News & Analysis
Cost of Warming Fraud Comes Clear
From the Met Office's mistakes to Gordon Brown's (pictured left) wind farms, the cost of 'green' policies is growing. Impeccable was the timing of that announcement that directors of the Met Office were last year given pay rises of up to 33 per cent, putting its £200,000-a-year chief executive into a higher pay bracket than the Prime Minister. As Britain shivered through Arctic cold and its heaviest snowfalls for decades, our global-warming-obsessed Government machine was caught out in all directions. For a start, we saw Met Office spokesmen trying to explain why it had got its seasonal forecasts hopelessly wrong for three cold winters and three cool summers in a row. The current cold snap, we were told with the aid of the BBC – itself facing an inquiry into its relentless obsession ... No attempt was made to explain why the same freezing weather is affecting much of the northern hemisphere (with 1,200 places in the US alone last week reporting record snow and low temperatures). And this is the body on which, through its Hadley Centre for Climate Change and the discredited Climatic Research Unit, the world's politicians rely for weather forecasting 100 years ahead. Then, as councils across Britain ran out of salt for frozen roads, we had the Transport Minister, Lord Adonis, admitting that we entered this cold spell with only six days' supply of grit. No mention of the fact that the Highways Agency and councils had been advised that there was no need for them to stockpile any more – let alone that many councils now have more "climate change officials" than gritters. – UK Telegraph
Dominant Social Theme: A difficult conundrum.
Free-Market Analysis: We've spent plenty of time on global warming and of course we considered it a power elite promotion from the start (many years ago). But we have been gratified to see how thoroughly the meme has collapsed, even though like all dominant social themes the official efforts have not ceased. This is one of the hallmarks of an elite promotion, as we have pointed out, that even when debunked government recognition and solutions continue apace.
But what has brought us back to global warming today is that it is increasingly a good example of how government doesn't work and how the free-market is distorted by government as a matter of course. It is difficult for people often to understand that even when the issue is not nearly so egregious as global warming. True, government involvement in the market distorts the market's price information and leads to inefficiencies, opportunity costs and terrible queues and shortages. But sometimes this is hard to perceive, even though ultimately socialism doesn't work. Unfortunately, mixed economies can go on for a considerable period of time and yet, when the tipping point is reached, they can collapse rather quickly. (See Venezuela.)
But in the case of global warming, we have a clear cut example of how the government can distort the marketplace emphatically and with great vigor. In Britain, the socialist government of Gordon Brown is moving ahead on many fronts to recognize global warming and its impact on society even as the evidence mounts that the earth is heading toward a serious cooling decade. Here's some more from the article:
With the leasing out of sites for nine giant offshore wind farms, there was Gordon Brown's equally timely relaunch of his "£100 billion green revolution", designed, in compliance with EU targets, to meet a third of Britain's electricity needs. This coincided with windless days when Ofgem was showing that our 2,300 existing turbines were providing barely 1/200th of our power. In fact, 80 per cent of the electricity we used last week came either from coal-fired power stations, six of which are before long to be closed under an EU anti-pollution directive, or from gas, of which we only have less than two weeks' stored supply and 80 per cent of which we will soon have to import on a fast-rising world market.
In every way, Mr. Brown's boast was fantasy. There is no way we could hope to install two giant £4 million offshore turbines every day between now and 2020, let alone that they could meet more than a fraction of our electricity needs. But the cost of whatever does get built will be paid by all of us through our already soaring electricity bills – which a new study last week predicted will quadruple during this decade to an average of £5,000 a year. This would drive well over half the households in Britain into "fuel poverty", defined as those forced to spend more than 10 per cent of their income on energy.
Finally, following Mr. Brown's earlier boast that his "green revolution" will create "400,000 green jobs", there was the revelation that more than 90 per cent of the £2 billion cost of Britain's largest offshore wind farm project to date, the Thames Array, will go to companies abroad, because Britain has virtually no manufacturing capacity. At last, in all directions, we are beginning to see the terrifying cost of that obsession with "global warming" and "green energy" which for nearly 20 years has had all our main political parties in its grip. For years governments, including the EU, have been shovelling millions of pounds into the coffers of "green" lobby groups, such as Friends of the Earth and the WWF, allowing them in return virtually to dictate our energy policy. Not for nothing is a former head of WWF-UK now chairman of the Met Office.
The bills for such follies are coming in thick and fast. Last winter's abnormal cold pushed Britain's death rate up to 40,000 above the average, more than the 35,000 deaths across Europe that warmists love to attribute to the heatwave of 2003. Heaven knows what this winter will bring. And remember that the cost of the Climate Change Act alone has been estimated by our Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband at £18 billion every year until 2050 – a law that only three MPs in this Rotten Parliament dared oppose. Truly have they all gone off their heads.
We can see emphatically from the above how wrong-headed the British government is being about climate change and how much money it is wasting. This article is even clearly written enough to show that the government is causing mayhem and death with its policies. And lest Americans think they have escaped the worst of it, we would point out that the Obama administration is dead set on remaking the ruined car manufacturer GM as a "green" car company. In fact, the Obama administration's policies differ little from Gordon Brown's – only America is a bigger country than Britain and the libertarian and conservative push back to green policies has been emphatic.
The green phenomenon should convince one the existence of power elite promotions even if one generally doubts the organizations of such massive efforts. In fact, water vapor is a far stronger "carbon sink" than carbon itself. Carbon was chosen as the greenhouse gas of choice because it is associated with ENGINE emissions. While it might be nice to regulate water (that will surely come) the point of the greenhouse gas promotion was to regulate anything that ran on fuel. Very profitable if you can get away with it.
But have those behind this promotion gotten away with it? We don't think so. The promotion can limp along for a while longer and probably more laws will be passed. But the buy-in is not what it was, in our humble opinion. As we have pointed out many times a promotion is a promotion because people believe in whatever fraudulent, fear-based nonsense is being pushed. And, yes, it is pushed, through think tanks, white papers, universities, NGOs, the United Nations and then, gradually, as it trickles down, through the mass media, public schools, church groups, etc. But if people cease to believe in the promotion then it is for all attempts and purposes defunct.
Information is key. The promotional chain has been built over the past 100 years especially in Britain and America at great expense. The only pleasure we partake in analyzing it, is that it is all tumbling down about the ears of those who constructed it. The Internet is doing a most effective job of demolition.
Truth is powerful. Ideas will win out against laws and guns – no matter how many of them there are. One of the biggest promotions of course is the false sense of helplessness and fear that the power elite has worked hard to instill in people through various "Illuminati"-type promotions – prominent awarding of prison complex contracts to Halliburton, etc. Resistance is futile, etc. We think even good old George Orwell may have been involved in this sort of nonsense. But It will not stand. It is collapsing along with all the rest.
Conclusion: The green meme is a various obvious example of how government distorts industry and economic outlooks. In Britain, billions of pounds are being spent on green industries and useless wind farms. In America, billions if not trillions will be spent trying to create a variety of green industries and in propping up car companies like GM with auto technology that few desire and fewer will probably purchase unless forced to by law. And yes, for a while, an industry can be built by force, a market (cap and trade) can be created by regulatory bluff. But ultimately, the market is not fooled and ruin advances. This happened most recently with the fiat dollar itself after nearly a half century or monetary puffing-up. And this leads us to our normal concluding prognostication that not only will green industries eventually collapse but also that money will at some point reclaim its private dominance within the arch of a private gold and silver standard.
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Posted by Michaeliharris01 on 01/25/10 11:12 PM
The a href="Click to view link"government marketplace/a in terms of green industry should consider reaching a compromise deal that our people could benefit. I think we have to adopt to this development so that we could have our own product and service in this area.
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Posted by Brian on 01/19/10 06:42 PM
A warning that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it. Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming.
A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.
It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.
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Posted by Snowy on 01/16/10 02:43 AM
I agree with the the conclusion on the problems with government (and bankers), fiat, inflation, largesse, etc.However, global warming or not (as a professional engineer I take exception to this so-called "indisputable science"), is not the use of green technology the future of energy?
Non-renewables have boosted our standard of living to unprecedented levels, these are in finite supply, and therefore any suggestion that the market should decide on which energy alternative to use appears rather short sighted.
Does the market look 20 to 40 years out (that's how long it takes to make changes in energy systems)? Does only money matter in evaluating energy alternatives? Does our sustaining, yet declining (pollution, depletion regardless of "global warming"), environment not matter?
If all useable energy is from the sun, would not a prudent man believe solar and wind are the way to go? It is my considered opinion a paradigm shift is coming, but by non-action it will be thrust upon us with a triple impact of financial, environmental and social calamity when non-renewables become so scarce that we cannot feed even the West.
That said, I agree whole-heartedly that politicians have no business making these decisions for us; these are the brain-trust that propose corn as alternative fuel supply. Somehow, collectively, we need to come to our senses and have an informed discussion about what matters and make some wise decisions.
We must change how we use oil for transportation, food production and products. I suggest the reader learn the energy value of sunlight falling on the roof and terms of gallons of fuel. Then we will be on the right track.We are coming to the point where the sleeping public will be jolted awake by the pop of the energy bubble and the need for a massive reformation. Wait too long and the outcome will be tragic.
Reply from The Daily Bell
"Somehow, collectively, we need to come to our senses and have an informed discussion about what matters and make some wise decisions."
Couldn't we let the market decide?
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Posted by Bill on 01/14/10 08:35 PM
This topic was recently addressed in Jess Ventura's (ex-governor of Minnesota) new show: Conspiracy Theory. The focal point was that there is no conclusive evidence man is responsible for the climate changes we may be seeing.
Sir Morris Strong, an oil billionaire, who buys and sells energy credits, along with his right hand man George Hunt, and Edmund Rothschild (World Conservation Bank) stand to make billions off the fear generated projects paid for with government borrowed monies.
Dr. Ben Santor was is a prominent scientist who has blown the whistle on this way before the recent "climategate." So I believe this shows another example of predatory capitalism buying influence and buying votes. As Ventura stated: if you want to find out who/what is behind something, follow the money trail.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Ventura is tilting at some heavy hitters. Anyway, we wouldn't call what is going on predatory capitalism as it has nothing much to do with a free market. We would call it mercantilism.
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Posted by Mark on 01/14/10 04:42 PM
Interestingly, even the Telegraph article demonstrates the most ridiculous aspect to the whole global warming ruse - that the damage done to us by the "cure" for global warming will be much worse than the "disease" of global warming, if global warming is indeed even true!
The economic deprivation, reduction of innovation in areas such as medicine due to lack of capital for research and development because of the money being sucked out of the economy will be far more damaging than atmospheric warming could ever be.
Some honest atmospheric scientists have acknowledged this. In fact, I believe history shows that societies do better during warm climatic periods. After all, why do people move to California? It sure can't be the wonderful government in Sacramento!
As an aside, I have to agree with your statement on Glenn Beck. His fawning interview with Sarah Palin last night would seem to me to indicate that Beck is more interested in ratings and conservative approval than actually pushing someone like Ron Paul who actually has the knowledge and mental acumen to fight these elite agendas to the front.
On the other hand, Beck's show is very useful in that he exposes the masses who watch Fox to the behind the scenes reality that is really driving world events.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Beck has done many good things. But Lord, we remember all the rest, especially when he was at CNN. If he is fawning over Sarah Palin without pointing out her unquestioning support of every aspect of the war on terror and Homeland Security erosion of freedom and privacy, warrantless wiretapping, etc. then he is once again doing violence to the philosophy of civil libertarians whose ranks he proclaims he has joined.
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Posted by Bill Ross on 01/14/10 01:37 PM
Perhaps the Russians are attempting to move the magnetic north pole into their territory, so them can copyright and license North?Or, perhaps, they want to control the direction we are collectively headed due to the moral vacuum left by the US being captured by the "dark side"Anything is possible. Very little is plausible.
Reply from The Daily Bell
A growing moral vacuum in the US seems plausible to us.
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Posted by Ruth on 01/14/10 01:29 PM
Ultimately, God is showing how foolish this notion of global warming is. He is making it very clear.
Reply from The Daily Bell
It seems clearer and clearer.
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Posted by Georgia Hamblin on 01/14/10 01:09 PM
The powers that be behind the Global Warming scam forgot a very important truth. God created this earth and is in control of the weather! He can humble a people with His mighty power, usually when He wants to send a message loud and clear.
Sometimes people hear His message and respond in humility, and some choose to go on their unbelieving merry way! Things will continue to deteriorate worldwide in direct relationship to the people's belief in God.
History seems to repeat itself in each period of civilization. The power mongers and those whose greed drives them will continue to have it their way, and the people will mourn under the oppression - but there will come a turn around!
Reply from The Daily Bell
We think a turnaround is taking place even now ...
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Posted by Emil Rasnussen on 01/14/10 01:00 PM
in the discussion of climate change why do we never hear mention of the 50 megaton a-bomb detonated by the soviets in the atmosphere in december of 1958?
It was proven to move the jet stream in an attempt to disrupt the weather over north america, and has not settled down yet. Another thing never mentioned is the shifting of the earths magnetic poles, a phenomenon which is occurring fairly rapidly, and something no government can control.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Thanks. Here's some more on the poles. ...
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QUESTION: News articles say the next magnetic pole shift is imminent. Magnetic fields in Africa are getting weak and they say in some places you can't get accurate compass readings. What will happen to us without protection from the sun's radiation?
ANSWER: Don't stress, kid. When talking about the magnetic poles flipping, we can say three things with reasonable confidence: it's going to happen, we don't know when, and it probably won't be as bad as some people think.
As far as scientists can tell, the earth has had a magnetic field for billions of years. The ancient Chinese were likely the first to discover the field's effect on lodestones, although Europeans may not have figured it out till the Middle Ages. In 1600 a physician in Queen Elizabeth's court named William Gilbert proposed that the earth itself generated the force that moved compass needles. Scientists began measuring the strength of the earth's magnetic field in the 1830s using a magnetometer invented by Carl Friedrich Gauss. Since then the magnetic field has been subject to intensive if somewhat inconclusive study, the upshot of which is that we're not certain why it's there, but we're lucky it is - it does a lot more than make compasses work. In combination with the atmosphere it shields us from many of the solar and other charged particles that would otherwise spatter the planet's surface and its inhabitants; it also protects the atmosphere itself from erosion by the solar wind.
While the experts are vague on the details, they're pretty sure the earth's magnetic field is a result of movement in the planet's liquid iron and nickel core (although Jupiter and other planets believed to lack such cores also have magnetic fields). They also know the field isn't stable and tends to shift in at least two different ways: the magnetic poles typically wander around slowly, but every so often flip completely, reversing the magnetic polarity of the planet.
Ever since the compass was invented, navigators have noticed that the direction indicated by the needle changes slightly each year. Over the last century, both the north and south magnetic poles have been drifting north (that is, toward the geographic north pole, which itself wanders somewhat, but let's not make this more complicated than it already is). The north magnetic pole historically has moved at a rate of about ten kilometers per year, but has lately accelerated, heading toward Russia at four times that rate.
Click to view link
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Posted by Lyfo on 01/14/10 12:32 PM
My thinking may be a product of this distorted Zeitgeist but I have always opined that we would have a lot more highly efficient, fuel efficient, small footprint, yes 'Green technologies if we were working in a laissez-faire, free market economy. The choice would certainly be there for those who were so inclined.
Most people do not like squandering and wasting resources unnecessarily. Detroit went the way of the Railroads and for the same reasons " Government domination. Bottom up market-tested enterprise must by necessity be viable. The top down, big project approach will indeed discredit what may have been good ideas.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Yes, by all means let the market decide. But when it comes to green technology, it seems obvious it isn't.
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Posted by ColdInAmerica on 01/14/10 11:54 AM
There are two conundrums in this whole global warming fraud. First, how the globalists are continuing to push it even in the face of the mounting evidence that is is nothing but a scam to fill their pocketbooks and push us "useless eaters" into deeper submission. Maybe they just haven't yet readied their next great lie.
The second conundrum is how many "useless eaters" in America still don't see through this entire global-warming, carbon-pollution lie.
Maybe tainted food and water, chemical-based medicine and, especially, TV mind control have rendered the older generations brain dead and it will be up to the younger generation to get us out of this mess.
Thanks to the Daily Bell (and the Telegraph) for helping expose these plots. Now, if we could get more people to stop listening to Glen Beck and Bill O'Reilly and start reading...
Reply from The Daily Bell
Thought Beck (whom we still cannot bring ourselves to like) was on top of the global warming fraud. No?
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Posted by Bill Ross on 01/14/10 08:49 AM
Share Bell's opinion that arbitrary power is just "dead man walking". However, their demise is only partially due to increasing public awareness and will happen even if the sheeple do not wake up (and oppose).
This is because arbitrary power has declared war on REALITY, a losers game.We live in an action precedes consequence (according to laws of nature) reality. The consequences ALWAYS happen. Power's basic methodology is to define matters such that they can choose and privately profit and the costs of the consequences are punted to their prey or socialized to be paid by society in general.
They call this unaccountability which is really irresponsibility.The most powerful law of nature applicable here is life and the non-negotiable will to live of humanity. Costs imposed on people are a survival hit. Once the tipping point of the costs of certain doom of complicity exceed the RISK of opposition (for the majority), the game is over for our predators.
The risk we take is that the majority will not retaliate against the true perps and problems and we will globally repeat the insane French Revolution to achieve "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss". Consensus regarding opposition (tipping point to intolerance) is certain to be achieved.
We are far from consensus regarding against whom and what the new "social / economic order" will look Click to view link heart, this is war between the productive and greedy. Civilizations rise (honest values in control) and fall (predators in control) according to the choices we collectively make, determined by "Mathematics Of
Rule":Click to view link
Reply from The Daily Bell
No one should be so foolish as to predict the future. But we make the case you make here, that the power elite is in disarray and that brute regulatory or even military force is no substitute for promotions cleverly initiated and overwhelmingly accepted (once upon a time). We think the Internet has a lot to do with the desperation.
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Posted by Bill Ross on 01/14/10 08:07 AM
Vaclav Klaus has got their number
Click to view link
Just another false pretext (fraud) for centralized power and control. Power's excuses are getting more and more absurd. Fake invasion from Mars cannot be far off. The terror is that the educationally subverted sheeple will buy it, as they did the US during the "War of the Worlds" (Orson Welles, 1938) broadcast to a terrified population. MSM may be dead, but it still has far too many believers.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Yes, of course. He is a hero. And thanks for the link. Here at the Bell, however, we will continue to point out that the power elite is increasingly harried and desperate and that its dominant social themes have come under attack as never before.
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Posted by Johan Brouwer on 01/14/10 06:22 AM
With great interest I read your articles, and mostly I just agree with your reasoning and conclusions.Regarding the theme 'Global Warming', however, I feel that I have to make an important remark.
Under the title 'Global Warming' (especially used in the mainstream media) is hidden the perception of a global increase of temperatures of the athmospere and of the seas. Due to this increase, up until now with a rather slow pace, an enormous amount of extra energy is added to the weather system.
Simply put, the weather will show more and more extreme situations of longer duration. Tropical storms will be much more devastating, low pressure areas will be deeper and more persistent, causing strong cold airflows in winter penetrating deep into parts of the world which up to the present had relative mild winters, and more persistent warm flows into the colder areas where ice caps will be melting.
What I want to point out is, that 'Global Warming' does not necessarily mean 'a warmer climate'; it means 'a climate with ever more frequent exceptional weather- and climatical conditions'.
Reply from The Daily Bell
So global warming actually may imply global cooling?
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Posted by OhOrw on 01/14/10 12:34 AM
Point about Orwell well taken. From M16 to famous writer I think. How did that happen?
Reply from The Daily Bell
He wrote great books, and yet ...
