Climate change - the POLITICAL debate.
Discussion
mybrainhurts said:
"Yeah, somebody should bring out a board game like monopoly but called 'Carbon Trading'"
"'Con-opoly'
Every time you throw a double six, you get a speeding fine and your wife goes to prison."
Guam said:
Scientists say that if natural factors were still governing the climate, the Northern Hemisphere would probably be destined to freeze over again in several thousand years. “We were on this downward slope, presumably going back toward another ice age,” Dr. Marcott said.
Instead, scientists believe the enormous increase in greenhouse gases caused by industrialization will almost certainly prevent that.
Instead, scientists believe the enormous increase in greenhouse gases caused by industrialization will almost certainly prevent that.
mybrainhurts said:
Oh, yes, Earth Hour. Must remember to switch everything on.
So for Earth Hour PHers should burn every bulb and rev up every engine in their fleet, to help save the Earth from the oncoming ice?Had the below email from an old friend. He's very clever but is a science tea her and I sometimes despair. I'm quite happy to deal with this all nonsense but wondered if anyone has some handy links to why GISS is crap and why the other data sets like CRU are too. My memory has failed me...
"The fact that mean global temperatures have been rising and continue to do so at an increasing rate is not question. Even the most staunch deniers that climate change is caused by human activity accept this. The controversy is whether or not it is caused by human activity. There is copious data available everywhere supporting this, but I’ll include the link from NASA: http://climate.nasa.gov/news/249 . The sticking point is the cause. Now, as you are aware, science operates under the caveat that no theory can be proven, it can only be disproven. Thus leaving the door open for better evidence, should it ever be forthcoming to be considered and then the theory adjusted or scrapped. This is the basis of The Scientific Method and it shall be thus in perpetuity. The overwhelming body of evidence collected over the last century (and with far greater accuracy in recent times from ice cores, the high atmosphere, infra-red analysis and weather satellites) supports the theory that human activity is certainly a statistically significant factor. That is all science can offer – statistical significance. With this in mind, climate change deniers have postulated many other contributing factors, such as solar flares, solar cycles, atmospheric particulates and volcanoes to mention a few, but the overwhelming consensus of meteorologists and climatologists agree that the cumulative effect of all of these is not sufficient to cause the temperature changes seen in recent history. The very few scientists who disagree with this are free to offer evidence to the contrary, which would allow the theory to be adjusted, but they have not provided any – which means the original theory supported by empirical evidence should still be accepted. Instead these statistically few scientists; many of whom also have vested interests in energy production or political funding prefer to snipe criticism at the accepted wisdom (I use the word deliberately!) and just seem keen to get their names in the papers from time to time. The great tragedy is that so many of the public seem keen to accept this viewpoint in absentia of evidence rather than the vast majority of empirically supported, statistically significant opinion. I guess it’s a human trait that sometimes we just prefer to argue with convention; just because. Either that, or it’s easier and more palatable to bury one’s head in the sand than accept our hand in this. Maybe the scale of what we are doing is just too much to admit to. In any case, The overwhelming consensus and majority of scientific eminence is in the “human cause is statistically significant” corner. With this in mind, it is absolute madness to ignore the body of evidence available and invest in palm oil incinerators. Is this the “energy independence” that we have been looking for? Reliance on Indonesia or Borneo seems just as folly as reliance on Russia or Ukraine. The crazy part is that the net CO2 effect is far greater than gas or coal, due to the destruction and burning of rainforest. Windmills in their current guise are a waste of time, space and money – and solar panels in this country are similarly unfeasible economically. There are other technologies available which offer greater promise (smart chlorophyll photoexcitation systems, tidal turbines to name two) – but they will not be as cheap in the short term as turning Drax into a chip pan fire. They would however be far more prudent!"
"The fact that mean global temperatures have been rising and continue to do so at an increasing rate is not question. Even the most staunch deniers that climate change is caused by human activity accept this. The controversy is whether or not it is caused by human activity. There is copious data available everywhere supporting this, but I’ll include the link from NASA: http://climate.nasa.gov/news/249 . The sticking point is the cause. Now, as you are aware, science operates under the caveat that no theory can be proven, it can only be disproven. Thus leaving the door open for better evidence, should it ever be forthcoming to be considered and then the theory adjusted or scrapped. This is the basis of The Scientific Method and it shall be thus in perpetuity. The overwhelming body of evidence collected over the last century (and with far greater accuracy in recent times from ice cores, the high atmosphere, infra-red analysis and weather satellites) supports the theory that human activity is certainly a statistically significant factor. That is all science can offer – statistical significance. With this in mind, climate change deniers have postulated many other contributing factors, such as solar flares, solar cycles, atmospheric particulates and volcanoes to mention a few, but the overwhelming consensus of meteorologists and climatologists agree that the cumulative effect of all of these is not sufficient to cause the temperature changes seen in recent history. The very few scientists who disagree with this are free to offer evidence to the contrary, which would allow the theory to be adjusted, but they have not provided any – which means the original theory supported by empirical evidence should still be accepted. Instead these statistically few scientists; many of whom also have vested interests in energy production or political funding prefer to snipe criticism at the accepted wisdom (I use the word deliberately!) and just seem keen to get their names in the papers from time to time. The great tragedy is that so many of the public seem keen to accept this viewpoint in absentia of evidence rather than the vast majority of empirically supported, statistically significant opinion. I guess it’s a human trait that sometimes we just prefer to argue with convention; just because. Either that, or it’s easier and more palatable to bury one’s head in the sand than accept our hand in this. Maybe the scale of what we are doing is just too much to admit to. In any case, The overwhelming consensus and majority of scientific eminence is in the “human cause is statistically significant” corner. With this in mind, it is absolute madness to ignore the body of evidence available and invest in palm oil incinerators. Is this the “energy independence” that we have been looking for? Reliance on Indonesia or Borneo seems just as folly as reliance on Russia or Ukraine. The crazy part is that the net CO2 effect is far greater than gas or coal, due to the destruction and burning of rainforest. Windmills in their current guise are a waste of time, space and money – and solar panels in this country are similarly unfeasible economically. There are other technologies available which offer greater promise (smart chlorophyll photoexcitation systems, tidal turbines to name two) – but they will not be as cheap in the short term as turning Drax into a chip pan fire. They would however be far more prudent!"
"The sticking point is the cause. Now, as you are aware, science operates under the caveat that no theory can be proven, it can only be disproven. Thus leaving the door open for better evidence, should it ever be forthcoming to be considered and then the theory adjusted or scrapped. This is the basis of The Scientific Method and it shall be thus in perpetuity. The overwhelming body of evidence collected over the last century (and with far greater accuracy in recent times from ice cores, the high atmosphere, infra-red analysis and weather satellites) supports the theory that human activity is certainly a statistically significant factor. That is all science can offer – statistical significance. With this in mind, climate change deniers have postulated many other contributing factors, such as solar flares, solar cycles, atmospheric particulates and volcanoes to mention a few, but the overwhelming consensus of meteorologists and climatologists agree that the cumulative effect of all of these is not sufficient to cause the temperature changes seen in recent history."
That's a neat soft shoe shuffle from the scientific method to unscientific consensus and the logical fallacies of argumentum ad populum mixed with a smidgen of argumentum ad verecundiam.
It's also plain wrong, and very much out of date. With solar eruptivity included, not just solar irradiance as previously held sway in the literature, the picture changes. The Sun has even dawned on NASA.
Then we get to hypotheses (rather than theories) being disproven - presumably this refers to cases when data confounds a given hypothesis and requires its wholesale revision or rejection, and at that point the irony becomes overwhelming.
That's a neat soft shoe shuffle from the scientific method to unscientific consensus and the logical fallacies of argumentum ad populum mixed with a smidgen of argumentum ad verecundiam.
It's also plain wrong, and very much out of date. With solar eruptivity included, not just solar irradiance as previously held sway in the literature, the picture changes. The Sun has even dawned on NASA.
Then we get to hypotheses (rather than theories) being disproven - presumably this refers to cases when data confounds a given hypothesis and requires its wholesale revision or rejection, and at that point the irony becomes overwhelming.
And on to something relevant about GISS which offers a choice, but PHer Tallbloke's coverage must get first place.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/10/21/roger-an...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/22/how-giss-cre...
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/10/21/roger-an...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/22/how-giss-cre...
Andy Zarse said:
Had the below email from an old friend. He's very clever but is a science tea her and I sometimes despair. I'm quite happy to deal with this all nonsense but wondered if anyone has some handy links to why GISS is crap and why the other data sets like CRU are too. My memory has failed me...
"The fact that mean global temperatures have been rising and continue to do so at an increasing rate is not question. Even the most staunch deniers that climate change is caused by human activity accept this. The controversy is whether or not it is caused by human activity. There is copious data available everywhere supporting this, but I’ll include the link from NASA: http://climate.nasa.gov/news/249 . The sticking point is the cause. Now, as you are aware, science operates under the caveat that no theory can be proven, it can only be disproven. Thus leaving the door open for better evidence, should it ever be forthcoming to be considered and then the theory adjusted or scrapped. This is the basis of The Scientific Method and it shall be thus in perpetuity. The overwhelming body of evidence collected over the last century (and with far greater accuracy in recent times from ice cores, the high atmosphere, infra-red analysis and weather satellites) supports the theory that human activity is certainly a statistically significant factor. That is all science can offer – statistical significance. With this in mind, climate change deniers have postulated many other contributing factors, such as solar flares, solar cycles, atmospheric particulates and volcanoes to mention a few, but the overwhelming consensus of meteorologists and climatologists agree that the cumulative effect of all of these is not sufficient to cause the temperature changes seen in recent history. The very few scientists who disagree with this are free to offer evidence to the contrary, which would allow the theory to be adjusted, but they have not provided any – which means the original theory supported by empirical evidence should still be accepted. Instead these statistically few scientists; many of whom also have vested interests in energy production or political funding prefer to snipe criticism at the accepted wisdom (I use the word deliberately!) and just seem keen to get their names in the papers from time to time. The great tragedy is that so many of the public seem keen to accept this viewpoint in absentia of evidence rather than the vast majority of empirically supported, statistically significant opinion. I guess it’s a human trait that sometimes we just prefer to argue with convention; just because. Either that, or it’s easier and more palatable to bury one’s head in the sand than accept our hand in this. Maybe the scale of what we are doing is just too much to admit to. In any case, The overwhelming consensus and majority of scientific eminence is in the “human cause is statistically significant” corner. With this in mind, it is absolute madness to ignore the body of evidence available and invest in palm oil incinerators. Is this the “energy independence” that we have been looking for? Reliance on Indonesia or Borneo seems just as folly as reliance on Russia or Ukraine. The crazy part is that the net CO2 effect is far greater than gas or coal, due to the destruction and burning of rainforest. Windmills in their current guise are a waste of time, space and money – and solar panels in this country are similarly unfeasible economically. There are other technologies available which offer greater promise (smart chlorophyll photoexcitation systems, tidal turbines to name two) – but they will not be as cheap in the short term as turning Drax into a chip pan fire. They would however be far more prudent!"
He's not all wrong. He may be persuaded to keep his mind open, as scientists should."The fact that mean global temperatures have been rising and continue to do so at an increasing rate is not question. Even the most staunch deniers that climate change is caused by human activity accept this. The controversy is whether or not it is caused by human activity. There is copious data available everywhere supporting this, but I’ll include the link from NASA: http://climate.nasa.gov/news/249 . The sticking point is the cause. Now, as you are aware, science operates under the caveat that no theory can be proven, it can only be disproven. Thus leaving the door open for better evidence, should it ever be forthcoming to be considered and then the theory adjusted or scrapped. This is the basis of The Scientific Method and it shall be thus in perpetuity. The overwhelming body of evidence collected over the last century (and with far greater accuracy in recent times from ice cores, the high atmosphere, infra-red analysis and weather satellites) supports the theory that human activity is certainly a statistically significant factor. That is all science can offer – statistical significance. With this in mind, climate change deniers have postulated many other contributing factors, such as solar flares, solar cycles, atmospheric particulates and volcanoes to mention a few, but the overwhelming consensus of meteorologists and climatologists agree that the cumulative effect of all of these is not sufficient to cause the temperature changes seen in recent history. The very few scientists who disagree with this are free to offer evidence to the contrary, which would allow the theory to be adjusted, but they have not provided any – which means the original theory supported by empirical evidence should still be accepted. Instead these statistically few scientists; many of whom also have vested interests in energy production or political funding prefer to snipe criticism at the accepted wisdom (I use the word deliberately!) and just seem keen to get their names in the papers from time to time. The great tragedy is that so many of the public seem keen to accept this viewpoint in absentia of evidence rather than the vast majority of empirically supported, statistically significant opinion. I guess it’s a human trait that sometimes we just prefer to argue with convention; just because. Either that, or it’s easier and more palatable to bury one’s head in the sand than accept our hand in this. Maybe the scale of what we are doing is just too much to admit to. In any case, The overwhelming consensus and majority of scientific eminence is in the “human cause is statistically significant” corner. With this in mind, it is absolute madness to ignore the body of evidence available and invest in palm oil incinerators. Is this the “energy independence” that we have been looking for? Reliance on Indonesia or Borneo seems just as folly as reliance on Russia or Ukraine. The crazy part is that the net CO2 effect is far greater than gas or coal, due to the destruction and burning of rainforest. Windmills in their current guise are a waste of time, space and money – and solar panels in this country are similarly unfeasible economically. There are other technologies available which offer greater promise (smart chlorophyll photoexcitation systems, tidal turbines to name two) – but they will not be as cheap in the short term as turning Drax into a chip pan fire. They would however be far more prudent!"
James Hansen has vested interests in supporting nuclear. Makes him very anti-coal. The strongest argument against coal is either soot or CO. Bring both in to the game and he's on a winner.
Finding from research grants, rarely awarded for potential "nothing to say here" research, should also be an pobvious vested interest.
Also there should not be any 'convention' in science apart from the rules and their application - which is often where consensus clearly fails. He almost says as much but draws a different conclusion. There are many examples of broadly accepted consensus that have turned out to be wrong.
Intelligent people, especially very intelligent people, often make extremely poor decisions or are detached from the general workings of the world. The phrase "Ivory Tower" does not come without a basis. We might consider a number of recent news items, especially over the past two weeks or so, from which we might conclude that not a few apparently 'bright' people are self destructively dim. If they can do this to themselves there seems little doubt that, at heart, they can care little for the masses. If they did they would understand more of their own actions. They just don't have the facility.
Fairly sound on the idiocy of many positions on energy independence. Needs to ask where the proposal and support for palm oil, etc. comes from.
The two examples of "other technologies available" are certainly interesting but don't really look like 'now' solutions and we really really need 'now' right now. Can't really comment on the "smart chlorophyll photoexcitation systems" although they do sound rather exciting no matter which side of a fence one sits on (unless you James Hansen perhaps) but the problems with tidal turbines, other than the potential variability of output (though that should be more predictable than wind) and the sheer cost of the things, is likely to be in the area of corrosion and the battering components receive thorugh the movement of water and of their movement through water. That's assuming one can stop the creatures of nature colonising the structures and causing their own disruption. Expensive. Potentially problematic if some rare sea based equivalent of a great crested newt turns up and takes residence.
If one can find a cost effective way counter thase problem (inflation perhaps, in time?) then the idea becomes viable.
Of course using water is hardly new. Over the years deployment of water driven technology seems to have slipped away as other technologies became available. Why was that?
Are any of his students likely to have the ability to develope anwsers to the challenges? If so there is hope. If not ... can he assume that someone else has students who can fill the void? If not then his hopes are theories without any obvious evidence that they can, currently, be turned into solutions. Tidal is a rather local benefit anyway. Too many landlocked places for which it offers no answers.
"Of course using water is hardly new. Over the years deployment of water driven technology seems to have slipped away as other technologies became available. Why was that?"
Probably more subsidies available for wind, solar, etc, though my theory is more that it means Politicians are seen to 'do something', the same flawed logic that has led to a replacement Forth Road Bridge, which will still be closed to high sided vehicles on a regular basis, and sometimes completely closed, whereas a tunnel would have been a similar cost, but you only get a couple of tunnel entrances to crow about.
And don't get me started about Edinburgh's trams, a classic case of car hating Nu Labia and Lib Dim idiots running the show, less money would have dualled the A9 and saved quite a few lives a year, as well as speeding up transport links to the Highlands.
Can someone not conceive of generating power from all the hot air that politicians spout?
Probably more subsidies available for wind, solar, etc, though my theory is more that it means Politicians are seen to 'do something', the same flawed logic that has led to a replacement Forth Road Bridge, which will still be closed to high sided vehicles on a regular basis, and sometimes completely closed, whereas a tunnel would have been a similar cost, but you only get a couple of tunnel entrances to crow about.
And don't get me started about Edinburgh's trams, a classic case of car hating Nu Labia and Lib Dim idiots running the show, less money would have dualled the A9 and saved quite a few lives a year, as well as speeding up transport links to the Highlands.
Can someone not conceive of generating power from all the hot air that politicians spout?
Eco Madness
Christopher Booker 09 March 2013
"Sir David King told Radio 4's Today programme that when the full 'life cycle' of the wood chips is factored in, he doubted there would be any real saving in carbon dioxide emissions."
"Alistair Buchanan, the retiring head of our energy regulator Ofgem, recently warned that our electricity supplies are now running so low and close to 'danger point' that we may face major power cuts."
"The tragedy is that, listening to our politicians such as Ed Davey, the Lib Dem Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, it is only too obvious that they haven't the faintest idea of what they are talking about."
There could be no better symbol of the madness of Britain’s energy policy than what is happening at the giant Drax power station in Yorkshire, easily the largest in Britain. Indeed, it is one of the biggest and most efficiently run coal-fired power stations in the world. Its almost 1,000ft-tall flue chimney is the highest in the country, and its 12 monster cooling towers (each taller than St Paul’s Cathedral) dominate the flat countryside of eastern Yorkshire for miles around.
Every day, Drax burns 36,000 tons of coal, brought to its vast site by 140 coal trains every week — and it supplies seven per cent of all the electricity used in Britain. That’s enough to light up a good many of our major cities.
But as a result of a change in Government policy, triggered by EU rules, Drax is about to undergo a major change that would have astonished those who built it in the Seventies and Eighties right next to Selby coalfield, which was then highly productive but has since closed.
As from next month, Drax will embark on a £700 million switch away from burning coal for which it was designed, in order to convert its six colossal boilers to burn millions of tons a year of wood chips instead.
Most of these chips will come from trees felled in forests covering a staggering 4,600 square miles in the USA, from where they will be shipped 3,000 miles across the Atlantic to Britain.
The reason for this hugely costly decision is that Drax has become a key component in the so-called ‘green revolution’ which is now at the heart of the Government’s energy policy. Because it burns so much coal, Drax is the biggest single emitter in Britain of carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas supposedly responsible for global warming.
The theory is that, by gradually switching to wood — or ‘biomass’ as it is officially known — Drax will eventually save millions of tons of CO2 from going every year into the atmosphere, thereby helping to prevent climate change and save the planet.
Unlike coal, which is now demonised as a filthy, planet-threatening pollutant, biomass is considered ‘sustainable’, because it supposedly only returns back to the atmosphere the amount of CO2 it drew out of the air while the original tree it came from was growing.
The truth remains, though, that coal is still by far the cheapest means of creating electricity. But the Government is so committed to meeting its own and the EU’s targets for reducing Britain’s ‘carbon emissions’ that it is now going flat out to tackle the problem on two fronts — both of which forced the changes at Drax.
First, the Government wants to use a carbon tax to make burning fossil fuels such as coal so expensive that, before too long, it will become prohibitive for power companies to use them. A new carbon tax will be introduced in three weeks’ time, and applied to every ton of carbon dioxide produced during electricity production. The tax will start at a comparatively low level, but rise steeply every year so that, within 20 years, the cost of generating electricity from coal will have doubled and it will no longer be economical.
Second, the Government is determined to boost all those ‘carbon neutral’ — but currently much more expensive — means of making electricity, such as wind farms, nuclear power and burning biomass. It hopes to achieve this by offering a host of subsidies, paid for by every household and business through electricity bills.
What forced Drax to embark on the switch from coal to ‘biomass’ was ministers’ decision last year to give any coal-fired power station which switched to ‘biomass’ the same, near-100 per cent ‘renewable subsidy’ that it already gives to the owners of onshore wind farms.
When the experts at Drax did their sums, they could see how, if they stayed with coal, they would gradually be priced out of business by a carbon tax which will eventually make their electricity become twice as expensive. In terms of hard-headed realism, the Government was giving them little choice.
But it is hard to overstate the lunacy of this Drax deal. To start with, some of those environmentalists who are normally most fanatically in favour of ‘renewable’ power are among those most strongly opposed to the burning of wood as a means of producing electricity.
Campaigning groups, such as Friends of the Earth, scorn the idea that wood chips are ‘carbon neutral’ or that felling millions of acres of American forests, to turn trees into chips and then transporting those chips thousands of miles to Yorkshire, will end up making any significant net reduction in ‘carbon’ emissions.
Their criticism chimes with the view of Sir David King, formerly the Government’s chief scientific adviser, who this week told Radio 4’s Today programme that when the full ‘life cycle’ of these wood chips is factored in, he doubted there would be any real saving in carbon dioxide emissions.
Drax disagrees with this, although what King had in mind was all the additional emissions arising from the laborious processes required between the growing of those millions of trees in America and the moment they go up in smoke.
The trees must first be felled, then turned into wood chips in two dedicated plants that Drax is building in America. The chips have to be transported in huge ships thousands of miles across the ocean to Yorkshire ports, then ferried in huge railway trucks to the power station.
Even then, before being pulverised into powder ready for use, the wood chips must be stored in giant purpose-built domes, where they need to be humidified in order to prevent spontaneous combustion — to which wood is 1,000 times more prone than coal.
This has already given rise to disastrous fires in other power plants that have converted to biomass, such as one which recently caused millions of pounds’ worth of damage to Tilbury power station in London.
As Drax admits, all this means that to generate nearly the same amount of power from wood as it does from coal will cost between two and three times as much, meaning that its fuel costs will double or treble — so that the only thing to make this possible will be that massive subsidy, which will eventually be worth over £1 billion a year.
This is hardly good news for us electricity users. We have already seen bills go up by over £1 billion a year because we are being forced to subsidise the use of wind farms. In the years to come, with these vast subsidies going to Drax, they will soar ever higher.
Yet while consumers are being hammered, government ministers are delighted by Drax’s decision to convert to wood chips. This is because it will result in a significant contribution towards meeting an EU-imposed target, which commits Britain to producing nearly a third of our electricity from ‘renewables’ within seven years. At the moment, we produce only a fraction of that figure, way behind almost every other country in the EU.
Despite the huge subsidies that have been spent on wind farms, their contribution is negligible. On one windless day this week, for example, the combined output of the UK’s 4,300 wind turbines was just one thousandth — a mere 29 megawatts — of the electricity we need.
But when Drax has completed its conversion to biomass, it will be capable on its own of generating 3,500 megawatts, reliably and continuously, and contributing more than a quarter of our entire EU target for the use of renewable energy.
Yet the very fact that the Government is so desperate for this switch away from CO2-emitting fossil fuels brings us face to face with another devastating and much more immediate consequence of its energy policy.
This month sees the closure of several of our remaining major coal-fired power stations. Plants such as Kingsnorth in Kent, Didcot A in Oxfordshire and Cockenzie in Scotland (capable of generating nearly 6,000 megawatts a year — a seventh of our average needs) will stop production as a result of an EU anti-pollution directive. This means that, to keep Britain’s lights lit, we’ll soon be more dependent than ever on expensive gas-fired power stations.
The trouble is that our gas supplies are becoming ever more precarious. Only this week we were told that Britain has just two weeks’ worth of gas left in storage — the lowest amount ever.
So quickly have our once-abundant supplies of gas from the North Sea dwindled that we are increasingly dependent on expensive imports from countries such as Qatar and Algeria and, to a lesser extent, Russia — supplies on which we cannot necessarily rely at a time when world demand for gas is rising fast.
Given this fact, it is hardly surprising that Alistair Buchanan, the retiring head of our energy regulator Ofgem, recently warned that our electricity supplies are now running so low and close to ‘danger point’ that we may face major power cuts. Some of us have been warning about this for years, having watched the reckless hi-jacking of our energy policy by the environmentalists’ hostility to fossil fuels.
Crucially, what many people forget is that if we do have major power cuts, this will not be like the ‘three-day weeks’ Britain had to endure in the early Seventies. Back then, the country managed to get by, as people lived and worked by candlelight or huddled over coal fires. But, today, 40 years on, we live in a world almost wholly dependent on constant supplies of electricity.
Computers power everything from our offices and factories, to cash machines, to the tills and freezers in our supermarkets, to the traffic lights and signalling systems which keep our roads and railways running.
It is all very well for Government ministers to be obsessed with wind farms and other ‘renewable’ energy sources, but the fact is that the wind is often not blowing — so we need the constantly available back-up that will soon only now be available from gas-fired power stations.
And the great irony on top of all this is that gas itself will be subject to that rapidly escalating new carbon tax because, like coal, it is a fossil fuel — although, admittedly, it produces less carbon dioxide when burned. The result of this dog’s dinner of an energy policy is that, on the one hand we can look forward to ever-soaring energy bills, while on the other hand we will have crippling power cuts.
The tragedy is that, listening to our politicians such as Ed Davey, the Lib Dem Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, it is only too obvious that they haven’t the faintest idea of what they are talking about. They live in such a la-la land of green make-believe that they no longer connect with reality — and seem unable to comprehend the national energy crisis now heading our way with the speed of a bullet train.
The fact that Drax, our largest and most efficient power station, is having to go through these ridiculous contortions to stay in business is a perfect symbol of the catastrophic mess our politicians of all parties have got us into — all in the name of trying to save the planet by cutting down our emissions of carbon dioxide further and faster than any other country in the world.
Germany, which already has five times as many wind turbines as Britain, is now desperately building 20 new coal-fired stations in the hope of keeping its lights on. The first, opened last September, is already generating 2,200 megawatts; nearly as much as the average output of all of Britain’s wind farms combined.
China, already the world’s largest CO2 emitter, is planning to build 363 more coal-fired power stations, without any heed of the vast amount of emissions they’ll produce. India is ready to build 455 new coal-fired power stations to fuel an economy growing so fast that it could soon overtake our own. If these countries deigned to notice what we are up to in Britain, where this week we lost yet another of our handful of remaining coal mines, they might find it difficult to stifle a disbelieving smile.
But the sad truth is that we ourselves should be neither laughing nor crying. We should be rising up to protest, in real anger, at those politicians whose collective flight from reality is fast dragging us towards as damaging a crisis as this country has ever faced.
A long essay but spot on throughout.
Christopher Booker 09 March 2013
"Sir David King told Radio 4's Today programme that when the full 'life cycle' of the wood chips is factored in, he doubted there would be any real saving in carbon dioxide emissions."
"Alistair Buchanan, the retiring head of our energy regulator Ofgem, recently warned that our electricity supplies are now running so low and close to 'danger point' that we may face major power cuts."
"The tragedy is that, listening to our politicians such as Ed Davey, the Lib Dem Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, it is only too obvious that they haven't the faintest idea of what they are talking about."
There could be no better symbol of the madness of Britain’s energy policy than what is happening at the giant Drax power station in Yorkshire, easily the largest in Britain. Indeed, it is one of the biggest and most efficiently run coal-fired power stations in the world. Its almost 1,000ft-tall flue chimney is the highest in the country, and its 12 monster cooling towers (each taller than St Paul’s Cathedral) dominate the flat countryside of eastern Yorkshire for miles around.
Every day, Drax burns 36,000 tons of coal, brought to its vast site by 140 coal trains every week — and it supplies seven per cent of all the electricity used in Britain. That’s enough to light up a good many of our major cities.
But as a result of a change in Government policy, triggered by EU rules, Drax is about to undergo a major change that would have astonished those who built it in the Seventies and Eighties right next to Selby coalfield, which was then highly productive but has since closed.
As from next month, Drax will embark on a £700 million switch away from burning coal for which it was designed, in order to convert its six colossal boilers to burn millions of tons a year of wood chips instead.
Most of these chips will come from trees felled in forests covering a staggering 4,600 square miles in the USA, from where they will be shipped 3,000 miles across the Atlantic to Britain.
The reason for this hugely costly decision is that Drax has become a key component in the so-called ‘green revolution’ which is now at the heart of the Government’s energy policy. Because it burns so much coal, Drax is the biggest single emitter in Britain of carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas supposedly responsible for global warming.
The theory is that, by gradually switching to wood — or ‘biomass’ as it is officially known — Drax will eventually save millions of tons of CO2 from going every year into the atmosphere, thereby helping to prevent climate change and save the planet.
Unlike coal, which is now demonised as a filthy, planet-threatening pollutant, biomass is considered ‘sustainable’, because it supposedly only returns back to the atmosphere the amount of CO2 it drew out of the air while the original tree it came from was growing.
The truth remains, though, that coal is still by far the cheapest means of creating electricity. But the Government is so committed to meeting its own and the EU’s targets for reducing Britain’s ‘carbon emissions’ that it is now going flat out to tackle the problem on two fronts — both of which forced the changes at Drax.
First, the Government wants to use a carbon tax to make burning fossil fuels such as coal so expensive that, before too long, it will become prohibitive for power companies to use them. A new carbon tax will be introduced in three weeks’ time, and applied to every ton of carbon dioxide produced during electricity production. The tax will start at a comparatively low level, but rise steeply every year so that, within 20 years, the cost of generating electricity from coal will have doubled and it will no longer be economical.
Second, the Government is determined to boost all those ‘carbon neutral’ — but currently much more expensive — means of making electricity, such as wind farms, nuclear power and burning biomass. It hopes to achieve this by offering a host of subsidies, paid for by every household and business through electricity bills.
What forced Drax to embark on the switch from coal to ‘biomass’ was ministers’ decision last year to give any coal-fired power station which switched to ‘biomass’ the same, near-100 per cent ‘renewable subsidy’ that it already gives to the owners of onshore wind farms.
When the experts at Drax did their sums, they could see how, if they stayed with coal, they would gradually be priced out of business by a carbon tax which will eventually make their electricity become twice as expensive. In terms of hard-headed realism, the Government was giving them little choice.
But it is hard to overstate the lunacy of this Drax deal. To start with, some of those environmentalists who are normally most fanatically in favour of ‘renewable’ power are among those most strongly opposed to the burning of wood as a means of producing electricity.
Campaigning groups, such as Friends of the Earth, scorn the idea that wood chips are ‘carbon neutral’ or that felling millions of acres of American forests, to turn trees into chips and then transporting those chips thousands of miles to Yorkshire, will end up making any significant net reduction in ‘carbon’ emissions.
Their criticism chimes with the view of Sir David King, formerly the Government’s chief scientific adviser, who this week told Radio 4’s Today programme that when the full ‘life cycle’ of these wood chips is factored in, he doubted there would be any real saving in carbon dioxide emissions.
Drax disagrees with this, although what King had in mind was all the additional emissions arising from the laborious processes required between the growing of those millions of trees in America and the moment they go up in smoke.
The trees must first be felled, then turned into wood chips in two dedicated plants that Drax is building in America. The chips have to be transported in huge ships thousands of miles across the ocean to Yorkshire ports, then ferried in huge railway trucks to the power station.
Even then, before being pulverised into powder ready for use, the wood chips must be stored in giant purpose-built domes, where they need to be humidified in order to prevent spontaneous combustion — to which wood is 1,000 times more prone than coal.
This has already given rise to disastrous fires in other power plants that have converted to biomass, such as one which recently caused millions of pounds’ worth of damage to Tilbury power station in London.
As Drax admits, all this means that to generate nearly the same amount of power from wood as it does from coal will cost between two and three times as much, meaning that its fuel costs will double or treble — so that the only thing to make this possible will be that massive subsidy, which will eventually be worth over £1 billion a year.
This is hardly good news for us electricity users. We have already seen bills go up by over £1 billion a year because we are being forced to subsidise the use of wind farms. In the years to come, with these vast subsidies going to Drax, they will soar ever higher.
Yet while consumers are being hammered, government ministers are delighted by Drax’s decision to convert to wood chips. This is because it will result in a significant contribution towards meeting an EU-imposed target, which commits Britain to producing nearly a third of our electricity from ‘renewables’ within seven years. At the moment, we produce only a fraction of that figure, way behind almost every other country in the EU.
Despite the huge subsidies that have been spent on wind farms, their contribution is negligible. On one windless day this week, for example, the combined output of the UK’s 4,300 wind turbines was just one thousandth — a mere 29 megawatts — of the electricity we need.
But when Drax has completed its conversion to biomass, it will be capable on its own of generating 3,500 megawatts, reliably and continuously, and contributing more than a quarter of our entire EU target for the use of renewable energy.
Yet the very fact that the Government is so desperate for this switch away from CO2-emitting fossil fuels brings us face to face with another devastating and much more immediate consequence of its energy policy.
This month sees the closure of several of our remaining major coal-fired power stations. Plants such as Kingsnorth in Kent, Didcot A in Oxfordshire and Cockenzie in Scotland (capable of generating nearly 6,000 megawatts a year — a seventh of our average needs) will stop production as a result of an EU anti-pollution directive. This means that, to keep Britain’s lights lit, we’ll soon be more dependent than ever on expensive gas-fired power stations.
The trouble is that our gas supplies are becoming ever more precarious. Only this week we were told that Britain has just two weeks’ worth of gas left in storage — the lowest amount ever.
So quickly have our once-abundant supplies of gas from the North Sea dwindled that we are increasingly dependent on expensive imports from countries such as Qatar and Algeria and, to a lesser extent, Russia — supplies on which we cannot necessarily rely at a time when world demand for gas is rising fast.
Given this fact, it is hardly surprising that Alistair Buchanan, the retiring head of our energy regulator Ofgem, recently warned that our electricity supplies are now running so low and close to ‘danger point’ that we may face major power cuts. Some of us have been warning about this for years, having watched the reckless hi-jacking of our energy policy by the environmentalists’ hostility to fossil fuels.
Crucially, what many people forget is that if we do have major power cuts, this will not be like the ‘three-day weeks’ Britain had to endure in the early Seventies. Back then, the country managed to get by, as people lived and worked by candlelight or huddled over coal fires. But, today, 40 years on, we live in a world almost wholly dependent on constant supplies of electricity.
Computers power everything from our offices and factories, to cash machines, to the tills and freezers in our supermarkets, to the traffic lights and signalling systems which keep our roads and railways running.
It is all very well for Government ministers to be obsessed with wind farms and other ‘renewable’ energy sources, but the fact is that the wind is often not blowing — so we need the constantly available back-up that will soon only now be available from gas-fired power stations.
And the great irony on top of all this is that gas itself will be subject to that rapidly escalating new carbon tax because, like coal, it is a fossil fuel — although, admittedly, it produces less carbon dioxide when burned. The result of this dog’s dinner of an energy policy is that, on the one hand we can look forward to ever-soaring energy bills, while on the other hand we will have crippling power cuts.
The tragedy is that, listening to our politicians such as Ed Davey, the Lib Dem Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, it is only too obvious that they haven’t the faintest idea of what they are talking about. They live in such a la-la land of green make-believe that they no longer connect with reality — and seem unable to comprehend the national energy crisis now heading our way with the speed of a bullet train.
The fact that Drax, our largest and most efficient power station, is having to go through these ridiculous contortions to stay in business is a perfect symbol of the catastrophic mess our politicians of all parties have got us into — all in the name of trying to save the planet by cutting down our emissions of carbon dioxide further and faster than any other country in the world.
Germany, which already has five times as many wind turbines as Britain, is now desperately building 20 new coal-fired stations in the hope of keeping its lights on. The first, opened last September, is already generating 2,200 megawatts; nearly as much as the average output of all of Britain’s wind farms combined.
China, already the world’s largest CO2 emitter, is planning to build 363 more coal-fired power stations, without any heed of the vast amount of emissions they’ll produce. India is ready to build 455 new coal-fired power stations to fuel an economy growing so fast that it could soon overtake our own. If these countries deigned to notice what we are up to in Britain, where this week we lost yet another of our handful of remaining coal mines, they might find it difficult to stifle a disbelieving smile.
But the sad truth is that we ourselves should be neither laughing nor crying. We should be rising up to protest, in real anger, at those politicians whose collective flight from reality is fast dragging us towards as damaging a crisis as this country has ever faced.
A long essay but spot on throughout.
Guam said:
You guys so need to check this out, this Guy stands assumptions about Desertification on its head, great feature on watts.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/08/a-bridge-in-...
Very interesting. The greenies may reject it as it doesn't involve higher taxes for bigger cars but it looks fantastic.http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/08/a-bridge-in-...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI
mondeoman said:
s, one and all. fking s.
Booker's article said:
Germany, which already has five times as many wind turbines as Britain, is now desperately building 20 new coal-fired stations in the hope of keeping its lights on. The first, opened last September, is already generating 2,200 megawatts; nearly as much as the average output of all of Britain’s wind farms combined.
China, already the world’s largest CO2 emitter, is planning to build 363 more coal-fired power stations, without any heed of the vast amount of emissions they’ll produce. India is ready to build 455 new coal-fired power stations to fuel an economy growing so fast that it could soon overtake our own. If these countries deigned to notice what we are up to in Britain, where this week we lost yet another of our handful of remaining coal mines, they might find it difficult to stifle a disbelieving smile.
It's a tragedy that no one is protesting this madness in Westminster. We seem to be living in an Alice in Wonderland world. China, already the world’s largest CO2 emitter, is planning to build 363 more coal-fired power stations, without any heed of the vast amount of emissions they’ll produce. India is ready to build 455 new coal-fired power stations to fuel an economy growing so fast that it could soon overtake our own. If these countries deigned to notice what we are up to in Britain, where this week we lost yet another of our handful of remaining coal mines, they might find it difficult to stifle a disbelieving smile.
A pox on each and every politician and "Green" (sic) fool involved in this insanity.
mondeoman said:
hidetheelephants said:
turbobloke said:
Eco Madness
<snip>
The only positive thing I can see here is that all this makes nuclear seem both cheap and clean; who do I vote for to get it?<snip>
s, one and all. fking s.Does one have to be stark, staring, raving mad before one is admitted into membership of the Liberal Democrat Party, or does membership bring the requisite tuition to qualify as a first class barking loony?
I feel another letter to my dear old MP, Mr Clegg, coming on...
While Europe Lurches Into Green Bankruptcy Russia Muscles In On Mediterranean Gas Boom
A new deal by Russia’s Gazprom energy giant to market Israeli liquefied natural gas puts Moscow firmly in the burgeoning and contentious east Mediterranean energy sector, and shows that it’s again emerging as a player in the strategic region. The deal, signed Feb. 26, is a direct consequence of a ground-breaking visit to Israel, the United States’ most valuable strategic ally in the region, by Russian President Vladimir Putin last June. With U.S. interest in the Middle East seemingly diminishing, in part because of vast shale oil and natural gas deposits that lessen dependence on Persian Gulf oil, Putin clearly has ambitions of filling the vacuum.
UPI, 09 March 2013
A new deal by Russia’s Gazprom energy giant to market Israeli liquefied natural gas puts Moscow firmly in the burgeoning and contentious east Mediterranean energy sector, and shows that it’s again emerging as a player in the strategic region. The deal, signed Feb. 26, is a direct consequence of a ground-breaking visit to Israel, the United States’ most valuable strategic ally in the region, by Russian President Vladimir Putin last June. With U.S. interest in the Middle East seemingly diminishing, in part because of vast shale oil and natural gas deposits that lessen dependence on Persian Gulf oil, Putin clearly has ambitions of filling the vacuum.
UPI, 09 March 2013
turbobloke said:
While Europe Lurches Into Green Bankruptcy Russia Muscles In On Mediterranean Gas Boom
A new deal by Russia’s Gazprom energy giant to market Israeli liquefied natural gas puts Moscow firmly in the burgeoning and contentious east Mediterranean energy sector, and shows that it’s again emerging as a player in the strategic region. The deal, signed Feb. 26, is a direct consequence of a ground-breaking visit to Israel, the United States’ most valuable strategic ally in the region, by Russian President Vladimir Putin last June. With U.S. interest in the Middle East seemingly diminishing, in part because of vast shale oil and natural gas deposits that lessen dependence on Persian Gulf oil, Putin clearly has ambitions of filling the vacuum.
UPI, 09 March 2013
I don't particularly like the man or the way he runs his country, but it shows how the right person can really just crack on and get the job done when given the opportunity.A new deal by Russia’s Gazprom energy giant to market Israeli liquefied natural gas puts Moscow firmly in the burgeoning and contentious east Mediterranean energy sector, and shows that it’s again emerging as a player in the strategic region. The deal, signed Feb. 26, is a direct consequence of a ground-breaking visit to Israel, the United States’ most valuable strategic ally in the region, by Russian President Vladimir Putin last June. With U.S. interest in the Middle East seemingly diminishing, in part because of vast shale oil and natural gas deposits that lessen dependence on Persian Gulf oil, Putin clearly has ambitions of filling the vacuum.
UPI, 09 March 2013
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