A new generation of nuclear power stations will be encouraged to supply unlimited amounts of electricity to the national grid, The Times has learnt.
The Cabinet will give the go-ahead for the new building programme today and John Hutton, the Business Secretary, will announce the decision on Thursday.
European governments are paying close attention to negotiations in Abuja, Nigeria, where Russian officials are trying to access the host country’s sizeable natural gas reserves, a development that would tighten Moscow’s grip on Western Europe’s energy supplies.
Russia already provides about a quarter of the continent’s natural gas demand, and its energy market share is poised to increase as the European Union begins to phase out coal power in order to fight global warming. The prospect of energy dependence has elicited concern from many Western European government officials, feelings that were heightened after Moscow cut off energy supplies to Ukraine in December, 2005, in order to enforce a precipitous price hike in natural gas.
European leaders have been slow to heed calls for a diversification of the continent’s energy ssources. Meanwhile, Russia’s state-owned energy giant, Gazprom, has been consolidating control over the regional supply. In May, 2007, Russian and Central Asian leaders came to agreement about the transport of natural gas from the Caspian Sea on terms favorable to Moscow. Algeria, the second largest provider of natural gas to Europe, has talked with Gazprom about better coordination, which has stoked fears of a possible natural gas cartel, like OPEC. And now, Russia is making moves on Nigeria’s promising reserves.
There has been a subtle yet important shift in the rhetoric of some global warming alarmists, whose industry has thrived for years on a disciplined party line of “ignore the skeptics”. This has played out in many absurd ways including by insisting that only a dozen or so actually exist. The audience for their rhetoric has remained instead the public.
We see here what appears to be almost desperation, coming on the heels of widespread pickup given to a recent Inhofe, et al. compilation of more than 400 scientists – from both “soft” and “hard” disciplines, just as is true with the IPCC and alarmists, generally, though they conveniently forget this when attacking (see the series of exposés on this from the gang at Climate Resistance).
The icing on the cake is the rest of the instruction, to change the subject.
To borrow their phrase, that’s “climate progress”.
On Wednesday, January 2, California, along with 15 other states, sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, alleging EPA unlawfully rejected California's request to regulate automotive greenhouse gas emissions more stringently than national standards.
In rejecting California's request, EPA noted greenhouse gas emissions do not have any state-specific qualities and are best addressed through national and international policy. Accordingly, California failed to show the "compelling and extraordinary" circumstances required for states to obtain an EPA waiver.
First the credit crunch, now the energy crunch. Just as household electricity bills go stratospheric the first coal-fired power station to be built in Britain for more than 30 years has been approved by Medway Council in Kent. The £1 billion plant at Kingsnorth, near Ashford, will be coal-burning – and carbon-producing – so is hardly an example to India or coal-rich China on how not to overheat the planet. But it will be built if only for one reason – to keep the lights on in the south of England.
The European Commission is considering proposing a carbon dioxide tariff on imports from states failing to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, while also considering a toughening-up of the EU's own emission trading system.
According to a draft commission proposal, firms from heavily polluting countries outside Europe would be obliged to buy EU carbon emission permits as part of the bloc's Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), Reuters reports.
The former House Speaker’s latest book, "A Contract with the Earth" co-authored with Palm Beach Zoo CEO Terry Maple, is an appalling paean to environmental naivete and taxpayer-subsidized profiteering.
While the book’s theme — i.e., let’s all just happily pitch in and do what it takes to save the environment — may sound reasonable, at least on a superficial basis, Mr. Gingrich’s notions are often wrong or simply bizarre, and his prescriptions amount to little more than a full embrace of rent-seeking "green" business and left-leaning eco-activist groups, both of which often masquerade as "protectors" of the environment.
The stark headline appeared just over a year ago. "2007 to be 'warmest on record,' " BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government's Meteorological Office, the story announced that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007," surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998. But a funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the planet grew bitterly cold.
Continuing with the theme from yesterday on Maryland's Commission on Climate Change, today in the Washington Examiner I dissect many of the interim recommendations sent by the commission to the Maryland General Assembly. This includes the carbon cap I mentioned, which is even more aggressive than California's:
However, if you ask anyone involved with the commission how they intend to reach those targets, you get the standard shoulder shrug.
“If you asked me right now, how are you going to do it? What exactly are you going to do? The answer is, I don’t know,” Tad Aburn, director of the state’s Air and Radiation Management Division within the Maryland Department of the Environment, told The Associated Press last month.
Speaking of Aburn, he is the one in charge of withholding from me on a public records request I made to the Maryland Department of the Environment, as outlined earlier this week in an Examiner editorial. MDE is telling me one thing (they have 12 pages that fulfills my request) and they are telling Red Maryland blogger Mark Newgent another (that they have 3700 pages and it will cost him $1381 to get what he's asking for).
My request seeks all records related to MDE's relationship with the Center for Climate Strategies, a global warming advocacy group cloaked in "objective technical advisor" garb for state commissions. CCS's process in every state where they work claims to be "fully transparent," so I am still wondering what they want to hide in Maryland.
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