Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the
tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds

Via the GWPF, a new report - Shale Gas Shock Challenges Climate and Energy Policies:

London, 4 May - The Global Warming Policy Foundation today publishes a detailed report about the shale gas revolution and its likely implications for UK and international climate policy.

The report The Shale Gas Shock, written by Matt Ridley and with a foreword by Professor Freeman Dyson, finds that shale gas:

• is not only abundant but relatively cheap and therefore promises to take market share from nuclear, coal and renewable energy and to replace oil in some transport and industrial uses, over coming decades.
• will help to keep the price of nitrogen fertiliser low and hence keep food prices down, other things being equal.
• is unlikely to be a major source of pollution or methane emissions, but in contrast promises to reduce pollution and accelerate the decarbonisation of the world economy.

Matt Ridley, the author of the GWPF report, said:

“Abundant and relatively cheap shale gas promises to lower the cost of gas relative to oil, coal and renewables. It indefinitely postpones the exhaustion of fossil fuels and makes reducing emissions of carbon dioxide possible without raising energy prices.”

It’s a fascinating report and I recommend reading it in full (PDF).

Manhattan, originally uploaded by stevenjbaker.

Flew there Sunday, trained a team of financial professionals Monday, training and consulting Tuesday and flew home overnight. I thoroughly recommend Smith and Wollensky for steak, but go hungry! A great pleasure to visit a great city.

This is the way to do it: with just four hours difference at this time of year and a short trip, jet lag is no problem. Economy seats through the night, however, win no friends.

(Took my compact camera, forgetting the battery, so we’re stuck with this scrappy iPhone image. That’s the remarkable art deco Chysler Building top left.)

The new Council of Food Policy Advisors, chaired by Dame Suzi Leather, Chair of the Charity Commission, will advise on food distribution and consumption as well as pricing.

Food shopping bills rose at their fastest rate since records began last year, with bread, rice, pasta and meat all going up by well over the rate of inflation.

And this is before the impact of the falling pound on food imports. This looks awfully like the road to price controls: price controls do not work [1, 2] and they never have:

In 284 A.D. the Roman emperor Diocletian created inflation by placing too much money in circulation, and then “fixed the maximum prices at which beef, grain, eggs, clothing and other articles could be sold, and prescribed the penalty of death for anyone who disposed of his wares at a higher figure.” The results, as Schuettinger and Butler explain, quoting an ancient historian, were that “the people brought provisions no more to markets, since they could not get a reasonable price for them and this increased the dearth so much, that at last after many had died by it, the law itself was set aside.”

Much better to let farmers get on with it.

read more | digg story

World Bank president Robert Zoellick urged governments to act to contain a mounting “human crisis” today, as he warned that 44 million of the world’s poorest people would be driven into malnutrition this year, as a result of high food prices.

read more | digg story

The EU will be limiting the number of pesticides available to farmers. Lower yields and higher prices are expected. No impact assessment was carried out for the proposals.

It’s as if the bureaucrats think regulation is free!

read more | digg story