Catching on

It's finally starting to come out into the open just how much the EU (and the UK) is going to be hit by the rip off that is global warming climate change, not that the warmist camps have given up the ghost yet of course.

Telegraph.

The EU's response to global warming is a costly mistake

Europe's 20/20/20 policy will cost billions of pounds, but yield only tiny results, writes Bjorn Lomborg .

European leaders have a lot to deal with. The financial crisis has prompted several national stimulus packages and a joint effort to keep Greece afloat, while the EU is in danger of being outstripped by other economies that are growing faster, producing more efficiently and at lower costs.

One bright spot is that politicians remain committed to responding to global warming. Unfortunately, their plans do not withstand scrutiny. New research shows that the EU's "20/20/20" policy, which aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 (and ensure 20 per cent renewable energy), will cost hundreds of billions of euros but yield only tiny benefits. The UK alone will be hit to the tune of an annual 35 billion euros (£28 billion).
As a cost-benefit analysis by the climate-change economist Richard Tol shows, any single regional carbon-reduction scheme will have a very small effect on emissions and temperature rises across the globe. That's not an argument against ever implementing one: but it means that it's crucial that the numbers stack up.
The EU recently stated that it would cost £39 billion a year to meet its emissions target. That figure is implausibly optimistic. Averaging out the best-regarded economic models shows that, even if politicians got their policies exactly right, the cost would come to at least £90 billion a year.
And Europe has not got it exactly right. Instead, it has made things worse, by introducing additional red tape, complication and constraints – in particular, that 20 per cent renewable-energy target. This is expensive because popular "green" energy sources such as wind and solar power cost more than replacing coal with gas. As a result, the real cost of EU policy is likely to be as much as £170 billion. 

In other words they are wasting time, money resources and strangling it in red tape too, how typically EU is it not? But the UK itself does no better, the coalition have stuck an utter moron in charge of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, yes we're looking at you Chris Huhne. This is the man that wants a 30% cut in carbon envisions, 2500 more useless wind turbines, the type that don't work when there's no wind and too much wind, oh yes and is willing to pay them not to work when there's too much power. He even wants to remove the carbon subsidy for the nuclear industry, the only "green" power generating plant that's guaranteed to work when we need it. The man is an utter menace to civilisation and really should never have been allowed near government (he is a Lib Dem after all), never mind a ministry.
The real tragedy is of course further down the article.

The tragedy is that the EU could do much better for the world, and for itself. For far less than £8 billion a year the EU could halve the incidence of malaria, provide micronutrients (particularly vitamin A and zinc) to 80 per cent of the world's undernourished children and prevent a million deaths from TB.

 But sadly that doesn't bring in "green" taxes from the proles, so is not a priority.