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David Cameron Warned He May Lose Elections Over Rising Green Energy Costs

Green Nightmare Haunts UK Prime Minister



UK Chancellor George Osborne tells the environmental lobby today that Britain should not be “in front of the rest of the world” in tackling climate change. In an interview with The Times, the Chancellor dismissed as a gimmick Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices, but he signalled that he could ease green measures if prices continued to rise. Michael Fallon, the Energy Minister, is understood to be looking at reducing the burden of environmental measures on household bills in the next Conservative manifesto. --Francis Elliott, Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester, The Times, 28 September 2013
On June 8 2008, only five Members of Parliament – Christopher Chope, Philip Davies, Peter Lilley, Andrew Tyrie and Ann Widdecombe (all Conservatives) – voted against the Climate Change Bill. They are worth naming, I think, because “the Five Members” who defied executive fiat in the 1640s have an honoured place in our history. The modern Five Members, four of whom are still MPs, should be honoured too. But all the other Tories – nearly 200 of them – voted for the Bill, led by an enthusiastically green David Cameron. What this means is that energy prices will go on rising for at least a generation. What that means is that the most unavoidable element in any household’s cost of living will make that household poorer each year for the foreseeable future. And what that means is that any incumbent government will find it extremely hard to get re-elected. –Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph [Pay Site], 27 September 2013 By putting energy prices at the heart of the political debate, [Britain's opposition leader Ed] Miliband has raised a series of interconnected issues. [UK chancellor] George Osborne is known to have been increasingly impressed by the former chancellor Lord Lawson’s more sceptical view of the orthodoxy on global warming – an orthodoxy reaffirmed last week by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I ask David Cameron if he, too, has shifted his ground on greenery. “I’m certainly not more Lawsonian. It’s worth looking at what this report this week says – that [there is a] 95 per cent certainty that human activity is altering the climate. I think I said this almost 10 years ago: if someone came to you and said there is a 95 per cent chance that your house might burn down, even if you are in the 5 per cent that doesn’t agree with it, you still take out the insurance, just in case.” --Matthew d’Ancona, The Sunday Telegraph, 29 September 2013

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which published on Friday the first instalment of its latest report, is a deeply discredited organisation. Presenting itself as the voice of science on this important issue, it is a politically motivated pressure group that brings the good name of science into disrepute. --Nigel Lawson, The Sunday Telegraph, 29 September 2013 From the geniuses who gave us vanishing Himalayan glaciers and similar jeux d’esprit comes another million-word exercise in Nostradamus-style science to be hung on a very robust nail in the smallest room in the house. The dystopian predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are now awaited by the saner elements of the population with the same keen anticipation as the special edition of a favourite television comedy show on Christmas Day. -- Gerald Warner, The Scotsman on Sunday, 29 September 2013 A leading global warming expert believes the latest UN warning on man-made climate change is a "big gamble" as temperatures have not increased since 1997. Dr Benny Peiser, of Lord Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation, argued today's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is based on flawed models. Dr Peiser does not doubt the climate has changed, but the report has failed to explain why temperatures have not risen since 1997. He said: "The IPCC are gambling that temperatures will rise soon. They ignore the fact that their models have a problem, and they are unable to say when the temperature will start rising again. That is a gamble.” --Owen Bennett, Daily Express, 28 September 2013 The global warming ‘pause’ has now lasted for almost 17 years and shows no sign of ending – despite the unexplained failure of climate scientists’ computer models to predict it. The Mail on Sunday has also learnt that because 2013 has been relatively cool, it is very likely that by the end of this year, world average temperatures will have crashed below the ‘90 per cent probability’ range projected by the models. Last night independent climate scientist Nic Lewis – an accredited IPCC reviewer and co-author of peer-reviewed papers – pointed out that taking start years of 2001, 2002 or 2003 would suggest a cooling trend of 0.02-0.05C per decade, though this would not be statistically significant. --David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 29 September 2013 The IPCC has thrown down the gauntlet. Should the pause continue they are toast. --Judith Curry, head of climate science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Mail on Sunday, 29 September 2013 In the climate debate, which side are you on? Do you think climate change is the most urgent crisis facing mankind requiring almost unlimited spending? Or that it’s all a hoax, dreamt up to justify socialism, and nothing is happening anyway? Because those are the only two options, apparently. I know this from bitter experience. Every time I argue for a lukewarm “third way” — that climate change is real but slow, partly man-made but also susceptible to natural factors, and might be dangerous but more likely will not be — I am attacked from both sides. I get e-mails saying the greenhouse theory is bunk and an ice age is on the way; and others from guardians of the flame calling me a “denier”. --Matt Ridley, The Times, 28 September 2013 In the past 16 years, temperatures have not risen at all, that is a fact, and before 1980 we had 30 years of cooling. Since 1950, only 20 years have seen rising temperatures and nobody knows when temperatures will rise again. If climate scientists were honest enough to acknowledge their predictions were for excessive warming they would have to admit that their climate models could be in serious trouble. The reality regarding climate change is that the outlook is much better than people are being led to believe with scary reports like this. We are not facing imminent disaster, temperatures aren't rising as predicted and we have much more time than is claimed by climate alarmists to get our policies right. Unless global temperatures begin to rise again in the next few years it is very likely going to suffer an existential blow to its credibility. --Benny Peiser, Daily Express, 28 September 2013 Everyone likes a consensus. The word itself has only positive connotations, regardless of the conclusions reached. When the consensus is said to be among experts — rather than the more obviously fallible world of politics — then that’s it: opinion is elevated to the status of unchallengeable fact. This is when things can get really dangerous. --Dominic Lawson, The Sunday Times, 29 September 2013 It is thanks to the Labour leader Ed Miliband that we are paying dearly for the Climate Change Act - easily the most expensive law ever put through Parliament. Yet the man who sent us down this disastrous path now wants, by law, to stop electricity prices rising, just when our energy companies must spend billions of pounds to bring his mad dream to fruition. –Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 29 September 2013


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Guest Column Dr. Benny Peiser -- Bio and Archives

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