Christopher Booker

September 24, 2012 in journalist

Christopher Booker- journalist [although that is being kind, opinionated would be more accurate. Writes a Sunday Telegraph column that flicks from AGW is a lie, the BBC, all scientists, and the liberial media are in on it, the government steals babies [a side interest of his!] the evils of Europe , and wind turbines are a scam. Believes in intelligent design, that passive smoking is not harmful, neither is white asbestos or BSE [mad cow disease]. On the positive side he founded Private Eye.

Look out for his classic mistakes that make his column fun to read.

In his book, or rather manual on being a sceptic The Real Global Warming Disaster he leads with the mythical quote of “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen,” Sir John Houghton was supposed to have said in 1994. In fact it was invented in 2006 [not from 1994- then] by Piers Akerman in the Australian newspaper The Sunday Telegraph.

A graph from the US Environmental Protection Agency showed temperatures having soared in the past 100 years by 1.4 degrees – exactly twice the generally accepted figure.

From Telegraph 23/9/12, confusing Fahrenheit for Centigrade [the U.S uses the former].

The classic was in the winter of 2007/8 after record breaking ice loss in the Arctic bounced back and that he failed to understand that it was winter. George Monbiot lists some of his serious errors.

including

“Like many other households who, during all that global warming last winter, watched the cost of their oil-fired central heating soaring through the roof, we are now switching to gas. Thus did I learn that the absurdly over-large boiler we are getting rid of generates 100 kilowatts.
“Hang on, I exclaimed: that wind turbine up the hill from where we live in Somerset generated only just over 500kW last year. So a giant wind turbine that cost £2m to build, and that costs us £200,000 a year in subsidies, on top of the £200,000 we pay for its electricity, produces only five times as much energy as the oil-fired boiler I use to warm my house.”

Booker mixing apples and pears and getting confused- boilers don’t generate they emit, a 100 kilowatt is means to measure heat output, like a 3kw electric fire. A 500  kw windturbine is its capacity not output which is in kilowatt hours. This small type could produce up to 2 million kw hours, it won’t but it could and a third of that [which is more likely] is 700,000 kw hours. If you are interested this size of turbine it costs about £850,000 connected to the mains and about £10,000 each year, and could deliver up to £450,000 in electricity each year. A 100kw oil boiler will heat a large house, costs about £2000 installed and up to £1000 in fuel each year.