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'The Great Global Warming Swindle': Is Climate Change A Myth?

All this angst against a young girl who has spoken out about the dangers of man made climate change she certainly knows how to trigger a certain sub set of the population, she just as the rest of us is allowed an opinion, now I don't know about this forum but elsewhere the people trying to get rid her belong to the far right of politics
 
Thunberg was chosen as a figurehead because she was unassailable: A (a) teenage (b) girl with (c) autism whose (d) first language wasn't English.

No one could say a word against her without being accused of an -ism or a -phobia; yet even when she said that anyone who didn't share her views should be "put up against a wall", it could all be brushed under the carpet as she "wasn't a native English speaker."

Anyone can be "brave" when no one is allowed to oppose them.

maximus otter
 
Robbrent said:
All this angst against a young girl who has spoken out about the dangers of man made climate change she certainly knows how to trigger a certain sub set of the population, she just as the rest of us is allowed an opinion, now I don't know about this forum but elsewhere the people trying to get rid her belong to the far right of politics
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I am on the left, I believe that much of the climate change is due to human activities. Thunberg represents a wing of the environmental movement which puts all of the onus for changing habits on ordinary people. They never really take on the big companies or do anything concretes to support thise in the developing world who are killed when they fight back.

The net result of their activities would be to make meat and foreign travel a preserve of the rich like it was in the past.
 
I dont think people care, really, and dont bother my head over it.

(Which is not to say it is not good to point out issues sometimes).
 
Kondoru said:
I dont think people care, really, and dont bother my head over it.

(Which is not to say it is not good to point out issues sometimes).
Click to expand...

Shoot the messenger.

I think you're right, it's definitely for the best not to point out dilemmas for which there are no solutions.
 
ramonmercado said:
I am on the left, I believe that much of the climate change is due to human activities.
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I'm on the right. I'd be amazed if the climate weren't changing, which is what it's always done without Man's intervention. (After all, 12,000 years ago much of the UK was under a massive ice sheet.)

How much it is changing, and how much of that may - repeat may - be human-related, that's the issue.

I have seen nothing to convince me that we are major culprits; and the steps proposed in order to mitigate the supposed human evils seem, shall we say, convenient and desirable to those with a certain point of view....

maximus otter
 
Clothes shopping I can control.

Petrol use...well, I live in a rural area; I keep my travel to a minimum, but sometimes I have to use the car.

(Spent my Christmas money on a Made in GB, top brand, jacket...but it will last me a lifetime...)
 
Robbrent said:
All this angst against a young girl who has spoken out about the dangers of man made climate change she certainly knows how to trigger a certain sub set of the population, she just as the rest of us is allowed an opinion, now I don't know about this forum but elsewhere the people trying to get rid her belong to the far right of politics
Click to expand...
Yes. That’s right. Everyone who questions the narrative is automatically a fascist. Not the line I’d go down to promote interest in a cause but there you go. As I said earlier, the WonderPuppet is now a political figure so going any further with this subject is presumably verboten.
 
I would say that if Thunberg doesn`t fly, she has to do protests close to home. She can`t suddenly show up in China or Brazil.
 
PeteS said:
I don't get this aspect of smart meters saving money- how can they? Unless of course it's a way of scaring consumers into not using electrickery (so random net zero targets can be met) by telling them to check the numbers constantly so they can tell how much they are spending. (which you can do on any meter). A few elderly people I know who have been forced to have smart arsed gubbins installed (one was told "it's the law") have become paranoid over the numbers on the remote. The cost of making a cuppa having a light on is the same whatever meter you have.

I've been bombarded by letters from Eon to have a smart meter installed - probably over 50 so far. Suppliers are fined by the authorities if they don't meet targets for installations. I suspect now they are using back door methods to get their way. Certainly in my case they have been considerably overestimating my usage for 2 years and at one point suggested I had used £3k's worth of electricity in 2 months, telling me that they had read the meter. (they hadn't). Despite getting the Energy Ombudsman involved (who were so useless as to be a joke and had to issue a formal apology) Eon continue to take money from me despite being £1k in credit. I intend to issue proceedings against them in the New Year if they continue to reject my requests for return of my dosh. Never had a problem before but this is the issues people are coming up against when dealing with energy suppliers who really couldn't give a toss about consumers and net zero.
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Not so 'smart' meters;

Missed energy bill error saw man pay £244,000 direct debit​



Energy firms have been urged to tackle billing errors after customers told the BBC of wild inaccuracies, including a £244,000 bill for one month's supply.

Holiday park owner Patrick Langmaid said there was pandemonium in the office after the fee was taken via direct debit from his business account.

Victims question how such bills are ever sent, and why banks allow payment.

The cases emerged after artist Sir Grayson Perry spoke of his "bizarre" £39,000 bill.

The Turner Prize-winner told the BBC in December his difficulty in getting answers was "an interesting fable of the technological age".
Evidence that he was far from alone includes:
  • The demand for nearly £250,000 from Mr Langmaid, about 100 times greater than his normal monthly bill
  • A church charged £40,000 - with sufficient funds in its account only because it had been left from someone's will. The supplier said two errors led to the bill
  • The owner of a property who received a "catch-up" bill for £16,000 which was eventually wiped


Patrick Langmaid's invoice

The invoice sent to Mr Langmaid


Suppliers have pointed to estimated meter readings as being among potential causes, but Mr Langmaid said his mammoth bill came from a "not very smart meter".

He has a complex of holiday lets called Martha's Orchard on the Cornish coast, and is accustomed to relatively high bills. Normally, he pays £2,500 a month.

But, it seems, the meter on one property clocked all the way around and back to zero, and the system suggested huge amounts of energy had been used. It generated the invoice automatically, and payment of £244,000 was collected from the business's account. The funds had been earmarked to buy new caravans and pay suppliers.

"That's the frightening thing," he said. "I have an issue with the energy company for doing it, the bank for allowing it to happen, and the whole direct debit system for allowing the payment to be taken without any safeguard."

The supplier, Total Energies, admitted that human error meant the hugely inflated invoice was not cancelled.

(Warning- photo of Grayson Perry at link).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68130784
 
"You need this expensive meter to let you know that turning on extra devices in your home uses extra electricity, you stupid peon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with it enabling us to reduce or turn off your electricity supply remotely when the unreliables renewables can't generate enough power."

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
"You need this expensive meter to let you know that turning on extra devices in your home uses extra electricity, you stupid peon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with it enabling us to reduce or turn off your electricity supply remotely when the unreliables renewables can't generate enough power."

maximus otter
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You forgot the bit about scaring vulnerable people into freezing to death.
 
Analogue Boy said:
In 2018, she said that humanity would be wiped out by 2023 but deleted the tweet not long ago. There are small children who are terrified and living under a climate of fear thanks to her. Instead of getting the first steps of a proper education, kids are getting this sort of crap hammered into them before they can develop critical thinking skills.

Snopes has this to say…



Moral of the story - Don’t believe everything climate ’experts’ say.
Click to expand...

Scaring kids. How sad.

But we had MAD.

Was it a real threat? Or was the Cold War just made up to keep us in line.

I dont know.
 
maximus otter said:
You need this expensive meter to let you know that turning on extra devices in your home uses extra electricity
Click to expand...
EDwibb-20200131042306977.jpg

British Gas ('n electric) ran a massive advertising campaign from 2017 invoking the mystic influence of a certain Wilbur the Penguin: one of his latter key mantras was the value & virtue of fitting a smart meter.

Right Now. Or ideally yesterday.

This was pushed very hard (ultramultichannel) all across the Untied Kondom, but: one day Wilbur got pulled, suddenly and universally, from our screens (in fact, not long prior to 'Covid: the Musical'). As did the overt incessant demand that we all should (indeed must) install Smart Meters or we would all be collectively-guilty of eco-genocide on a greater than global scale. Here's possibly why he slid from his position of power: and it's far from cool

I was always impervious to his chilly chides, but unfortunately certain other powerful factions within my pseudo-rural domestic utopia were not: and I was outvoted (and put on report for possibly being unsufficiently-green: which is a charge I may have to ultimately & happily answer to).

The fateful day arrived, when Smartness (not for the first time) was meant to be inflicted installed within our schloss.

Being a pathologically-technical person, I was quite-keen to observe 'the doings' from a respectful-but-informative distance, and had intended to watch Wilbur's stunt double install our Meter Of Smarts (but I was shooed-away so as to not impair the feng shui during the birthing process).

However, my (no, our) smartification had hit an early snag: I heard a loud technical swear-word being exhaled from our understair lair, wherein we hide our futilities-

(Wilbur's WorkMate)- "Oh no no, this won't do....it's hopeless!"
(The Ermintruder)- "Umm, what? How do you mean? I'm a techniscientificengineer-type person, give it to me straight!"
(Wilbur's WorkMate)- "I'm having to condemn your entire installation: it's unsafe and unacceptable- here, have this pink slip detailing the defects...I will out of random kindness leave the power on just now, but I really should cut the lead (Pb) tags on your incoming power, remove the company fuses, and leave you & the rest of your proletarian collective in total cold & darkness".

He then proceeded to do something I have never seen before (and I've seen most things) which was to screw an enormous flexible thick plastic opaque rectangle of shame over our entire fuseboard and existing unsmart meter, overprinted with various yellow warnings, doom sigels and hieroglyphs.

I was advised that our house was Unsafe, About To Kill The Inhabitants And/Or Burn Down, and we needed to have a brand-new fuseboard fitted (in North America and other superficially-advanced jurisdictions this may be referred to as a circuit-breaker power distribution box). Specifically, we needed to have one fitted with lots of RCDs (don't ask: these are required so as to protect humans by constantly tripping-off in the absence of faults, and to make electricians rich).

Let's now fast-forward £700+ and a couple of months into a still 'BC' era, so maybe Autumn/Fall 2019. Much Smartness was now re-ordained, and the long-awaited hour had arrived:

(Wilbur's Second WorkMate)- "Oh no no, this won't do....it's hopeless!"
(The Ermintruder)- "Umm, what? How do you mean? I'm a techniscientificengineer-type person, give it to me straight!"
(Wilbur's Second WorkMate)- "I'm having to delay this smartmeter installation because of your postcode"
(The Ermintruder)- "OK, that's something I can't afford to change: what happens now?"
(Wilbur's Second WorkMate)- "I'll be back: with a new generation of smart meter that can cope with you not using the primary energy provider for this area- otherwise the meter I was going to fit won't work, although it will still work, except it won't. You do know how silly you are not using the primary energy provider, don't you?"
(The Ermintruder)- "Right you are, goodbye!"

Let's now move the clock even-closer to the advent of the Covid circus (early 2020):

(Wilbur's Third WorkMate)- "Oh no no, this won't do....it's hopeless!"
(The Ermintruder)- "Really? You do surprise me! Pray tell!"
(Wilbur's Third WorkMate)- "Something's not right"
(The Ermintruder)- "Can you be more specific?"
(Wilbur's Third WorkMate)- "No, but I will be back without fail, tomorrow"

Time passed...

(Wilbur's Fourth WorkMate)- ""Oh no no, this won't do....it's hopeless! And have you, or any member of your familial group got, or ever had, Covid"
(The Ermintruder)- "Yes of course! Or possibly not"
(Wilbur's Fourth WorkMate)- "Your smart meter just seems as if it won't synchronise with the complex systems we have. It's very technical problem and you wouldn't understand the explanation"
(The Ermintruder)- "Let me guess...the stone walls are too thick, and the resulting attenuation of the Zigbee UHF wireless telemetry network means that the smart meter is completely-useless, just like I said it probably would be to your contact centre colleague in a vain attempt to forestall this costly, generally frustrating and pointless farce"
(Wilbur's Fourth WorkMate)- "Yes. Can you please complete my feedback satisfaction form and pop it in the letterbox?"

I reassured Wilbur's Fourth WorkMate that there was no likelihood of me ever doing this before the end of time, and ejected him down our coal chute.

And that, Dear Reader, is where I am today.

With a still-unnetworked not-very-smart meter. Blamed upon a whole range of pathetic baseless reasons, including Covid (of course), weather conditions (I think that's so sweet of them) and Insert Further Vague Reason Here.

Perhaps in the company of many thousands of other dissatisfied customers, who receive constant emails, text messages & phonecalls from their energy provider, requesting them to send-in a meter reading. Unless they live in proper cheek-to-cheek urban clapperboard houses, saturated with all those smart signals and suchlike.

So it's probably no wonder that Wilbur got fired: at least that was a smart move.
 
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I once had a smart meter that did not register my Gas usage, never paid a penny apart from standing charges, I did contact them and they said nothing was wrong with it, I moved home a couple of years later sadly the episode has not been repeated, however I do know of someone who lives in a big house and his smart meter does not register the electric consumption he has raised it loads of times only to be told it's working fine, suffice to say he does not heat his house with gas central heating, it's been going on for years
 
Robbrent said:
I once had a smart meter that did not register my Gas usage, never paid a penny apart from standing charges, I did contact them and they said nothing was wrong with it, I moved home a couple of years later sadly the episode has not been repeated, however I do know of someone who lives in a big house and his smart meter does not register the electric consumption he has raised it loads of times only to be told it's working fine, suffice to say he does not heat his house with gas central heating, it's been going on for years
Click to expand...
Ours doesn't and never has showed us our gas usuage, but it is registering it, unfortunately.
 
Kondoru: Buying less is an option. However the decrease in comsumption would likely lead to a loss of jobs as well, and maybe another economic crisis. So we would need to know if it would be worth it.
 
Robbrent said:
I once had a smart meter that did not register my Gas usage, never paid a penny apart from standing charges, I did contact them and they said nothing was wrong with it, I moved home a couple of years later sadly the episode has not been repeated, however I do know of someone who lives in a big house and his smart meter does not register the electric consumption he has raised it loads of times only to be told it's working fine, suffice to say he does not heat his house with gas central heating, it's been going on for years
Click to expand...
My Mum has had the exact same problem with her smart meter.
The old gas meter still works, but the smart one isn't registering properly. And they insist that it is working!
I suggested that there was a problem with the sender unit, but they won't send anybody out to actually test it in situ.
 
Floyd1 said:
Not so 'smart' meters;

Missed energy bill error saw man pay £244,000 direct debit​



Energy firms have been urged to tackle billing errors after customers told the BBC of wild inaccuracies, including a £244,000 bill for one month's supply.

Holiday park owner Patrick Langmaid said there was pandemonium in the office after the fee was taken via direct debit from his business account.

Victims question how such bills are ever sent, and why banks allow payment.

The cases emerged after artist Sir Grayson Perry spoke of his "bizarre" £39,000 bill.

The Turner Prize-winner told the BBC in December his difficulty in getting answers was "an interesting fable of the technological age".
Evidence that he was far from alone includes:
  • The demand for nearly £250,000 from Mr Langmaid, about 100 times greater than his normal monthly bill
  • A church charged £40,000 - with sufficient funds in its account only because it had been left from someone's will. The supplier said two errors led to the bill
  • The owner of a property who received a "catch-up" bill for £16,000 which was eventually wiped


Patrick Langmaid's invoice's invoice

The invoice sent to Mr Langmaid


Suppliers have pointed to estimated meter readings as being among potential causes, but Mr Langmaid said his mammoth bill came from a "not very smart meter".

He has a complex of holiday lets called Martha's Orchard on the Cornish coast, and is accustomed to relatively high bills. Normally, he pays £2,500 a month.

But, it seems, the meter on one property clocked all the way around and back to zero, and the system suggested huge amounts of energy had been used. It generated the invoice automatically, and payment of £244,000 was collected from the business's account. The funds had been earmarked to buy new caravans and pay suppliers.

"That's the frightening thing," he said. "I have an issue with the energy company for doing it, the bank for allowing it to happen, and the whole direct debit system for allowing the payment to be taken without any safeguard."

The supplier, Total Energies, admitted that human error meant the hugely inflated invoice was not cancelled.

(Warning- photo of Grayson Perry at link).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68130784
Click to expand...
I have an ongoing problem with Eon Next who refuse to accept that I use very little elecktrickery because their algorithm says I use £1500 a year. Despite this ludicrous over estimation they maintained I had used £3k's worth in one month because they had read the meter. They hadn't. Eon then decided I had used £1k's worth in the next month because they had read the meter again. They hadn't. .They are now holding on to £1k's worth of credit and refuse to give it back. Legal action is going to happen.

The Energy Ombudsman was utterly useless and had to apologise to me. I strongly suspect that these companies deliberately ignore problems so that customers will be strong armed into getting a Smart meter.
 
Floyd1 said:
Ours doesn't and never has showed us our gas usuage, but it is registering it, unfortunately.
Click to expand...
Mine is the same, they are just a gimmick in my opinion, although having an interface to take accurate readings is useful rather than looking in the meter cupboard, the pricing never seems to match the deal you are on so they are a bit useless in that respect as well, I suspect most are unplugged and never looked at, now they could have done something more useful and offer realistic grants for those wishing to upgrade their homes insulation etc. But that would be actually doing something about the problem rather than talk about it

Could you imagine how much emissions we would cut if most houses had solar panels and things like tidal barrage plants were actually built, sod the cost we are either in a climate emergency or we are not, and that's the problem on a deep level they tell people it's a climate emergency (and on the balance of probabilities it is) but seem very reluctant to do anything concrete about it, saying things are too expensive, on the same logic the Fire Brigade could stop fighting and preventing emergency situations on the grounds of costs
 
I suppose what it comes down to is that you pay a fixed amount per kilowatt hour (depending on your tariff) so it makes no difference whether your heater is the size of a shoebox or a bathtub- you will pay the same amount to get the equal amount of heat out of them.
 
What I ponder about is why is the government so desperate for us to all have smart meters. They say it's for our own benefit. Since when has any government spent shed loads of money for our benefit?
 
Xanatic* said:
Kondoru: Buying less is an option. However the decrease in comsumption would likely lead to a loss of jobs as well, and maybe another economic crisis. So we would need to know if it would be worth it.
Click to expand...
I think @Kondoru is saying that she has little control over, for example, gasoline usage due to her rural living, but has more direct control over purchasing clothing. Therefore, why have simple measures such as these not been put forward as much as the talk of decreasing automobile/gas usage?

And the idea that jobs will be lost, mmmm. Much of the "fashion" industry manufactures cheap clothing that doesn't even last a year. And the manufacturers generally use the cheapest labour possible, so these jobs don't really provide anything near a livable wage to the workers.

The manufacturing processes are generally not environmentally friendly and thus are farmed out to third world countries who have no strict laws protecting their people from the poisons and waste that is produced. These same third world peoples then have to deal with the harmful detritus of the clothing manufacturing sector.

And our clothing manufacturing sectors don't have to address any environmental issues. They have pushed that responsibility to the third world countries.

We used to make clothing in Canada decades ago, now. The clothes lasted.

Now, in the race to the bottom, our clothes are made in China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and India. These jobs are not for the betterment of society, but for corporate profits. Nothing more.
 
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