Benny Peiser’s climate roundup – ‘windfarms a disgrace’ says royal

CCNet – 21 November 2011

The Climate Policy Network

Prince Philip: Wind Farms Are ‘Absolutely Useless And A Disgrace’

The Duke of Edinburgh has made a fierce attack on wind farms, describing them as “absolutely useless, completely reliant on subsidies and an absolute disgrace.” The Duke’s views are politically charged, as they put him at odds with the Government’s policy. In a withering assault on the onshore wind turbine industry, the Duke said the farms were “a disgrace”. He also criticised the industry’s reliance on subsidies from electricity customers, claimed wind farms would “never work” and accused people who support them of believing in a “fairy tale”. –Jonathan Wynne-Jones, The Sunday Telegraph, 20 November 2011

Former Chancellor Lord Lawson yesterday led the backing for Prince Philip after he branded wind farms ‘absolutely useless’. Lord Lawson, a former Tory Chancellor and leading climate change sceptic, said: ‘[The Duke] is spot on. He rightly feels strongly about the issue and equally clearly knows what he is talking about. ‘If you tried to devise the most costly and inefficient means of generating electricity imaginable, you would choose wind power – which is also an environmental monstrosity, desecrating ever more of our English landscape. ‘And the cost of all this – to no benefit except to the wind power industry itself – is paid by all electricity consumers, including the poorest, and damages the British economy which is fragile enough as it is.’ –Tamara Cohen, Daily Mail, 21 November 2011

The Duke was backed by Dr Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation who said: “Prince Philip is telling it as it is. Wind farms are a complete waste of money and a huge burden on consumers who have to pay for them. Prince Philip is a strong environmentalist. He is clearly sending out a message that the current policy is a disgrace from both an environmental and economic point of view.” – John Ingham, Daily Express, 21 November 2011

Green subsidies work a bit like Robin Hood – but in reverse. They effectively take around £8bn from the poorest consumers in the country over the next 20 years and transfer the cash to well off people who can afford the capital costs of installing mini solar and wind power schemes. –Bill Carmichael, Yorkshire Post, 19 November 2011

You have to hand it to the Duke of Edinburgh. At 90, he is still as incisive as ever. Once again, the Royal family has articulated what ordinary people, without the ear of the media, have long felt. His son might have called the wind farms that are besmirching our mountains and waving their giant arms inanely out at sea “a monstrous carbuncle”. Prince Philip chose “disgrace”. So they are. The politicians who foisted them upon us should be put in the stocks. – Clive Aslet, The Daily Telegraph, 21 November 2011

Germany’s abandonment of nuclear power is facing increasing obstacles. The rating agency Moody’s has warned Europe’s electricity and gas suppliers about downgrading their creditworthiness due to growing political risks. This means that German energy companies which are supposed to make the switch to renewable energies are having increasing difficulties to get raise money on the capital markets. At the same time, the expansion of renewable energies has made only little progress. –Financial Times Deutschland, 16 November 2011

For centuries, the Netherlands has harnessed wind power, using windmills to drain water from low-lying marsh and turn it into arable land. Now however, Holland is falling out of love with its iconic technology. — Ivana Sekularac, Reuters, 16 November 2011

1) Prince Philip: Wind Farms Are ‘Absolutely Useless And A Disgrace’ – The Sunday Telegraph, 20 November 2011

2) Ex-Chancellor Backs Prince Philip Over Attack On Wind Farms – Daily Mail, 21 November 2011

3) Clive Aslet: Prince Philip Said What We’re All Thinking About Wind Farms – The Daily Telegraph, 21 November 2011

4) Bill Carmichael: Solar Panels Are A Badge Of Shame – Yorkshire Post, 19 November 2011

5) Germany’s Green Energy Revolution Falters – Financial Times Deutschland, 16 November 2011

6) Dutch Fall Out Of Love With Windmills – Reuters, 16 November 2011

7) Christopher Booker: The BBC’s Hidden ‘Warmist’ Agenda – The Sunday Telegraph, 20 November 2011

8) Andrew Montford: The BBC & The Green Propaganda Machine – Bishop Hill, 21 November 2011

1) Prince Philip: Wind Farms Are ‘Absolutely Useless And A Disgrace’

The Sunday Telegraph, 20 November 2011

Jonathan Wynne-Jones

The Duke of Edinburgh has made a fierce attack on wind farms, describing them as “absolutely useless, completely reliant on subsidies and an absolute disgrace.” The Duke’s views are politically charged, as they put him at odds with the Government’s policy.

In a withering assault on the onshore wind turbine industry, the Duke said the farms were “a disgrace”.

He also criticised the industry’s reliance on subsidies from electricity customers, claimed wind farms would “never work” and accused people who support them of believing in a “fairy tale”.

The Duke’s comments will be seized upon by the burgeoning lobby who say wind farms are ruining the countryside and forcing up energy bills.

Criticism of their effect on the environment has mounted, with The Sunday Telegraph disclosing today that turbines are being switched off during strong winds following complaints about their noise.

The Duke’s views are politically charged, as they put him at odds with the Government’s policy significantly to increase the amount of electricity generated by wind turbines.

The country has 3,421 turbines — 2,941 of them onshore — with another 4,500 expected to be built under plans for wind power to play a more important role in providing Britain’s energy.

Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, last month called opponents of the plans “curmudgeons and fault-finders” and described turbines as “elegant” and “beautiful”.

The Duke’s attack on the turbines, believed to be the first public insight into his views on the matter, came in a conversation with the managing director of a leading wind farm company.

When Esbjorn Wilmar, of Infinergy, which builds and operates turbines, introduced himself to the Duke at a reception in London, he found himself on the end of an outspoken attack on his industry.

“He said they were absolutely useless, completely reliant on subsidies and an absolute disgrace,” said Mr Wilmar. “I was surprised by his very frank views.”

Mr Wilmar said his attempts to argue that onshore wind farms were one of the most cost-effective forms of renewable energy received a fierce response from the Duke.

“He said, ‘You don’t believe in fairy tales do you?’” said Mr Wilmar. “He said that they would never work as they need back-up capacity.”

One of the main arguments of the anti-wind farm lobby is that because turbines do not produce electricity without wind, there is still a need for other ways to generate power.

Full story

2) Ex-Chancellor Backs Prince Philip Over Attack On Wind Farms

Daily Mail, 21 November 2011

Tamara Cohen

Former Chancellor Lord Lawson yesterday led the backing for Prince Philip after he branded wind farms ‘absolutely useless’.

In a scathing attack, the Duke of Edinburgh said the turbines were ‘completely reliant on subsidies’ and ‘would never work’.

His comments are a rebuke to the Government, which is trying to increase the amount of energy generated by wind farms and other renewable technologies.

Last night Lord Lawson said the Duke was ‘spot on’ and speaking on behalf of ordinary people in fuel poverty.

Philip made the remarks to Esbjorn Wilmar, managing director of Infinergy, which is building offshore turbines around Britain.

Mr Wilmar said he introduced himself to the 90-year-old Duke at a reception and suggested he put wind turbines on royal property.

‘He said that they were absolutely useless, completely reliant on subsidies and an absolute disgrace. I was surprised by his very frank views,’ he said.

When Mr Wilmar tried to argue that onshore turbines are one of the most cost-effective forms of renewable energy, the Duke apparently replied: ‘You don’t believe in fairy tales do you?’

Mr Wilmar added: ‘He said they would never work as they need back-up capacity.’

And the Duke apparently told him: ‘You stay away from my estate young man.’

Electricity customers pay an average of £90 a year towards wind turbines and other forms of renewable energy such as solar power.

Yesterday Lord Lawson, a former Tory Chancellor and leading climate change sceptic, said: ‘[The Duke] is spot on. He rightly feels strongly about the issue and equally clearly knows what he is talking about.

‘If you tried to devise the most costly and inefficient means of generating electricity imaginable, you would choose wind power – which is also an environmental monstrosity, desecrating ever more of our English landscape.

‘And the cost of all this – to no benefit except to the wind power industry itself – is paid by all electricity consumers, including the poorest, and damages the British economy which is fragile enough as it is.’

Glyn Davies, Tory MP for Montgomeryshire, which has seen huge protests against wind farms in the area, added: ‘[The Duke] speaks for a large section of the population.

‘The industry is not just being subsidised but is making a big contribution to the increase in fuel poverty and reducing the competitiveness of British industry. We need to look at other technologies, such as solar and nuclear power, not put all our eggs in the wind farm basket which is sacrificing beautiful countryside at the altar of a false god.’

Britain has 3,421 turbines, of which more than 2,900 are onshore. Thousands more will need to be built if the Government is to meet its target of generating 15 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020. The current level is just 6.6 per cent.

Adam Bell, of Renewables UK, which represents the wind industry, said that last year wind farms generated enough electricity to power two million homes, and would cost the same to produce as fossil fuels by 2016.

He added: ‘Wind technology is working now. The era of cheap energy is over due to rising oil and gas prices and if we are first to invest, we will have a powerful technology which will create thousands of jobs.’

Yesterday the Government’s chief energy scientist, Professor David McKay, said that even if just 10 per cent of the country was covered in wind turbines it would only meet a sixth of our energy needs.

3) Clive Aslet: Prince Philip Said What We’re All Thinking About Wind Farms

The Daily Telegraph, 21 November 2011

You have to hand it to the Duke of Edinburgh. At 90, he is still as incisive as ever. Once again, the Royal family has articulated what ordinary people, without the ear of the media, have long felt. His son might have called the wind farms that are besmirching our mountains and waving their giant arms inanely out at sea “a monstrous carbuncle”. Prince Philip chose “disgrace”. So they are. The politicians who foisted them upon us should be put in the stocks.

Wind farms are Blairism incarnate. Wanting to look big on the international stage, he committed Britain to some preposterously over-ambitious targets for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. As ever, this was glittering, shop-window stuff, the bill for which would somehow be obfuscated by the dour Scot in accounts. After due nail-biting, Brown came up with a system so convoluted that most people have only just realised that the person who ultimately pays is the consumer.

We are all generously subsidising the wind farms which many of us hate through our electricity bills. Why? Because unlike other forms of renewable energy, which would have required the Treasury to build huge civil engineering projects, the cost could be met through a trade in Renewable Obligations Certificates (ROCs). It works like this. Power companies are required by law to provide a proportion of green energy and if they don’t meet the target, they are fined. But they can avoid the fine if they buy-in green energy credits, which are traded in the shape of ROCs.

The money from selling ROCs is far more attractive to the wind farm speculators than the value of the energy itself. The power companies simply pass on the cost to the poor sap who buys their electricity. It’s Machiavellian. Worse, it’s Brownian — and, as the Duke says, a disgrace. But from the Blairite shallows, it was much better than having to confront a decision that might have incurred short-term unpopularity, but is all but inevitable for our future energy security: the building of more nuclear power stations.

Of course, in the boom times, when the economy was growing, this green indulgence might have been like that extra chocolate you shouldn’t have; nobody would notice it when the suit had been let out. We have now found that the waist band isn’t infinitely elastic. But just as belts are being tightened, green energy has bloated our bills by, as Lord Marland from the Department of Energy and Climate Change revealed in the House of Lords last month, a whopping £7.1 billion. Think how many libraries that would keep open. It is due to get worse. According to the Renewable Energy Foundation, whose sums have so far proved accurate, that figure will have risen to some £40 billion by 2020 — that’s between £6 billion and £8 billion a year; nearly all of it taken by wind.

I’m not the first person to have noticed that wind farms only generate electricity when the wind is blowing. On a freezing day, when the country turns up its electric blanket, the ear hearkens to what Robert Bridges called “the stillness of the solemn air”. No wind. However many turbines bristle on Welsh mountain tops or pylons stride through the Great Glen, we’ll only be tickling the nose of our energy crisis. We’re missing those targets to reduce emissions by a country mile. Yet as the winter progresses, life for some of the poorest members of society will become more difficult because of it. Food and fuel are going up in price, fuel by more than it need do because of those wretched wind farms.

We all know about David Cameron’s green instincts: he paraded them before the election as part of the campaign to convince voters that the Tories weren’t simply driven by the bottom line. He even put a windmill on his London chimney, even though there is not enough wind in cities. Now he should go and see that Meryl Streep film, and remind himself of the great lesson that Mrs Thatcher taught us: subsidies for industry don’t work.

We need more research into renewables, to find technologies that will work. But no form of green energy except nuclear is ready to take over from present sources of production. As fossil fuel prices rise, entrepreneurs will find ways of producing energy more cheaply. Wind farms are the modern British Leyland; the Government tried to pick a winner, but picked wrong.

Throw them out. Throw out the windmonger in chief, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne, and leave it to the money men. Green MP Caroline Lucas may instinctively defend the interests of people rich enough to put solar panels on their roofs against those of the lowly consumers who have to pay to subsidise them, but the Treasury is, quite rightly, reducing the feed-in tariff for solar panels.

Less attention has been attracted by the intention to reduce subsidies for wind. Not by very much, mind you, and not by enough; but sufficient to send a signal to would-be investors that this rash, fierce blaze of riot cannot last. We can’t go on wrecking the landscape and spending money we don’t have. As the Admiral would have said in Mary Poppins, heavy weather is brewing for wind farms. It can’t arrive a moment too soon.

4) Bill Carmichael: Solar Panels Are A Badge Of Shame

Yorkshire Post, 19 November 2011

Green subsidies work a bit like Robin Hood – but in reverse. They effectively take around £8bn from the poorest consumers in the country over the next 20 years and transfer the cash to well off people who can afford the capital costs of installing mini solar and wind power schemes.

OH the squeals of outrage this month when the Government announced a modest reform to one of the biggest green rip-offs this country has ever seen.

You may not have heard of Feed-in Tariffs (Fits), but if you are lucky enough to live in one of the posher parts of town, you’ve no doubt noticed your more well-heeled neighbours covering their roofs with solar panels.

The reason for the mad proliferation of solar panels, and to a lesser extent mini windmills, is that householders are being paid enormous subsidies to generate their own electricity.

The Fit scheme works a bit like Robin Hood – but in reverse. It effectively takes around £8bn from the poorest consumers in the country over the next 20 years and transfers the cash to well off people who can afford the capital costs of installing mini solar and wind power schemes.

The racket – for that is what it is – works like this; once householders have installed the solar panels, the power companies have to pay for the electricity they produce at a price more than six times the market rate, for a guaranteed period of 25 years.

The returns are so fantastic as to be far beyond the dreams of avarice.

Some solar panel installers were recently boasting that a £12,000 solar panel system would pay for itself in little more than ten years and produce total returns over the life of the scheme of £25,000.

Certainly, as an investment it promises to produce profits far in excess of anything the banks, building societies or stock market could offer – all entirely risk free, tax free and index linked against inflation.

Great if you can afford it. But what if you can’t? Well, tough!

Consumers, including the very poorest, are expected to pay for this outrageous handout to the wealthy by way of a hidden “green” tax on their fuel bills – about £13 a year on the average electricity bill.

Not surprisingly since the subsidy bonanza started in April last year, those lucky enough to have substantial sums in the bank have been climbing over each other to get their snouts in the trough.

Around 80,000 householders have taken advantage of the subsidies including Jude Law, Gary Neville and Mick Jagger, who have all installed solar panels on their multi-million pound homes.

Alarmed at the escalating cost, the Government has now announced the Fit subsidies are to be cut by half – hence the bleats of complaint from everyone from Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to solar panel installation companies and the CBI. But if solar power is as cheap and efficient as the environmental groups pretend it is, then it shouldn’t need any subsidy at all.

But this isn’t just poor politics and stupid economics – it is morally wrong, too.

For a government to take money from a freezing pensioner in order to give it to someone as rich as Mick Jagger, is nothing short of wicked.

Until the subsidy is scrapped entirely having solar panels on your roof should be seen as a badge of shame.

These people aren’t “green” – just greedy.

5) Germany’s Green Energy Revolution Falters

Financial Times Deutschland, 16 November 2011

Germany’s abandonment of nuclear power is facing increasing obstacles. The rating agency Moody’s has warned Europe’s electricity and gas suppliers about downgrading their creditworthiness due to growing political risks. This means that German energy companies which are supposed to make the switch to renewable energies are having increasing difficulties to get raise money on the capital markets. At the same time, the expansion of renewable energies has made only little progress.

After the nuclear disaster in Japan in March, Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Party, CDU) had called the switch to alternative energies a “huge opportunity”. Eight months later, the issue has slipped far down the political agenda as the political parties are blocking key laws.”The many fragments that have been legislated at the federal and state level must now be brought together,” demanded Hildegard Müller, chief lobbyist from the industry association BDEW.

Federal and state governments are divided about the question, which should carry the burden of the proposed tax benefits for the people and companies that increase the energy efficiency of their buildings. A first attempt by the Conciliation Committee to resolve the dispute failed. On the crucial issue of energy efficiency, the federal government is divided: The Free Democrats (FDP) reject an ambitious EU proposal, which would provide mandatory targets. At the same, German states develop energy plans – but uncoordinated.” Next year, we need a script for the energy transformation,” said Mueller.

Fritz Vahrenholt, CEO of RWE’s renewable division, warned against the “danger of blackouts” given the rapid shutdown of many German nuclear power plants and pointed to rising energy prices and the growing import of nuclear power. At the same time, the nuclear energy phase-out also removes a source of revenue for investments in green power for energy suppliers. Lack of electricity grids are further slowing down the development of renewables; delays are caused by bureaucratic procedures and citizen protests.

The situation is critical for wind energy, which plays a central role in the energy concept of the government. On Wednesday, the electricity network operator Tennet, which has to wire all offshore installations in the North Sea, warned that to wire dozens of wind farms at a same time, as planned, would fail due to “lack of financial, human and material resources of all involved”, as it is written in an urgent letter to the Chancellor’s Office, the Economic and Environment Ministries. “The conditions have to be substantially revised and the burden has to spread over more shoulders.”

Tennet estimates that investments of 5-6 billion Euros are needed over the next ten years. The company wants, among other things, to extend the target deadlines: currently, it must add a wind farm to the grid within 30 months after approval, which fails regularly. Installation vessels as well as sufficient suppliers of sea cable are lacking. The construction of wind turbines is getting delayed too – banks shy away from financing the 1.5 billion-Euro projects.

The financial strength of the energy industry, meanwhile, is disappearing fast. The valuation of the companies with the lowest A-level “A3” is at risk, according to Moody’s. So far, RWE, E.ON and EnBW still have this investment-grade and are considered as prime borrowers. However, the nuclear phase-out and fuel taxes increase the burden on their balance sheets.

What is more, the industries of the future suffer: Almost all solar companies are deep in the red, wind turbine manufacturers complain about lack of demand and are reporting growing losses. The stock index Renixx, which lists 30 international Greentech companies, has lost 56 percent since the year-high in April.

Wissen.de, 16 November 2011

Transl. Philipp Mueller

6) Dutch Fall Out Of Love With Windmills

Reuters, 16 November 2011

Ivana Sekularac

For centuries, the Netherlands has harnessed wind power, using windmills to drain water from low-lying marsh and turn it into arable land. Now however, Holland is falling out of love with its iconic technology.

When the Netherlands built its first sea-based wind turbines in 2006, they were seen as symbols of a greener future.

Towering over the waves of the North Sea like an army of giants, blades whipping through the wind, the turbines were the country’s best hope to curb carbon emissions and meet growing demand for electricity.

The 36 turbines — each one the height of a 30-storey building — produce enough electricity to meet the needs of more than 100,000 households each year.

But five years later the green future looks a long way off. Faced with the need to cut its budget deficit, the Dutch government says offshore wind power is too expensive and that it cannot afford to subsidize the entire cost of 18 cents per kilowatt hour — some 4.5 billion euros last year.

The government now plans to transfer the financial burden to households and industrial consumers in order to secure the funds for wind power and try to attract private sector investment.

It will start billing consumers and companies in January 2013 and simultaneously launch a system under which investors will be able to apply to participate in renewable energy projects.

But the new billing system will reap only a third of what was previously available to the industry in subsidies — the government forecasts 1.5 billion euros every year — while the pricing scale of the investment plan makes it more likely that interested parties will choose less expensive technologies than wind.

The outlook for Dutch wind projects seems bleak.

COUNTRY OF WINDMILLS

For centuries, the Netherlands has harnessed wind power, using windmills to drain water from low-lying marsh and turn it into arable land.

Now however, one of the most densely populated countries in Europe — with 489 people per square kilometer (0.6 miles) compared to 356 in Belgium or 192 in Luxembourg — is falling out of love with its iconic technology.

Arguments over the high cost and maintenance of sea-based turbines, as well as complaints from residents about unsightly land-based models, have brought the Dutch to an impasse.

Offshore wind farms produce more electricity than onshore ones but it costs twice as much as onshore wind power due to the higher cost of materials, more expensive drilling methods, and more complex maintenance.

Wind turbines in the sea need to be more robust to withstand strong winds and salt water; their maintenance some miles away from the coast requires special equipment and transportation.

Drilling the seabed is more expensive as it requires a specialized workforce and equipment. Then there’s the additional cost of connecting the offshore farms to the grid.

Onshore, wind turbines face local resistance.

In 1994, a group of entrepreneurial farmers around the Dutch town of Urk got together and decided to build the country’s largest onshore wind farm with 86 wind turbines nearby. Maxime Verhagen, then minister for economy, innovation and agriculture, said this would be enough to supply 900,000 people.

The project has since been adapted to meet changes in legislation and 20 years after it was launched, construction may finally start this year and be completed in 2014. The only thing holding up the project now is a lawsuit filed by local residents. They say the 30-meter-high wind turbines will spoil their views.

“If we have wind turbines here this old picture will be destroyed,” said the mayor, Jaap Kroon. “We are also concerned about the safety and noise.”

Ironically Urk itself used to be an island until windmills were used to drain the surrounding land and connect it to the mainland. The Dutch Wind Energy Association says about half the country’s onshore wind projects such as the one in Urk are disputed.

“People don’t want big wind turbines in their backyards,” said Kasper Wallet, an energy consultant. “They think it will impact the value of their property.”

Full story

7) Christopher Booker: The BBC’s Hidden ‘Warmist’ Agenda

The Sunday Telegraph, 20 November 2011

Since 2006, the BBC has relentlessly promoted the global warming orthodoxy as a pressure group in its own right.

The story of the BBC’s bias on global warming gets ever murkier. Last week there was quite a stir over a new report for the BBC Trust which criticised several programmes for having been improperly funded or sponsored by outside bodies. One, for instance, lauded the work of Envirotrade, a Mauritius-based firm cashing in on the global warming scare by selling “carbon offsets”, which it turned out had given the BBC money to make the programme.

Just as this scandal broke, I was also completing a report, to be published next month by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, on the BBC’s coverage of climate change. It ranges from the puffing of scare stories dreamed up by “climate activists”, to BBC reporting on wind farms, often no more than shameless propaganda for the wind industry. Part of the story told in my report is the unhealthily close relationship that developed between the BBC and organisations professionally involved in the “warmist” cause.

Some years back, the BBC adopted a new editorial policy –that the scientific and political “consensus” on climate change was now so overwhelming that it should be actively promoted, while climate sceptics, or “deniers” as the BBC calls them, should be kept off the airwaves.

A key moment in developing the new party line was a “high-level seminar” in 2006, attended by a bevy of top BBC executives. It was organised by Roger Harrabin, one of its senior environmental correspondents, and Dr Joe Smith, a geographer and climate activist from the Open University. They had set up the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme to promote the consensus line on global warming, funded by, among others, the Department for the Environment (then in charge of government policy on climate change) and WWF, one of the leading warmist pressure groups.

For a long time the BBC was remarkably coy about what had transpired at this gathering, but gradually – aided by the Freedom of Information Act – the details were dug out by two diligent bloggers, Tony Newbery of Harmless Sky and Andrew Montford of Bishop Hill. Their submission on it was, however, brushed aside in that dotty BBC Trust report last summer, where Prof Steve Jones recommended that the BBC’s coverage of climate issues should show not less bias but more.

Since 2006, the BBC has relentlessly promoted the global warming orthodoxy as a pressure group in its own right. In covering the latest twists of this story on his blog, Montford cites another odd BBC programme, Earth Reporters: Sea Change, funded by Unesco, which was like an adulatory commercial for the scientists who push alarm about the impact of global warming on the oceans, via the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The scientific adviser for the programme was the same Dr Smith who organised that 2006 seminar, and whose website lists a string of other BBC programmes he has worked on.

The irony is, however, that just as the BBC adopted its new hard line on climate change, in the real world the story was beginning to shift. Ever more searching questions have come to be asked about the supposed “consensus” on man-made warming, and the BBC’s coverage has come to look ever more one-sidedly absurd.

Last week, even Richard Black, another BBC proselytiser for man-made warming, was gloomily having to reveal the conclusion of a new IPCC report: that, over the next few decades, “climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variabilty”. In plain English, that means the great scare story is over. What a shame. But at what a price.

8) Andrew Montford: The BBC & The Green Propaganda Machine

Bishop Hill, 21 November 2011

Readers may remember that TVE, the organisation that had been involved in illicitly sponsored BBC shows, has apparently taken its website down. Commenters at Biased BBC noted that this appears to have happened on 24 October 2011.

There’s a footnote in the BBC Trust report on the scandal about another of the organisations involved: FBC Media.

It has been reported that on 24 October 2011, FBC Media (UK) Ltd went into administration.

The same date.

Are FBC and TVE related in some way?

FBC Media appears to have journalist Alan Friedman as the sole director. The company was certainly in financial trouble, and it looks as if creditors are going to take a bath on FBC.

TVE, meanwhile, is a charity, owned and run by a parent charity called the Television Trust for the Environment (TVTE). TVE appears to produce the programmes and TVTE raises the funds. The parent appears to be in dire financial straits. There is no obvious connection to FBC though, so it may be that the BBC Trust’s decision has simply pushed them over the edge at the same time as FBC.

But this is not the end of the story. Look at who’s funding TVTE. Of their £1090k income, more than half is from the EU, with the rest mostly from the usual suspects – UNEP, Oxfam, FAO, UNFPA, UN etc etc. Now look at the accounts of TVE, the production company subsidiary. Of their total income of £1423k, only £48k (~3%) was from sales of TV programmes. The rest was donations, mostly from the parent charity, TVTE.

In other words, the content was being given away to TV stations in order to promote the interests of the international bureaucracies of the EU and UN. There are hints in the BBC Trust report, referring to programmes being purchased at nominal cost. But one doesn’t quite get the right impression. And, as we saw yesterday, this may have been going on for fifteen years.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 1 Carlton House, London SW1Y 5DB

Director: Dr Benny Peiser

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