How the Green Taliban spreads its poison gospel
The Telegraph -
Quite probably you missed the big story in yesterday’s Independent that, according to a “think tank”, the economy would be £20 billion a year better off if it focused on wind power. Personally, I’d put more faith in the scheme once mooted by the Daily Mash to pay off the national debt by breeding unicorns and selling them to the Chinese at £250,000 a pop. But the difference is that the Mash is a satirical publication whereas the Independent – at least in theory – is not.
Now just imagine, for a moment, that you were a news editor – or even, heaven forfend, an environment editor – and a story like that came across your desk. The first thing you’d do, surely, would be to assess the reliability of the source. This is just what Richard North has done at his Eureferendum blog.
Turning to the source of this wisdom, we find the “think tank” originator named as “Cambridge Econometrics“, but to call it a think tank is something of a misnomer. The company actually describes itself as “an independent consultancy”, its business being the application of economic modelling and data analysis techniques to the needs of clients in business and government.
As to its “independence”, the company is a trading subsidiary of a charity, the Cambridge Trust for New Thinking in Economics, which receives income from the company to pursue its registered objects.
What is interesting here is that Cambridge Econometrics seems to be a very profitable company, which, according to the accounts submitted to the Charity Commission, turns over a cool £2-million-plus each year and giving its effective owner, Dr Terry Barker, a very comfortable living, plus pension. And Dr Barker has a certain amount of baggage. His cv says he is:
… the Chairman of Cambridge Econometrics, having founded the company in 1985. He is also Senior Departmental Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research (4CMR), Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Economic Systems Research, the International Journal of Climate Strategies and Management, the International Journal of Global Warming, and the Scientific Advisory Board of the World Wide Views on Global Warming. He was a member of the Scientific Committee of the Climate Change Congress, Copenhagen, March 2009, and was on the Writing Team of the Synthesis Report of the Congress.This is a warmist personified, which might suggest a certain bias in his approach to the subject of windfarms. And, if that isn’t enough to set an odiferous rat running, we find that the report itself is produced for Greenpeace and WWF-UK, which funded the work.
Read More: telegraph.co.uk
2012-12-06 19:21:14
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