By Dan Chapman

The failed Range Fuels wood-to-ethanol factory in southeastern Georgia that sucked up $65 million in federal and state tax dollars was sold Tuesday for pennies on the dollar to another bio-fuel maker with equally grand plans to transform the alternative energy world.

LanzaTech, a New Zealand-based biofuel company, paid $5.1 million for the plant in Soperton. Its main financial backer: Vinod Khosla, a California entrepreneur who also bankrolled Range Fuels, and helped secure its government loans, before Range went bust last year.

LanzaTech hasn’t received the same type of loans, but the company has received $7 million from the U.S. departments of Energy and Transportation to assist in the development of alternative fuels.

Read the rest at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Subsidies fail to help sector take root

By Ben Wolfgang

The green-jobs revolution may be going up in smoke.Despite billions of dollars in federal investment and cheerleading from President Obama, even the most ardent supporters of a transformed, job-generating energy sector based largely on wind, solar and other renewable sources acknowledge that their dreams have not translated into reality. The records for other countries chasing green employment opportunities have been equally unimpressive.

Rep. Maxine Waters, California Democrat, told MSNBC last month that, despite impassioned support from liberal Democrats and environmentalists, “green jobs” initiatives “have been about a lot of talk, and not a lot has been happening on that.”

The absence of a promised boom in environmental jobs has become a talking point among Republicans who are campaigning to unseat Mr. Obama in the 2012 election.

Mr. Obama “keeps talking about green jobs,” former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said during the GOP candidates debate Wednesday night. “Where are they? Let’s have real jobs.”

Talk of green jobs was conspicuous by its absence from Mr. Obama’s jobs speech to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night. He gave the address on the same day that the FBI raided California solar-energy company Solyndra, which filed for bankruptcy and laid off at least 900 full-time employees.

Read the rest at the Washington Times.

By J. D.  Heyes

The world has a food shortage. This isn’t speculative or subjective, and it’s not fear-mongering or alarmist. It’s a well-documented fact and, what’s more, the real experts – those who aren’t influenced by government or corporate interests – have been trying to make that case for months.

Moreover, these same experts say, the shortages are causing global food prices to rise – dramatically in some cases – which is only leading to more hunger, more pain and more hardship.

So, what is the United States doing to blunt the effects of this food shortage? What is official U.S. policy regarding, say, the production of corn – the primary ingredient in scores of food products and livestock feed? Well, officially, our policy is to burn up a substantial amount of corn every year in our automobiles – food that could be used to feed Americans and the world.

 Read the rest at Natural News.

The last we saw such an economy was in the 13th Century

By Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren

“Green” energy such as wind, solar and biomass presently constitute only 3.6% of fuel used to generate electricity in the U.S. But if another “I Have a Dream” speech were given at the base of the Lincoln Memorial, it would undoubtedly urge us on to a promised land where renewable energy completely replaced fossil fuels and nuclear power.How much will this particular dream cost? Energy expert Vaclav Smil calculates that achieving that goal in a decade–former Vice President Al Gore’s proposal–would incur building costs and write-downs on the order of $4 trillion. Taking a bit more time to reach this promised land would help reduce that price tag a bit, but simply building the requisite generators would cost $2.5 trillion alone.

Let’s assume, however, that we could afford that. Have we ever seen such a “green economy”? Yes we have; in the 13th century.

Renewable energy is quite literally the energy of yesterday. Few seem to realize that we abandoned “green” energy centuries ago for five very good reasons.

Read the rest at Forbes.

By Paul Chesser

Living in a home with four kids and two dogs, one child’s “clean” can mean “unacceptable” to an adult — think barely visible shower scum or machine-washed plates without phosphates.

And necessary energy levels and types mean different things to different people: A back-to-nature maiden who practices what she preaches needs much less than a multitasker who watches her LCD TV while researching on the Internet and listening to her iPod.

And as we know from years of observation of political discourse, one man’s “standard” is another’s moral abhorrence.

Put them together in a “Clean Energy Standard” (CES) and you ask for real trouble.

But that’s not stopping Sens. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who on Monday — as Chairman and Ranking Republican respectively of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee — issued a “white paper” that solicits comments on what should constitute a CES. You might remember that in his State of the Union address last January 25, President Obama proposed that the federal government impose an 80 percent standard by the year 2035.

Read the rest at the American Spectator.

U.S. ethanol consumes about 40 pct corn crop; Impact on food prices “real”

By Gerard Wynn

ATHENS, Nov 22 (Reuters) – Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore said support for corn-based ethanol in the United States was “not a good policy”, weeks before tax credits are up for renewal.

U.S. blending tax breaks for ethanol make it profitable for refiners to use the fuel even when it is more expensive than gasoline. The credits are up for renewal on Dec. 31.

Total U.S. ethanol subsidies reached $7.7 billion last year according to the International Energy Industry, which said biofuels worldwide received more subsidies than any other form of renewable energy.

“It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol,” said Gore, speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank.

“First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.

“It’s hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.”
He explained his own support for the original programme on his presidential ambitions.

“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”

Read the rest at Reuters.

90 top global warming scientists have turned their sights on the biomass energy industry, until recently seen as allies, warning that biofuels sometimes increases rather than decreases greenhouse gas emissions.

By Lawrence Solomon

“There may be a public perception that all biofuels and bioenergy are equally good for the environment and are all lower in carbon emissions than fossil fuels, but that’s not true,” said one of the signatories, Dr. William Schlesinger of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in a press release yesterday aimed at the U.S. Congress. “Many produce just as much or more carbon pollution than oil, gas, and coal. If our laws and regulations treat high-carbon-impact bioenergy sources, like today’s corn ethanol, as if they are low-carbon, we’re fooling ourselves and undercutting the purpose of those same laws and regulations.”

That ethanol in your gas tank, the climate change scientists are telling us, could be bringing us closer to Armageddon by undercutting their efforts at saving the world. “Many international treaties and domestic laws and bills account for bioenergy incorrectly by treating all bioenergy as causing a 100% reduction in emissions regardless of the source of the biomass,” the scientists explain.”Under some scenarios, this approach could eliminate most of the expected greenhouse gas reductions during the next several decades.”

Read the rest of this story at Financial Post.

By Stephen Power And Ben Casselman

Three big companies quit an influential lobbying group that had focused on shaping climate-change legislation, in the latest sign that support for an ambitious bill is melting away.

Oil giants BP PLC and ConocoPhillips and heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. said Tuesday they won’t renew their membership in the three-year-old U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a broad business-environmental coalition that had been instrumental in building support in Washington for capping emissions of greenhouse gases.

The move comes as debate over climate change intensifies and concerns mount about the cost of capping greenhouse-gas emissions.

On a range of issues, from climate change to health care, skepticism is growing in Washington that Congress will pass any major legislation in a contentious election year in which Republicans are expected to gain seats. For companies, the shifting winds have reduced pressure to find common ground, leading them to pursue their own, sometimes conflicting interests.

Last week, the head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Billy Tauzin, said he would step down as president of the industry’s main lobby in Washington, amid criticism from some in the industry over the alliance he made last year with the White House to support health-care legislation.

The administration had worked hard to persuade industry groups to climb aboard its major legislative initiatives—a tack many business interests saw as sensible following the Democrats’ big gains in the 2008 elections. But “unlikely bedfellows make for breakups,” said Kevin Book, managing director of Clearview Energy Partners, a consulting firm.

Spokesmen for ConocoPhillips and BP said the companies still support legislation to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, but believe they can accomplish more working outside USCAP’s umbrella. Caterpillar said it plans to focus on commercializing green technologies.

ConocoPhillips’s senior vice president for government affairs, Red Cavaney, said the USCAP was focused on getting a climate-change bill passed, whereas Conoco is increasingly concerned with what the details of such a bill would be.

“USCAP was starting to do more and more on trying to get a bill out without trying to work as much on the substance of it,” Mr. Cavaney said.

A spokesman for USCAP said it intends to continue its work. More than 20 other large companies, including oil company Royal Dutch Shell PLC and industrial heavyweights General Electric Co. and Honeywell International Inc., remain in the coalition with environmental groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council. The USCAP said it expects to add new members in coming months.

“We think there’s momentum to get [a climate bill] done,” USCAP spokesman Tad Segal said. “President [Barack] Obama’s State of the Union address made it clear the administration is behind us.”

Read the rest of this article at Wall Street Journal.

Turning carbon into cold cash

From National Post

The closer the United States gets to adopting a cap-and-trade system to control greenhouse gas emissions, the more frightening it gets.

Not because the plan now under debate in the U. S. Congress would complicate the lives of energy producers, or impose new costs on consumers. Those drawbacks might be bearable if the system was truly designed to reduce emissions, and if the expense was reasonable. The alarm results from increasing evidence that emissions have become a secondary concern of a plan whose main purpose is to serve the partisan interests of the Democratic Party.

Jim Prentice, Canada’s Minister of the Environment, visited Washington this week to warn in no uncertain terms that the proposal before Congress would be a “prescription for disaster” for U. S. trade relations.

He was referring to “border tax adjustments” included in the U. S. bill, which would impose charges on goods imported from countries that do not match U. S. efforts to reduce emissions.

The charges are ostensibly intended to force countries like China and India to adopt similar emission-fighting measures. In reality, argued Mr. Prentice, they would act as “trade protectionism in the name of environmental protection,” allowing the United States to force up the price of imports to the benefit of American competitors. Mr. Prentice said Ottawa fully intends to match whatever greenhouse legislation the United States puts in place, but that might not avert the danger. It would still be up to Washington to decide whether it deemed Canadian protections adequate.

If Washington continues along the path toward discrimination, Mr. Prentice warned, Ottawa will take appropriate action — a clear hint at retaliation. A trade war would benefit no one, but would nonetheless likely be popular among labour unions, a traditional base of support for Democrats.

The U. S. plan would similarly boost Democrat fortunes by providing a multi-billion-dollar windfall to power producers largely clustered in states loyal to the party. As outlined by National Post columnist David Frum this week, the bill would include a system in which carbon emitters could buy the right to continue emitting by purchasing credits from cleaner companies. This is a key feature of cap-and-trade plans, but Democrats have stacked the deck by proposing to award allotments of emission credits, free of charge, to “clean” firms, which could then earn billions by selling them to big emitters.

Read the rest of this article at National Post.

By Paul Chesser

Never mind the allegedly detrimental effect biofuels have by increasing greenhouse gas emissions and therefore global warming — the Obama Administration will continue to blast CO2 in the atmosphere by burning vegetation. It’s not a surprise as the president talked about it during his campaign, but now the ugly details are coming out and the new subsidies are being unveiled. From a May 5  White House press release:

President Obama today announced steps to further his Administration’s commitment to advance biofuels research and commercialization.  Specifically, he signed a Presidential Directive establishing a Biofuels Interagency Working Group, announced additional Recovery Act funds for renewable fuel projects, and also announced his Administration’s notice of a Proposed Rulemaking on the Renewable Fuel Standard.

The BIWG is to be co-chaired by Obama’s superheroic force of top eco-bureaucrats: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. Part of their responsibilities will be to:

• Immediately begin restructuring existing investments in renewable fuels as needed to preserve industry employment; and
• Develop a comprehensive approach to accelerating the investment in and production of American biofuels and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

Read the rest of this article at GlobalWarming.org.

Jason Lewis today, who in turn was filling in for Rush Limbaugh. Most discussion on the program centered on Global Warming. In the first hour, Sue’s guest was Chris Horner, author of Red Hot Lies. I followed to talk about GlobalClimateScam.com in the second hour and came back to discuss Minnesota Majority in the last half-hour. Listen here:

Sue Jeffers

Sue Jeffers filled in for

• Hour 1: Sue’s guest Christopher Horner discusses his new book disputing global warming.
• Hour 2: Sue continues the global warming discussion with Dan McGrath of Minnesota Majority.
• Hour 3: Sue talks about running for office with Jim Schottmueller and Dan McGrath.

Notes on the “Hockey Stick:” Global Warming Bombshell; Breaking the Hockey Stick; Documenting Global Warming Fraud; Hockey Stick a New Low in Climate Science; Hockey Sticks, Principal Components and Spurious Significance (McIntyre / McKitrick report)

Corn prices have more than doubled in the past two years, contributing to sharp rises in the price of virtually everything in the American economy. Obvious products like corn flakes and meat aren’t the only commodities affected. Soda, beer, motor vehicle fuel, medicines and even car parts rely on corn-based substances in their production.

Ethanol-based fuel gets fewer miles per gallon than petroleum based gasoline, and some argue that ethanol, though touted as a “green” fuel, actually produces more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuel.

In June, US Senator and candidate for president, John McCain said “Support for corn-based ethanol has been a case study in the law of unintended consequences.” 

The national Republican Party revised it’s platform last week during the national convention calling for a reversal of the energy bill signed by president Bush that mandates a five-fold increase in ethanol production and provides additional government subsidy. The new platform plank says the US government should end ethanol mandates and let the free market work. 

McCain says he didn’t push for the platform change, but supports it. He pointed out that ethanol mandates have led to “distorted food markets through crop land competition,” and are “depriving America of better and cheaper fuels.”

For his part, presidential candidate Barack Obama says he “strongly supports ethanol subsidies.”

President Bush, in defending the policy suggested that new technology might come along that will allow economical production of ethanol from other biomass, like wood chips or switchgrass. He’s counting on the development of currently non-existent technology within the next nine years to meet the demands of the energy bill he signed in December and federal dollars are being invested in that research. Presently, not a single commercial US refinery is producing ethanol from anything but corn.

Failing the development of the theoretical new technology within a decade will leave US energy law in the precarious position of mandating something that is not physically possible. There is not enough corn farmed to meet the demands of the energy bill. As the forces of reality inch closer to currently unattainable ethanol mandates in the coming years, the price of virtually everything is likely to rise even more sharply than the preceding two years. Supply simply cannot meet the artificial demand imposed by government.

Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty has been leading the charge for increased ethanol mandates. During his tenure as chairman of the National Governor’s Association, he advocated increased ethanol usage nationally and in 2005, he signed a law doubling Minnesota’s ethanol mandate from 10% to 20% by 2013. “Only people on the far margins of the political spectrum oppose ethanol,” he said.

Minnesota’s increased ethanol mandate will not take effect unless a waiver can be obtained from the US Environmental Protection Agency.

By Roy Innis 

The U.S. civil rights revolution of the 1950s and ’60s was one of the greatest social and political liberations in history. It gave African-Americans and other minorities new opportunities and new levels of success in virtually every walk of life.

But today we face unprecedented new challenges to indispensable but often neglected rights enunciated in our Declaration of Independence: “That all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

These fundamental rights are under assault in subtle, often insidious ways. Sometimes it is with the best of intentions, by good people who don’t realize they are impairing other people’s rights, hopes and dreams. At other times, it is by people who are willing, even determined, to sacrifice individual rights in the name of a proclaimed threat or greater common good.

One critical challenge involves restrictions on access to energy and economic opportunity – and thus on liberties and rights – in the name of protecting the environment.

Energy is the master resource of modern society. It transforms constitutionally protected civil rights into rights we actually enjoy: jobs, homes, transportation, health care and other earmarks of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. With abundant, reliable, affordable energy, much is possible. Without it, hope, opportunity, progress, job creation and civil rights are hobbled.

Laws and policies that restrict access to America’s abundant energy drive up the price of fuel and electricity. They cause widespread layoffs and leave workers and families struggling to survive, as the cost of everything they eat, drive, wear and do spirals higher. They roll back the progress for which civil rights revolutionaries like the Rev. Martin Luther King struggled and died.

They create unnecessary obstacles to the natural, justifiable desire of minority Americans to share in the American Dream. They prevent us from resolving conflicts through compromise and impose needless and unfair burdens on our poorest families. These regressive, energy-killing laws and policies deny minority and other poor families a seat at the energy lunch counter and send us to the back of the economic bus.

The Congress of Racial Equality and I care deeply about our environment. But we also care about having jobs, and affordable food, heat and transportation. We care about impoverished Third World families achieving their dreams.

We want to know that the environmental values we cherish really are threatened the way environmental activists say they are. And we want to know that the solutions they advocate really will safeguard those values, at reasonable cost, without creating enormous new problems, like global grain shortages.

Today, unfortunately, these common-sense requests are under assault by activists who want to eliminate fossil fuels, base public policies on unfounded ecological scare stories, and stifle debate by attacking anyone who challenges their assertions.

Energy reality must no longer be denied. Fully 85 percent of all the energy Americans use comes from fossil fuels. Add in nuclear and hydroelectric power, and we’ve reached 96 percent. Biomass (3 percent) is mostly waste from paper mills and sawmills.

A mere 0.8 percent is wind and solar power. These renewable sources are not alternatives to fossil fuel use. They are supplements. Just to provide electricity to meet New York City’s needs would require blanketing Connecticut with 300-foot-tall wind turbines that generate power only eight hours a day, on average. That is neither economically nor ecologically sustainable.

Read the rest of this piece at The Washington Times.

By Walter Starck

The most critical problem we now confront is not global warming or how to tax emissions, but providing enough affordable fuel to avoid severe recession before alternative energy can become reality. The Lucky Country faces a choice between disaster and a unique opportunity.

Oil supply

Over the past two years climate all over the world has inexplicably begun a pronounced cooling. This is contrary to all expectations from global warming theory and growing other evidence is also indicating that the threat has been overestimated. However, the obsession with catastrophic climate change seems to have distracted attention from a much more certain and immanent danger. The oil supply vital to the entire economy is not keeping up with increasing demand while presently all focus is on renewable energy solutions that will require decades to develop and implement.

Consider just a few key facts about oil:

• production is already in decline in some 50 nations;
• new discoveries have steadily declined for several decades and are far below depletion rates;
• oil exports are decreasing in most exporting nations as their own domestic demand increases;
• refining capacity has not kept pace with demand due to environmental restrictions and investment concerns over future supplies of crude;
• most existing refineries are designed for light sweet crude the supply of which is rapidly declining;
• future oil will increasingly be heavy sour crude which only a minority of existing refineries can use;
• the major producers have no reason for massive investment to increase production. The value of their remaining reserves is rapidly appreciating. Increased production would reduce prices and accelerate depletion. Expensive infrastructure for increased production would soon end up excessive to declining reserves.

Growth in demand, shortages and further price rises will slow the global economy for the foreseeable future. Fuel intensive sectors such as primary production, transport and travel will be hit especially hard.

Synfuel

Viable alternative energy is still decades away. Using commercially proven technology synthetic fuel from coal and gas could supply all our needs here in Australia at much less than the current price of fuel from oil. Only emission restrictions on CO2 stand in the way. “Clean” renewable technology is decades from becoming commercial.

The Australian economy is in a vulnerable position. Manufacturing is in decline and, at 13 per cent of GDP, is among the lowest in the developed world. The trade balance remains in chronic deficit even with the mineral boom. In April it became positive for the first time in six years but in May it was in deficit again, chiefly because of rising oil prices. Foreign debt is growing at twice the rate of the economy. It is now about 60 per cent of GDP, the highest in the developed world.

High commodity prices normally last only a few years before increased production, spurred by high prices, brings them down again. An end to the boom will result in a fall in the exchange rate of the Australian dollar, an even worse trade deficit and a crippling increase in the cost of foreign debt. An economy not dependent on imported oil would be a huge advantage.

Australia’s portion of global CO2 emissions is about 1.4 per cent or just six months’ growth in China’s emissions. Natural uptakes of CO2 over Australia’s land and Exclusive Economic Area of surrounding ocean absorb much more than this. Our net contribution to global CO2 emissions is already negative. Whatever we do or don’t do will be trivial to the global situation, either in quantity or even as an example. Why cripple the economy for an increasingly doubtful theory?

The opportunity

Global warming is a distant and uncertain possibility of a problem that most likely does not even exist, at least in the catastrophic form being predicted. It can only be meaningfully addressed by developments that will require decades to become effective and which, in any event, must be undertaken even without the threat of warming.

Severe economic hardship because of fuel costs and shortages, however, is an imminent probability. This could be greatly alleviated if not avoided altogether by development of our own liquid-fuel supplies. It would be far easier to do this now in a time of prosperity than trying to do it in a recession. Having such capacity already in place might well even avert a recession here altogether. Being energy independent would be a huge competitive advantage in a time of high energy costs and shortages everywhere else.

Although precaution in the face of uncertainty is sensible, the realm of hypothetical risk limitless. Many perceived risks turn out to have no reality. Remember the Y2K millennium bug scare? We cannot build fortresses against every shadow of doubt. Precaution too is not without its own attendant risk. Any proposed precautionary measure must be weighed against alternatives as well as consideration of its own consequences.

Obsessing over distant uncertain risks, while ignoring immediate consequences, is poor precaution. For Australia, drastic cuts in carbon emissions to prevent global-warming is to climate what anorexia is to obesity.

Read the rest of this article at ScienceAlert.com (Austrailia/New Zealand)

Nigel Lawson, the Iron Lady’s chancellor, scourge of the miners and father of the adorable Nigella, has joined the ranks of the climate change sceptics. He believes David Cameron’s green agenda is overblown, biofuels are useless and carbon trading resembles ‘nothing so much as the sale of indulgences by the medieval church’

An inverview of a global warming skeptic conducted by a believer.

By John-Paul Flintoff

I can’t pretend I’m expecting to get on with Nigel Lawson. In fact, I’m worried that I might lose my cool – say something I’ll regret, perhaps even bop him on the nose.

On receiving his new book, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, I find myself handling it as though it is toxic; I even flinch at the expression of fierce intellectual arrogance in the author’s photograph.

When I start reading, though, I’m dismayed to discover that I agree with considerable amounts of what Lawson is saying – especially about the current biofuel madness – while also disagreeing with other chunks.

As energy minister under Margaret Thatcher, Lawson masterminded the war against the miners, and as chancellor of the exchequer he launched a series of controversial privatisations and deregulated financial services. Lately, he’s raised my blood pressure even further by pooh-poohing the idea of climate change and resisting any attempt to address what most people accept as a pressing reality. In fact, according to the Lawson view, I – like many others – am a deluded fool for growing food in the garden, cycling everywhere, flushing the minimum possible amount of water down the loo (using an Interflush), and generally making do and mending when things fall apart.

Still, it’s hard to disagree with him about biofuels, on which new European Union regulations came into effect last week, requiring petrol to contain at least 2.5% biofuel, a figure that will increase in future.

“Biofuels,” he says, “have become one of the European Union’s latest fads. It’s far from clear that ethanol produces more energy than is used in its own production. In the second place, it requires a vast amount of land to produce a relatively small amount of ethanol. This not only antagonises environmentalists, upset by the destruction of rainforests for this purpose, but has also led to a marked rise in food prices – in particular the price of grain.”

Last year the Chinese government suspended its production of ethanol for precisely this reason. Now dozens of other countries that are experiencing grave food shortages must wish more would do the same.

In person, Lawson appears less intimidating than his photo. Though no longer startlingly thin – his weight loss, some years ago, gave him the unexpected opportunity to become a bestselling diet guru – he’s by no means fat. And instead of scowling, he twinkles, disarmingly.

We meet at the glamorous home of his daughter, the TV cook Nigella, and her husband Charles Saatchi, the adman turned art collector. Lawson himself now lives in France. Sinister lifelike sculptures – an old codger, a woman pushing a pram – loiter in the hall and on the stairs. Among the many other artworks are several large pots by Grayson Perry.

To begin with, I tell Lawson I’m glad somebody of his background has made absolutely clear the uselessness of biofuels, carbon trading (“it has done nothing to reduce emissions, merely awarded subsidies to selected emitters”), and carbon offsetting (“a scam . . . it resembles nothing so much as the sale of indulgences by the medieval church”).

If we seriously wanted to reduce emissions, he says, we’d have to impose a carbon tax across the board – but this government lacks the confidence to do that. Not that he’s bothered about emissions, anyway. And so we come to climate change . . . or we would, but Lawson thinks the term is specious: it was only adopted, he says, because recent evidence suggests that global warming has almost stopped.

Read the rest of this interview at London’s Sunday Times.