Warm and well fed, or hungry in the dark?
Guest post by Viv Forbes
Which is worse – gradual man-made global warming or sudden electricity blackout?
Alarmists try to scare us by claiming that man’s activities are causing global warming. Whether and when we may see new man-made warming is disputed and uncertain. If it does appear, the world will be slightly warmer, with more evaporation and rainfall; plants will grow better and colonise some areas currently too cold or too dry; fewer old people will die in winter and sea levels may continue the gradual rise we have seen since the end of the last ice age. There may even be a bit more “green” in Greenland. There is no evidence that man’s production of carbon dioxide is causing more extreme weather events. Any change caused by man will be gradual and there will be plenty of time to adapt, as humans have always done. Most people will hardly notice it.
What is certain, however, is that global warming policies are greatly increasing the chances of electricity blackouts, and here the effects can be predicted confidently – they will be sudden and severe.
Localised short-term blackouts can be caused by cyclones, storms, fires, floods, accidents, equipment failure or overloading. People will cope with them. The more widespread blackouts, caused for example by network collapse or insufficient generating capacity, will have severe effects.
All modern human activities are heavily dependent on electricity. Blackouts will stop lifts, trains, traffic lights, tools, appliances, factories, mines, refineries, communications and pumps for fuel, water and sewerage. People will be trapped or stranded in trains, ports, airports, lifts, hotels, hospitals and traffic jams. ATM’s, credit cards and supermarket checkouts will not work. Cash, cheques, IOU’s and pocket calculators will be required to buy anything.
Immediately a blackout occurs, those with emergency generators, fuel or batteries will start using them.
But within a very few days, batteries will run flat, emergency fuel supplies will be exhausted, food supplies will disappear from stores and pumped water will not be available. Intensive dairies, hatcheries, piggeries and feedlots will all face critical problems in keeping their animals alive and cared for.
If the blackout is extensive and prolonged, looting will infect the big cities and then spread to country areas. People who are old, sick, incapacitated or alone will be forgotten as able-bodied people focus on feeding and protecting their own.
The real threat to humanity today is not the theoretical dangers from gradual man-made global warming. A far bigger real danger is the growing threat to reliable electricity supplies from deep-green climate policies.
The most reliable electricity supplies come from coal, gas, hydro, nuclear, geothermal or oil. Misguided politicians and uncompromising nature are conspiring to ensure that few of these will be available to generate Australia’s future electricity.
The carbon tax and renewable energy targets threaten the financial viability of using coal, gas or oil to generate electricity. Banks and investors will not risk their capital on new carbon-powered stations dependent on an unstable and polarised political environment. And the declining profitability of existing stations under the carbon tax and mandated market sharing makes it risky and uneconomic to spend money maintaining existing aging stations.
The same green zealots who plot to destroy carbon energy will also work to prevent the construction of new nuclear or hydro plants in Australia. And Australia’s geothermal resources, being generally deep and remote, are unlikely to provide significant electricity for decades.
We are thus being forced to rely on fickle breezes and peek-a-boo sunbeams to generate expensive and intermittent electricity. And it will not be economic to continue building backup gas plants that are run below capacity or sit idle, earning insufficient income as they try to fill the unpredictable production gaps in the supply of green energy. The margin of supply safety will disappear.
Therefore, if we continue to allow green zealots to dictate our electricity generation, blackouts are inevitable. Britain and Germany already face this grim prospect.
All actions have consequences. We cannot continue pouring billions of dollars of community savings down the climate-change sink-hole, without starving our essential infrastructure. We cannot keep adding taxes and political risk to traditional electricity generators without reducing new investment in real base-load generating capacity. And we cannot keep adding unstable solar and wind elements to our electricity network without adding greatly to electricity costs and the risks of network failure.
When the lights fail, and the supermarket shelves are cleaned out, we will return, at great cost and after much misery, to cheap reliable continuous electricity using coal, gas or nuclear fuels.
Gaia worshippers will find that “Earth Hour” will not be such fun when it becomes “Earth Week”.
(772 words)
Viv Forbes,
Rosewood Qld Australia
More Reading for those interested:
A real story of life in a Megacity during an extended Blackout:
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/living-the-green-dream-in-megacity.pdf
What Happens during a Blackout – an assessment of the consequences of a prolonged and wide-ranging Power Outage in Germany:
http://carbon-sense.com/2013/03/30/blackout-dangers-in-germany/
Germany facing Blackouts:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/9609777/Germany-facing-power-blackouts.html
Rolling Blackouts loom in UK:
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/business/energy_and_environment/article1206396.ece
Rolling Blackouts force Texas to Import Power from Mexico:
Wind Power fails Britain:
http://carbon-sense.com/2011/10/21/wind-power-fails-britain/
Why Wind Won’t Work:
http://carbon-sense.com/2011/02/08/why-wind-wont-work/
It’s the cold, not global warming, that is the danger:
A Lesson on Renewable Energy from a Canny Scot:
http://carbon-sense.com/2011/12/01/miller-to-salmond-letter/
Wind Farm Performance:
http://stopthesethings.com/2013/03/29/the-wind-industrys-lies-dissected/
If we are expected to rely increasingly on fickle sources such as solar and wind then the push should be for additional investment in east-west TIE lines. I personally look forward to the clashes as the sustainable energy crowd clashes headlong with the environmentalists opposing transmission corridors.
It’s panic-stricken carbon strangulation policies that need to be re-examined in the absence of any ‘climate crisis’ or other justification for the panic.
Reblogged this on Das Culturas.
There are places with nearly constant sun and wind. The environmentalists don’t want solar panels to cover the former, nor windmills near the latter.
Sort of like Monty Python’s Scott of the Sahara (it was to be the Antarctic except there are no lions to kill “with the blood spurting in slow motion”).
Absolutely. There are arguments to be had regarding the scientific question of AGW, but the policy questions are much simpler.
Very good article, thanks for posting.
And today being what it is, here is a genuinely disturbing article.
I remember the rolling blackouts the unions caused in England Under Heath not funny!
This all seems a little alarmist.
Probably just dramatically more expensive power.
Wind has very low firm peak demand coincident output, but with enough plants spread over enough territory the firm output isn’t zero. In Texas, for example, the regulatory (ERCOT) body considers 7% of rated wind plant output to be available to meet peak demand. By this estimate, if you want 100% wind power all the time with zero storage and zero demand response you need to build about 100/7 = 14 times as much rated wind plant capacity as you have peak load. And you plan on throwing away a lot of wind energy.
In real life, you just use gas plants to back up wind output and you probably only need something on the order of 2-3x as much wind plants as you have peak load. So, electricity rates can only be expected to rise to 5-6x where they are today – roughly in line with the cost of energy in the expensive parts of Europe.
But we probably won’t have many outages caused directly by renewables. We have enough regulatory bodies and extensive utility planning departments to prevent that. Germany might if it follows its nuclear phase out plan to the letter, though.
Been without heating for 2 days now.
Floor price of £16/ton came in today too. £10 lasted less than 3 days & I only have gas heating. If I cooked by gas, I’d be struggling to eat.
µwave works a treat though.
DaveE.
The alarmism in this post makes me wonder whether this is an April Fools Day joke.
Viv Forbes:
Exactly! Well said. Thankyou.
Richard
Too true…
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/03/30/turbine-foes-left-to-twist-in-the-wind/
And
The core problem is that this is driven by people who have no meaningful connection to reality. Rather, their reality is based entirely on the relationship between humans and the physical world having been developed to a point that sustains their existence well before they were around, or it occurs “out of their sight” and is undertaken by people they have no connection with.
They are actually a parasite class who exist entirely on the historical and on-going efforts of other people, other sensibilities, and actions that are foreign to them. They disdain these things and consider themselves to have a superior understanding of life. They would protest the exact opposite but they are the ultimate consumers, not producers.
In the abstract, they can probably see the relationship between their existence and material underpinnings. But it is beyond their imagination that any alteration in conditions could effect THEM. Surrealy given their claims to association, they are DENATURED.
Watch the UK. They will be the first country to suffer sudden blackouts and then, the first to leave the EU and start building coal and gas stations while fraking for gas and oil.
Oops, Synopsis of James Burke video.
“The Trigger Effect” details the world’s present dependence on complex technological networks through a detailed narrative of New York City and the power blackout of 1965. Agricultural technology is traced to its origins in ancient Egypt and the invention of the plow. The segment ends in Kuwait where, because of oil, society leapt from traditional patterns to advanced technology in a period of only about 30 years.
“Green” policies were implemented as a ‘precaution’.
I wonder what precautions politicians are taking in the event that that those “green” policies are unnecessary?
After doing some calculations, I arrived at the amount of land a solar farm would need in order to produce the same amount of electricity over its practical lifespan as one modern nuclear power plant. The solar farm would have to be 80,000 acres,or 125 square miles. A large geographical
footprint, I would say. I wonder what the average air temperature in such a solar farm would be?
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May I suggest, “Which is worse – gradual man-made global warming or sudden man-made electricity blackout?”
Unfortunately the watermelon crowd don’t care and would welcome blackouts!
I rather suspect that the UK will have to learn that lesson the hard way.
When the blackouts arrive – the UK will probably be first in line – there will be at least two benefits:
1. No more greenie nonsense for at least a generation.
2. Thousands of unemployed ‘climate scientists’. No one is going to tolerate their BS once the blackouts start.
OT
SIDC non-smoothed Sunspot Count for March is 57.9 (Feb = 38).
From the article:
” Misguided politicians and uncompromising nature are conspiring to ensure that few of these will be available to generate Australia’s future electricity.”
Misguided?!?? Are you sure about that or are you just being polite?
Excellent piece, Viv Forbes, and it applies worldwide except where they already live with little or no electricity. After a collapse, those people will be the ones to pick over the bones of all the highly specialized people who are unable and unprepared to cope with a long-term disruption to electrical supplies. When reduced to the primitive, the experienced ‘primitives’ will prevail.
Ironically, I installed my solar system with 100 KWH of lead acid to protect me against crap like this from the grid. I can muddle for a long time. including pulling water from my well and heating my house with my pellet stove. Alternatively, since i would have power to my boiler, the regular circulating hot water should be ok so long as the ng pressure is. After that, cooking will be over an open fire, but I don’t mind. My wife and I are fairly vegan.
I cringe when I hear the words “smart grid”. As a PhD engineer in EE, I have come to realize that such terms are usually used to describe systems that are about as robust as a bunch of sewing needles balanced end to end.
Hopefully, the rollover of the AMO and what not will kill the AGW folks before they can make life fragile for millions. For myself I just hedge as hard as possible.