Archives for January 7, 2008

A draft New Zealand Energy Strategy is dominated by the Government’s conviction that climate change (more properly described as “man-made global warming”) is happening and that we must develop renewable energy to save New Zealand from disaster.

The strategy ignores the uncertainties in the evidence claimed to support the belief that man-made global warming is real and dangerous. It cannot explain why, before the days of man-made CO2, the world was warmer during the Middle Ages, Roman and Minoan warm periods. The whole of the Energy Strategy is based on the assumption that the “scenarios” and “projections” of dangerous warming generated by unproven climate models are accurate predictions.

Read the rest of The New Zealand Herald article: ‘Brian Leyland: Powering our future or wrecking the economy?’

Meanwhile, in California controversial legislation is also pending to control energy use, in particular:

“In California, we have 236 pages of state-mandated standards for building energy efficiency, known as Title 24…

…What should be controversial in the proposed revisions to Title 24 is the requirement for what is called a “programmable communicating thermostat” or PCT. Every new home and every change to existing homes’ central heating and air conditioning systems will required to be fitted with a PCT beginning next year following the issuance of the revision. Each PCT will be fitted with a “non-removable ” FM receiver that will allow the power authorities to increase your air conditioning temperature setpoint or decrease your heater temperature setpoint to any value they chose. During “price events” those changes are limited to +/- four degrees F and you would be able to manually override the changes. During “emergency events” the new setpoints can be whatever the power authority desires and you would not be able to alter them….

…The real question poised by this invasion of the sanctity of our homes by state power is — why are we doing this? It seems to me to be the wrong fix for a problem that we don’t have to have. The common sense alternative is to build new power plants so that power shortages don’t occur. Of course, they can’t be coal or nuclear power plants! The coastal elites have their minds set against those undesirables. The state has wasted billions of our dollars on wind generation that hasn’t helped to meet peak loads. For natural gas, offshore drilling should be considered. While we have one liquefied natural gas terminal in Mexico supplying us with Indonesian and, in the near future, Russian, LNG, another receiving terminal to be supplied by Australian LNG was rejected by the State Coastal Commission.

While nowhere in the Bill of Rights is there explicitly a right to set one’s own thermostat to whatever temperature one desires (and is able to pay for), the new PCT requirement certainly seems to violate the “a man’s home is his castle” common law dictum.

Californians have until January 30th to send their opinions and comments on the pending revisions to Title 24 to the California Energy Commission and state legislators.

Read the whole article: ‘Who Will Control Your Thermostat?’ in American Thinker.