought on by global warming may affect women more negatively than men, the end has to be nigh. All we now need is for global warming to be blamed on men and the cycle of lunacy is complete.

Meanwhile, up yours greenies! (See above left.)

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

Germany warning

For anyone with any residual doubts about the wave of madness about to engulf us with the introduction of the feed-in tariff on 1 April, they need go no further than read a recent report from the Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, entitled: "Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energies: The German experience".

Packed with detail and well-argued, its conclusions are unequivocal and coruscating. "Although Germany's promotion of renewable energies is commonly portrayed in the media as setting a shining example in providing a harvest for the world," the authors write, "we would instead regard the country's experience as a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits."

You really cannot get much clearer than that, the result of a failed experiment based on an aggressive policy of "generously subsidising and effectively mandating renewable electricity generation" in Germany that has led to a doubling of the renewable contribution to electricity generation in recent years.

In this narrative, taken directly from the executive summary, we are told that the preference for renewables came primarily in the form of a subsidy policy based on feed-in tariffs, established in 1991 by the Electricity Feed-in Law.

A subsequent law passed in 2000 guaranteed continued support for 20 years. This required utilities to accept the delivery of power from independent producers of renewable electricity into their own grid, paying technology-specific feed-in tariffs far above their production cost of 2 to 7 euro-cents per kilowatt hour (kWh).

With a feed-in tariff of 43 euro-cents per kWh in 2009, solar electricity generated from photovoltaics (PV) is guaranteed by far the largest financial support among all renewable energy technologies. Currently, the feed-in tariff for PV is more than eight times higher than the wholesale electricity price at the power exchange and more than four times the feed-in tariff paid for electricity produced by on-shore wind turbines.

Even on-shore wind, widely regarded as a mature technology, requires feed-in
tariffs that exceed the per-kWh cost of conventional electricity by up to 300 percent to remain competitive. By 2008 this had led to Germany having the second-largest installed wind capacity in the world, behind the United States, and the largest installed PV capacity in the world, ahead of Spain. This explains the claims that Germany's feed-in tariff is a great success.

However, installed capacity is not the same as production or contribution. By 2008, the estimated share of wind power in Germany's electricity production was 6.3 percent, followed by biomass-based electricity generation (3.6 percent) and water power (3.1 percent). The amount of electricity produced through solar photovoltaics was a negligible 0.6 percent despite being the most subsidised renewable energy, with a net cost of about €8.4 billion for 2008.

The total net cost of subsidising electricity production by PV modules is estimated to reach €53.3 billion for those modules installed between 2000 and 2010. While the promotion rules for wind power are more subtle than those for PV, the authors estimate that the wind power subsidies may total €20.5 billion for wind converters installed between 2000 and 2010.

As in the UK, consumers ultimately bear the cost of renewable energy promotion. In 2008, the price mark-up due to the subsidisation of green electricity was about 1.5 cents per kWh, meaning the subsidy accounted for about 7.5 percent of average household electricity prices.

Yet, given the net cost of 41.82 cents/kWh for PV modules installed in 2008, and assuming that PV displaces conventional electricity generated from a mixture of gas and hard coal, "carbon" abatement costs are as high as €716 per ton.

Using the same assumptions and a net cost for wind of 3.10 cents/kWh, the abatement cost is approximately €54. While cheaper than PV, this cost is still nearly double the ceiling of the cost of a per-ton permit under the EU's cap-and trade scheme. Renewable energies are thus amongst the most expensive GHG reduction measures.

There are much cheaper ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions than subsidising renewable energies. For instance, the authors say, the current price of emissions certificates in the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is only €13.4 per ton (October 2009). Hence, the cost from emission reductions as determined by the market is about 53 times cheaper than employing PV and four times cheaper than using wind power.

Moreover, the prevailing coexistence of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) and the ETS means that the increased use of renewable energy technologies generally attains no additional emission reductions beyond those achieved by ETS alone. In fact, since the establishment of the ETS in 2005, the EEG's net climate effect has been nil.

Turning to employment, while projections in the renewable sector convey seemingly impressive prospects for gross job growth, they typically obscure the broader implications for economic welfare by omitting any account of off-setting impacts.

These impacts include, but are not limited to, job losses from crowding out of cheaper forms of conventional energy generation, indirect impacts on upstream industries, additional job losses from the drain on economic activity precipitated by higher electricity prices, private consumers' overall loss of purchasing power due to higher electricity prices, and diverting funds from other, possibly more beneficial investment.

Proponents of renewable energies often regard the requirement for more workers to produce a given amount of energy as a benefit, failing to recognize that this lowers the output potential of the economy and is hence counterproductive to net job creation. Significant research shows that initial employment benefits from renewable policies soon turn negative as additional costs are incurred. Trade and other assumptions in those studies claiming positive employment turn out to be unsupportable.

In the end, Germany's PV promotion has become a subsidisation regime that, on a per-worker basis, has reached a level that far exceeds average wages, with per worker subsidies as high as €175,000. It is most likely that whatever jobs are created by renewable energy promotion would vanish as soon as government support is terminated, leaving only Germany's export sector to benefit from the possible continuation of renewables support in other countries such as the US.

Due to their backup energy requirements, it turns out that any increased energy security possibly afforded by installing large PV and wind capacity is undermined by reliance on fuel sources – principally gas – that must be imported to meet domestic demand. That much of this gas is imported from unreliable suppliers calls energy security claims further into question.

Claims about technological innovation benefits of Germany's first-actor status are also unsupportable. In fact, the regime appears to be counterproductive, stifling innovation by encouraging producers to lock into existing technologies. In conclusion, government policy has failed to harness the market incentives needed to ensure a viable and cost-effective introduction of renewable energies into Germany's energy portfolio.

On the contrary, Germany's principal mechanism of supporting renewable technologies through feed-in tariffs imposes high costs without any of the alleged positive impacts on emissions reductions, employment, energy security, or technological innovation.


Yet, this is the scheme that is to come into force in the UK on 1 April. Predictably, organisations such as the National Trust are leaping on the bandwagon, having already fitted PV to their Dunster Castle in Somerset (pictured, above). They are adding insult to injury by attracting funding from Barclays, the "Big Lottery Fund Bio-Energy Capital Grants Scheme" and the Rural Development Programme. Equally predictably, they do not tell us how much this is going to cost other electricity consumers, concentrating instead on the illusory "carbon" savings.

Delingpole, of course, gets the point (as well as making a ribald comment about the "independent" inquiry of the IPCC), picking up on the point that the British scheme, when fully developed, will cost the equivalent of four aircraft carriers each year.

Anyone with even a fragment of a brain can see the utter madness of the scheme, and the German experience simply reinforces the blindingly obvious. Yet, it seems that our current government's brain cell is flying solo.

But, if you despair that sentient creatures can be so utterly stupid, until we hear otherwise we have to continue to note that the Conservatives want a much larger scheme, set to cost £60 billion a year. That, in case you are interested, is 30 aircraft carriers a year. (Pick your own comparator if you prefer – it would, for instance, buy 50 billion bacon butties, thereby abolishing world hunger except in the Moslem world).

Forgive me for harping on, but this is so staggeringly stupid – in a land beset with stupidity – that it is difficult to take on board. One can only surmise that they really cannot be that stupid, and it is all a joke. After all, the scheme is set to start on 1 April. Sadly, though, they are serious. We are going to have to do something equally serious.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

Is climate change losing us the war in Afghanistan?

The short answer to this seemingly off-the-wall question is yes. British political and diplomatic efforts on the region are not focused on brokering the political deal necessary to secure peace. Instead, they are being subsumed by the seemingly more important need to secure an international climate change treaty.

To explore this in more detail, a good starting point is to visit a commentary in The Guardian by Seumas Milne on the war in Afghanistan. His headline is: "Voters are far ahead of the elite – so they'll get no say", with a fairly descriptive strap line which declares: "Afghanistan should be at the heart of the election campaign. But it won't be because the main parties all support the war."

Particularly intriguing, though is his observation that, "in the coming general election, this ever more bloody conflict is unlikely to intrude into the heart of the campaign, except in well-rehearsed spats about equipment and funding."

Milne then argues that, "For all the promise of a great national debate, don't expect one about the life-and-death struggle on the plains of Helmand. The reason is that, unlike in the case of Iraq, all three main parties are signed up to carrying on with a war the public has decisively rejected."

You can take that latter comment with a pinch of salt – Milne is quite clearly "anti war" and that obviously colours his argument. But the overarching point made is sound. Political arguments – as yesterday at PMQs – are corralled into the narrow confines of "well-rehearsed spats about equipment and funding."

Almost certainly by design, the parties have decided not to debate the "big issues", amongst them being whether we should be there or not. But, between the narrow focus on equipment and funding, and the question of whether we should be in Afghanistan at all, there is another level of debate – our strategy in the region. That too is not being debated.

Thus, as with so many issues, there is that leaden, unspoken consensus, where a wide range of issues which could help voters distinguish between parties are simply not aired, reinforcing the impression that they are "all the same", except in that tiny, claustrophobic patch they have chosen for their battlegrounds.

As far as Afghanistan goes, this leaves us with the bizarre situation where the leader of the opposition rails against the prime minister over things for which he is not directly responsible – or, at least, culpable – while ignoring the bigger issues, such as strategy, for which he is.

However, even that might be a fond hope. The UK line appears to be to adopting the US strategy, while pretending all along that it is one we thought of as well – if not first – and are perfectly content to follow. Forging an independent strategy could well be above Brown's pay grade, as indeed it would be for Cameron if he ever got into No 10. Hence, it is perhaps best not to talk about it.

If that really is the case, then it is a complete dereliction of duty – to the British nation and the troops who are fighting in our name. The United States is relatively new to the south Asia region, has little feel for the subtleties and has no in-depth experience of the politics.

By contrast, as an ex-colonial power, in theory at least, the British have a wealth of experience and an institutional memory which goes back centuries. The policy lead, if it is to come from anywhere, should be provided by the British.

Where this is particularly appropriate and necessary is in our relationship with and understanding of India, the great elephant in the room of Afghan politics. Already, Indian officials are prepared to admit privately that which is obvious to informed observers – there is a proxy war being played out between India and Pakistan on the canvass of Afghanistan.

Some will aver that this is the main driver of the present conflict and it is certainly the case that there will be no long-term (and therefore any) resolution to the instability in Afghanistan until relations between India and Pakistan are normalised.

With that, one might expect British diplomatic activity to be intensively focused on regional conflict resolution. But what is very evident in the Brown administration is the relatively light footprint and that the emphasis is elsewhere.

Informed observers in the region note that the primary policy objective of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office – and that of its partner in crime, the Department for International Development (DFID) - seems to be climate change. Far more resource, in terms of manpower and aid, is going into India to address that issue than is being devoted on Afghanistan, even to the FCO having an official on permanent detachment to Dr Pachauri's TERI in New Delhi.

That this should be the case is hardly surprising. While the resolution of the Afghan conflict is important, it is mostly seen in terms of an expression of support for the US, and thus an extension of Anglo-US relations. Thus, the foreign policy objective is to do enough to maintain credibility with the US. Winning is not an imperative.

On the other hand, the achievement of an international agreement on climate change is a major foreign policy objective of the UK, both on its own account and through the prism of EU policy - where the EU would probably be quite content to see the US-led venture in Afghanistan fail. Furthermore, it has a vital economic dimension. Unless other countries can be prevailed upon to follow the same suicidal course as the EU in the aggregation of damaging climate mitigation policies, the economic consequences could be dire.

In this, India is a key player, not only because Dr Pachauri is chair of the IPCC but because the goodwill of the Indian government is essential if a global deal is to be brokered. And, insofar as any nation can claim such a role, India is also key to that other major player, China.

The confounding factor here is Afghanistan, and more particularly, Indo-Pak relations. Fraught at best, India is extraordinarily sensitive about these (as indeed is Pakistan), to the point of institutional paranoia. It resents anything that looks like external interference – especially from an ex-colonial power such as Britain, of which there is still great suspicion and some resentment.

The upshot of this is that Indian involvement in Afghanistan is a no-go area for British diplomats and the government. It is simply not discussed at any meaningful level. The climate deal takes precedence and the risk of souring relations over Afghanistan is too great to be taken.

We thus end up in a bizarre situation where our troops are committed to fighting in Afghanistan in a conflict which by general accord cannot be won by military means and which requires an overarching political solution. In any such solution, India has to play a major part or it simply will not work. Yet, to protect its climate change agenda, the British government is not prepared to address the Indian government on this pressing issue.

Coming full circle, this could explain the reluctance of Brown to entertain a public debate about strategic options for Afghanistan, preferring instead to conserve political capital and follow the US strategy. Flawed though it may be, it avoids any confrontation with India.

This would certainly explain the Conservatives' reluctance to engage as they also hold climate change policy in a pre-eminent position. Although they would never admit it publically, this is far more important to Cameron than sorting out Afghanistan, especially if the real objective of that adventure is maintaining "face" with the Americans.

Putting this all together, there is a case to be made that British troops in Afghanistan are dying not for peace but for the greater cause of an international deal on climate change. In such a cause, of course, troops are expendable – a small sacrifice to make in the titanic battle to save the planet.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

A carbon neutral blog?

We have been enjoined to participate in another mad greenie scheme, asking us to reduce the "carbon footprint" of our blog by allowing a tree to be planted in our name.

The aim is "to raise awareness of the carbon emissions resulting from the use of the internet - specifically of blogs. A blog with 15,000 visits a month has a yearly carbon dioxide emissions of 8lb."

Thus, to neutralise these emissions the organisers have created "My blog is carbon neutral" buttons (pictured) so that happy little bloggers can demonstrate that they care about the environment and the carbon emissions of their blogs.

This is a small but nontheless (sic) worthy solution to contribute to environmental issues. "Our idea is to show possibilities to make a contribution to protect the environment," say the scheme organisers.

The worst of it all is that they appear to be serious. However, I suppose as a perverse incentive, readers can take some consolation from the fact that, every time they view this site, they are adding 0.000044 lb of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (provided they don't breathe while they are reading).

We are considering setting up a fund to pay al-Gore for the offsets.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

The hidden hand

"Foreign lorry drivers should pay for road use say MPs", blares the headline in The Daily Telegraph.

Knowing the predilection of newspapers for getting even the simplest things wrong, it was necessary to check the Public Accounts Committee report to see if our gifted MPs had really said such a thing. And indeed they had, albeit in not such strident terms. What they actually said was:

We are concerned that foreign lorries use our roads and cause accidents here but, unlike British lorries, do not pay any tax. The Department [for Transport] should work with the Treasury to reduce this imbalance and find a way for foreign lorries to pay for their keep on our roads.

With that, one could not disagree, but – to put it mildly – the honourable members are being more than a little disingenuous. The report was actually about inspection standards for commercial vehicles and the MPs had inquired as to whether inspection charges could be imposed on foreign vehicles as a means of addressing the huge cost of policing the flood of foreign trucks entering this country every day.

They were in fact told that the Department had considered introducing a "European vignette scheme" under which foreign operators would be required to pay a fee for each vehicle entering the country. But the level of the fee would have been fixed by European law at a maximum of €11 and the Department's cost benefit analysis had shown that such a scheme would offer poor value for money.

The problem is that, for such a small sum, the costs of collection and administration exceed the income, so it is a non-starter. Thus, another attempt bites the dust, impaled on the altar of European integration.

A much better – and more accurate – headline, therefore, would have been: "EU blocks charges on foreign trucks," which could have been the case if the MPs had chosen to frame their report in terms of the evidence they had been given. But, as always, our representatives are never anxious to display to their adoring voters just how much power they have given away to the evil empire.

The only way, legally, the UK can impose worthwhile charges on foreign trucks is to have a non-discriminatory scheme which applies equally to domestic trucks as well, which is why the French and the Germans, with their road toll systems, can get away with it. But that would mean huge changes to the British system, which is not something the government is yet prepared to consider.

Thus, the voting public must be kept in that twilight world, a fog of incomprehension, buoyed by meaningless headlines which herald things that will never happen.

And, in the same territory, Cranmer picks up on an amendment to the law on performing rights, which is to remove the exemption currently enjoyed by charities and "non-profits" on paying license fees for performing musical works - in church halls and the like.

Set to cost these worthy enterprises some £20 million a year, no mention is made of the reason for making the change. A little investigation on behalf of Cranmer, however, reveals that the original UK rules were "non-compliant" with EU law and now, after a considerable elapse of time, the amendment is being passed through parliament to regularise the position.

Neither our gifted legislators nor the voting public are allowed to know this, of course, other than being told that the change is "a legal imperative."

Yet, in a matter of weeks now, we are to vote in a general election, supposedly to choose our next government. You can quite understand why so many people are entirely indifferent to this event. A few individuals in Westminster may swap sides in the House, but our rulers will stay the same.

COMMENT THREAD

The sinister nexus

The Policy Network has, very helpfully, partially updated the work we did on 18 July 2007 when we first discovered that the EU was paying environmental groups such as the Friends of the Earth Europe to lobby itself.

To that effect, we are offered a report which analyses one programme of funding, in which DG Environment distributed over €66 million to environmental NGOs between 1998-2009.

Specifically, the report examines funds allocated to the so-called "Green 10" – a coalition of ten NGOs pushing for an "environmental" agenda in EU policy-making. It finds that nine out of the ten receive funds from the commission, eight receive one-third or more of their income from the commission, and five of those rely on the commission for more than half their funding.

We also learn that, from 1998 to 2009, there was a substantial increase in funds given by the Commission to environmental groups: from €2,337,924 (1998) to €8,749,940 (2009) – an average increase of 13 percent every year.

Details of some of the payments are given, and it transpires that in 2008, DG Environment provided the European Environmental Bureau with nearly €900,000, 52 percent of its income that year. Similarly in 2008, Friends of the Earth Europe received €790,020. This is compared with €635,000 (from all EU sources) in 2006.

From the EU register of lobbyists, we see that FoE Europe also got money from DG Employment and Social Affairs, to the tune of €37,292, as well as €92,113 from DG Development.

FoE Europe also got finance from the German and Dutch ministries of environment, respectively €61,527 and €79,632, bringing its public sector income to €1,064,529 out of its total income of €2,143,893. Other donors included the Oak Foundation, which gave €330,274, and the James M Goldsmith Foundation which donated €55,811.

An EU parliamentary answer, which gave some of the 2009 figures, is just as revealing. The WWF European Policy Office gets €661,878, Climate Action Network Europe gets €259,762 and FoE Europe gets €813,721. FoE also gets two grants totalling just under €94,000 for the EU's "Youth in Action" programme, one for a project on "building capacity for youth participation in Friends of the Earth Europe".

The authors of the Policy Network report, however, seems somewhat surprised to discover what we were calling two years ago a vast nexus of influence. Environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have enormous influence in the European Union, they write, then telling us that the primary function of EU funding for the Green 10, it appears, is to support self-justifying propaganda, rather than to promote the wider public good.

Yet, that is in fact only a part of it – a small part. The Commission staff working document of October 2008 could not make this clearer.

EU legislation, it tells us, itself acknowledges that NGOs "contribute to the development and implementation of Community environmental policy and legislation." Thus, it (the legislation), "provides for funding of operational activities of environmental NGOs that are primarily active in protecting and enhancing the environment at European level".

What, in effect, therefore, has happened is that the NGOs have become an arm of the state, contributing to "the development and implementation of Community environmental policy and legislation." They are part of our system of government, subsumed in much the same way that trades unions became part of the Soviet Union.

This, of course, goes back to the White Paper on European Governance of 27 July 2001, which specifically targeted "civil society" – of which NGOs are part – as a means of getting "more people and organisations involved in shaping and delivering EU policy." This built on an initiative started in December 1997 when payments to environmental NGOs were first authorised.

However, what is really interesting is a point not made by the Policy Network authors. They assert that the majority of Green 10 members now receive considerably more money from the Commission than in previous years, but the amount allocated to the NGO funding programme increased at its greatest rate in 2003 and 2004. After 2006 the total amount has only increased in line with inflation.

By contrast, some environmental NGOs have enjoyed a considerable increase in their incomes, far above the inflation rate, with FoE Europe enjoying an increase from €1,377,430 in 2006 to €2,143,893 in 2008.

This can be partly explained by the emergence of shadowy groups such as the European Climate Foundation, bringing a new line of money from outside the EU budget, aimed at helping "Europe play an even stronger international leadership role in mitigating climate change." Then there is the equally shadowy role of the giant charitable foundations, in the FoE's case, the Oak Foundation being a substantial donor.

This money is being used as what amounts to a force multiplier, adding to the EU's reach and extending its influence at no cost to itself. To some extent, therefore, this sinister nexus is even more worrying than the EU itself, which at least doffs its hat to the idea of accountability. Not so these organisations, which are spending money on influence and we have no idea as to its true origin.

Once again, we have "powerful vested interests" at work, and we are not even close to finding out who is really pulling the strings.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

You can't buck the narrative

There are several things I try to do with this blog. In bringing you a diet of posts each day, one of my aims is to avoid being derivative. My preference is to bring genuine, new or little-known information to the table, or to add fresh thinking or analysis to current topics.

Despite that, there is value in repeating existing material, and spreading the word – and it is done exceedingly well by a large number of blogs. But, in many areas where there is a narrative up and running, it is either wrong or heavily distorted, either by act or omission. In this case, mere repetition or commentary which takes the baseline facts as read simply perpetuates the errors and the distortions, helping to lock in the narrative to the point where it achieves the aura of truth, irrespective of the actual facts.

No more so is this the case than with the Snatch Land Rover, an earlier preoccupation of this blog, and in particular the reports attendant on the coroner's inquest on the death of Cpl Sarah Bryant and her three colleagues in Afghanistan in June 2008.

The basic facts of this incident are not disputed and are well established. On 17 June 2008, Bryant and four other soldiers were riding in a Snatch Land Rover which impacted a pressure plate IED. It was blown apart killing four, including Bryant, and seriously injuring one other. By common consent, the Snatch Land Rover did not provide adequate protection and, had they been better equipped, the soldiers might have survived.

What is in dispute – or should be - however, is a claim that has become a central part of the narrative, a classic example of which is here, but one that is repeated endlessly. This is that the reason for the wholly unsuitable Snatch Land Rovers being in theatre was due to a shortage of funds and a refusal by former chancellor and now prime minister Gordon Brown to permit the purchase of replacements. We hold no brief for Mr Brown, none at all, but this narrative is wrong, wholly and completely wrong – and dangerously so.

That said, I do not intend to rehearse all the details as to why it is wrong. I have already done that in my book Ministry of Defeat, a book well-known in military, political and media circles, and strenuously and quite deliberately ignored because it contradicts the narrative and tells people what they do not want to know.

The same story, is told in even more detail in hundreds of posts in my much-neglected sister blog, Defence of the Realm, a blog I have largely abandoned because – as I have found to my cost – there is little value in telling people things they do not want to know, when they prefer the prevailing narrative. Nevertheless, the whole story is there and will remain so, mute testament to the power of the narrative, for the very few who are interested.

A good place to start would be with seven linked posts, taken from my book under the generic heading "Lost before it started". The links are here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7.

Viewing the disgusting performance of David Cameron during today's PMQs, however – when he sought to make political capital out of the "narrative" on the backs of fallen soldiers (matched only by the performance of Mr Brown), it is necessary to remind readers of the last chapter of the story, which led that Snatch Land Rover down the path to destruction.

The story was set out in a DOTR post here in November 2008, with further elaboration here. The essence of the story is that a batch of protected vehicles – the Australian Bushmaster – had already been ordered and could easily have been in theatre at the time to replace the Snatches, and which could well have saved Sarah Bryant and her colleagues' lives.

From this, several crucial points emerge. The first is that, even at this late stage, funding was not an issue. The cash had been allocated, the vehicles selected and the purchase approved. Why they were not then in theatre is a question for the Army, not ministers, to answer.

Secondly, even at that time, the Conservatives knew all about this transaction. They knew because I told them – giving them a full verbal briefing - and sent a full dossier down to their defence team, with all the supporting data.

Then, as now, they had all the information they needed to know that this episode – and indeed the run-up – was nothing to do with cash shortages. It was everything to do with a sequence of mistakes and incompetence by senior Army officers and civil servants, all of whom are currently covering their backs, using the narrative – not least in testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry – to hide their tracks.

Despite this, the Conservative chose – quite deliberately – to run with the narrative. That was not because it was the truth. They knew it was not. Simply, that was the politically convenient "attack strategy" which offered the most promise and the best prospects of short-term political advantage.

Out of the limelight, however, Ann Winterton, myself and others, have been painstakingly teasing out the truth, ignored by the political claque and the media, because it does not fit the narrative.

Worse still, that applies to the media. The "Bushmaster" dossier has been placed before innumerable journalists and even very recently, a senior journalist from a major broadcasting organisation checked out the information. It stood up and yesterday I was asked to give a recorded interview for television news. The footage was not used. It ran counter to the narrative. Others don't even begin to see the point and have never tried.

Yet, the information is there. The information about the Vector is also there – the vehicle that the Army chose as the replacement for the Snatch, just under 200 at a cost of nearly £100 million – a vehicle that was so dangerous and so mechanically unreliable that it had to be replaced ... by the Snatch, which then cost £5 million to upgrade.

Then there is the saga of the Panther, with 401 ordered in 2001 at a cost of £166 million which then required an additional £20 million to get 67 into theatre, eight years after they had been first ordered. No wonder the Army was short of money and vehicles.

But the Conservatives knew all that. Many journalists also knew what was going on, but chose to ignore it. The ever-staunch Booker has retailed many of the details in his column, not only for them to be ignored but censored as well. You want "powerful vested interests", look at the arms industry. There is, it seems, no way of bucking the narrative. People will believe what they want to believe – and suppress the rest.

In conclusion, I have to admit I am soured and not a little embittered by this process. When I first heard about the death of Sarah Bryant and her colleagues, I was in Paris, sitting in the shade of an armoured personnel carrier, eating an agreeable steak dinner, discussing Army requirements with a galaxy of senior personnel.

From this and other sources – some at an unbelievably senior level who have fed this blog with material most political journalists would die for – I have come to learn a great deal about the inner workings of Whitehall and the machinations of Army politics. I know what I'm talking about, and information last seen with "secret" plastered over it has found its way into DOTR. But that has been to no avail. The narrative prevails.

It actually makes writing DOTR an exercise in futility. Having neglected it for some time, I am now minded to wrap it up. I owe myself one more post, though – which has been months in the writing – on why the military adventure in Afghanistan will fail, can only fail and will lead to our eventual ignominious departure, carefully spun as a victory. That I have decided, when I get round to it, will be my swan song on that blog.

COMMENT THREAD

It's started

Recognising a bargain when they see it, the investment firm Low Carbon Accelerator (LCA) has invested £500,000 in wind and solar power project developer Vigor Renewables in order to cash-in on UK feed-in tariffs (FITs).

Vigor, we are told, is a new company formed to take advantage of changes to UK FITs, which aims to partner with land-owners, as well as commercial property owners and managers, to build and operate renewable power generating assets across the UK.

Each of the solar and wind energy sites they build will be designed to qualify for the FITs which come into effect in the UK on 1 April 2010 and "guarantee an inflation linked income for sub-5MW renewable energy projects." For solar projects, the incentives are available for 25 years and for wind 20 years.

In an unfortunate turn of phrase, Vigor managing director Oliver Hughes says the FIT has created a "wealth of opportunity" for renewable energy developers in the UK. "We are pleased that LCA, as a pioneer in clean-tech investment, has recognised this opportunity and the return potential for investors and for property and land-owners," Hughes said.

So it starts ... the pigs rush to the trough, scooping up the cash by the handfuls. They would be mad not to do so. The government has devised an utterly mad system designed to put £8.6 billon a year into the kitty, available for anyone able to afford the initial investment. AND THE REST OF US PAY.

This one, like so many, has crept in under the radar, a perverted, distorted reverse Robin Hood scheme where the poor are robbed to give to the rich. And even with today's debauched currency, £8 billion plus A YEAR is a lot of money – you could build four aircraft carriers a year with that, every year.

This is money which is going to be siphoned out of our pockets, all to produce electricity in one of the least efficient and most expensive ways known to man. On our backs, will arise a vast, bloated "green" industry, milking the poor and the less-well-off, just to pay homage to a mad obsession. In Zimbabwe, runaway inflation produced scenes such as the one shown. If you see something similar in Britain, you are looking at a solar energy developer.

AND IT IS OUR MONEY.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

A multiple of insanity

Moonbat's spat over feed-in tariffs continues with a repost from his nemesis, Jeremy Leggett, defender of the solar industry.

For once, though, we are completely on Moonbat's side. Only now is the enormity of the government's proposal beginning to sink in, with its intention to have a full two percent of UK electricity supplied from micro-generation by 2020. This will largely be delivered by solar panels, the most profitable option for small installations.

Actually, solar panels are one of the least cost-effective ways of producing electricity, costing £4,000-6,000 per kilowatt of installed capacity. Without massive government support, payback times (with interest) could be a hundred years or more to recoup the typical installation costs of between £3,000 and £20,000. Given that the devices have a maximum lifetime of 30 years, that would never have happened.

However, from 1 April, the government is offering 41.3p per kWh produced – a supposed "feed-in" tariff although it is paid even if the owner uses all the electricity produced. From this, it estimates that a typical 2.5kW well sited installation could earn £900 a year and save £140 a year on the electricity not used – the subsidies calculated to give a 5-8 percent return on investment.

The income from the electricity sales is not taxed so, for a higher bracket taxpayer – who would have to pay for the electricity out of earned income, the payback time can be reduced to as little as 15 years. By 2020, however, the government estimates that the subsidy – paid by electricity users – will be costing £8.6 billion annually. Since only the better off will be able to afford the installation costs, this amounts to a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to those fortunate enough to be able to buy the equipment.

To get to this state, the number of installations, currently approximately 100,000 and, up from an estimated 82,000 at the end of 2004, will need to increase to something like 7-10 million. And, as a rough estimate, the capital cost could be in the region of £100 billion – for two percent of our electricity production – with which we could buy 100 percent of our requirement in the form of brand new nuclear power stations.

It is this capital expenditure which will be defrayed by the feed-in tariff, replacing a composite scheme which included installation grants.

There was an inkling of how profitable solar was becoming last year when Guardian journalist Ashley Seager spent £8,500 on solar roof panels (having got a 50 percent grant for a system that cost £17,500) and claimed the experience to be financially rewarding.

That was before the government's feed-in tariff came into force and, when it does the owners will be able to sell all the electricity they produce at 41.3p per kWh, even if they use it all themselves.

Just how insane this really is can be seen from a similar scheme introduced in Germany in 2004 – with a 57.4 euro cent/kWh subsidy for domestic users. This pushed solar power capacity to about 9GW, delivering about 1.35 GW, or about one percent of total German production - including some massive industrial installations, which get a slightly lower subsidy rate.

But the cost has been massive. German electricity consumers last year paid more than £10 billion in subsidies, forcing chancellor Merkel to cut the tariff by 15 percent this month, with more cuts in the pipeline.

With the UK feed-in tariff – and other tax incentives – solar panels are now a good investment for anyone who can afford them, which means that there will almost certainly be a massive uptake. The government may well reach its 2020 target of two percent but the rest of us will be paying dearly for the privilege.

Even allowing for a low end installation cost of £4,000 per kW installed, the load capacity of domestic panels in the UK rarely exceeds 10 percent. This means that the 2GW needed by 2020 to make up 2 percent of our electrical production would still cost in the region of £80 billion. At this rate, no wonder Merkel finds the subsidies unaffordable. And yet, David Cameron wants not 2 but 15 percent, jacking up capital costs to a potential £600 billion.

If the current scheme is already insane, what the Tories are proposing is a multiple of insanity. And we can afford neither.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

They are serious

An article in the Western Mail gives a clue as to what is going on.

Under the heading, "House cattle – or we will have to sharply cut herds", we learn of recommendations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farming by permanently housing cattle, delivered to the Welsh rural affairs minister Elin Jones. They come from the Land Use Climate Change Group, established last year "to consider how agriculture and land use can reduce greenhouse gases and adapt to climate change."

The Welsh Assembly Government has saddled itself with a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by the year 2040 and, having virtually destroyed any productive industry in the province, the government is casting around for ways of making this madness happen.

Up pops Professor Gareth Wyn Jones, who chaired the Land Use Climate Change Group, obligingly offering a "road map" to help them on their way to complete their economic suicide – in a region where the majority of the working-age population is either employed by the state or on benefits.

Jones is picking on probably the only productive enterprise left in Wales, proposing "a range of initiatives" including the introduction of anaerobic digestion to reduce methane emissions, improving farm productivity, including more efficient use of manure, fertilisers and energy, expanding woodlands and developing renewable energy sources.

His emphasis, however, is on maintaining intensive dairy, sheep and beef farming while diversifying and increasing vegetable crops. In the longer term, he recommends developing a more radical approach where much of the cattle herd is housed and methane emissions are captured.

In shroud-waving mode, Wyn Jones warns: "If we don't go down this road you are really into the scenario where people will say we have got to get rid of 60 to 70 percent of our animals and move away from livestock farming completely."

There is, of course, a delicious irony here, with the "green" agenda now pushing intensive animal husbandry as a means of saving the planet, putting the global warming alarmists on a collision course with the open-toed sandaled organic brigade which wants their animals au naturel.

The trouble is that the "planet savers" are serious. They have latched onto methane emissions from farming – arguing that the gas is 20-times more potent than CO2 – and onto nitrous oxide, which is approximately 250 to 300 times more "effective" as a greenhouse gas than CO2.

Of course, the current enthusiasm for this issue may have something to do with Welsh universities being awarded £4 million last year to set up the Climate Change Consortium of Wales, aiming to build their fund to £10.2 million over five years.

But, as we noted yesterday, agriculture seems to be becoming the new target for the warmists, who are looking for a quick fix to kickstart their efforts to meet emission targets.

Even Rajendra Pachauri's private cash machine, TERI, is getting in the act, last year hosting a "workshop" in Delhi on methane reduction, managing to extract a $100,000 grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency to finance it.

Methane, it seems, is the new poster child, hence Geoffrey Lean's recent hyperventilation. And, although he gets a hard time from the comments, the money stacking up behind this obsession suggests that the warmists are not going to let go of it any time soon.

The only minor problem is that they are also set to stack up costs to such an extent that food - like energy - is likely to become an unaffordable luxury for an increasing proportion of the world's population.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

Not over by Christmas

One baulks slightly at the dire Connie Hedegaard, EU commissioner on climate change, being called a "climate chief", although that rather puts her in the same league as Rajendra Pachauri – and that hasn't done him a great deal of good.

Anyhow, said "chief", according to the Financial Times and sundry others, is playing down the prospects of it brokering a new, all embracing climate treaty at the global conference this December in Mexico. Given the general incompetence of the EU in everything it touches, it is comforting to see this institution recognising its own limitations, although the obduracy of India and China might have something to do with the pessimism.

Hedegaard is being remarkably candid on this issue – not that she has much choice. "To get every detail set in the next nine months looks very difficult," she said. "Europe would love that to happen, and I would love that to happen . ... but my feeling is that it is going to be very difficult to get a treaty."

Her pessimism is shared by the outgoing Yvo de Boer, but far more important is German chancellor Angela Merkel. Wholly in tune with the mood music, she too is downplaying the prospects. But she is actually going further, expressing doubts that a new deal can be made in time to replace Kyoto by the time it runs out in 2012.

With Obama's "cap 'n' fade" running into problems and the Aussies having little local difficulties with their attempts to commit economic suicide, things are not looking too good for the warmists. However, their Lemming-like tendencies are not to be under-rated and they may yet pull something out of the bag ... even if the occasional one is wearing a lifebelt.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

Jobs for the boys (and girls)

Climate Change Coordinator. Location: Camden, London, £22,797 to £23,997.

For over 70 years Plan has been working with the world's poorest children, families and communities. Today, child centred community development is at the heart of our programmes with 11 million children in 48 developing countries. We are currently recruiting for a Climate Change Coordinator (fixed term contract to 31 January 2013) whose role will be to coordinate the implementation of a three year EC-funded project on climate change involving schools, youth groups and partner organisations in six countries (UK, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Kenya, Malawi and Senegal). This exciting new project is aimed at increasing public awareness of the links between climate change, poverty and child rights, and engaging ...

Green jobs anyone?

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

Neck and neck in the marginals

Through the run of declining polls, the Tories have relied, almost as an article of faith, on their internal polling telling them that they were doing better in the key marginals.

However, a Populus poll in 100 key seats currently held by Labour and targeted by the Conservatives gives the lie to that optimism. According to The Times, Labour and the Conservatives are neck and neck, "raising doubts over David Cameron's ability to win a clear overall majority".

The poll has the two main parties on about 38 percent in the seats it polled, giving the Tories a 6.7 percent swing in their favour since 2005 - but not enough to give them an overall majority.

What the polls cannot measure very easily – if at all – is the UKIP effect, where very small numbers of voters can exercise a highly localised effect and rob candidates of seats they might otherwise have won.

Publicly at least, the main parties and all of the MSM pundits are ignoring this phenomenon, yet it was real enough in 2005, when I ventured the view that it could cost the Tories this election.

It may not. As polling day draws close, the "tiddlers" could be caught in the classic two-party squeeze as sentiment polarises. But, given the current anti-politician sentiment and Cameron's lacklustre performance, it would be unwise to bet on it.

The Tories will no doubt continue to argue that a vote for any one of the minority parties is a vote for Brown – a simplistic vision that they hope will drive unenthusiastic voters into their camp.

However, with the possibility of a lower than average turnout and a degree of sophistication amongst those who do go out and vote, a different calculus could apply.

An extremely narrow vote in favour of Brown could put him back in government with no overall majority, in an extremely unstable coalition, leading to a collapse within months – and certainly within a year.

Meanwhile, electoral defeat for the Tories would ensure a very rapid replacement of Cameron and a new leader who might be more responsive to the wishes of the core vote, taking a more robust stance on issues such as the EU and climate change.

A vote for Brown under those circumstances is in fact a vote for a new Tory leader, with the added advantage of forcing the Labour leader to confront his own mess, ensuring that the next election sweeps the newly invigorated Tories into power with a healthy majority.

Inevitably, this is speculation – but not wildly so. And in this strange, iconoclastic mood that afflicts the nation, anything is possible. At least ebay is doing its bit though.

COMMENT THREAD

Who owns the science?

Jo Nova makes a good point in her recent piece about the hideously complex task of tracing funds spent on climate change research. It's a PhD size project, she writes, and there are no grants available to fund this kind of PhD.

Actually, as I've hinted before, I'm not sure it's even doable. The tortuous flows of money, the multiple agencies involved, the extremely slack accounting in some instances, and the lack of any clear definition of "climate change", all conspire to make any calculations extremely tenuous.

There may even be an element of exaggeration – not only for the reasons Jo suggests, that some agencies and governments want to be seen as "green" but also, many projects are deliberately falsely categorised, just to get the money. Knowing which way the wind is blowing, many academics tag a "climate change" label on work that would have been done anyway, to improve the chances of a grant award.

However, the job has got a great deal harder with a poorly reported announcement at the end of last year, heralding the launch of a "Global Research Alliance" on agricultural greenhouse gases. The Washington Post was one newspaper which did pick it up, on 17 December, retailing a statement from US agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack on a 21-country "research alliance" which would include the United States.

The objective is "better to understand - and prevent - greenhouse-gas emissions from farms," and Vilsack promised that the US department of agriculture would increase its spending on farm-emissions research by $90 million over four years, bringing it to a total of $130 million.

Canadian environment minister Jim Prentice pledged $27 million (Canadian) in additional funding over the next five years. New Zealand also announced a contribution of $45 million over four years.

This multiplies the tracking problem in several ways, as Vilsack says research projects will be shared with the other countries in the alliance, leading to multi-national projects of the type we have already seen – but on a larger scale. Global costs will (sometimes) be identified, but there will be no clues as to the apportionment between individual countries.

This is exactly the sort of dynamic evident in EU research funding. For instance, in a current project called INCREASE, we see details of an "integrated network on climate change research activities on shrubland ecosystems". The lead institution is Københavns University in Denmark but there are seven partners, from five countries, including the UK.

Crucially, the UK partner is the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) which itself is a funding body. Thus, funding identified on the NERC database will include an unknown element of EU cash, making apportionment extremely difficult. Yet this is no small project. It started in March 2009 and will finish in February 2013, costing €7.78 million, of which the EU will pay €6 million.

What is not evident from the title is that this is part of a much larger study aimed at identifying the "carbon budget" of a small part of the ecosystem, the combined projects all focusing on agriculture and its assumed role in climate change.

This issue has massive political and economic significance, the extent of which could hardly be overstated. In the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, the role of agriculture was highlighted. As the global industry is reckoned to account for 14 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, it is being presented as a prime target for "mitigation" measures.

What this amounts to is that agricultural policy is progressively being re-framed. No longer is food production, per se being seen as the absolute priority. More and more, the climate change industry is looking to "land use" as an attractive way of reducing emissions – where the focus is on bullying individual farmers rather than having to confront the power of the industrial conglomerates.

Already, in EU terms, spending is huge. One project alone, code-named CARBOEUROPE, received €16.3 million in funding from the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) and about €30 million from member states.

In the current round (Seventh Framework Programme), spending is continuing, with projects such as SOILTREC, aimed at establishing an "integrated model of soil processes that describes key soil functions", part of the process that will help define the EU strategy on agricultural management. Led in this case by Sheffield University, this is costing €9.16 million, of which the EU is paying €6.97 – and calling the shots. Once again, NERC is one of the beneficiaries.

Another massive project is GHG EUROPE, looking at "Greenhouse gas management in European land use systems", aiming to "improve our understanding and capacity for predicting the European terrestrial carbon and greenhouse gas (GHG) budget." It started in January and will run until June 2013, costing €8.93 million, with a €6.65 million EU contribution.

The point, of course, is that while individual nations are paying for this research, through their EU membership payments and the greater amounts in "co-funding" top-ups, they neither define the research priorities, control the research nor own the results – despite the political implications. Equally, the research scientists involved are not responsible to their national authorities but to a supranational agency. Not only are they becoming politicised, this is happening at an international level.

Unsurprisingly, when it comes to the Global Research Alliance, the EU is heavily involved and plans to support it with secretarial assistance. It is seen as an opportunity to coordinate funds and activities, the EU priding itself on "its long experience in bringing together national research programmes to tackle shared problems."

So, yet another transnational body is in the making, detaching still further the research effort from its national base, blurring the lines of responsibility and destroying the last vestiges of accountability. And there lies the greatest of all dangers. Too often, we hear ministers tell us that they must be "guided by the science". But, we have to ask, who owns this science – and who is it working for? It is no longer ours, and it does not work for us.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

It is a religion!

"... the plain fact is that we surely need a prophet, not yet another committee. We need one passionate, persuasive scientist who can connect and convince – not because he preaches apocalypse in gory detail, but in simple, overwhelming terms. We need to be taught to believe by a true believer in a world where belief is the fatal, missing ingredient."

Peter Preston in The Guardian, bemoaning the lack of public commitment to "climate change."

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

The great scam exposed

Connie Hedegaard, the newly appointed EU commissioner for climate change is waking up to the realities of the carbon trading scam set up under the Kyoto agreement, which could permit an overall increase in developed world emissions.

According to a report from Reuters, the commission is about to announce that "loopholes" in the system mean that the world is awash with surplus carbon credits which can be bought up by manufacturers in developed countries who can then avoid having to make emission cats.

The main problem, it seems, is the collapse of heavy industry in former communist countries during the transition to a free market economy, leading to sharp falls in carbon emissions and a huge surplus of emissions rights. Russia and Ukraine are the main problem, with Russia alone on track to under-cut its Kyoto target by about 1.4 billion tons.

These spare credits could cover up to 6.8 percent of current developed world emissions, which means that they need only reduce actual emissions by 6.4 percent below 1990 levels over the next decade. Furthermore, loose rules for allowing credits for forestry and agriculture could erode another nine percentage points from the agreed emission cuts.

In all, this actually means that real cuts could amount to as little as 2 percent but, if all the scams are taken into account, developed countries could increase emissions by 2.6 percent above 1990 levels and still meet Kyoto obligation. This falls far short of the real 25-40 percent cut recommended by the IPCC.

In fact, it points to the enormity of the fraud perpetrated, which is now worth $128 billion annually, in traded credits, to the great benefit of traders, financiers and brokers. Having ripped of this huge sum, they make Bernie Madoff – who only took $18 billion – look like a rank amateur.

The difference is, of course, that Madoff went to jail, while the perpetrators of this scam are still roaming free, supported by the UN and all the governments of the world, including the EU. But then, the best way to rip off the public has always been to get government approval first. All you have to do is cry "global warming" and the world is your oyster.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

Lean times for the alarmists

"It may just be one of the most ominous bits of evidence yet that global warming could run out of control," writes Geoffrey Lean.

"Scientists are beginning to find that methane frozen in permafrost under the Arctic Ocean is bubbling up to the surface and reaching the atmosphere, raising concerns that one of the most-feared potential self-reinforcing effects of climate change may be starting to get under way."

You have to read right down to the end of the report, however, to find the great man writing: "It is far too early to draw firm conclusions from the findings."

Then we learn that "Only a tiny amount of methane has been released so far compared to what is emitted elsewhere in the world and the Alaskan researchers are only beginning to track how the methane moves into the atmosphere."

Aha, though, never fear ... er ... please do fear. Be very afraid, please – my job depends on it. This, Lean assures us: " ... certainly bears watching closely. It could turn out to be one more piece of evidence that the effects of climate change are becoming evident faster than anyone predicted."

They are getting desperate. It'll be farting cows next.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

No answers in the soil

In The Observer is a report on a fascinating scientific dispute which provides a graphic illustration of the uncertainties of climate science and the unreliability of predictions offered by disparate scientists – to say nothing of the utter shambles of the research effort.

The nature of the dispute seems clear enough from the article headline, which tells us: "Rise in UK carbon emissions disputed by report". The strap lines further elucidates the issue, with the information that "Soil deposits of CO2 'not fuelling global warming yet – but will in future'".

Thus informed, we learn from the text that a major study for the UK government "has cast doubt over claims that rising temperatures are causing soil to pump greater amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, further fuelling global warming."

The original claim was reported in September 2005 in the journal Nature (Bellamy, P H, et al) covered at the time by The Guardian. Then, under one of those classic scare headlines, we were told that, "Loss of soil carbon 'will speed global warming'", the piece retailing the claim that, over the previous 25 years 100 million tons of carbon dioxide had been released by the soil of England and Wales.

Leaving us in no doubt as to the importance of this release, we were told that the figure cancelled out all emissions cuts in the UK since 1990.

As to the source of the information upon which the claim was made, we learn that it was derived from the National Soil Inventory, carried out initially between 1978 and 1983, and again from 1994 to 2003, by the National Soil Resources Institute at Cranfield University.

In full scare mode, professor Guy Kirk of the university – and a co-author of the Nature paper - declared that it had been reckoned that the CO2 fertilisation effect was offsetting about 25 percent of the direct human-induced carbon dioxide emissions. He added that it was reckoned that the soil temperature emission effect would catch up in maybe 10 to 50 years' time. But, according to his analysis, "We are showing that it seems to be happening rather faster than that."

To complete the current Observer "take" on this claim, we are now told that a national survey of the soils of Great Britain, funded by DEFRA, claims to have found no net loss of carbon over approximately the same period. Now, a special study group is being proposed, with an independent statistical expert, to examine why the reports differ and which result is more likely to be correct.

However, if we now step aside from the newspaper report and look at the National Soil Inventory, we find some fascinating detail which would seem completely to re-frame the debate.

The concept, it appears, arose in 1976 from a recommendation of the Soil Science Committee of the Joint Consultative Organisation for Research and Development in Agriculture. It wanted information on "the total content and extractable amount of biologically important trace elements in soil samples representing their principal soil series," entirely for agricultural purposes.

From the outset, then, this was not intended as a climatic research tool. Soil sampling was restricted to the uppermost six inches of mineral soil (or less if rock intervened), or of peat, as appropriate. Litter layers were not sampled.

Furthermore, when samples were estimated to have an organic carbon content of greater than 18 percent, these were classified organic soils and no carbon estimation was made. It was considered that the contribution of mineral matter to their behaviour was small. In other words, no attempt was made to determine climatically relevant carbon assays. That could hardly be scaled up to give an accurate national carbon budget.

Nevertheless, with the signing of the Kyoto agreement, the British government needed data on carbon levels in soil and between 2000 and 2003 financed a project costing £183,219 to quantify soil carbon fluxes associated with land management and land use change. This was led by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH).

In 2001, the department launched another project, this one costing £90,971, to set up a UK soil database.

The subject was of sufficient concern for Professor D Powlson of Rothamsted Research to set a project entitled: "Impact of soil carbon decomposition on future global climate." Starting in March 2004 and lasting a year, this cost £28,104. Before that was complete, though, along came Kirk with his assertions in the Nature paper. In response, DEFRA commissioned a review – at a cost, incidentally, of £11,000 – under the heading: "Unravelling the loss of Soil Carbon".

Interestingly – and this was back in 2006 - its report noted that there was a "high degree of uncertainty" in the data. This, it was surmised, mainly derived from:

… limitations in our measurement and sampling strategies, a lack of background information (e.g. management / history) at re-sampling sites, the lack of standard reference depth markers in the soil (so that the soil sampled at successive samplings can be compared on a like-for-like basis), lack of knowledge of C loss processes, lack of knowledge concerning the interaction of soil C conserving practices and future environmental change.

The following year an expert group was set up, this little exercise costing £40,124. It noted:

Current literature on the state of soil carbon levels in UK soils is equivocal. Predictions of future changes in soil carbon levels related to land use and climate change are highly uncertain, so evidence-based policy setting is extremely difficult.

It took another year for it to identify "a strategic and coordinated programme of work to deliver integration of existing UK data on soil carbon (and greenhouse gas fluxes)." It also established a practical methodological framework through which data could be integrated, allowing gaps and uncertainties to be quantified.

Crucially, it reported on the need to collate UK data on soil carbon and the release of greenhouse gases in relation to land management. This would, it said, enable a clear picture to be gained of the current state of UK soil carbon and the processes driving change, and inform model predictions of future changes.

Even as the expert group was being recruited, however – and long before it had reported – Kirk had been busy obtaining funding from the Natural Environment Research Council. With a grant of £176,931, he set up a project labelled: "An improved empirical model of soil carbon dynamics in temperate ecosystems."

Starting on 2 Jan 2007 - 1 Jul 2009, Kirk repeated the 2005 mantra, that previously "it was thought that most soil carbon was safely locked away. But a recently-completed survey of the soils of England and Wales by members of the proposed project has shown losses of carbon over the past 25 years on an enormous scale: enough to cancel the UK's reductions in carbon emissions from fossil fuels." For the money, Kirk proposed to improve the soundness of current computer model predictions, based on updated mathematical modelling.

Even while he was thus toiling, the DEFRA soil survey was being updated having started once more in 2005. By 2008, data collection was complete, requiring the department then to spend £134,430 on another project to assemble all the data and present it in useable form, the work having been completed last year.

This brings us back to the Observer report, where the work is fronted by professor Bridget Emmett (in left of picture, addressing our illustrious leader) of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH). She contradicts Bellamy, P H, et al, stating: "Overall there was no change in carbon concentration ... and [we] cannot confirm the loss reported by the National Soil Inventory."

Needless to say, she offers as consolation prize, with the assertion that the absence of carbon loss should not be taken to mean the absence of a threat. In the long term, she says, on the basis of computer modelling, scientists predict a "tipping point" when the faster activity of microbes in warmer soils starts to generate more CO2 than can be absorbed by plants.

Kirk, however, is unrepentant. His team is still "confident in our results [that] there was a net loss of carbon". But he said subsequent studies had suggested that "at best" 10 percent of the loss of carbon was due to climate change, and the rest was due to changes in land use and management, such as conversion of grassland to crops.

Emmett has the last word on this. "The amount of carbon in topsoils across England and Wales is about 2 billion tons, so detecting a change of even 4 million tonnes per year is very challenging," she says. "Small differences in methods between the two surveys can therefore have a large effect."

Tactfully, she does not mention an earlier critique of Bellamy, P H, et al which noted the admission from the Kirk team that they "do not have sufficient data at the scale of the National Soil Inventory to explore these [land use]effects." Then as now, they did not know the role played by land use, which means that, even if carbon levels had fallen, they had no idea of the role played by climate change.

Meanwhile, despite Kirk spending £176,931 on modelling carbon dynamics in temperate soils, DEFRA is shelling out another £99,712 on a project entitled: "Modelling the impact of climate change on soils using UK Climate Projections," aiming to finish this year.

Not to be outdone, the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Boorman , the University of Exeter and the University of Leeds are sharing a £354,109 grant on the "impacts of climate change on erosion, sediment transport and soil carbon in the UK and Europe."

Tackling these challenges at national and regional scales will necessitate the development of new modelling approaches capable of investigating the feedbacks, we are told, with the researchers seeking to discover whether the effects of future changes in climate on the redistribution of soil organic carbon within the landscape be quantified and incorporated as a feedback into future models of terrestrial carbon biogeochemistry.

With more models than an Airfix catalogue, however, and £1,118,600 of taxpayers' money spent, it seems we are no further forward than when we started. The answer, most definitely, does not lie in the soil.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME