New blog

Climate Observer is a new blog out of Australia that puts up a lot of detailed information about climate fraud. Lots of graphics. Recommended.





Doctors warn on climate failure

They say that climate change will increase rates of malnutrition but ignore the fact that more CO2 makes crops grow bigger and faster and that there will be more rain overall as a warmer ocean evaporates off more moisture. And, of course, warm weather is a lot more benign to health than cold weather is. Why else is there more illness in winter? There is not a shred of intellectual honesty to be found below

Failure to agree a new UN climate deal in December will bring a "global health catastrophe", say 18 of the world's professional medical organisations. Writing in The Lancet and the British Medical Journal, they urge doctors to "take a lead" on the climate issue.

In a separate editorial, the journals say that people in poor tropical nations will suffer the worst impacts. They argue that curbing climate change would have other benefits such as more healthy diets and cleaner air [How?]

December's UN summit, to be held in Copenhagen, is due to agree a new global climate treaty to supplant the Kyoto Protocol. But preparatory talks have been plagued by lack of agreement on how much to cut greenhouse gas emissions and how to finance climate protection for the poorest countries.

"There is a real danger that politicians will be indecisive, especially in such turbulent economic times as these," according to the letter signed by leaders of 18 colleges of medicine and other medical disciplines across the world. "Should their response be weak, the results for international health could be catastrophic."

Earlier in the year, The Lancet, together with University College London (UCL), published a major review on the health impacts of climate change. Some of the headline findings were that rising temperatures are likely to increase transmission of many infectious diseases, reduce supplies of food and clean water in developing countries, and raise the number of people dying from heat-related conditions in temperate regions.

But it also acknowledged some huge gaps in research - for example, that "almost no reliable data for heatwave-induced mortality exist in Africa or south Asia". Nevertheless, the main conclusion was that in a world likely to have three billion new inhabitants by the second half of this century: "Effects of climate change on health will affect most populations in the next decades and put the lives and wellbeing of billions of people at increased risk".

The current Lancet and BMJ editorial that accompanies the letter from doctors' organisations argues that climate change strengthens the cases that health and development charities are already championing. "Even without climate change, the case for clean power, electric cars, saving forests, energy efficiency, and new agriculture technology is strong.

Written by Lord Michael Jay, who chairs the health charity Merlin, and Professor Michael Marmot of UCL, [Not the Marmot again! What an inveterate crook he is! He is associated with the dubious WCRF and some equally dubious dietary claims] the editorial argues that there are plenty of "win-win solutions" available. "A low-carbon economy will mean less pollution. A low carbon-diet (especially eating less meat) and more exercise will mean less cancer, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. [A myth. There's no good evidence for that at all. Traditional Eskimos eat meat and fat almost exclusively but have LOW rates of cardiovascular disease etc. See also here]

SOURCE





THERMAGEDDON? POSTPONED!

Last week a UK tribunal ruled that belief in manmade global warming had the same status as a religious conviction, such as transubstantiation.

True believers in the hypothesis will need mountains of faith in the years ahead. The New Scientist has given weight to the prediction that the planet is in for a cool 20 years - defying the computer models and contemporary climate theory. It's "bad timing", admits the magazine's environmental correspondent, Fred Pearce.

Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, quoted by the magazine, attributes much of the recent warming to naturally occurring ocean cycles. Scientific study of the periodic ocean climate variability is in its infancy; for example the PDO or Pacific Decadal Oscillation, was only described in the late 1990s. It's the Leibniz team which predicted a forthcoming cooling earlier this year - causing a bullying outbreak at the BBC. "We have to ask the nasty questions ourselves or other people will do it," Latif told the magazine.

A historical comparison of recent warming contrasts the UN IPCC accounts of Thermageddon - based on climate models - with the post-1800 trend which shows a gradual warming. Little seems out of place in recent times except the predictions, says Dr Syun Akasofu, Founding Director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and former director of the Geophysical Institute. Aksasofu says multi-decadal oscillations, discovered within the past decade, account for the variability.

Earlier this summer a mathematical study also predicted cooling, and won an unusual endorsement from the Real Climate website, the blog founded by Al Gore's PR company and staffed by advocates of the manmade climate change theory. In a paper entitled Has the climate recently shifted? Professor Kyle Swanson and Anastasios Tsonsis, mathematicians at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the authors engage with the problem that temperatures have failed to follow the predictions made by computer climate models.

It excited climate sceptics, but I'm not sure why. In the paper, Swanson and Tsonis correlated data from the ENSO, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, and the North Pacific Index and found that synchronisations occurred four times - in 1910-20; 1938-45; 1956-60; and 1976-1981. After three of these, the climate shifted too. When coupling between the systems was high, climate invariably changed.

The recent cooling, which they suggest started in 2001, is an indicator of a phase shift. (Others point out that discounting the freak El Nino weather event of 1998, which raised temperatures by 0.2°C, there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995.)

This cooling, which appears unprecedented over the instrumental period, is "suggestive of an internal shift of climate dynamical processes that as yet remain poorly understood," they wrote.

"The apparent lack of a proximate cause behind the halt in warming post 2001/02 challenges our understanding of the climate system, specifically the physical reasoning and causal links between longer time-scale modes of internal climate variability and the impact of such modes upon global temperature... the possibility of near constant temperature lasting a decade or more into the future must at least be entertained...

This overshoot is in the process of radiatively dissipating, and the climate will return to its earlier defined, greenhouse gas-forced warming signal. If this hypothesis is correct, the era of consistent record-breaking global mean temperatures will not resume until roughly 2020," Swanson wrote.

The confidence that higher atmospheric CO2 levels will result in significant long-term increases in temperature is founded on knock-on effects, or positive feedbacks, amplifying the CO2 effect. Large positive feedbacks imply "runaway" global warming - aka Thermageddon.

But even the basics are fiercely contested. Does a warmer climate mean more or fewer clouds, and do these trap even more heat, or act as a sunshade, cooling it back down again? Clouds are so poorly understood, you can take your pick. So if the climate isn't getting warmer, the theory requires the view that the energy must be "hiding" somewhere, mostly likely in oceanic heat sinks.

But neither the feedbacks, nor the oceans, are currently being kind to contemporary climate theory.

SOURCE






GETTING GOD TO DO THEIR DIRTY WORK

In seeking to use religion to force people to change their eco-unfriendly behaviour, greens are debasing both religious belief and scientific truth

Frank Furedi

We live in world where the cynical manipulation of people's fears and anxieties often overrides informed public debate. Principles and beliefs seem to have become negotiable commodities, and all too often the search for truth gives way to doing 'whatever works'. In recent decades religious figures have, at various times, embraced the authority of science, therapy and the environment as a way of communicating their messages. Indeed, the old statement 'our faith demands...' has increasingly given way to the claim that 'the research shows...'. If Christian fundamentalists can reinvent their dogma in the language of 'creationist science', how long before atheist scientists seek to justify their moral crusade in the language of religion?

Well, Lord May, president of the British Science Association, has risen to the occasion with his call last week to mobilise religion as part of the crusade against global warming. May said that mainstream religions should play a key role in convincing people to become more aware of environmental issues and to change their behaviour in order to 'save the planet'. By making this opportunist demand for the effective rehabilitation of God, an atheist moral entrepreneur has shown that it is possible to debase both religion and science at the same time.

May's call to use religion to promote the cause of climate change awareness is the logical conclusion to a project - environmentalism - which in every respect is a moral crusade. Back in September 2003, the late American writer Michael Crichton characterised environmentalism as a powerful new religion. He was possibly thinking of the Lord Mays of this world when he said that 'environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists'.

Old-fashioned religious themes are continually recycled by greens. Some environmentalists may joke about 'green sins' but they are deadly serious when they denounce evil polluters and deniers. In this contemporary urban religion, the carbon footprint symbolises human transgression, though absolution can be gained through carbon offsets. Green judgements on our diets, our procreation habits and our everyday behaviour are possibly even more intrusive than the pronouncements of medieval religious figures. Old-fashioned prophecy and divination have given way to speculation and alarmist warnings based on computer models. And the medieval inquisition that targeted heretics and witches has got a new lease of life in the current crusade against sceptics and so-called deniers.

Many intelligent observers of today's green theocracy argue that it represents an answer to humanity's need for religion. No doubt we all need to believe in something, but the current embrace of religion by Lord May and other green-leaning atheists is driven by simple opportunism rather than a genuine crisis of belief. The attempt to recruit God to the anti-climate change campaign is driven by a desire to influence all those people who currently are not responding to the moral crusade to save the planet. The turn to God is underwritten by a strong feeling of contempt towards both religion and the public.

Many environmentalists believe that ordinary people are too selfish and too stupid to pay attention to the lofty message about saving the planet. Leading green commentators bemoan people's short-termist and irrational behaviour. One British eco-columnist wrote about how 'depressed' he felt about 'the epidemic of mass denial' in Britain, where ordinary people simply refuse to take climate change seriously. 'Up to a point, laws can be passed to combat climate change, and offenders who don't conform can be punished', he casually observed, before noting that, in the end, people will have to understand 'the dangers and threats we face' (1).

Activist-scientists like May seem to believe there are two ways of influencing the public: by making fear appeals or using a form of moral blackmail. Apocalyptic warnings about the future of the planet have become the bread and butter of the crusade against climate change. These alarmist messages are promoted in the most simplistic and emotive terms. 'I liked it. It does emotionalise the debate, but it seems that it has to do that' - that was the verdict of Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. American environmentalists often give a deeply contemptuous assessment of their audiences. According to one green activist, 'the "issue" of climate change must be defined for Americans' in 'uncomplicated, black-and-white terms' (2).

More HERE







Light Bulbs and the Madness of Energy Efficiency Regulations

Because you can't flip them on and off quicky, fluorescents tend to be left on continuously. That alone probably negates any power savings -- JR

Europeans (like Americans) choose to buy ordinary light bulbs around 9 times out of 10 (European Commission and light industry data 2007-8). Banning what people want gives the supposed savings that are "good for them"—no point in banning what people don’t want!

If new LED lights—or improved CFLs etc—are good, people will buy them—no need to ban ordinary light bulbs (little point). If they are not good, people will not buy them—no need to ban ordinary light bulbs (no point). The similar case of the arrival of the transistor didn’t mean that more energy using radio tubes were banned…they were bought less, anyway.

"Market failures" keep being cited as a reason for efficiency regulations. In other words, consumers don't act as they are "supposed to", in preferring cheap but inefficient products. Certainly, ordinary light bulbs are cheap—no crime—but you don’t keep buying cheap products that do not meet your expectation. Ordinary light bulbs, for example, have many advantages including broad spectrum light quality, appearance, versatility with dimmers and sensors, quickness to come on in the cold, and are easy to make bright, including in small sizes.

Conversely: People don’t avoid "energy saving" lights (CFLs, LEDs) just because they are expensive. If that were true, no other expensive alternative products would be bought either. Think of imaginative advertising that sells long lasting batteries (Duracell/Energizer bunnies) or washing up liquids: "expensive to buy but cheap in the long run!" As it is now, certainly in Europe, CFL and LED manufacturers rely on boring public campaigns - and the ban - to shift their product.

Yet, from various research it can be seen that most households have indeed tried CFLs—maybe they don’t want a house full of CFLs or LEDs, maybe they like a bit of variation (different light suit different locations, —maybe, shock horror, they just don’t like CFLs!

Consider more closely this notion among politicians that "everyone should buy something just because it is efficient". Certainly, they might improve, as promised, but CFL manufacturers themselves can inform on and promote that—just like any other business does.

Efficiency is one advantage a product can have. Not only can inefficient products have other advantages, they have to have them, or they would not survive on the market. Our inspired politicians are banning everything from types of building to washing machines to computers, TV sets, plasma screens etc based on efficiency criteria. Unfortunately, appearance, construction, performance as well as price—and indeed savings—can be tied in with advantages of inefficient products.

There is another question that should be asked: What is the actual need to save energy? Advice is good and welcome, but bans are another matter…Consumers—not politicians—pay for energy, its production, and how they wish to use it. There is no energy shortage—on the contrary, more and more renewable sources are being developed—and if there was an energy shortage, the price rise would lead to more demand for efficient products anyway—no need to legislate for it. As for light bulbs, the supposed savings of a ban don’t hold up, for many reasons

Brief examples:

Effect on Electricity Bills

If energy use does indeed fall with light bulb and other proposed efficiency bans, electricity companies make less money, and they’ll simply push up the electricity bills to compensate, in covering their fixed overheads. They can't just (like politicians seem to think) "save a power station". Now, marketplace competition might have prevented such price rises—but power companies often have their own grids with little supply competition, grids that moreover have to be maintained at fixed costs. Energy regulators can hardly deny any such cost covering exercise—supposed money savings then affected.

Conversely: Since energy efficiency in effect means cheaper energy, people simply leave appliances on more than before, crank up the heat of boilers etc., as shown by recent Scottish and Cambridge research (in the case of CFLs they’re supposed to be left on more anyway, to avoid cutting down on their lifespan)—supposed energy savings then affected.

The fact that CFLs are not as bright as stated is another reason against supposed savings. A simple comparison test was recently described by a British newspaper. Also, since lifespan is lab tested in 3 hour cycles, any increased on-off switching reduces it, as does (as said) leaving the lights on to combat it.

More: CFLs typically have a "power factor" of 0.5

Power companies therefore typically need to generate more than twice as as much power than what your electricity meter - or CFL rating - shows, taking everything into consideration. Of course you end up having to pay for this anyway, in electricity charges being higher than they otherwise would have been. Without going into technicalities, this has to do with current and voltage phase differences set up when CFLs are used. There is nothing new or strange about this. Industries are today penalized if they present such a work load to the power station. The only significant "energy saving" going on here is in the mental activity of politicians in Brussels...London…Dublin…Washington...and the journalists uncritically regurgitating everything thrown at them aren't much better, either.

Emissions?

Does your light bulb actually give out any gases? That's right: It's not like a car is it? Yet, cars that release large amounts of CO2 aren't banned. (in fact in Europe they are often taxed for emissions - hang on to that thought). Power stations might not give out any CO2 gas either: Why should emission-free households - like in Sweden and France (or much of Washington state, as hydropower, and nuclear powered US regions) be denied the use of lighting they obviously want to use? Low emission households already dominate some other regions, and will increase everywhere, since emissions will be reduced anyway through the planned use of coal/gas processing technology and/or energy substitution.

The Taxation alternative

A ban on light bulbs is extraordinary, in being on a product safe to use. We are not talking about banning lead paint here. This is simply a ban to reduce electricity consumption (whether viable or not).

Even for those who remain pro-ban, taxation to reduce the consumption would be fairer and make more sense, also since governments can use the income to reduce emissions (home insulation schemes, renewable projects etc) more than any remaining product use causes such problems. A few euros/dollars tax that reduces the current sales (EU like the USA 2 billion sales per annum, UK 250-300 million pa) raises future billions, and would retain consumer choice. It could also be revenue neutral, lowering any sales tax on efficient products. When sufficent low emission electricity delivery is in place, the ban can be lifted http://www.ceolas.net/LightBulbTax.html

Taxation, it should be said, is itself unjustified for similar reasons to bans. It just has, in comparison, advantages for all concerned. Of course, an EU ban is underway, but in phases, supposedly with reviews in a couple of years time. Maybe as the ban draws nearer in the USA and Canada, lessons can be learned from what is happening over here?

More HERE (See the original for more links on the subject)





GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Three current articles grouped below

Beautiful Australian island faces rising tide of oppressive Greenie regulation



Last Wednesday I was minding my own business, atop the high, sheer cliffs along Malabar Hill on Lord Howe Island. I was not expecting the company of a ratbag. He was the worst kind of ratbag: intelligent, articulate, informed, focused.

It was a perfect day at a perfect place. Lord Howe is probably the most beautiful island in Australian territory, one of the most beautiful islands in the world and a globally significant bird sanctuary and coral zone. I was using binoculars to gaze at tropicbirds, with their long, trailing, red tails, as they wheeled in circling, looping mating rituals above the sea. Behind me, three people turned up, a couple of visitors from the mainland and their guide, a knowledgeable man. His ratbaggery was not at all evident at first.

One of the visitors commented that plants right on the edge of the precipice had been banded with identifying marks by park staff (the entirety of Lord Howe Island has been declared a World Heritage Site). The guide told the visitors that staff were paid $24 an hour to keep the park free of weeds and preserve native species. He said it was like being paid to bushwalk.

He also mentioned that staff were responsible for setting rat traps, because rats have been a problem on Lord Howe Island for more than 100 years, since they were introduced from a ship foundering on one of the reefs. When I asked this apparent expert whether rats were a growing problem on the island, or in a steady state, he replied, ''A steady state, but we can't be complacent.''

''Is it true,'' I asked, ''that they want to drop poisoned pellets from a helicopter over the island to get rid of the rats?'' ''Yes,'' he replied. The program will be based on successful rat eradication efforts on islands in New Zealand. (I later checked this and it turned out to be true.)

He seemed to know everything, so I asked if it were also true there were plans to get rid of the Norfolk Island pines on Lord Howe Island. There was a proposal, he replied, to phase out the pines over 30 years, leaving a few trees for ''heritage'' reasons. ''Why?" I asked. ''Because they are not native,'' he replied.

What? The groves of giant pines along the central shore of the island, where most people live or stay, are sheltering windbreaks, beautiful, and part of the traditional character of the island almost since habitation began in 1833. They are also the breeding habitat for white terns. Besides, Lord Howe has an airport and a village, and will never to return to native purity. When I registered my dismay, he said the pines should be replaced by native species.

''Are you staying at Pinetrees?'' he asked. Yes. Pinetrees is the oldest and most famous of the hotels on the island. It has been run by the same family for 110 years. He had plenty of suggestions for the owners, too. (Pinetrees is owned by two sisters, Kerry McFadyen and Pixie Rourke, whose family has lived on the island for five generations.)

''They should cut down the pine trees and use the timber to make cabins further up the hill, so that when global warming brings a rise in sea level, they will still have a resort and they can still call it Pinetrees.'' His attitude was a metaphor for the dark side of the environmental movement, the uncompromising, didactic, self-important side. Religious zeal may be on the wane in our society, but the impulse towards crusading, evangelistic certainty is not.

This is why the Greens have failed to break out of their 9 per cent political rump. The party should be in a much more powerful position, with the benefit of the great gale of environmental concern billowing in its spinnaker. Instead, it constantly sails into the politically less rewarding and less pragmatic territory of anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, drug politics, sexual politics, identity politics, refugee politics and a doctrinaire brand of sanctimonious environmentalism that irritates more than educates.

That same evening, I met Kerry McFadyen and her husband, Bruce, who co-manages the property. She is a marine biologist and qualified as a medical doctor; he is an architect, but they gave up these careers to run Pinetrees. I didn't interview them. I was just a guest chatting about what I had heard that day from the zealot on Malabar Hill. They were worried about their pine trees but they had more pressing problems. Like the rest of society, they were beginning to feel the rising tide of regulation, which, in a social system as small and delicate as Lord Howe Island has a greater impact.

The Lord Howe Island Board, which runs the island, intends to impose a thumping tax increase on the small band of hotel operators. For Pinetrees, the annual bed tax is going to more than double from $32,640 a year to $68,000 next year, and to $85,000 in the year after that. They are also being blocked from renovating their staff quarters by a pedantic bureaucrat. Space precludes detailing the idiocy of this particular obduracy.

Then there is the threat to the pine trees from axe-wielding purists. And a particularly doctrinaire island environmental officer who makes their life hell. Oh, and the NSW Government might be dropping rat poison via helicopter.

Lord Howe Island does not face any environmental crisis, but it does face a rising tide of bureaucracy which could threaten the island's health long before the sea rises even a millimetre.

SOURCE

How cutting carbon emissions leads to wasting energy

Why is the Rudd government's green-team intent on wasting natural gas?

ECONOMISTS can and do get it wrong. The lead-up to the sub-prime mortgage crisis being an obvious case in point. While some economists and regulators were convinced all was well, many people were alarmed at a system that enabled people to buy expensive houses with loans that were beyond their means of repaying. It just didn't pass the common sense test. But have we learned our lesson about relying on complex economics that nobody really understands? In the context of climate change legislation, it would appear not.

Consider the following. If the government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is introduced, it will actually be cheaper for the coal industry to burn the natural gas that is produced by coal mines than to use that same gas to generate electricity.

That's right. Rather than capture what is known as waste coal mine gas, which is a form of natural gas, and use it to generate electricity across Australia, once the CPRScomes in it will be more efficient to set it alight.

Never mind that the world demand for natural gas is rising. Never mind that the gas wasted in this way could be used to reduce the amount of coal burned elsewhere in Australia. And never mind that there are a lot more skilled jobs in building and maintaining waste gas-fired generators than there are in literally watching the gas go up in smoke. If the intent of the government's legislation is to be believed, they know what's best and that, it seems, is supposed to be the end of the issue.

But what if the economists Climate Change Minister Penny Wong is listening to are wrong? Isn't it at least possible that using this waste natural gas is better than burning it?

The irony is that for the past decade the answer has been a resounding yes. Well before anybody had even heard of a CPRS, private companies began building and operating gas-fired electricity generators. In fact, there are 215 megawatts of these generators now in operation. Together they help to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by more than 6.5 million tonnes each year, which is greater than the annual abatement the government hopes to achieve with its $4billion ceiling insulation initiative.

The problem is that it costs a bit more to turn gas into electricity than it does to simply set fire to it. While the electricity that is generated can be sold into the grid, without some form of government assistance it can't compete with the very low price of power generated from burning coal.

And there's the rub: while the existing NSW scheme makes using the gas viable, the proposed CPRS does not.

In response to pressure the government recently announced some changes to the renewable energy target designed to reduce the harm that the CPRS will do to the owners of waste coal gas electricity generators, but in doing so they ensured that no new waste gas generators will be built.

What better example of the lack of transformation that the CPRS will generate could there be? The government is willing to provide some compensation to existing waste gas generators, but its policy will prevent new ones from being built.

The CPRS has been criticised from all directions. Of course the government argues that if nobody likes it they must have the balance right. But of course it might also be the case that nobody likes it because it doesn't really work. The government's whole strategy for selling the scheme to the public seems to be to confuse people into supporting it. In arguing that their scheme is the most effective way to tackle climate change they have placed the burden of proof on their critics. But it is the government that should be able to answer simple questions about its scheme. Simple questions such as:

* If the CPRS is a step in the right direction why will it destroy $350 million worth of planned projects to convert waste natural gas into electricity?

* If the CPRS delivers least cost abatement why is it cheaper to burn the natural gas that comes out of coal mines than turn it into power?

* If the government is interested in creating green jobs why does its scheme encourage coal mines to import emissions credits from other countries rather than invest in the onsite conversion of waste gas into useable electricity?

Australian firms are at the cutting edge of this industry, with their technology and skills in demand throughout Asia where this gas exists in abundance and is being converted to fuel for communities in dire need of energy. Already they are employing hundreds of people turning natural gas, that would otherwise be wasted, into electricity. It's an efficient use of a natural resource and it means that less coal needs to be burned elsewhere. Most important of all, however, is the fact that it is the existing policy framework, not the CPRS, that makes the expansion of this industry viable.

Australia needs a comprehensive national approach to tackling climate change, but that does not mean we need the CPRS as it is proposed. It is the government's fault that the proposal is so flawed and it is the government's job to fix it. Unfortunately, rather than listen to her critics, Wong has sought to silence them. And rather than explain her scheme to the public she has sought to confuse them.

If the Minister is proud of her scheme she should explain why she thinks burning waste natural gas is better than using it. And if she isn't proud of it, she should fix it.

SOURCE

Greenie craze burns down homes

Rather a puzzle why, though. Batts are usually made of glass fibre or wool, neither of which is flammable. Are people using ones made of recycled paper?

DOZENS of NSW homes have been destroyed or damaged by fires which erupted when badly installed ceiling insulation came into contact with downlights. Seven homes in Sydney caught fire, with at least one totally destroyed, in just the past six weeks. The fires are particularly dangerous because they can spread in the roof cavity before the occupiers notice, and have forced an urgent warning from the State Government and NSW Fire Brigade.

In NSW, 129,420 homeowners have taken advantage of the $1600 rebates for the installation of ceiling insulation batts which are part of the Federal Government's $3.9 billion energy efficient homes program.

But NSW Fair Trading Minister Virginia Judge said yesterday too many batts were being laid incorrectly. Ms Judge said at least 26 homes in NSW had been destroyed or damaged this year by fires caused by poorly placed ceiling batts touching downlights. Several fires happened within a day of batts being installed. Downlighting, globes that sit flush in ceilings with their transformers and wiring in the roof space, is one of the most popular ways to light a home.

Ms Judge said batts were being laid directly over downlights, or over older insulation material. "Down lights and transformers should never be covered by ceiling insulation because they act like giant firelighters," Ms Judge said.

SOURCE

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