New official data issued by the Met Office confirms that world average temperatures have plummeted since the middle of the year at a faster and steeper rate than at any time in the recent past. The huge fall follows a report by this newspaper that temperatures had cooled after a record spike. Our story showed that these record high temperatures were triggered by naturally occurring but freak conditions caused by El Nino ‚Äì and not, as had been previously suggested, by the cumulative effects of man-made global warming. To the end of October, the last month for which figures have been released, Hadcrut4 had fallen about 0.5C from its peak in the spring. –David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 11 December 2016
David Whitehouse talks to David Rose about the hostile and irrational reactions to his article on the drop in global temperatures since the El Nino ‘spike’ in early 2016. —GWPF TV, 12 December 2016
Britain has given ¬£274 million in foreign aid to a controversial climate change organisation without knowing where the money goes. Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, expressed astonishment at DfID’s admission that it had no knowledge of the recipients of the climate fund. “It’s hard to believe they can get away with this kind of answer,” he said. “Development funding in itself is highly contentious but this takes it to a different level.” — Dominic Kennedy, The Times, 12 December 2016
A bombshell report reveals today that despite years of promises by Labour, Coalition and Tory governments, the radical shift to ‘green’ renewable energy will have cost the economy ¬£319 billion by 2030 ‚Äì three times the annual NHS budget for England. Instead of cutting energy bills, the policy will be adding an average burden of ¬£584 a year to every household by 2020, and ¬£875 by 2030. Yet this is only the start. By 2050, green energy policy will be costing every household ¬£1,390 a year, based on 2014 prices. The report’s calculations are derived entirely from official figures issued by Government departments and the Office for Budget Responsibility. They reveal for the first time the true cost of levies on bills to fund the shift to renewable energy. The impact results from the 2008 Climate Change Act, and will be felt mainly by the poorest and so-called JAMs ‚Äì those families who are ‘just about managing’. –David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 11 December 2016
Peter Lilley MP, an unusually numerate former cabinet minister, has written a devastating new report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, published today, on the costs of Britain’s Climate Change Act 2008. It reveals “at best economic illiteracy and at worst deliberate deception” by government. Mr Lilley calculates, and this is a conservative estimate, that the Climate Change Act will have cost over ¬£300 billion by 2030. That is a gigantic sum subtracted from the earnings of Britons. Worse, Mr Lilley finds that government sources have concealed and downplayed the cost of climate policies. But even on true believers’ own terms — indeed, especially on those terms — the Climate Change Act has been disastrous. In devising its climate-dominated energy policy, government has proceeded as if cost was no object. That is economically irrational, morally wrong and politically foolish. –Matt Ridley, The Times, 12 December 2016
Britain’s increasing reliance on “intermittent” renewable energy means that the country is facing an unprecedented supply crisis, a senior Ofgem executive has warned. Andrew Wright, a senior partner at Ofgem and former interim chief executive, warned that households could be forced to pay extra to keep their lights on while their neighbours “sit in the dark” because “not everyone will be able to use as much as electricity as they want”. He warned that in future richer customers will be able to “pay for a higher level of reliability” while other households are left without electricity. –Peter Dominiczak, Daily Telegraph, 12 December 2016
