topic Re: I was wrong about the Climate Change Act!! in Community Spirit

I was wrong about the Climate Change Act!!

catsnknots — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 22:28:56 GMT

This is so true... and I think many MP's will have a change of heart as the years progress.

My biggest regret as an MP is that I failed to oppose the 2008 Climate Change Act. It was a mistake. I am sorry.

On the very day the Labour government passed this fatuous attempt to "stop global warming", it was, if I remember rightly, snowing. Had I opposed the Bill, it wouldn't have made much difference, but I feel I should have known better.

Unlike much of the gesture legislation that goes through Parliament, this law has turned out to have real consequences. The Climate Change Act has pushed up energy prices, squeezing households and making economic recovery ever more elusive.

The aim of the Climate Change Act was to create a low carbon economy. I fear the Act will do that, but perhaps not the way intended. The Climate Change Act is giving us a low carbon economy the way that pre-industrial Britain had a low carbon economy.

Cutting carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2020 – as the Act requires – means, in effect, making energy costs so high that some will have to go without. How is that progress?

The Act's carbon price floors push up prices. Instead of energy producers competing to supply households and businesses with a product at a price they are willing to pay, the legislation introduces a system of price fixing. Suppliers switch to so called "renewable" energy sources, and the end user pays.

An unaccountable quango – the Committee on Climate Change – gets to determine energy policy much the way that central bankers now run monetary policy. The precedent is not a good one. Adair Turner, head honcho at the Financial Service Authority, was its chairman.

The tragedy is that it does not have to be this way. Technological innovation is discovering new ways of obtaining vast reserves of fossil fuel. As our understanding grows, the idea that human activity alone causes climate change seems less certain than it once did. Wind turbines, it turns out, are renewable in the sense that they need replacing every 25 years – or perhaps even every 15.

Too often, public policy in Whitehall is shaped by residual ideas and assumptions – which turn out to be wrong. Nowhere is this more so than when it comes to energy policy. It is time for a fundamental rethink about energy policy – starting with an acknowledgment that 2008 Act has got it wrong.

http://www.talkcarswell.com/home/i-was-wrong-about-the-climate-change-act/2607

Re: I was wrong about the Climate Change Act!!

the_hawk* — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 22:53:42 GMT

WOW shock horror, some are just working all this out now !

Re: I was wrong about the Climate Change Act!!

the_great_she_elephant — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 01:31:58 GMT

Cutting carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2020 – as the Act requires – means, in effect, making energy costs so high that some will have to go without. How is that progress?

Yes, heaven forbid that we do anything to stop 'progress'. After all it will be our children's children, not us who have to deal with the effects of climate change when it reaches crisis point We won't be around to cop the flak when they realise how badly we let them down - so lets party on regardless.

Re: I was wrong about the Climate Change Act!!

the_hawk* — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 01:46:40 GMT

Climate change has been happening since the dinosaurs ruled and that was before the ice age it just goes round and round.

Re: I was wrong about the Climate Change Act!!

monman12 — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 03:04:03 GMT

TH: "Climate change has been happening since the dinosaurs ruled"
Very true, but in 100,000 year cycles not a few hundred years!

"My biggest regret as an MP is that I failed to oppose the 2008 Climate Change Act"

I am not the slightest bit concerned about a UK politician and a 2008 UK statute, especially considering that there is not the slightest possibility of it making any difference in global CO2 levels, considering the total, and level rate change since 1990!

Re: I was wrong about the Climate Change Act!!

darksideofthemoon — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 08:56:48 GMT

I won't bore you with the lot, but you can Google it if you are interested 🙂

Little Ice Age

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The reconstructed depth of the Little Ice Age varies between different studies (anomalies shown are from the 1950–80 reference period).

The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period(Medieval Climate Optimum).^[1] While it was not a true ice age, the term was introduced into the scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939.^[2] It has been conventionally defined as a period extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries,^[3]^[4]^[5] or alternatively, from about 1350 to about 1850,^[6] though climatologists and historians working with local records no longer expect to agree on either the start or end dates of this period, which varied according to local conditions. NASA defines the term as a cold period between AD 1550 and AD 1850 and notes three particularly cold intervals: one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, each separated by intervals of slight warming.^[7] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report considered the timing and areas affected by the LIA suggested largely independent regional climate changes, rather than a globally synchronous increased glaciation. At most there was modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during the period.^[8]

Several causes have been proposed: cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, an inherent variability in global climate, or decreases in the human population.

Re: I was wrong about the Climate Change Act!!

topsidesoul — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 08:37:15 GMT

His blog has ads for solar energy all over it?

How ironic?

Re: I was wrong about the Climate Change Act!!

topsidesoul — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 08:44:31 GMT

Oh look he has a book he is promoting, great timing isn't it?