Shale gas can help the world to avoid dangerous climate change if it replaces coal in power stations, according to a United Nations report. The IPCC was silent, however, on how much investment there should be in each source of energy. It said it was up to each country to decide on the mix of energy sources it needed to meet its share of the global emissions target. --Ben Webster, The Times, 14 April 2014
The United Nations (UN) has delivered its latest verdict on the measures necessary to save the world from global warming and the news is as grim as it is predictable and wearisomely familiar. This action will set back economic growth, involve significant "behavioural change" and "devalue fossil fuel assets", the report admits. But only with "major institutional and technological changes" can the world avert an even greater threat. If no action is taken, it warns, temperatures may rise by as much as 4.8 degrees C by 2100. --James Delingpole, Breitbart London, 14 April 2014
The report is written in extreme language, of course it is, because that is what the IPCC does. But what is unusual about this one is its support for nuclear energy and shale gas - for which the greens will hate it. Not that any of this matters. The IPCC is no longer taken seriously by governments around the world and decarbonization has ceased to be one of their major priorities. Thanks to the crisis in the Ukraine and the state of the global economy, they are now much more interested in energy security and economic competitiveness than they are in 'combating climate change.--Benny Peiser, Breitbart London, 14 April 2014
Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: “This is the first IPCC report that will be largely ignored by most policymakers. It will have no influence on governments’ energy policies that are now almost completely dominated by energy security and economic considerations. Around the world the climate issue is being pushed to the margins of decision making.” --Ben Webster, The Times, 14 April 2014
The collapse of a controversial wind export plan has been announced by the Government on the same day that the UN’s top scientific body called for a rapid switch to renewable energy to fight climate change. Minister for Energy Pat Rabbitte said that “given the economic, policy and regulatory complexities involved” the Irish and British governments had failed to agree terms “to facilitate green energy export from the Midlands within the EU’s 2020 timeframe”. -- Mark Hennessy, Frank McDonald, The Irish Times, 14 April 2014
Not often does a senior Cabinet minister declare that a policy long pursued by his own department is “against the law”. But that was the response of Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, to a report exposing just how profoundly our education system has been hijacked by promoters of the official group-think on global warming. Expanding on a theme touched on here more than once over the years, the report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation by Andrew Montford and John Shade shows how generations of schoolchildren have been taught to accept as gospel nothing but a propagandist, Greenpeace-type view of the global-warming scare, so one-sided that it makes a mockery of the requirement under the 1996 Education Act that pupils only be taught in a balanced way, allowing them to form their own view of the evidence. --Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 13 April 2014
