Is this how it ends?

Most of these public scams such as bird flu (= sales of anti viral drugs), the Millennium bug, Ozone hole (=sales of new refrigerant), etc. start with a mass of publicity as those making money from the scam try to create the scare, and then as reality overtakes, they die by fading into obscurity.
However, I’ve long known the end of this scam might be very different. The problem is that the government passed legislation to force it to act. So, the usual government tactic of ignoring its own (or more accurately civil service) stupidity & saving itself embarrassment was difficult this time.
… although after perhaps as much as 5 years saying it would all come to a sticky end – and nothing happening, I was doubting my own analysis. I had resigned myself to the proverbial “watching paint dry” as we waited for the scam to slowly fade away.
But the fact is that the government are caught between a rock and a hardplace. They know the electorate do not, will not & in many cases cannot stomach the massive rises in fuel bills necessitated by these idiotic climate targets. They know that if they do not act against unreliables particularly onshore bird-mincers, the electorate in the countryside will turn against them more. But they are also compelled by their own legislation to raise those fuel bills and erect more bird-mincers.
The problem for the politicians is that global warming alarmism was always strongest amongst the left-of-centre public sector civil servants and academics and “climate” was a magnet subject for the extreme left, political active “eco-fascists” academics. There must be few more anti-tory subjects outside the overtly leftist political subjects like feminist studies.
Few academics will willingly support the government and amongst climate academics there will be a particular loathing for Tory politics. There is no way academics pushing this climate alarmism are going to stick their hands up to help the Tories out of this mess by saying “we’re to blame”.
After years of inaction, what I assumed was going to happen – is that the government were just going to ignore unreliables and slowly turn off the tap of funding – continually making statements about their “aspiration” to cut CO2 – but knowing few alarmists have any interest in actual figures – so knowing that the odd concession of a few £million to the Greens would offset cuts of £billions.
And that might still be the game plan – but perhaps not! Because soon after the election the Tories announced an end to onshore wind (clearly suggesting the Lib Dems were being blamed for stopping this move in the past).
When there was little or no outcry from the alarmists it seemed likely that unreliables would go the way of all the other scams and fade into obscurity.
But today I learn:

Stay of execution for onshore wind farms as subsidy axe delayed – Conservative proposals to axe onshore wind farm subsidies delayed amid fears of legal challenge and row with SNP

This is great news! Particularly if you have a herd of bird-mincers near you. Because until this announcement, it looked inevitable that this scam would die a very slow death – not finally disappearing until the last bird-mincer stopped turning of its own volition. So perhaps 20 years of sleepless nights – ignored by politicians – ignored by the press.
But now it appears a move is afoot to bring this to court and the Tories have to act. Now, rather than fading into obscurity, the affair risks exploding into a big trial with headline news. The political reality is that the Tories have to be seen to be ending onshore wind. The legal reality is that the only way out for the government if this goes to court, is to do what the US republicans are doing and to start holding inquiries into the integrity, ethicacy & criminal behaviour of the academics and those like the WWF (who wrote a substantial part of the IPPC reports).
And rather like FiFa – once they start criminal investigations against one of the academics, they’ll start squealing about others and very soon the newspapers will be filled by academics saying how much they wanted to tell the truth about the global warming scam – but they “couldn’t” because others “wouldn’t let them”.

The vicious cycle

What these alarmists don’t realise is that because it was so easy for them to make any ridiculous claim they liked about global warming in the past – there is so much material that in the cold light of a court room is going to look, not so much like people being silly, but like criminal corruption. THEY GOT MONEY – THEY LIED. IT DOES NOT TAKE A LOT TO LINK THE TWO TOGETHER TO GET “THEY LIED TO GET MONEY”. Which is a crime known as fraud with long prison terms.
Once the green light is given to start investigating those behind the scam, the evidence of lying is going to come in thick and fast. And then like Michael Mann, all the fair weather friends will desert them and they will be up almost alone against the full power of the state & media.
And BECAUSE the government will not get the support of the climate academics, they will have little choice but to attack those climate academics – if not in court –  in the media. And once that begins, the howls for more investigation and more revelations will grow until the government have no choice but to massively increase the scale of the investigation. That will in turn reveal much more of the scandal, forcing more resources to the investigation … and very soon it will have a life of its own.
But I’d given up hope of a quick resolution and thought this scam was just going to be put out to pasture. But now with the potential legal action, there’s a real chance of it heading down the track of the “vicious cycle” ending in headline investigations and prosecutions suddenly is back in the running.

The SNP hypothesis

However, there is possibly much more at stake than this little policy. The Tories cannot help but notice the success of the Scottish Nationalists at the last election. And it was noteworthy that the SNP got the chair of the climate committee after the election. They didn’t let that happen without knowing they could use it.
It is well known the SNP are more alarmists than even many academics. Something that cannot be lightly dismissed is the possibility that the real target for this move is not unreliables but the SNP.
The way this would work is this: the UK government manufacture a dispute between itself and the SNP forcing the SNP to come out publicly pro-unreliables. The UK government (and this is not just about parties – I mean the whole government with the civil service) then cause the SNP to have to become more and more vocal in their support for unreliables.
And then the UK government drop a bombshell. An obvious one would be widespread and high profile corruption in the unreliables business – or perhaps academia – or even corruption in the Scottish government itself.
And they would not start down this path of forcing the SNP into conflict, unless they already had sufficient evidence to drop the bombshell!

Unsupportable hypothesis: blame the SNP

The other possibility is that the Tories want to be seen to be acting against unreliables, but because so many Tories have benefited (such as the PM’s father in law), they are not actually that keen to end the scam. Under this scenario, the Tories will blame the SNP for their own inaction. At first glance this seems a possibility, but it doesn’t hold water as the Tories are bound to lose support if they are seen to be caving in to the SNP. I can’t see the Tories willingly getting into a fight with the SNP which they don’t know they can win. And note the news of this comes in the oft named “Torygraph” paper.

If the Tories know they can win against the SNP, why wait till now?

Sitting in Scotland I’ve been astonished that the Tories never attacked the SNP on their crazy pro-oil anti-fossil fuel, pro VERY costly unreliables, anti-tourist, birds, scenery, wilderness, i.e. Scotland … policy.
But I was ignoring the wider politics of the UK. Up until now, the Tories saw that the SNP were undermining the labour power base in Scotland. That worked very well at the last election allowing the Tories to scare many voters away from labour by suggesting England would be run by the SNP-labour coalition.
So, paradoxically, the strong SNP support increased the electoral support for the Tories across the UK.

Timings

G7
If the Tories are planning a move against the SNP, it is odd that they just signed a “pro-global warming” statement at the G7. However, on reflection, even most ardent sceptics could sign a statement saying it would be a good idea not cause more than a couple of degrees rise in climate. So it was a meaningless aspiration when sceptics know even doubling CO2 is very unlikely to lead to 2C warming.
Paris
… is more tricky. We look set toward another “we agree not to agree this time but instead to come back next time to see if we agree”, type declaration. However, they usually tag on some aspirational action (which then gets dumped). Usually that doesn’t matter as the greens are so delighted by their “victory” and so gormless that they don’t realise they never happen.
But it would be a problem to sign up to such an aspiration and then quickly launch a full scale attack on the SNP.
Scottish Elections – May 2016
Realistically, I don’t think the Tories care much about the Scottish elections except it would be an opportunity to humiliate the SNP. But it would be an opportune time.
US Presidential Election – Nov 2016
A very realistic possibility is that this whole process is being driven,  not from the UK, but from the US. As such the timings may have more to do with the US presidential election than anything in the UK
EU referendum – 2017
As the EU are really the power pushing the unreliables through various directives and because UKIP are both against the EU and unreliables, if the matter were allowed to fester till the EU referendum it could potentially end up in a scandal leading to a large “yes” to leaving the EU.
Westminster Election – 2020
If the unreliables  policy is still in place by 2020 – the Tories can kiss goodbye to any chances of forming the next government.
Winter v. Summer
Power cuts from unreliables are much more likely in winter. Fuel bills hit people in winter and generally the idea of “stopping warming” is least attractive in winter. That makes the ideal time to launch the attack around end of January/early February.

Possible scenario

Based on this analysis, if the Tories are planning an attack (but see end), then the most likely time is the winter before the Scottish elections in 2016. The most likely times are late January. If I were planning it, I would wait until a massive power cut in England – expecting the SNP to attack the Tory’s for their mishandling of the English power grid. Then there would be an even bigger power cut in Scotland – demands in the papers for an inquiry – followed by a series of releases showing criminal activity in Scotland – allowing the sitting Westminster government to end its obligations at a time of maximum embarrassment to the SNP when they are facing an election and when the Scottish parliament is not sitting.

The Republican Hypothesis

If however, the US Republicans are planning an attack – the timings look much more sensible. The scandal would break winter 2015/16. The law suits would begin shortly after and this would allow time for them to get into the courts running up to the presidential elections. So providing a constant stream of bad-news stories to circulate in the critical pre election period.

But (UK) politicians are not rational

The UK scenario assume the UK government acts rationally. And if I’ve learnt anything about the UK governments it is that it doesn’t behave rationally  as shown by their support for the climate scam. Support for the climate scam is fundamentally irrational – and no rational analysis can predict what an irrational body will do.

Final thoughts

I started by thinking the Tories were moving against unreliables. I finish concluding that the Tories are being forced to come out against because they know the scandal will break in the US.