Scottish Sceptic

When the history of the global warming scam is written up, there will be one phrase that comes to sum up the arrogance of those involved:

if we continue to burn fossil fuels as we are, the world will warm by …

Hidden in that simple assertion is a very nasty assumption. Continue reading →

Steve McIntryre is continuing his pressure on the University of East Anglia on the Muir Russell inquiry. The University are trying to suggest there was no contract between the University and Muir Russell, suggesting instead it was an Public appointment, apparently unaware that such public appointments must be done to a strict code of conduct including independent review.

The University does not consider that there was a contractual relationship with Sir Muir Russell or the inquiry team; it was by way of a public appointment (as is commonplace in these circumstances).

This is frankly an absurd position to hold. Continue reading →

I’m extremely grateful for Orkneylad who pointed out this story to me, because I know many of the characters involved because a long while back when the Marine test centre in Orkney was still just an idea, I was lobbying various people involved in renewables trying to persuade them to carry out the kind of policies that had created such a successful wind industry in Denmark and had actually created so many jobs (unlike UK renewables which cost 3.7 jobs for each one created).
Unfortunately, I failed to convince them, or to be more precise, there were too many idiots who thought they new better and who totally misunderstood the role of the Danish Windmill test centre at Risø.
The problem was that guided by academics and renewable “experts” (whose only expertise was conning the government to give them our money), the “consensus” had developed that Risø was some research centre involved in highly sophisticated academic research. So, it was not surprising that the UK saw the way to a successful wave centre as another similarly “research” centre.
So, I was quite amazed when I actually did meet one of the original Continue reading →

From the Daily Mail:
Scarcely a day goes by without more evidence to show why the Government’s obsession with wind turbines, now at the centre of our national energy policy, is one of the greatest political blunders of our time.
Under a target agreed with the EU, Britain is committed within ten years — at astronomic expense — to generating nearly a third of its electricity from renewable sources, mainly through building thousands more wind turbines.
But the penny is finally dropping for almost everyone — except our politicians — that to rely on windmills to keep our lights on is a colossal and very dangerous act of self-deception.
Read more in the: Daily Mail

Back in 2000/1 when I used to attend the Scottish Parliamentary Renewable Energy Group I regularly pushed them to look at the economic impact of wind energy on Scotland. I knew there was a problem, because despite the 45,000 jobs (sometimes the figure was 35,000) that were supposed to come “if we invested in wind”, the evidence from my own contacts to every single “renewables” company I could find in the UK, was that they were all small, far too small to get involved in the wind energy program being pushed by the then Westminster government and Scottish Executive at the behest of SPREG and its English counterpart.
It was painfully obvious to me, having done the real research of someone who wanted to do business with renewable companies in Scotland and/or the UK, that there was no one out there who was a serious contender for creating jobs. Continue reading →

Just one quote says it all:

Central Taxis estimates it will save around 4,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere by signing up to a project capturing methane gas from China’s Tieling coal mines. (Guardian)

Apparently this is all the rage these days. Saving the planet from impending climate doom supposedly caused by fossil fuel, by buying carbon indulgences to capture more fossil fuel from a fossil fuel mine, to provide a thin greenwash to cover the fossil fuel burnt in the taxis.
Why don’t they just walk? Continue reading →

Thanks to Bishop Hill I learnt the supprising fate of the Irish Greens which seems to point the way things will go in the May Scottish elections. Funnily, enough I was just talking to my better half yesterday about the Greens last night when Patrick Harvie appeared (yet again) on the BBC.
The original Scottish Green MSP was Robin Harper Continue reading →

There is a letter in the Herald replying to a previous correspondent’s “several criticisms of wind power”. (Herald letter)
I’ll start with the interesting bit which is a debate about whether Hydro or Pump Storage should be a priority. On the one side are the wind maniacs who say that we should do everything to promote wind (mainly because that is how most of them make money) and they are worried that sooner or later as they force the decommissioning of base load coal and gas, the lights will start turning out on cold still days and that may make a few people angry. So, they want us to build a lot of pump storage (presumably the hydrogen powered economy having proven a complete pie-in-sky wetdream).
But, annoyingly for wind, Continue reading →