British Gas boss announces brilliant new scheme to make Britain even more expensive and uglier – Telegraph Blogs

Let’s just remind ourselves of the example of Germany, where every church roof now glows and shimmers like some futuristic metropolis from Doctor Who, thanks to a solar-promoting government subsidy programme costing German taxpayers $2 billion a year.

Yet according to calculations by Bjorn Lomborg, these panels contribute about 0.03 per cent of German energy usage. For every $3700 Germany spends on solar energy, it does about $1 worth of good to the world in the form of CO2 savings. The solar panel programme will cost Germany around $150 billion. In return for this, it will have the matchless satisfaction – Lomborg calculates – of postponing global warming by the end of the century by ONE HOUR.

Otago in grip of big freeze - New Zealand

Dunedin Airport's -6.7degC yesterday was the second-coldest July air temperature recorded at the site since 1947, and the -7.2degC at Queenstown was the third-coldest since 1871.

[Touching naivety from Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club]

For every dirty coal plant that gets bulldozed, a new solar park, wind farm, or other clean-energy facility must come online.