Telegraph Publish Professor Mitchell’s Lies

By Paul Homewood  

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/12189350/Letters-The-best-of-both-worlds-for-Britain-in-the-outer-circle-of-a-two-tier-EU.html

 

In yesterday’s Letters Column in the Telegraph, Prof Catherine Mitchell was allowed to get away with this astonishing piece of grossly misleading propaganda. I immediately fired off a reply correcting her second assertion, but as the Telegraph has chosen not to print it, it is time to make a much fuller response.

 

 

 

1) Whether the economics of shale gas stack up or not is utterly irrelevant. Private capital will take all the risk, and if it does not pay they will be the ones who lose.

As to whether people want fracking or not is a matter of opinion, and she is entitled to hers. But as a supposed expert in energy matters, she should be providing the public with the facts, on which they can then decide themselves, rather than making emotive claims.

 

2) Although I believe the figure of £10 per household did come from the Committee on Climate Change, that does not make it right, or mean that it was not just propaganda.

Again,as a supposed expert, Mitchell must be aware of the very real and substantial costs being incurred by the public, which are solely due to subsidised renewable energy.

If she does not know, I suggest she checks out what the Office for Budget Responsibility says about the matter:

 

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/the-rising-cost-of-the-climate-change-act/

 

If we take Feed in Tariffs, Renewables Obligation, Contracts for Difference and Capacity Market (which all relate solely to renewables), the budgeted cost for 2016/17 is £6.3 billion, about £240 per household.

This figure is set to double by 2020.

 

3) Is climate change a serious issue? Again, a matter of opinion. But what is indisputable is that the Paris Agreement itself acknowledges that GHG emission will continue to grow at a global level until at least 2030.

Any small reductions we make are irrelevant.

Again, as a supposed expert, why has she not told us that we are already making, and committed to making, much bigger GHG cuts than the rest of the EU?

 

4) She offers no evidence of how renewable energy can deliver the market-based electricity system that Mr Darwall wants.

5) She repeats the false claim often made that fossil fuels are subsidised, and ignores the reality that we would not need to be subsidising nuclear power if we were not committed to shutting down efficient fossil fuel plants.

 

 

  

It needs pointing out that Mitchell is, as the Bishop reminds us, one of the those public funded political activists who masquerades as an academic researcher. She has no background in energy from an engineering point of view,  her degree was in history and her MA in Energy and Environmental Studies, whatever that means.

Most of her career has been spent in academia, and her CV is full of memberships of various publically funded advisory boards, going back at least to 2001. The full list is here.

One of her current positions is Advisory Board Member of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, which you may recall is the global warming propaganda unit run by Richard Black, ex BBC, and funded by the Who’s Who of the Green Blob.

 

Everybody is entitled to their opinion, and it is right that the Telegraph allows the full range of views onto its letters page. However, if they are going to publish letters from people such as Mitchell, who claim to speak from a position of authority, they must ensure that any “facts” stated are fully backed up.

On this occasion, they have failed miserably.