In light of the recent announcement by Ofgem chief executive Alistair Buchanan that the chances of avoiding power cuts looks very slim in the UK, Dr. John Brignell, proprietor of the Number Watch Blog, writes in with this note about a prediction he made ten years ago:
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A doleful anniversary
Ten years ago this month Number Watch carried an addendum entitled (in red) Power mad!
It was a warning of the disaster that the then Government was making inevitable with its Energy White Paper, including the estimate of ten to twenty years for it to take effect. It also laid out the simple, immutable principles of reliable energy supply. Unbelievably, we still have a government that is prevaricating on the matter, under domination by an EU that is fundamentally of the water melon tendency.
Now, it starts!
This month’s pusillanimous announcement by the bureaucrat in charge of energy, reported with characteristic wittering by the BBC, heralds a new age of energy poverty, with dire consequences, including deaths.
We are standing on the doorstep of the future.
20/02/13
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The entry from Feb 2003 was:
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Power mad!
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones.
Julius Caesar
It is fortunate that in democracies bad government is usually a transient phenomenon, but there are some areas in which bad government afflicts succeeding generations. One such area is long-term borrowing. The post-war Labour government, instead of knuckling down to the task of ensuring that the nation could earn its living, chose to borrow money from the USA on usurious terms that have blighted the lives of Britons ever since. The present Government is borrowing on a grand scale (including hire purchase disguised as the Private Finance Initiative) and like its post-war predecessor is diverting the funds into an overweening bureaucracy. Another important area is energy. Decisions on energy policy come into effect ten or twenty years after they are made. The way to cripple a modern state is to cut off its energy supply, as various oil crises have demonstrated.
The basics of a sound energy policy are quite simple:
1. Energy should be obtained from a variety of sources, lest one should fail.
2. There should be a reliable and continuous source to service the base load.
3. There should be further instantly available sources to accommodate demand surges.
4. Unpredictable and intermittent sources should be avoided.
5. Policy should not be decided by trends, fashions or religious convictions.
The British Government’s White paper of this month fails in all these respects. It represents a craven obeisance to the Green desire for a return to the Stone Age. It is driven by the science fantasy of the global warming myth. It makes no decision on the vital investment needed in nuclear technology to guarantee the servicing of the base load in future. It ensures that the country will be beholden to other nations for the provision of this most vital resource, assuming that their goodwill continues uninterrupted. It diverts even more precious research funds into academic organisations that are little better than propaganda machines.
The arithmetic that damns so-called renewable energy is perfectly simple, yet the nation’s prosperity is being hocked to pay for entry into the Solar Fraud.
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Let’s keep an eye on Bulgaria and see where an energy policy impacted a gov’t.
http://news.yahoo.com/bulgaria-government-resigns-national-protests-073220738.html
There is nothing more certain than the fact that in the UK we have been led for years by donkeys. The future generations will pay the consequences in terms of poverty and misery. Think of the grandchildren; oh how they will suffer.
According to the British Geological Survey the UK has produced a report that concludes we have huge shale gas reserves (https://www.og.decc.gov.uk/UKpromote/onshore_paper/UK_onshore_shalegas.pdf)
Needless to say the handwringing watermelons in charge of our ludicrously named “Department of Energy and Climate Change” are doing their best to ignore this report.
@ Phillip,
Please please don’t offend that noble animal, the donkey! 🙂
Number Watch is an interesting blog.
Energy rationing for the UK via ‘smart’ meters which will soon become obligatory.
Philip Bratby (7.39) has been crusading against the drive for renewables for years and is very knowledgable regarding electricity supply.
All main parties in UK have similar energy policies.
The donkey is a noble animal, a reliable pack animal, which means it’s ill-matched as a symbol of our Democrat Party, which is trying to turn the rest of us into their pack animal.
Dr. Brignell understood the problem ten or more years ago. What is stunning is that a so-called conservative government in the UK doesn’t understand it now.
Never underestimate the power of a bad idea whose time has come.
Winter weather and high electricity prices kill old people.
Politicians jumping aboard the green bandwagon with no real understanding of the reality of climate change make electricity more expensive than it needs to be.
Therefore politicians are killing people.
How can we make sure they face justice?
Like may others around the World I have, since climategate, reverse-engineered climate alchemy to identify when it went wrong.
Basic radiation physics plus a bit of science from spectroscopy no-one has apparently hitherto suspected means CO2 is only a GHG below the self-absorption level. Above it, there is no surface IR emission in that self-absorbing band of wavelengths, because it is turned off: Maxwell’s Equations mean only net vectors can do work.
So there can be no CO2-AGW, no positive feedback at present or any future CO2 concentration. The same goes for all self-absorbing GHGs, e.g. CH4, but the self-absorbing level is very dependent on the complexity of the spectrum so water vapour’s limit is much higher in ppmV terms.
The mistake was made in 1972 or earlier, but later than 1967 when Manabe and Wetherald correctly assumed that the IR from the Earth was the 160 W/m^2 SW input from the Sun. There is no ‘GHG blanket’. The proof is very simple: if there were ‘back radiation’, you’d never get dew or a ground frost in temperate regions.
UK Demand right now is 51.55 Gw, of which wind is providing 0.46Gw. It has been this low and lower over the last 4 days. It has been at 10% a few times lately but that has been unusual, peaking at around 5.0 Gw.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php
“Dr T G Watkins says: Energy rationing for the UK via ‘smart’ meters which will soon become obligatory”
It is true that these will allow the energy companies to terminate your power supply remotely. Fortunately for me where I live we have no mobile ‘phone signal so a smart meter is unable to function. Unfortunately, when the power is cut anyway my PV solar panels will switch off because they need a signal from the mains supply.
Entirely obvious to me, as is this:
War, Or Enlightenment: The Only Option
It is not really about Green, or Bad UK Policies, it is all about GRAFT.
They or their Families and friends all have their fingers in the Renewables Industry, either in advisory, manufacturing, installing or providing the land for them. There are large amounts of money being made by them all.
Add to that the madness of the EU Greens and we have a disaster looming.
I think the majority of people in the UK know how to avoid it, but the politicians and their quango committees are all dead set on maintaining the gravy train.
One way to get an informed electorate, is to let them freeze in the dark.
Hard times make voters better citizens, our parents and grandparents built a functioning society, we frittered and wasted the benefits they gave us.
Rather than choose conservative paths and pay our own way, we borrowed from unborn children, to create a welfare state.
Rather than build infrastructure for coming needs, we paid people to kneecap the productive, and promoted liars, fools and thieves, who borrowed even more money against these unborn children, so they could live as Lords.
Now the bills are coming due, but those future hordes of children never got born and those that did, either can’t get a job or recognize they have no hope of escaping the slavery we bequeathed them.
Human nature does not change, so how do you incentivize production from people who know they will get zero benefit from their labour?
From the perspective of a twenty year old worker; Who are the greedy evil bas..rds now?
Dr Brignell is correct to highlight the BBC’s ‘witterings’ in this matter. Last night they were at it again – gleefully predicting energy doom and gloom in the years ahead, complete with ‘blackouts’ and ‘energy shortages’ (with, of course, not a mention of the readily available alternatives such as the UK’s significant, but dormant, shale gas reserves, etc). It’s the kind of gloomy CAGW-related pessimism the BBC goes in for these days; a constant meme that has infected every aspect of its output, dutifully reproduced by compliant reporter drones, documentary makers and even comedians. I’m afraid the BBC is lost in the politics of CAGW and sees the entire thing as a vehicle with which to relentlessly push it’s own pernicious brand of cultural Marxism. This is especially true now that The Corporation no longer even pretends to be even-handed in its coverage of CAGW – critics, sceptics, all now excluded from the ‘discussion’ by diktat. It’s a policy position with the BBC. There is no ‘discussion’. The ‘consensus’ must prevail.
It really is a dreadful state of affairs.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2281437/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Politicians-posture-lights-out.html
Luca says: “@ Phillip, Please please don’t offend that noble animal, the donkey! 🙂
Yes, indeed. The donkey is so noble that an entire Amercan political party has chosen it as their symbol. Oh, wait…
The Ofgen spokesman, Alistair Buchanan, also said we must respond by using less electricity. My supplier, EDF, has just last month raised prices by 12.5% and energy prices generally have gone up considerably over the past five years. Does he think anyone is wasting electricity any more?
AlecM says:
February 20, 2013 at 8:12 am
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Could you explain that a little more, please?
What is going on in Bulgaria today is a warning to those of us in the USA if “by necessity electricity prices will skyrocket” as Obama has promised. Shuttering coal plants now will come back to haunt us as natural gas begins to replace both coal and nuclear. Eventually, we will export natural gas (LNG) and it will become expensive. As our nuclear reactors are mothballed as is happening now because they are too expensive to upgrade or operate we will need to turn back to our 200 year supply of coal if we are going to have affotdable electricity.
Oil, wind, solar and most other energy technologies are on the way out…. Nickle hydrogen heat systems are the next heat technology…
Watch Cold Fusion 101 lectures in order here.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Peter Hagelstein and Dr. Mitchell Swartz of JET Energy are offering an IAP short course Cold Fusion 101: Introduction to Excess Power in Fleischmann-Pons Experiments for a second consecutive year.
The course runs from Tuesday, January 22 through Wednesday, January 30, 2013 from 11AM-1PM in Room 4-153 and 66-144 on the MIT campus.
http://coldfusionnow.org/2013-starts-right-with-cold-fusion-101-at-mit-for-second-year/
I remember a report was published in 1998 which said that if the UK was to have it’s own nuclear power construction sector it should commission new plants then. Instead the Labour govermnet did nothing and now, the people who would have designed and built the power stations that would have come on line now have been lossed and so have their skills as they retired without training people to follow them.
Even the BBC saw this coming. Their fictional future has Britain relying on Russian gas in 2010, a bomb severs the pipeline. (3 minutes of the programme)
“Unless we make decisions now our electricity will start to run out within five years,” Professor Ian Fells, World Energy Council.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/if/3487048.stm
There is an excellent article by the Express in the UK:
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/378835/Cheaper-energy-is-more-important-than-going-green
If you live in the UK you’d better get your hands on a good, wood burning stove. Buy now while stocks last. I only mention this because nearby in a country called Germany they have started stealing wood from forests to burn to keep warm. This is due to high energy prices forced on them by renewable / carbon scam schemes.
The Greeks are felling trees in public parks too. This is how you reduce man’s co2 output.
Well done you Greens. I congratulate you guys an a quite remarkable achievement. You have reduced our co2 output, increased wildlife habitat in forests, reduced soot. Is there anything you guys can’t do? ;O)
H/t
I read an article on world-nuclear.org that Russia is planning on moving toward 85% nuclear power by 2075.
Can anyone tell me what type of logic determines that a number of still-productive power stations across the UK should be closed down due to global warning dogma at the risk of closing down factories across the country through lack of energy supplies and possibly cause many deaths through hypothermia when families are unable to heat their homes during power cuts? Is our government out of its mind? Is every member of the Cabinet in the thrall of some obscure paymaster or EU directive that they would prefer to obey rather than keep British industry running and keeping our homes warm? Why can’t they see the dangers which are so obvious to the vast majority of the British public? Maybe I have missed something, If so, will the Prime Minister or a member of the Cabinet give us a plausible explanation?
Yes, in discussing this the BBC gives one of the reasons as the “early decommissioning” of the “dirty coal” (as they insist on calling it, without fail) Power Stations. No rationale given of course, no question as to why, so the elephant in the room is left standing there and no one says a word about it!
4. Unpredictable and intermittent sources should be avoided.
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And likewise, nine years ago I said pretty much the same thing about the lemming-like rush towards renewable energy:
Renewable energy – our downfall. (2004)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/25/renewable-energy-–-our-downfall
(P.S. The question mark came from WUWT, I was rather more emphatic in using a full-stop.)
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me2 says:
February 20, 2013 at 8:09 am
Winter weather and high electricity prices kill old people.
We can be really sarcastic here and conclude that this would benefit a government.
There is a good chance that those who can not afford high energy costs are economically not all that productive, i.e. on one benefit or another or minimum wage earners who are generally, sad to say, easily replaceable and also tend to get extra tax support.
If they happen to fall off the bandwagon it would reduce the social benefit payments. This would lead to an increased chance of balancing the budget.
Depending on your point of view: a win/win situation.
“The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones. Julius Caesar”
The quote is Shakespeare speaking through Brutus about Julius Ceasar, at Ceasar’s funeral. Unless it’s Macbeth’s father thinking he’s Ceasar and stealing Brutus’ lines.
George Lawson says: February 20, 2013 at 10:01 am
Can anyone tell me what type of logic determines that a number of still-productive power stations across the UK should be closed down due to global warning dogma at the risk of closing down factories across the country through lack of energy supplies and possibly cause many deaths through hypothermia when families are unable to heat their homes during power cuts?
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Yes, I was wondering if one could bring a private prosecution of government ministers, for premeditated murder. Ministers know people will die, if we have sustained power cuts in winter,** so the pursuance of this policy is tantamount to premeditated murder.
It is also tantamount to gowicide (the deliberate eradication of a nation).
(** Especially since UK winters being much colder now, due to Global Warming).
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The future looks bright. It’s just a matter of time before people rebel against these loons. They are willing to put people’s lives at risk for the sake on an unachievable green dream of bird chopping or idle windmills and hopeless winter solar.
Who said the UK and Germany have nothing in common.
Let’s be neighbourly and not leave out the Irish.
On a serious note, only when people die will people be alerted to the scam they have been sucked into by unscrupulous climate scientists, greens, politicians and Big Oil [Enhanced Oil Recover – pumping co2 into wells has been carried out for over 30 years by oil companies. Why not get paid anyway].
me2 says:
“February 20, 2013 at 8:09 am
Winter weather and high electricity prices kill old people.
Politicians jumping aboard the green bandwagon with no real understanding of the reality of climate change make electricity more expensive than it needs to be.
Therefore politicians are killing people.
How can we make sure they face justice?”
Don’t try to make them face justice – justice is bought and paid for. When it was determined that smoking was taking lives, they passed a law banning it in many places. In many countries, when they determined that guns were used to kill people, they have tried to impose a ban. The answer, then, is obvious. Since it is determined that politicians are killing people, the only sensible thing to do, then, is BAN them. When you really look at elected governments, for the most part, can you truly see where they actually DO anything worth the time and money spent getting them into office or paid to be in office? If the answer is no, then fire your government and live without one. It could hardly be worse.
Yo, Moderators!
Auto-spam alert!
Plus someone forgot to turn off the spam-bot. Don’t they have timers?
Tom O:
Somalia has tried living without a government and while that has allowed them to live with a zero carbon footprint I think it qualifies as worse. At least the UK has the potential in the future to change its course if the populous becomes miserable enough. That is no so for other places.
“Department of Energy and Climate Change” this title has to be some sort of Dilbert phrase generator joke, right ???
The British Government’s White paper of this month fails in all these respects. It represents a craven obeisance to the Green desire for a return to the Stone Age.
John Brignell is being very unfair to the Greens. I’m sure many of them would be satisfied with going back only as far as the Bronze Age.
This is not the first warning from OFGEM. In October of 2012 OFGEM (UK energy regulating agency) warned in a (pdf) report about Britain rapidly loosing its generating capacity and warned of further substantial price rises of dual gas / electricity national average of £1,300 a year. The Government cannot say it has wasn’t warned.
So, maybe soon we will have not only Germany but the UK demanding more French nuclear power. The Scottish did that in 2010 when their windmills failed to supply in the dead of winter.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
February 20, 2013 at 10:55 am
Simmer down. It appears to be a sloppy post sloppily read. You deleted the key line:
That line actually has a link to another page, http://coldfusionnow.org/cold-fusion-101-video-lectures-with-professor-peter-hagelstein/ and that has several videos from this year’s course. Really lousy sound quality.
The first video starts with a slide that says:
Sort of like being a climate skeptic in academia….
So we have protests in Bulgaria in the last week over high energy prices and corruption, a couple of the UK MSM just today warning about UK energy policy and slapping down wind turbines. It looks like (IF) prices continue up this year then we may have reached the tipping point we have been waiting for. Are people and institutions beginning to open their eyes?
(Last 7 days)
Bulgarians hit streets to protest fuel poverty
Bulgarian Government Resigns Amid Protests
Fuel Poverty Action Protest Brings Whitehall Traffic To Standstill
Daily Mail
“Politicians posture as the lights go out”
Express
“Cheaper energy is more important than going green”
With temperatures in the uk over the last 10 years plummeting like a stone we desperately need a plan B instead of a discredited and expensive plan A
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
Tonyb
My view is that politicians will back-pedal when they realize how angry people are. So let them know. If it takes a march on parliament, so be it. If it takes protests outside of those perfectly good stations about to be closed, then do it. Do it everywhere, do it over and over.
The Green rent-a-crowd mobsters can only show a piddling turn out – why can’t it be organized to show MSM and green-headed politicians what a REAL protest looks like? PEOPLE ARE DYING. What does it take to get into gear?
Tax policy could turn the entire issue into a non-problem. Instead of taxing energy companies on their profit – tax them on the amount of energy they provide. The more energy they provide, (the more we use) – the more tax revenue the government makes. That puts the government on our side to maintain policies to keep energy cheap and increase competition among providers to reduce cost.
The way system is set up now, revenue is a function of profit. Government has ‘discovered’ that higher energy prices are to their benefit. When large companies make a windfall profit from high prices – the government gets windfall revenue. US oil companies pay 40% income tax for domestic fuel sales making the government a virtual parasitic partner that the companies forced to “live with”. Not only does the government just ‘want’ high prices – they work to insure them by taking away incentives that would otherwise increase competition such as blocking the Keystone Pipeline or disallowing small oil exploration companies to write-off the cost of capital equipment abandoned at exploration sites. If the policy was my way the government would not just approve a pipeline – they’d want to find a way to build two of them. If the policy was my way they’d be looking for ways to speed up leasing, open more federal land/offshore for exploration and cut red tape all for the purpose of lowering consumer cost to increase usage and get more revenue.
Every dime of the after tax profit and collected tax revenue comes out of our pockets one way or the other so why not make it on a per unit energy sold basis?
ever so slightly OT –
“Secretary of State John Kerry gave his first major foreign policy speech today. In his address, delivered at the University of Virginia, he discussed tackling climate change.”
The heck with the NORKS blowing up a nuclear bomb or any of the other major problems in the world.
But…but….but, we won’t need so much energy in years to come as we will all be a lot warmer because the models say so…..What is the problem??
sorry!
High energy prices in Europe are going to be what high food prices were to the Arab world.
Europe Spring! Bulgaria is only the first domino to fall.
Jimbo says: February 20, 2013 at 10:31 am
On a serious note, only when people die will people be alerted to the scam they have been sucked into by unscrupulous climate scientists, greens, and politicians.
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We have the same policy in aviation. Its called tombstone engineering (nothing gets changed until someone dies).
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john robertson says:
February 20, 2013 at 8:34 am
The same 20 year old who looks around and sees hordes of corrupt politicians, police, newspaper people(I refuse to call them journalists on the whole), scientists – even doctors ffs – getting off Scot free? Then is supposed to do the opposite of what they see and work hard, save(for 24 years now – if they have a partner – just for the deposit) for a mortgage, pay their ever increasing power and food bills, obey the torrent of ‘laws’ flooding us from over the channel and smile while they are being shafted by all and sundry while real environmental and societal problems remain uncured purely for a lack of funds?
Oh, and also ‘believe’ the world is warming and sea level is rising at such a rate that merely worrying is an insufficient response?
No wonder the Tories want to lower the voting age to 16 – the yoof were suckered once and those in their mid-twenties at the next election wont fall for the lies of the Rupertocracy next time – maybe/hopefully. Nothing amazes me any more – how did all those people just ‘forget’ what the nasty party did last time they held the reigns? Probably a stupid question as they certainly forgot the large amounts of money Labour sent to families with children after Maggie slaughtered them prior and this bunch are doing once more.
Anyone would think there was a plan – but that would be crediting the Tories with intelligence and I ain’t buying that.
@Keitho
UK Demand right now is 51.55 Gw, of which wind is providing 0.46Gw.
++++++++
Here is Ontario’s energy sources (and price per MWh)
http://www.sygration.com/gendata/today.html
It is quite windy and wind it is reaching 7%.
Donkeys … brings back memories …
One of the phrases that Albert Steptoe used to like when talking about his time in the trenches in WWI, was “Lions led by donkeys” — supposedly a compliment paid to the British troops by a German general.
Seems that not much has changed.
(Albert Steptoe: one half of the (in)famous Steptoe and Son TV series in the 1960s).
Lions led by donkeys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHkOG7adupI
You have not adequately [done] your homework; ‘back radiation’ consistently yields warmer overnight temperatures (in this part of the country) … of course, most of that is from water vapor …
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Frankly, it is time to bring on the power cuts. Those of us fortunate enough to live in the countryside, have plenty of wood and stoves to burn it in. There’s plenty of grain and milk around the corner in our local farms, spuds galore and in the summer there is the harvest from the hedgerows our own vegetables and fruit trees.
But when the cities are cut off, there will be pandemonium, and then perhaps some of our politicians will wake up in the morning and see an army of pitchforks outside through the window. Then they will act, but it will be too late.
I have family in the USA, so I hope that we get it in England first, and just maybe, your leaders will see what happens to us and take action before it is too late.
Coal: the cleanest energy source there is?
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/02/20/coal-cleanest-energy-source-there-is/#ixzz2LU0F7S3m
Britain is sitting on over a thousand years of this incredible source.
Jeff (of Colorado) says:
February 20, 2013 at 10:19 am
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Just for the heck of it, thought I’d throw you this link:
http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive/Show-43—Wrath-of-the-Khans-I/Mongols-Genghis-Chingis
Part 1 of a 5 part series.
Bedtime (audio) history for those that can’t get enough.
Heck, I’ve got Tonyb’s Plan B right in front of me.
Currently it’s called the Breakthrough Energy Movement though names can change. Good starter book is Breakthrough Power. Good starter video is the Race to Free Energy even tho it’s a few years old, and commentator Eugene Mallove was killed because he got too good. It’s why I haven’t been around WUWT etc these last few months.
I’d like people here to see Plan B clearly – and see why so little is heard – and why it matters – and would be unstoppable if people grasped what it really is about. The silencing and coverups here are worse than with Global Warming. Compared with what I’ve discovered, the AGW fraud seems like a sideline to keep people distracted. The most serious issues are where people are getting raided of everything, silenced, bumped off.
So please, familiarize yourselves. Be prepared for surprises both good and foul. Be prepared for serious paradigm shifts – both physics/engineering and spiritual/inner and Follow the $$. Pay close attention to the evidence, remembering that this area of energy development is bound to look doubtful a lot of the time because as soon as it has ever looked like gathering strong evidence, or presenting it well enough, vested interests have been squashing it down. For this reason alone, the first to “succeed” could well be the bluffers and showmen/conmen like Rossi. But there are a hundred more technologies that inventors of integrity have worked on – with little money – LENR is but a small minority. And there are some, like Mohorn, whose product is already a wide success although it depends on no known law of physics – but does not challenge the energy barons and is beneath the academic radar.
It matters. Eppur si muove.
Correct predictions aren’t very “sciencey” these days. They’re so *mainstream*!
Cold Englishman says:
February 20, 2013 at 3:57 pm
I have family in the USA, so I hope that we get it in England first, and just maybe, your leaders will see what happens to us and take action before it is too late.
HAHAHAHAHA!
I love your optimism!
I will keep pushing thorium nuclear power every chance I get on this blog. Take 5 minutes and watch the intro to this video and see if you are not hooked. What nuclear power could have been 50 years ago and hopefully will be someday.
Ric Werme says:
February 20, 2013 at 11:50 am
The first video starts with a slide that says:
Working in this field at this time can destroy your career.
Being interested may be damaging to your personal and professional life.
Sort of like being a climate skeptic in academia….
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Except science actually worked when it came to Pons and Fleischmann cold fusion. There was a hypothesis/claim of energy production and excess neutrons. Other labs tried to replicate the results and when no one could the claims were debunked. CAGW on the other hand is unfalsifiable and therefore not real science.
From Jimbo’s posted link:
Fuel Poverty Action Protest Brings Whitehall Traffic To Standstill
“Renewable energy would be cheaper but they’re refusing to make that transition because their profits depend on gas.”
Renewable energy would be cheaper!? Not living in the real world….
Tsk Tsk says: February 20, 2013 at 6:00 pm
Ric Werme says:February 20, 2013 at 11:50 am
The first video starts with a slide that says:
Working in this field at this time can destroy your career.
Being interested may be damaging to your personal and professional life.
Sort of like being a climate skeptic in academia….
————————————————————————–
Except science actually worked when it came to Pons and Fleischmann cold fusion. There was a hypothesis/claim of energy production and excess neutrons. Other labs tried to replicate the results and when no one could the claims were debunked. CAGW on the other hand is unfalsifiable and therefore not real science.
——————————————————————
When the Pons/Fleischman claims hit the press, Pres Bush asked his science advisers to check the claims and report in two weeks. During the two weeks, the big name labs reported no corroboration, and it got reported as pseudo science bunk. Later, the claims were shown to be repeated and reported hundreds of times and it turns out the deuterium loading process itself takes longer than 2 weeks. Here’s a good presentation of the science done by one such corroborating lab in the US Navy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VymhJCcNBBc
It’s an hour long and dry at times, but there’s no doubt that cold fusion is real.
Here’s part one of an 8-part summary of the last 20 years in the real science of cold fusion research. Dr McKubre of Stanford Research International has excellent credibility.
Of course, the real question is whether there is enough net energy output to be recoverable in useful quantities. Answering that question is something the DOE is completely neglecting.
Mike M says:
February 20, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Tax policy could turn the entire issue into a non-problem. Instead of taxing energy companies on their profit – tax them on the amount of energy they provide. The more energy they provide, (the more we use) – the more tax revenue the government makes. That puts the government on our side to maintain policies to keep energy cheap and increase competition among providers to reduce cost.
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Hmmm, interesting reversal of the laws of economics there, champ. The more they produce, irrespective of real costs or real profits, the more tax they pay? Now, there’s a way to kill an industry stone dead. You don’t even mention whether they have to sell it, just as long as they produce it.
There are already heavy taxes (indirect taxes like sales taxes) which correlate to the amount of energy products that are sold. They have turned energy into a milch-cow for government spending and are grossly inequitable, as poor people also need energy and spend much more of their income on it than rich people.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the UK. Power brownouts and blackouts, especially in winter, are remarkable in their capacity to send voters into a towering, unforgiving rage.
Brant Ra says…
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says…
Ric Werme says…
Tsk Tsk says…
Dan in California says…
…all about Cold Fusion / Pons & Fleischmann.
This is exactly the kind of place where persistent and thorough digging for evidence is needed, to settle the disputes – even though it is perfectly clear from Brant Ra that MIT are once again embracing Cold Fusion principles. We’ve seen a few articles here on Rossi – promising, promising, promising… and not quite appearing to deliver the (Cold Fusion / LENR) goods. Some people here simply think they’ve encountered that kind of tall story before. But the reality is not nearly as simple. When I went to the Breakthrough Energy Movement conference last November, this was one of the many things I learned about. There was one, yes one man (I forget his name but it should be reasonably easy to find) who seemed to have an agenda, namely to debunk Pons and Fleischmann at all costs. It appears that P&F were effectively forced to go public long before they intended to, because someone else looked set to beat them to it (it even seems that they too may have been part of an effort to debunk the whole thing).
The problem P&F had was that although their results could sometimes be duplicated, at other times, duplication simply didn’t seem to work – and it was not at all clear as to why. And on all those failure times was built the case for debunking both the failures and the successes. Debunking P&F was decided by vote, with the detractor-with-hidden-agenda leading the vote. I’ve seen it on video. Just like the alarmists. Yeeugh.
After P&F were ejected from the minion journals of orthodoxy, they seemed to disappear. But this is far from the whole truth. In fact, a whole underground movement of support built up, and “alternative” conferences were, I believe, held every year from then until now. Only last year did the whole notion of “cold fusion” become acceptable as a concept, with the implication that it can now be researched again in the universities and above all, be duplicated.
Rossi is only one of many – and Cold Fusion is only one of many kinds of little-known but proven alternative energy sources. He is clearly a showman and a pusher, with little to lose (like Columbus escaping Inquisition-infested Spain) in a field that has already shown itself to be dangerous to follow – risking career prospects, and worse. BEM think that, on the whole, he is most likely to be the one to first get a workable energy device on the market – not because his is the best, or the most proven, or even the most useful, but perhaps because he has the combination of characteristics that make it most likely he will get away with it and evade the crucifying hand of Big Energy vested interests neatly enough – not being too big a threat, yet also representing the way the tide HAS to turn.
I apologize for lack of specific details like names. My memory never served me well that way. So over the years I have, as per Scientific Method, checked again and again to see if I remembered correctly enough, and with a balanced enough picture of the whole situation. Nearly always my memory has proved to be utterly correct in essentials though hazy in details. I had the choice between no statement at all, and the above. I think half a loaf is better than no bread. I am sure others can supply the details.
Henry Galt says:
February 20, 2013 at 1:44 pm
Henry, you appear to be well wide of the mark.
You claim that it’s the Tories who want to lower the voting age: if you check out http://www.votesat16.org you’ll find that it’s predominately a Labour/Lib Dem/Trade Union inspired ‘movement’, albeit one with all of 3,269 (at the time of writing) supporters.
Then you appear to be suggesting that the Labour Party gave money to dead children that were “slaughtered” by Margaret Thatcher. I have to confess that this one is beyond me so it would be useful to get a translation.
The main point though is that, in your seemingly passionate defence of the Labour Party, you appear to have forgotten that the Climate Change Act was introduced into parliament by Labour and brought into law by your party leader, Ed Milliband.
Oh, by the way, I ain’t no Tory neither – I’ve not forgotten that the Climate Change Act was supported by them, nor have I forgotten that Cameron’s father-in-law is a recipient of large sums of subsidy for allowing wind turbines on his land and nor have I forgotten that it’s two Tories, John Gummer and Tim Yeo, who have stitched up the Committee on Climate Change and who are, in my opinion, corrupted by their involvement in climate change businesses.
Balance, dear boy, balance 😉
Oh so true.
A.D. Everard says:
February 20, 2013 at 12:43 pm
“My view is that politicians will back-pedal when they realize how angry people are. So let them know. If it takes a march on parliament, so be it. If it takes protests outside of those perfectly good stations about to be closed, then do it. Do it everywhere, do it over and over.”
Well said. A very good idea, but the march would have to be massive to have any effect. Does anyone in the UK have experience of organising such a march? I’m sure it would get huge support if it was properly planned and well publicised with the kind help of Mr Watts and other supportive sites.
Last Tuesday UK wind power output was a massive 29 Megawatts, 0.065% of total.
Spain’s wind installation dwarfs the UK’s, but on one day last September it was generating 100 MW.
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
https://demanda.ree.es/eolicaEng.html
Although these are fairly extreme occurrences they do happen several times every year and can last for hours or even a day. In the UK these occurrences sometimes occur during winter high pressure conditions, precisely when the coldest temperatures occur.
I think there’s only one suitable description for all this: completely barking mad.
It’s not only mad, it’s completely immoral. As TonyB pointed out, the English climate has been steadily getting colder since 2000. The CET graph shows this:
1930 to 1990: pretty well flat with zero trend.
1990 to 2000: temps rose by about one degree C.
2000 to the present: temps fell by about 0.6 degree C, wiping out more than half of the previous rise. There is still a strong falling trend.
This corresponds quite well with our experience in England. Winters are now much colder with lots of snow. Even the summers are often quite chilly now. For the last few years I’ve been wearing a sweater quite often during the summer.
So, as our climate rapidly cools, and actual global warming is notable by its absence, we’re still being forced to pay for the global warming cult. Words almost fail me. All I feel is a numb sense of outrage and helplessness.
Having said that, I think democracy and the fundamental integrity of science will eventually reasssert themselves. But, at the age of 67, I may not live to see it.
I would have been a lifelong Conservative voter, but no longer. I will never vote for a party whose policies are designed to push up the price of energy. Cameron’s loss is UKIP’s gain!
Chris
Chris
It’s an unholy mess. Temperatures plummet whilst energy prices soar, preventing millions from keeping warm, always assuming there is enough power to go round after our insistence on building lots of highly inefficient and unreliable renewables . Trouble is that all three major political parties are fully on board with this madness.
Tonyb
davidgmills says: February 20, 2013 at 5:57 pm
I will keep pushing thorium nuclear power every chance I get on this blog. Take 5 minutes and watch the intro to this video and see if you are not hooked.
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Nice thorium video, davidgmills. Nice video.
Who is this guy? Why is he not a government advisor, being hailed in a 5,000 seat auditorium, instead of enlightening ten people in a decaying basement??
G-d, our political classes are Dumb, with a capital ‘D’.
.
Excellent. Power outages just as we head into solar cycle 25. Too much to hope the AMO and NAO play nice?
Germany builds coal fired power stations to avert power shortages, fuel poverty and decreasing economic output, and we have a government intent on doing exactly the opposite. You couldn’t make it up, largely because no sensible thinking person wouldn’t want to. Fortunately we don’t need to so we can actually save energy, we’ve elected illogical morons to do it for us.