UK & US climate developments

 

As the Trump presidency and cabinet appointments raise hopes that the politicisation of climate science may at least be challenged politically, if not arrested, a new report reveals that Britain’s global warming fantasy tale has already cost it over £300 billion, mostly in “rising costs borne disproportionately by the less well off, the elderly and the vulnerable.”

You would think that those who usually presume to talk for the less well off, the elderly and “the vulnerable” would all be up in arms at the news – except those who are usually most vocal to that end have been largely in the van of their oppression. (

The report, which is based entirely on official figures, exposes the mischievous attempts by ministers to try and disguise the true cost to households.
    “Britain has been gulled by false assurances that decarbonising our economy would be costless into signing up to a stupendous bill of over £300 billion up to 2030,” said Peter Lilley MP, the study’s author and one of the few Members of Parliament who voted against the Act back in 2008.
    “Hardly anyone in Westminster is aware of this even though it is more than double the cost of HS2, Heathrow and Hinckley put together. Yet so far it has not reduced our ‘carbon footprint’ as we have outsourced our carbon emissions to developing countries such as China. Described by the PM’s special adviser as ‘an act of self harm’, our climate change policies are harming our standard of living, our jobs and our industry.”
    The report details the huge burden on every household, explaining how numerous devices have been used to hide the real price of decarbonisation, which is rising at a rapid rate.

It would be instructive to see an independent measure of the costs to New Zealand of our own Emissions Trading Scam – that one John Key duplicitously told the Wall Street Journal we couldn’t really afford.

Meanwhile, back in the States, climate scientist Judith Curry rounds up with multiple links the Shifting Sands of the Climate Debate as “insiders are out; and outsiders are becoming the insiders.”

The sands of the climate debate are surely shifting rapidly, with major implications for those who are active in the public debate — scientist/advocates on both sides, environmentalists and the libertarian think tanks, the media, and policy makers and politicians.
    One side stands to lose a massive amount of influence in the public debate, whereas the other side is potentially ascendant (to the extent that this issue continues to have political saliency).
    I have hopes that climate research will be a winner in all this, with more openness and transparency and allowance for diversity of perspectives and funding for a broader range of research topics … [and] solutions [that] will come from innovations in the private sector and state and local governments — not from federal decrees or U.N. proclamations.

Check out her post for many, many links on what’s been happening and all the implications for science and environmental science with new appointments at the EPA, DOE, OSTP – on the changing of the tune “from both sides of the climate debate …  towards a more rational centre ground” – and the many “grounds for optimism for … saner, effective climate and energy policies.”