On November 26th 2012 Teignbridge District Council planning committee voted to refuse planning permission for Inazin Solar's application to construct a 13.5 Ha solar photovoltaic "farm" on land owned by the Fulford Estate near Gold's Cross Hill, between Tedburn St. Mary and Cheriton Bishop. I presume the fact that I objected to that application, at the second time of asking, explains why I have just received a letter from Teignbridge DC which says (amongst other things) that:

More on Inazin Appeal Tedburn St Mary Solar Farm Planning Decision. Again!

Prompted by a conversation over on Neven's Arctic Sea Ice blog I happened to glance at the Department of Energy and Climate Change's shiny new web site this morning, and discovered evidence strongly suggesting that Ed Davey is suffering from selective schizophrenia.

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The minutes of the meeting of the Teignbridge District Council planning committee held on November 26th have now been published. For some strange reason their coverage of my own contribution to those events is rather brief. It reads as follows:

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At the end of last month the "Summer Olympics Special" edition of Time magazine carried a picture of Jessica Ennis on the cover. Just inside, however, was a double page photograph of "A bulldozed field in Geff, Illinois", together with the information that "A drought devastating stretches of the U.S. has forced many farmers to destroy their failed crops".  That was accompanied on the Time web site by a series of photographs and an article entitled "The Great Drying Strikes Again". Time pointed out that:

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Some more background information has come to light concerning the apparent confusion within the UK government about their renewables obligations.  The Guardian has printed what it claims is a letter dated July 9th from George Osborne to Ed Davey discussing in particular a reduction in ROCs for onshore wind. Quoting from that letter:

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Those aren't my words. they are a slight paraphrase of the words of the MPs on the Energy and Climate Change Committee.  Following on from last week's criticism of the UK government's failure to deliver the renewables obligation numbers, today the UK Parliament web site reports that:

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Fresh from blogging about the undesirability of producing energy rather than cereals on local arable land I've just noticed courtesy of my Twitter feed that Professor Charles Godfray, a population biologist from Oxford University, gave a presentation at the Houses of Parliament earlier this week on the closely related topic of food security. Here it is:

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Regular readers will know that the  17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change  begin in Durban, South Africa in less than a week. At the same time and place the 7th Session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties (CMP7) to the Kyoto Protocol will also take place.  The question now is what if anything all these discussions will achieve apart from a modicum of global warming from all the hot air that will doubtless be emitted by the attendees?

More on Chris Huhne Says "The State is Obliged to Correct Market Failures"

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, but by the time they reach adulthood engineers understand technology better than politicians. If this is not self-evident to you, dear reader, please watch the presentation given by Jacque Fresco in Bristol, UK on August 21st 2010. Jacque's views on politicians are forcefully expressed at around 44:44 into the 3 and a bit hour video:

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As the G20 leaders start their deliberations in Cannes today some more famous names have been putting their weight behind the campaign to introduce some kind of financial transaction tax.  On Tuesday the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams,  joined Pope Benedict XVI in calling for the introduction of what he referred to in an article in the Financial Times as

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