U.K.: MADE-UP STATISTICS ABOUT POWER CONSERVATION

This is a dtory about dodgy statistics. It is intended more as a cautionary than a moral tale so you will find no villains or heroes in it. Though interesting, the issue itself is secondary. Being neither a statistician nor an engineer, I may in what follows make blunders of my own: but my purpose is not to initiate you into the mysteries of energy conservation but to offer a real-life example of how a dud fact can enter the national mind with no valid passport and no real corroborating paperwork.

Some of us are sure we saw or heard of a claim by the Chancellor, in April, that "up to 10 per cent of the electricity supply" is being wasted on electrical appliances left on "standby". I thought I heard this on a BBC radio news report. A colleague on The Daily Telegraph thinks it must have been a press briefing that led him to report on April 20 that "the Chancellor will be addressing the UN on the need for international co-operation to protect the environment. He intends to highlight the `huge waste' from consumer goods left on standby - about 10 per cent of the electricity supply".

The Evening Standard reported likewise. Gordon Brown flew off to speak in New York: "Consumer goods left on standby worldwide are responsible for 1 per cent of global emissions." That is, of course, a very different claim, which Mr Brown's civil servants say is partly based on an academic study in California. Of which more later.

As for the 10 per cent claim, the Treasury informs me (in so many words) that if it isn't true then Gordon Brown didn't say it, we must have misheard, and even if he did, it would be somebody else's fault - probably another department, so why don't I talk to them? Funny how civil servants begin to resemble their masters.

Meanwhile, it's fair to say that the startling "approximately 10 per cent" figure has entered the public imagination. Everyone I ask has noted claims about the wastefulness of appliances in standby mode. Politicians - who have to be communicators - need striking killer facts, and Westminster has embraced this one with a passion. Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat Environment spokesman, has been asking parliamentary questions about it, and so has Baroness Perry of Southwark. There have been many newspaper reports: "Energy waste soars as we fill our homes with gadgets" said the headline in the Daily Express.

Ministers love nothing better than a simple, graphic certainty. And so it was that last week Alistair Darling, the Trade and Industry Secretary, in a statement to Parliament on the energy review, declared: "Mr Speaker, it is estimated that leaving electric appliances on standby uses about 7 per cent of all electricity generated in the UK. So we will work with industry . . . to phase out inefficient goods limiting the amount of standby energy wasted." "About 7 per cent?" A new figure? Or is that "about 10 per cent"? More importantly, where did the phrase "all electricity generated in the UK" come from? We need not bother ourselves with this mystery because a written correction came fast from Mr Darling: "Further to my statement to the House on Tuesday July 11, it has come to light that the statistics quoted on electricity appliances on standby should have referred to 8 per cent of electricity used in the home, not 7 per cent of the electricity generated in the United Kingdom." This erratum slip reduced the estimate for wasted power to less than half the earlier figure - but, hey-ho, what's a few hundred gigawatts between friends?

Friends of the Earth took a similarly cheerful attitude when I rang them."In a way it doesn't really matter. In the meantime the Government should act." I rather warmed to that: at least it was honest, and made the not un- reasonable point that whatever the figures, there's a hell of a lot of electricity being wasted in lots of ways you might not have thought about.

Nevertheless, in the belief that the facts do still matter a bit, I tried to find out where all these figures were coming from. First I was directed to A Worldwide Review of Standby Power Use in Homes, conducted for the US Government by Alan K. Meier of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's energy analysis department. This is an old paper, published in 2000. It is carefully couched. It does not support the certitudes expressed by ministers or journalists. Dr Meier's report estimates that "between 3 per cent and 12 per cent of electrical power is being wasted on standby".

The guess is based on surveys in 22 countries. The United Kingdom has almost the best record of all of them: a fraction of the wastage in the United States or New Zealand. But in Britain only 32 homes were surveyed. There must (I thought) be a better basis for ministers' claims than a 20th-century survey of 32 houses. I inquired further and was led by the exceptionally helpful Institution of Engineering and Technology to a report, The Rise of the Machines, from the government-sponsored Energy Savings Trust. This document estimates that the figures for standby wastage "range from 3 to 10 per cent of residential electricity use".

But from where do such estimates come? I am redirected again, this time to a baby of the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, named Market Transformation Programme. Its Report BNXS 36 is headed Estimated UK Standby Electricity Consumption in 2004. Here at last are hard figures - or what seem to be. 9.2 terawatt-hours wasted per annum: about 360kWh per household, 8 per cent of domestic electricity consumption, costing about 27.50 pounds per household. In other words, about 10 pounds from each of us. You could recoup that by replacing one 100w tungsten light bulb with a low-energy equivalent (though in winter an appliance on standby is slightly helping to reduce your heating bill). Curiously, the MTP's 9.2 terawatt global figure includes commercial, retail, hotel and office use. To divide this by the number of private households seems misleading - if that is indeed what they've done.

Have they? I put a call in to the Defra press office, who promise someone will come back to me - but nobody does. Finally they re-send me the EST report - with a press release saying the figure is 10 per cent. Better tell Mr Darling, whose 8 per cent figure comes from the MTP report. But where, in turn, did the MTP folk find their figures? My eye moves to the references quoted at the end of the report.

And what's this? Alan K Meier again: that old 2000 study. So I make one final dive into what is turning into our rather flimsy Holy Grail. Near the end of Meier's report I spot this: "Estimates of standby power use and savings opportunities are based on just a few, scattered measurement studies . . . (they are) inadequate. More complete information is needed to answer these questions:

* What is the overall size of standby (nationally and globally)?
* What are the key contributors to standby?
* Is standby growing or declining?
* What are the potential savings from reducing standby?"

Meier is asking these questions! Everyone else is pointing to him as the man who answers them. The truth is plain. Nobody has the least idea. All we do know amounts simply to this: that some small energy savings are available from switching some appliances right off.

At the start of the Iraq war, Jack Straw, then the Foreign Secretary, announced that Iraq was more than twice the size of France. Soon everyone was repeating this. Actually Iraq is smaller than France. But why fret? Journalists and politicians bring you the essential not the literal truth. The essential truth is that you must remember to unplug your mobile phone charger; and Iraq is awfully big.

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On Global Warming: Who's Censoring Now?

Post lifted from Amy Ridenour

Next time you hear U.S. government physicist James Hansen claim the government is trying to censor him, consider this (paid subscription required) from Environment & Energy Daily (7/21/06):

A chronic illness only partly explains why James Hansen decided to skip the House Government Reform Committee's on global warming in seven years. The embattled NASA scientist also passed on yesterday's event because lawmakers are "still in denial" about the reasons for dramatic changes in the Earth's climate, he said last night in an e-mail.

In the message Hansen sent to reporters to explain his absence from yesterday's hearing, the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies said he had a conflicting doctor appointment to deal with a cold that interacts with his asthma... But he also indicated he would have adjusted his schedule if the witness list did not also include skeptical points of view.

"I would get out of my sickbed to testify to Congress on global warming, if they were ready to deal responsibly with the matter," Hansen wrote. "But obviously they are still in denial, inviting contrarians to 'balance' the science of global warming."

Hansen apparently was objecting to the House panel's late addition of John Christy, a professor and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In his testimony yesterday, Christy told lawmakers that scientists "cannot reliably project the trajectory of the climate" for large regions of the United States.

Christy also said it would be a "far more difficult task" to predict the effects should the United States adopt a mandatory greenhouse gas policy.

Hansen's e-mail said skeptical points of view cloud the climate debate rather than enlighten it. "The function of the contrarians is to obfuscate what is known, so as to keep the public confused and allow special interests to continue to reap short-term profits, to the detriment of the long-term economic well-being of the nation," he said.

Hansen said Congress should direct the National Academy of Sciences to update its 2001 report to President Bush on the state of the science surrounding global warming. "Until then, it is just a charade," he wrote...

Perhaps he meant it to be perceived differently, but Dr. Hansen's actions fit the description of a hissy fit. If Hansen disagrees with Dr. John Christy (whose testimony to the commitee can be found in pdf form here), why not participate in the hearing and explain why?

Science is supposed to be about considering all points of view and then rejecting those that cannot be proven valid, not about throwing hissy fits because alternative points of view are under consideration.

Had the House Government Reform Committee taken a page from Dr. Hansen's playbook and refused to invite Dr. Christy solely because of Christy's views, it would have been censorship.






THE NEVER-ENDING RECYCLING NONSENSE

Magistrates in Exeter, England, have binned a test case for the laws making recycling compulsory. But while the local council may be squealing that this makes the rules unenforceable, nobody seems to be asking the more uncomfortable questions about why green policies are proving to be increasingly authoritarian. Donna Challice, a 31-year-old single mother of three, was charged by Exeter city council with placing food waste in bins designated for recyclable items. Challice claimed that the food waste, including takeaway containers, was being put in her bins by passers-by. The council was unable to prove who was doing it, and lost the case.

Mike Trim, recycling officer for the local council, said: `We will have to look at the implications for us and other local authorities. It will be hard to bring cases like this if there has to be direct evidence of an individual contaminating a recycling bin. It's hard to see how you can carry out surveillance practically on what people do in their own homes and their own back gardens. This case shows the Act is not working in its current form.'

The prospect of jobsworths from the council environment department staking out housing estates is a less than attractive one. Presumably Mr Trim and his colleagues regard having to provide evidence in court as a messy business - much like separating your waste - and would be happier if they could slap a fine on householders and ask questions later.

Luckily for them, that's an idea the government has already had. Under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, councils will have the power to hand out fixed penalty notices for breaking the recycling rules. Those fixed penalties could still be challenged in court, but the authorities know that this is much less likely than if a case has to be brought to court in the first place.

The steady drip of letters, notices and fines against individuals charged with breaking the recycling rules might make some sense if recycling was a worthwhile activity. However, as Richard Tomkins points out in the Financial Times, `recycling household waste makes little difference to resource depletion because the quantities involved are too small'. Noting that the vast majority of resources in society are used in manufacturing, construction, commercial and public sector activities, he concludes that `the sort of recycling that makes a difference occurs outside the home, not in it'.

Daniel K Benjamin, professor of economics at Clemson University in South Carolina, notes that there are numerous myths about recycling, including:

-- We're overwhelmed by rubbish. In fact, our rubbish takes up a small fraction of available land. In many cases, rubbish is used to fill holes made by other activities, like mining or quarrying. There are other alternatives, like incineration, which can greatly reduce the volume of what is sent to landfill.

-- Waste is harmful. The vast majority of waste is harmless and perfectly safe in landfill.

-- Packaging is a huge problem. A combination of technical development and a desire to save money means the packaging on most goods has been steadily reduced over the years, and packaging reduces other forms of waste, like rotting or damaged food.

-- We're squandering resources if we don't recycle. The scarcity of a resource tends to be reflected in its price - if the stuff we throw away was really valuable, we wouldn't throw it away. Moreover, we are not concerned with a particular substance but rather with what that substance does - if we find something else that does it better and cheaper, resources can become obsolete long before they run out.

-- Recycling is better for the environment. Given that recycling is a manufacturing process in itself, it also uses energy and raw materials - and running separate rubbish collections burns extra fossil fuels. Whether recycling a particular type of waste is really better for the environment needs to be judged on a case-by-case basis.

-- Without compulsion, recycling wouldn't happen. Actually, lots of recycling goes on all the time. Numerous industries, large and small, have grown up around recycling, particularly with regard to commercial and industrial waste. The difference is that in these areas, recycling makes economic sense.

To summarise: household waste makes up only a small part of total waste and it is relatively expensive to collect. In fact, if we are to believe Exeter councillor Pete Edwards, what is collected is so close to being worthless that any contamination (for example, a takeaway carton) appears to make an entire batch of recyclable waste uneconomic to process: `Every day, thousands of people in the city diligently sort through their rubbish, separating residual waste from recyclables. It only takes one person to contaminate their green bin and we have to discard a whole lorry-load of recyclables. We cannot let the thoughtless minority spoil it for the selfless majority.'

None of which takes into account the time it takes all of us householders to separate waste and manage two or three different bins. Some might argue that moaning about this extra work is petty. But if there's no good reason to do it, then the whole recycling process becomes an expensive charade. No wonder the authorities, unable to convince many of us that recycling makes sense, have resorted to heavy-handed tactics.

Household recycling only makes sense as the practical form of a morality tale: that humans are essentially greedy and rapacious. The physical expression of that greed is the amount of rubbish we create. The lesson is that we should all rein in our expectations and demand less - be less `thoughtless' and more `selfless', to use the councillor's words. Western politicians have failed in recent decades to provide substantial economic growth. The environmentalist argument is that growth is not just difficult to produce - it isn't desirable, either. This suits political parties that have run out of ideas for how to carry society forward (see Who's afraid of economic growth?, by Daniel Ben-Ami).

The environment is also just the kind of lowest common denominator issue that the political classes are scrabbling round for right now to give themselves an excuse for existing. Who, after all, is not in favour of saving the planet? No one should have been surprised that David Cameron's Conservatives, a party with a particularly pressing need to find a reason to keep going, ran their local election campaign under the slogan `Vote Blue, Go Green'.

The case of Donna Challice captures in microcosm where society is headed: to a situation where our leaders try to convince us that we should lower our horizons, and where they wield the big stick against those who think otherwise. What a waste.

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Loony Green/Left government in the Australian State of Victoria

In Victoria, rivers are no longer water SOURCES. They are now water USERS! Comment below by Andrew Bolt

John Thwaites says we use too much water and too many plastic bags. But our state Environment Minister uses too little of something far rarer than water and even better than bags. Try brains. Has any government put out anything more irrational and half-baked than did green-priest Thwaites last week with his "Sustainability Action Statement"?

Here is proof that the true battle isn't between those who want to save the environment or use it. It's between those who have given in to superstition and those who still defend reason. Last week's statement promised, without a blush of shame, to make your power bills rise, your water dry up and your shopping bills rise, yet -- incredibly -- the media clapped like mad.

Indeed, this was mad. Take Thwaites' promise to force retailers to charge you 10 cents for each of those wicked plastic bags you use to carry home the shopping. Says Thwaites's statement, 10 million of them each year become litter "that endanger the health of marine wildlife", clog drains or "detract from the beauty of our environment". So from 2012 the poor will be fined for using these bags of evil, forcing them to use something else -- a pram, perhaps? -- to get their tins and packages home. (The rich won't feel any hurt at a lousy 10 cents a bag, which is why the rich-pleasing media barely cares about all this.)

But does the 10 cents actually make sense? Not if you believe the Productivity Commission. A draft commission report in May found that plastic bags make up only 0.2 per cent of land fill, where they probably do some good, reducing toxic leakage and keeping the fill stable. And there was little proof the bags caused harm to wildlife, which tends not to shop with them anyway. They might make a mess here and there, but there were probably cheaper ways of dealing with that than a ban, said the commission's boss, Philip Weikhardt. Besides, they are just so useful, which is why we don't carry our groceries home in, say, an Esky or a suitcase. More than 60 per cent are reused lining bins or for other household jobs such as keeping food fresh. Heavens, that might save lives. In fact, as the Environment Protection and Heritage Council concluded: "Plastic bags are popular with consumers and retailers as they are a functional, lightweight, strong, cheap, and hygienic way to transport food and other products."

So what was the Government's excuse for slapping on the 10 cent fine when it makes so little sense? I think I've found the answer on page 47 of Thwaites' statement: "(P)lastic bags are a symbol of our inefficient use of resources . . ." Note that the bags themselves aren't inefficient. They are bad because they are symbols of other things that are. And so must go. Mad. Next!

Next is Thwaites' promise to force energy retailers to buy 10 per cent of their power from green-approved solar and wind generators. Which sounds so earth-cuddling. Except for this: these huge mills and reflectors of "green" power wreck our views more than plastic bags ever could. And they'll crank out power that costs us big without cutting global warming by any amount anyone can measure. Figure it out for yourself: Most climate modellers -- such as Tom Wigley, senior scientist at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research -- say even if all the Kyoto-approved cuts to the world's greenhouse gases were put in place right now, they would delay the rise in temperature predicted for 2100 by a measly six years. The heat expected in 2100 will come anyway in 2106.

Now imagine what small contribution wind-power will make in producing that tiny effect. Break that down even more: what share of that contribution is Victoria's? See? These wind farms we're building will make all the difference of a bat-squeak in a grand-final roar. But measure the cost, and not just in ruined views. The Government says the extra green power will make your power bills go up by $1 a month. In fact, the Opposition is correct in warning the true cost is more likely to become more than five times that -- and we'll still need coal-fired plants as backup for the days the wind doesn't blow. Or blows too hard. Again, this is just an expensive symbolic gesture to please green gods. We must pay so Thwaites can pray.

Next! Yes, there is a next because the one thing we're not running out of under this Government is irrationality. Next is Thwaites's manic determination to stop any future government from building a dam for Melbourne on the river once set aside for that very purpose. Not content with already having turned the dam reservation at Gippsland's Mitchell River into a national park, Thwaites now says the Government will pass a law to declare the Mitchell a heritage river that can never be dammed. Don't think he doesn't know he's locking up good drinking water that one day we will badly need. His statement admits the "Mitchell River (is) the largest free-flowing river without a dam in southeastern Australia". So, you'll think there must be a good reason to deny us this water when our dams are already less than half full, with dry Melbourne expecting a million more thirsty residents within 25 years.

And I've found them. Well, not good reasons, but the only ones Thwaites's allies at Melbourne Water can dream up to justify their minister's dam ban. Says Melbourne Water: "New dams do not create any new water." How about that for a reason not to build one? Might as well not have built any of Melbourne's dams, then. None of them create water either, do they? On struggles Melbourne Water: "If a new dam were built for Melbourne, it would need to be filled with water that is currently used by rural and regional communities and the environment."

Pardon me? How is water "used ... by the environment"? Who can tell if a river really is "using" water, or just wasting it? And if a river really is "using" water, who says I can't take it anyway? But isn't all river water "used by the environment"? Um, well, yes, actually. So this nonsense statement tells us we should empty every dam we've ever built and never drink another drop of water that could be "used" by the rivers instead.

Indeed, this Government is already pulling the plug on the reservoir at Lake Mokoan, and promising to send more water from our dams down half a dozen of our rivers to flow to waste in the sea. This, during our worst recorded drought. You'll find all this hard to believe, so go check the October issue of Melbourne Water's A Source magazine. There you'll find Thwaites's plan for the giant Thomson Dam, which holds 60 per cent of Melbourne's water but is less than 40 per cent full. Does Thwaites plan to plug any leaks? Cut back on releases into the river? Hell, no. His big idea is to empty the reservoir of an extra 8 billion litres of drinking water each year to baptise more fish and bless more plants. So, while sacred fish soak we mere humans must heed Preacher Thwaites' call last week to "save the planet" by taking "four-minute power showers instead of the average seven minutes".

I cannot be the only person to think all this is so irrational as to border on the mad. Less water, dearer power and higher grocery bills -- just to genuflect to the earth gods that seem to have moved into Spring St. One day, of course, the crunch will come. We'll have a real water crisis. We won't have enough power to drive export industries such as our aluminium smelters. We'll price ourselves out of competition with our neighbours. Pray then to the nature gods of John Thwaites, asking them to return our pious favours. Learn then how deaf they are. And how pitiless.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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