Another billion plus down the drain. I guess it wasn’t “sustainable”.
…
The potential demise of the scheme comes amid growing fears among renewable power enthusiasts that David Cameron and George Osborne want to scale back the “green” agenda on the grounds that low-carbon energy schemes such as CCS and offshore wind cost too much at a time of austerity. Osborne told the Conservative party conference in Manchester that if he had his way the UK would cut “carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe”.
Scottish Power, and its partners Shell and the National Grid, have just completed a detailed study of the CCS scheme and have deep concerns about its commercial viability without heavier public backing.
Full story here
Of course this just follows a long line of FAIL, the most prominent being the death of the Chicago Climate Exchange and it’s nickel a ton flatline:
gee…..it didn’t work because the government would have to pay more tax money…and it they spend more tax money….more people will be out of work…..and they will have less tax money to spend
and these people were elected why?
Al Gores investments are worse than mine by a factor of? Count the 0’s.
Creeeak……..Groaan……Caution, falling debris!
Now if we can get Europe to drop their carbon emission tax on aircraft.
Britain’s Climate Change Minister, Greg Barker, said: ”We welcome today’s legal opinion. The UK and EU will continue to robustly defend our policy to bring aviation into the EU’s emissions trading system and believe it is consistent with international law. The aviation industry, in the same way as other industries, needs to play its part in reducing emissions.”
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/europes-airline-emissions-levy-gains-legal-backing-20111007-1ldvr.html#ixzz1a7uFG2iD
Really? I don’t believe it! They should throw another couple of billion pounds at it! I mean, we’re trying to save the planet right? From vicious attack plant food right? We should get rid of it all, I mean down to the last molecule. Yes, that will kill us all, but CO2 is evil! Wait. What!?!
Reality starts to prevail at last. Meanwhile in a parallel dimension …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/07/europeans-climate-change-poll
Does this qualify for cognitive dissonance?
http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_372_en.pdf
“have deep concerns about its commercial viability without heavier public backing.”
Isn’t that the whole story of this “green” fiasco? The “green” they are talking about is the taxpayer’s money. It is about cash. It isn’t about the environment at all. That thing would not make any measurable difference in global CO2 emissions. The impact would be absolutely negligible. It would, however, have significant impact on some people’s pocketbooks and political ambitions and that is what it is really all about, isn’t it?
Surely “commercial viability” and “public backing” in the same sentence constitutes an oxymoron, even in the socialist land of our British brethren.
Maybe if they captured diamonds instead of coal…
Don S,
Would that we did have some kind of left leaning government here in the UK.
Instead we have a very right wing Tory party that has no idea how to tackle the economic crisis we face propped up by a Lib-Dem party that is so drunk with power ( it has’nt had any in the last 90 years) that it can’t really remember what it stands for.
BTW, your so called ‘ commercial viability’ manages to leave some 40 million plus of your fellow Americans without adequate access to healthcare facilities. Are you not alittle bit ashamed about that?
I wonder.
Can a cemetery get carbon credits for carbon sequestration.
Commercial viability has been redefined as any thing that is deemed so, by authority, as green.
“Think about our great grandchildren?” seems to be the only justification of the green economic prime model. Naked men – all of them. GK
Dave Andrews,
You are mistaken, it is against federal law for any hospital to turn away anyone because of their inability to pay. No one in the U.S. is denied health care, and they don’t have to wait.
OTOH, we routinely hear about the horrors of the UK’s health care system, where people regularly expire while waiting months or more for care.
Pity, CO2 injection could raise the height of their land over rising sea levels.
@Stu Pidd says at 12:11 pm:
“Al Gores investments are worse than mine by a factor of? Count the 0′s.”
Al Gore made most (if not all) of his money from Google options where he became a consultant who was hired by his pal and newly-installed CEO Eric Schmidt back in early 2001, shortly after leaving the office of VP. The actual numbers are unknown, but it would have been preposterous for Gore to have been offered such a position for **anything less than** 100,000 pre-IPO Google options worth $40 million by 2005. 250,000 or so would sound more reasonable (i.e., $100 million by 2005). So say somewhere in that range. IIRC Schmidt received several million options upon hire.
Then if you look at Gore’s primary offshore investment vehicle Generation Investment LLP – based in London and staffed by 18 of 21 partners ex-Goldman Sachs – you’ll see that 90 percent of the bread and butter portfolio is not really “green”, unless you believe that Adobe Inc. is “green.” Pertinent and recent filings about the Generation portfolio are here, it’s a few billion at the moment, but not much “green” in it:
http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001375534&owner=exclude&count=40
“Dave Andrews says:
October 7, 2011 at 1:26 pm
BTW, your so called ‘ commercial viability’ manages to leave some 40 million plus of your fellow Americans without adequate access to healthcare facilities. Are you not alittle bit ashamed about that?”
Not in the slightest. I am not the one who changed the word welfare to entitlement.
Work for it.
We have it in our own hands, or more technically, within our our breathing, the ability to reduce carbon emissions.
On the average a human emits 900 grams daily of this world destroying gas into the atmosphere. That’s nearly a Kilo! And when you multiple that by 6 billion people we are talking significant numbers.
If we could reduce that by 20-30 % we are on our way to a sustainable green environment.
How?
1. Mandatory Yoga lessons for every one in the world. This would eliminate or reduce hyperventilating due to excess emotional reactions with the resultant increase in CO2 release.
2. Eliminate all sports events that require excessive breathing and crowd excitement.
3. Monitoring of each persons expiration rate and CO2 release and take stringent measures to reduce or control the CO2 emitted. This is now well within our technical capabilities.
This new world organization should be named “Life Support for the World”.
4. And for the greater good and a sound green environment … yes, it may have to be done, those who are Carbon Traitors must be removed and their Carbon residue carefully stored so it cannot enter the environment.
Let’s keep the Longannet CCS facility open so we’ll have an accessible repository for those who have no concern for the best interests of the World and The Environment.
Dave Andrews says…
I’m sorry, which American doesn’t have access to healthcare? You threw out the term 40 million, so my guess is you can name at least one, right? This person (extra points if you can name two) wouldn’t have access…why? Can’t they find the door to the ER?
No, they get health care. They don’t have health insurance, but they still get healthcare. As we may soon learn the hard way, healthcare and health insurance aren’t the same thing. What will happen when those 40 million (or 15 million, or 30 million, pick a number) suddenly get health insurance but the number of providers does not go up? We’ll have over 300 million with health insurance but inadequate care.
In Canada we have full health care for everyone. Now we all have the right to die waiting in line for substandard and insufficient care. Yes, I’m very ashamed.
Simple comment…
Good!
“Scottish Power, and its partners Shell and the National Grid … have deep concerns about its commercial viability without heavier public backing.”
“Heavier public backing” means obtaining higher subsidies than they already get. That in turn means that CCS is not commercially viable at all. To equate some process requiring subsidies with commercial viability is to violate sensibility and to make a mockery of economics.
To Dave Andrews:
It is first the responsibility of people to get their own healthcare for themselves and their families. Those who live their lives imprudently do not have a right to demand healthcare from their fellow citizens (see the fable The Grasshopper and the Ants for the essence of this point). To use the power of government to take from those prudent enough to be able to pay taxes to give to the to the non-productive is a form of slavery and is immoral. Charitable giving is another matter entirely.
Yet, because Americans are generous people, 100% of people in our land, citizens or not, have access to healthcare. It is everywhere the law of the land in America that Emergency Rooms cannot deny healthcare because of inability to pay, even for minor illnesses and injuries. Everyone gets treated. I have been an ER physician and can attest to this. It is true that this inadvertant socialization of healthcare in America is economically inefficient and awkward in some ways, but it does not carry the enormously destructive effects on quality and access that the British government system now has, and that Obamacare would visit on us if the US Supreme Court does not set things right
Today I treated 3 patients well over 65 years old for complications related to kidney failure and dialysis. My understanding is that in the UK these patients would have been denied dialysis because of age, and hence would be dead. The Brits have no basis to look askance at Americans regarding the access of ordinary people to healthcare.
They’ve probably come to the logical conclusion that assistance is futile-
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/euro-greenhouse-gas-emissions-up-in-2010/story-e6frfku0-1226161630150
Dave Andrews seems to be a bit clueless if he thinks that the current UK government is even vaguely conservative. We need them out and a proper conservative government in. Preferably UKIP.
Regarding US healthcare it seems he confuses insurance with health care. I see that some others have set him straight on that so I will only add that I have been to hospitals in both the US and the UK and the UK did not compare well.
The idea of capturing carbon is not daft but paying a premium for doing it and not getting any useful products or productive result is.
Xstrata has – perhaps – just saved aussie taxpayers a whole heap of money that was going to Windlab for a 750 megawatt wind farm in the outback that had to link to the grid via the proposed Copperstring project. the pollies and CAGW crowd are freaking out:
7 Oct: Climate Spectator: Giles Parkinson: Xstrata gas deal sinks renewables hub
Hopes of building one of Australia’s largest renewable energy hubs in north Queensland appear to have been dashed after the Swiss-based global mining giant Xstrata signed a deal instead with AGL Energy to build a gas-fired power station in Mt Isa.
Xstrata had been mulling three strategies to ensure future energy supply for its Mt Isa mining operations: the extension of the current sole supplier, the gas-fired Mica power station (an idea it dumped a while ago); go for another gas-fired station; or participate in the CopperString project that would link Mt Isa with the grid at Townsville via a 1000km transmission line, and unlock a series of renewable energy projects, including wind, solar, biomass and geothermal found in between.
Xstrata decided on the “safe” option and went for more gas, and signed a deal on Thursday with AGL and pipeline group APA to build a 242MW gas-fired power station at a cost of $500 million, and a 17-year supply contract.
The decision by one of its major customers almost certainly signals the end of CopperString, which would have cost at least $1.5 billion, but was backed by state and federal funding, and of a multi-billion dollar renewable plan, including the $1.5 billion, 750MW Kennedy wind farm – which would have been the nation’s largest – and a host of other renewable projects. Among them were several solar thermal projects; another wind farm and solar plant at Mt Isa; a 400MW biodiesel and biomass plant using kapla trees being considered by another CSIRO spin-off called PhytoFuel; a 100MW hydro project, and a biomass project proposed by Samsung; and several geothermal prospects. In all, up to 3000MW of renewable projects were envisaged…
It also means that Queensland will likely struggle to meet its renewable energy target, as CopperString would have unlocked its best renewable resources. As it is, the state has only 12MW wind farm in the south and a single turbine on Thursday Island to show for its renewable efforts, apart from a whole host of solar PV on rooftops and the two largest solar thermal projects, including the Solar Dawn flagships project, that are on the drawing board.
Xstrata says it has based its decision around the reliability and cost of energy, and a spokesman said it relied heavily on a report produced in 2009 by former Port Jackson principal Rod Sims (now chair of the ACCC) to justify it on environmental and social criteria…
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/xstrata-gas-deal-sinks-renewables-hub
7 Oct: ABC: Paul Sutherland: Green energy companies left reeling, as Xstrata pulls out of power project
Windlab was one company planning to tap into CopperString’s transmission lines, but chief executive Roger Price says its plans need to be reassessed…
Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan, who was a vocal supporter of the project, has said in a statement to the ABC that the Federal Government is disappointed with the decision, and they will now reassess the energy future of the north-west.
Federal independent Member for Kennedy Bob Katter says the decision means the death of clean energy in the region.
But Steve Du Kruijff, the chief operating officer of Xstrata Copper in North Queensland, says the gas-fired Diamantina Power Station was the best option for the energy needs of Xstrata Mount Isa Mines.
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201110/s3334455.htm
——————————————————————————–
A bit off-topic, but this interesting article about shipping through an increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean appeared in the same issue of the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/05/melting-arctic-ice-supertankers
Smokey says:
October 7, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Dave Andrews,
You are mistaken, it is against federal law for any hospital to turn away anyone because of their inability to pay. No one in the U.S. is denied health care, and they don’t have to wait.
OTOH, we routinely hear about the horrors of the UK’s health care system, where people regularly expire while waiting months or more for care.
___________________________________________________________________
Not to mention starving to death…. Starved by the NHS: 242 patients die from malnutrition in a single year
Scottish Power huh? I wonder how the Scottish government’s target of 100% renewable energy by 2020 is going.
Presumably not well. Looks like another Darien disaster in the making.
It’s the same in Queensland in Oz where miner Xstrata just bit the bullet on all the green daydreams and fantasies with the ‘Copperstring’ project and all the renewables that it would supposedly spawn and signed up a gas fired power plant to the howls from the usual suspects here-
http://antinuclear.net/2011/10/07/xstrata-mining-company-like-its-close-friend-glencore-out-to-wreck-renewable-energy-in-australia/
So many daydreamers, so little capital.
I apologise for the rudeness of a fellow Brit. British healthcare can be excellent, but it can also be abysmal. I dare say this is true, at least to some extent, of any healthcare system. Whether things on the whole are better in the USA or Britain, I cannot say; but I certainly don’t feel confident enough to throw stones from inside my glass house.
Dave Andrews says (October 7, 2011 at 1:26 pm): “BTW, your so called ‘ commercial viability’ manages to leave some 40 million plus of your fellow Americans without adequate access to healthcare facilities. Are you not alittle bit ashamed about that?”
Doesn’t the UK have a private health system operating alongside the National Health Service?
This is a regulated utility. The regulator won’t let the customers pay for it and the feds won’t fund it. There ain’t no one else.
M Night Shyalaman should make some crazy film about how nature gets back at us through the air – oh wait he did…and it was farcical
What’s next, digging holes to bury coal?
All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field. ~Albert Einstein
Robert M says:
October 7, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Really? I don’t believe it! They should throw another couple of billion pounds at it!
———–
The way the story is phrased it can be interpreted as: 1 billion pounds would have been spent —-if—— the project had gone ahead. It is not going ahead.
So how much was actually spent in the feasibility studies? Feasibility studies do not typically cost 1 billion.
Smokey says:
October 7, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Dave Andrews,
You are mistaken, it is against federal law for any hospital to turn away anyone because of their inability to pay. No one in the U.S. is denied health care, and they don’t have to wait.
————
That’s interesting. Didn’t know that. So what happens when you leave the hospital?
Lazy says:
“So what happens when you leave the hospital?”
How would I know? You need to ask them. But IMHO they either go home, or back to Mexico.
Pat Frank says
“Heavier public backing” means obtaining higher subsidies than they already get.
———
Maybe. But in some places in the world electricity rates are government controlled, to compensate for the fact that utilities are often de facto monopolies.
In that case “Heavier public backing” doesnt mean subsidies, it means adjustments in politically sensitive electricity rates by government.
Smokey says
How would I know? You need to ask them. But IMHO they either go home, or back to Mexico.
——-
So would you agree a reasonable scenario would be that: you recieve a bill for luxury health care at a price point set by those with health insurance. And then you go home and sell your house to pay for the bills. And then you and your family move into rented accommodation.
This doesn’t affect me, just plumbing the advantages and disadvantages of the american libertarian point of view.
If you loose your job does your health care disappear immediately or do you have a pro rata scheme that covers you for some transition time?
How could CCS possibly be a commercial success when it is the function of storing something no one wants.
Dennis Nikols, P. Geo. says:
October 7, 2011 at 4:11 pm
“The idea of capturing carbon is not daft but paying a premium for doing it and not getting any useful products or productive result is.”
The idea of capturing carbon dioxide ( one carbon atom, two oxygen atoms ) to try to remove it from the biosphere IS daft.
The use of the word carbon ( as in ‘carbon footprint’, ‘carbon pollution’, etc.) without the word ‘dioxide’ should be banned. Some think that this is about carbon monoxide, or just plain carbon, as in soot or coal dust. Tell ’em it’s the gas in soda, fizzy water, beer etc. and they look very askance.
Ben Turpin, dig holes to bury the carbon … hahaha LOL VG
the CAGW narrative is unravelling at a fast pace:
8 Oct: Age Australia: John Garnaut: As China’s emissions rise, so too does sceptics’ hot air
CHINESE President Hu Jintao is having to stare down claims that human-induced climate change is an elaborate American conspiracy, as the country’s carbon emissions surge despite tough government constraints.
“Global warming is a bogus proposition,” says Zhang Musheng, one of China’s most influential intellectuals and a close adviser to a powerful and hawkish general in the People’s Liberation Army, Liu Yuan.
Mr Zhang told The Age that global warming was an American ruse to sell green energy technology and thereby claw its way out of its deep structural economic problems…
Mr Zhang, whose father was secretary to China’s former premier, Zhou Enlai, blasted Chinese policymakers for encouraging Chinese companies to buy foreign intellectual property in order to manufacture renewable energy equipment. The Chinese-made equipment helps the environment in other nations while leaving China with financial and environmental costs, he said.
“The low-carbon economy, carbon politics and carbon taxes are actually driven by the West as the foundation for a new cycle of the virtual economy,” he added…
http://www.theage.com.au/world/as-chinas-emissions-rise-so-too-does-sceptics-hot-air-20111007-1ldvl.html
5 Oct: Clickgreen.org.uk: Building boom causes China’s carbon emissions to triple
Constructing buildings, power-plants and roads has driven a substantial increase in China’s CO2 emission growth, according to a new study involving the University of East Anglia (UEA)…
The study, entitled A ‘Carbonizing Dragon’: China’s fast growing CO2 emissions revisited’, is published today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. It emphasizes that putting a low carbon infrastructure in place in China as well as other emerging and developing economies from the beginning is a key global challenge to avoid ‘carbon lock-in’ – where a country could be stuck on a path of high emissions – which would have a significant and persistent impact on future emissions…
The study’s lead author Jan Minx, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Technical University of Berlin, said: “Up to 2002 there has been a race between consumption growth and efficiency gains. However, the recent rise in emissions is completely due to the massive structural change of China’s economy. Emissions grow faster and faster, because CO2 intensive sectors linked to the building of infrastructure have become more and more dominant. China has developed into a ‘carbonizing dragon’.”…
They found that emissions almost tripled between 1992 and 2007, growing by about four billion tonnes, with 70% of this growth happening between 2002 and 2007. The average annual CO2 emission growth alone in this period was similar in size to the total CO2 emissions in the UK. While exports showed the fastest CO2 emission growth at one point, capital investments and the construction industry then overtook…
http://www.clickgreen.org.uk/analysis/general-analysis/122602-building-boom-causes-china%5Cs-carbon-emissions-to-triple.html
A high school student suggested the most cost-effective way of going about this:
Build commercial greenhouses near the powerplants and use the CO2 as a by-product, piping hot in the wintertime.
Waste not, want not.
@LazyTeenager – when your job goes, you have COBRA, which basically allows you to purchase the same insurance that you had through your employer, for a year. But, you have to pay both parts, the money you were paying PLUS the employer’s contribution, which is usually significantly more than your part was.
So, now unemployed, no income, you can pay probably half of what was your take-home pay each month to continue to be covered.
So in reality – you finish work on Friday, your healthcare ends on Friday.
btw the John Garnaut who wrote the Age piece on China with the headline about “sceptics’ hot air”
is none other than the son of the aussie al gore, Ross Garnaut:
2009 Festival of Ideas: John Garnaut is the Asia Economics Correspondent for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, based in Beijing. He also writes occasionally for the International Herald Tribune, The Diplomat magazine and various other publications.
He is the son of Professor Ross Garnaut, author of the Garnaut Climate Change Review.
http://ideas.unimelb.edu.au/2009/speakers/jgarnaut.html
——————————————————————————–
It can be strongly argued that if so much the money had not been spent ‘fighting AGW’ the world would not be on the verge of Global Economic Collapse. When this happens, possibly in a few weeks time, no subsidies will be available to continue this ‘fight’. It could be fatal for any politician to try!
In some ways it could be considered a win for the ‘Dark Greens’ who want civilisation to regress, but probably the true winners will be the anti-globalists and anarchists. These are the trouble-makers at various G8 conferences, etc. who are usually despised.
I am not sure the green organisations will enjoy the world they have [inadvertantly] created, but unintended consequences are nothing new.
A billion dollars for 1/10,000 of a degree?
I did some number crunching on this issue since in Alberta, Canada, they still want to spend about a billion dollars on one carbon capture project. At the present time, humans emit about 90 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every DAY. I DO NOT believe this to be the case, however let us assume there will be the IPCC average number of 3.000 degrees C increase in temperature due to our emissions if we do nothing. So if a billion dollars is spent to capture 1 million tons a YEAR, this amounts to a fraction of 1 in 32,850. So if nothing is done, let us assume the temperature will presumably go up 3.0000 degrees C, but if a billion dollars is spent, the temperature would go up by 2.9999 degrees. Or to put in another way, if we take the temperature of 10,000 cities now and then again in 100 years from now, 9,999 cities will have the same temperature and one city will be 1 degree C colder if a billion dollars is spent.
LazyTeenager-
Assuming that one is not one of the 15 million that can merely return to Mexico or other points south after leaving the ER-actually, the better option is just to stay as you are basicly untraceable-you can take this route which is common in my region of the USA. Upon receiving your bill for your ER visit and meds, send $20 as partial payment with a note that you will be making periodic payments in a like manner until the balance is cleared. That will prevent any collection action by the health care facility.
@Bill says: October 7, 2011 at 2:15 pm
I live in Canada Bill and don’t understand what you are talking about regarding our health care. You should be ashamed of telling un-truths.
Dominos.
Maybe they could “grease the skids” of fracking by injecting CO2 down the well to help mobilize the natural gas or oil (as the case may be). Oh, wait…
“UK carbon capture project close to collapse”
LazyTeenager says: …et.al.
You sound a bit testier than usual, LZ. What happened? All of the CO2 leak out of your date?
When you believe in things that you don’t understand, you suffer. Superstition ain’t the way… I love the way the brass sounds like it’s laughing at superstitious fools. Just for you – Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDZFf0pm0SE
Verily, the Grauniad’s good news cup floweth over…
Philip Peake (aka PJP) says:
October 7, 2011 at 7:03 pm
“@LazyTeenager – when your job goes, you have COBRA, which basically allows you to purchase the same insurance that you had through your employer, for a year. But, you have to pay both parts, the money you were paying PLUS the employer’s contribution, which is usually significantly more than your part was.
So, now unemployed, no income, you can pay probably half of what was your take-home pay each month to continue to be covered.
So in reality – you finish work on Friday, your healthcare ends on Friday.”
Philip,
Your statement “So in reality – you finish work on Friday, your healthcare ends on Friday.” only applies if you have been so negligent as to not have a laid up an emergency fund for hard times. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans spend every dollar they earn and then some on both necessities (food, water, housing, basic clothing) and luxuries (cable TV, cell phones, web connections, a car and insurance for each member of the family, $4 dollar lattes, etc).
If you plan and save for ‘bad time’, the proverbial rain day fund, you would have the cash reserves to sustain your health care insurance for an extended period…along with your mortgage payments and other essentials.
I paid off my college loans first, then put up a reserve or emergency fund to cover at least half a years expenses, before I started investing in anything else…. or treating myself to a better vehicle. When I received wage increases, I applied them to paying down debt first, then investments of opportunity, and lastly to depreciating luxuries (like cars, motorcycles, airplanes, or boats) for myself. For those that embrace the discipline, they are never a ‘victim’ of a down economy again.
Fiscal discipline – It works well for individuals, as well as great countries. Try it….
MtK
AJB Thanks for this. Are 64% of the 27,000 people who took part on this survey, residents in homes for those with learning difficulties?
We are facing the prospect of economic depression not seen since the 1930’s with a pack of fools (or perhaps co-residents in the above homes) as our “leaders”. The ill advised concept of the Euro, together with the perceived need to reduce, tax and capture CO2 has resulted in a wrecked European economy and a threat to undermine world economic stability. We cannot afford the Euro and we cannot afford huge increase in energy prices based on the falsehood that AGW is occurring.
When will the clowns that govern us grasp these simple concepts?
Reality starts to prevail at last. Meanwhile in a parallel dimension …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/07/europeans-climate-change-poll
Sorry, in my last comment I didn’t paste the above.
Why dont they just start up a Coca Cola factory inside all Power Plants?
Give all the workers a free Coke every hour?
Would be cheaper…..
CCS failure? Good. Another waste of tax pounds.
“Guardian: UK carbon capture project close to collapse”
GOOD
I dunno – just when you think you can rely on ‘The Guardian’ to only report stories in support of AGW, you get this feature, and the Myles Allen piece…
Is nothing sacred..?
What next – the BBC doing a balanced piece on global warming..? Nah – that IS a wish too far….
Bottom line is, the UK State doesn’t have the money for everyhting right now.
They were not elected they just assumed power.
“A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
– attributed to Sen. Everett Dirksen
We’re running out of pocket change and will soon have to start spending only on the things that really matter. CCS will have to go to the bottom of the list.
(Wait… soon!?! Whatever was I thinking? We’ve been out of money for years!)
@Dave Andrews (who wishes for a left-wing government in the UK).
Don’t know whether you noticed Dave, or maybe you were still in school, but we had a so-called left-wing government for 13 years from 1997: they ran the country into the ground! And if you think that David Cameron’s Conservatives are a ‘right-wing’, you’ve missed a history lesson or two.
Our current government is in thrall to its left wing coalition partner, the Lib Dems, and to its EU climate change plans. It hasn’t a clue about getting the country back on track.
Then again, you could have forgotten the /sarc tag….
kwinterkorn:
You make many assertions that are complete nonsense in your iterative advertising of the American medical system which fleeces the public to make you and other medical practitioners rich at the expense of the American public.
For example, at October 7, 2011 at 3:40 pm you say to Dave Andrews:
“Today I treated 3 patients well over 65 years old for complications related to kidney failure and dialysis. My understanding is that in the UK these patients would have been denied dialysis because of age, and hence would be dead.”
I do not know where you obtained your “understanding” that is completely wrong. Perhaps you made it up in attempt to scare Americans who are dismayed at the Third World system of medical care which Americans suffer but benefits you and your colleagues?
My partner is older than 65 and recently broke her hip in a fall. The paramedics gave her first aid before the ambulance transported her to hospital where she stayed for 6 days and received surgery (including insertion of three screws) from a team of specialists and consultants followed by training and observation by physiotherapists and other medical staff. Upon leaving hospital she was provided with equipment to enable her to live in her home during her recovery. Welfare staff attend her in her home and address her needs each morning and each evening. These care workers are scheduled to continue their visits to her for 6 weeks as part of the re-ability plan for her that is evaluated each two weeks. And all this is free at the point of use because it is provide by the National Health Service.
Perhaps you would say what such treatment would have cost her in the US and how much of it an uninsured US citizen could expect to get?
Richard
It’s funnier than that. He said “bury the coal“, not “carbon”.
I assume burying coal in coal mines would serve!
pat;
Excellent news about China’s tripled emissions; I take it the growth has continued since 2007?. The anti-China conspiracy theory is totally bonkers of course; for the true conspiracy he simply needs to interview prominent Bejing resident Maurice Strong, and ask him about “de-industrialization of the West”.
Snotrocket:
At October 8, 2011 at 8:30 am you say to Dave Andrews:
“Don’t know whether you noticed Dave, or maybe you were still in school, but we had a so-called left-wing government for 13 years from 1997: they ran the country into the ground! And if you think that David Cameron’s Conservatives are a ‘right-wing’, you’ve missed a history lesson or two.
Our current government is in thrall to its left wing coalition partner, the Lib Dems, and to its EU climate change plans. It hasn’t a clue about getting the country back on track.”
It is hard to imagine how you could be more wrong.
Firstly, the UK had less (n.b. LESS) national debt when the Labour Government left office in 2010 than when that government took office in 1997. This reduction in UK debt (which was inherited from the previous Conservative government) was achieved despite the international banking crisis and the UK government bailing-out the UK Banks in 2008. Thus, in that way (among others) the government you slur saved the country from several problems including the inevitable result of over-reliance on Banking which the right-wing Thatcher government had imposed on the UK decades earlier.
David Cameron is PM and Leader of the right-wing Conservative Party. His government can only be considered not “right wing” if viewed from the position of Mussolini (or even further to the right). And it is not “in thrall” to the Lib Dems whose leaders give it their support for selfish reasons (i.e. Cameron has given them jobs).
CCS has nothing to do with left-right politics: it is about assuaging ‘green’ influence.
Richard
On the DECC website you should find a link to a CCS report prepared on their behalf by the international consultants PB Power. The report shows that UK CCS would not become feasible for 25 years as the required infrastructure and technology development would not be in place. Maybe Minister Huhne does not read his own reports. With the imminent demise of the UK nuclear programme, serious power shortages now seem inevitable. That will ensure a dramatic reduction in the UK carbon footprint. Still as the warmists keep telling us, although this will have no measurable impact on global temperatures we must all do our bit! I wonder whether this coalition will ever wake up the fact that this will not make them very popular with the electorate.
Mutually exclusive parameters always mess up an algore-ithm.
I understand that starting next year, the UK has offered to help us out by allowing these ’40 million’ patients access to their excellent ‘free’ health care, all we need to do is fly them over. Let me be the first to thank the UK taxpayers for their generosity. Oh wait!
Seriously, here in the USA we have outlawed slavery so no doctors (and health care professionals that do the actual work), or construction workers (that build the facilities), or pharma (that make the drugs) can be forced to work for free. How exactly did you folks in the UK get around this little fact? I was under the impression that you also outlawed slavery a few years before we did.
Richard Courtney: ‘The debt left by Labour in 2010 was less than that left by Conservatives in 1997’
You really did forget the /sarc then! Debt was around £28B in 1997 and I believe heading to £1.4T in 2010. But you, I’m sure will tell me differently. Just about every serious commentator claims that that the Labour government of 1997 had a golden inheritance from the Tories. But you know better. sheesh!
Oh, and by the way, Richard Courtney, your: ‘…including the inevitable result of over-reliance on Banking which the right-wing Thatcher government had imposed on the UK decades earlier.’ is the typical incantation of the left: to invoke the ghost of Thatcher. Don’t you realise, if what Margaret Thatcher did was SO wrong, why didn’t the labour government seek to change it in the 13 years they had? Sorry, you have to live with the idea that future generations will use Brown as the bogey-man: the era of the left’s hatred for MT is dead.
Snotrocket:
CCS has nothing to do with left-right politics. This thread is about CCS and the government abandoning the pointless nonsense of CCS because the world-wide financial crisis insists that the UK cannot afford pointless extravagance such as CCS.
This will be my final comment here on UK National Debt because I do not want to feed your trolling by helping you deflect discussion from CCS to your ‘red herring’ on UK National Debt. The facts are clear and, as I explain here, you are wrong in your assertions.
At October 8, 2011 at 9:38 am you say to me:
“You really did forget the /sarc then! Debt was around £28B in 1997 and I believe heading to £1.4T in 2010. But you, I’m sure will tell me differently. Just about every serious commentator claims that that the Labour government of 1997 had a golden inheritance from the Tories. But you know better. sheesh!”
I am interested in the facts and not views of “commentators” whether or not you consider them to be “serious”. And you can investigate the facts at e.g.
http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_national_debt_chart.html
The data are clear, the last UK Labour government left the UK with LESS national debt than it inherited when it came to power in 1997.
The link accurately reports;
“The National Debt began the 20th century at about 30 percent of GDP. It jerked above 150 percent in World War I and stayed high. Debt breached 200 percent during World War II. Debt declined to 50 percent of GDP by the 1970s and dipped to 25 percent by 1990. The National Debt began a rapid increase in the aftermath of the worldwide financial crisis of 2008. ”
Then, if you look at the graphs of
(a) actual UK National Debt
and
(b) UK National Debt as percentage of GDP
you will see that UK National Debt was smaller in May 2010 (when Labour left office) than in 1997 whichever way it is considsered.
But you quote debt at the end of 1997 following its rise after May 1997 when Labour took office, and that rise has continued unabated until now under the present Tory/LibDem government.
Richard
Ooops!
Clearly I intended “…after May 1997 when Labour left office…”
Sorry.
Richard
>>Andrews
>>Would that we did have some kind of left leaning government here in the UK.
>>Instead we have a very right wing Tory party that has no idea how to tackle
>> the economic crisis
I suppose you prefer the Marxist-Socialist policy of solving the debt crisis by borrowing ever larger dollops of money — the fiscal equivalent of giving a drunk anotger bottle of whiskey. Great policy, that, Andrew.
.
And still nobody has addressed the problem of a Gulf of Mexico blowout, with concentrated CO2 spreading out across the North Sea, driven by a light easterly wind. What will the Greens say, when all of thebeast of England is wiped out?
.
My apologies to Anthony for allowing myself to become a feeding station for the trolls Andrews and Courtney when they went off topic with left/right politics and debt levels. For the record, Andrews brought up the politics of left/right, and Courtney, who accuses me of trolling (ROFLMAO) about national debt when it was he who brought it up in the first place.
So apologies, once again Anthony. The irony is, that if we weren’t so much in debt in the UK we might be able to afford the development of CCS. The double irony is that, the national debt is only exacerbated by the idiocies of the DECC pumping money – our money – into so-called ‘renewables’.
Snotrocket:
Thankyou for your post at October 8, 2011 at 1:15 pm which begins;
“My apologies to Anthony for allowing myself to become a feeding station for the trolls Andrews and Courtney when they went off topic with left/right politics and debt levels.”
I always enjoy a good laugh and I like surealism. But this is a thread about CCS, and it is not the place for your comedic attempts so I suggest you return to beneath your bridge.
Richard
Richard, are we looking at the same graphs? Using the query function you can narrow the range – selecting 1990-2011 will produce a graph that shows you that Total UK Government Debt in 1997 was approximately 41% of GDP. By FY 2010 it was in the range 50-55% – and on a rising trend to 60% and beyond.
http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart_ukgs.php?year=1990_2011&state=UK&view=1&expand=&units=p&fy=2011&chart=G0-total&bar=0&stack=1&size=m&color=c&title=
Um, I thought that CCS was shown to be without merit because the captured CO2 simply leaks back to the surface again.