From Dr. Benny Peiser at The GWPF
The UK government wants nuclear power to be given parity with renewables in Europe, in a move that would significantly boost atomic energy in Britain but downgrade investment in renewable generation, according to a leaked document seen by the Guardian. The EU-wide target should be scrapped when its current phase – requiring member states to generate 20% of energy from renewables – runs out in 2020, according to a secret submission to the European commission. “The UK envisages multiple low-carbon technologies: renewables, nuclear and carbon capture and storage, all competing freely against each other in the years to come. For this reason, we cannot support a 2030 renewables target,” it reads. –Fiona Harvey and Juliette Jowit, The Guardian, 12 March 2012
The Government is poised to give the go-ahead for resumption of the controversial ‘fracking’ technique of mining that caused earthquakes near Blackpool last year. It is understood that the Department of Energy and Climate Change is likely to allow exploration by Cuadrilla Resources in Lancashire to continue on condition that the company introduces new safety methods to ensure mining stops on signs of impending tremors. —Mail on Sunday, 11 March 2012
The European Union’s ambitious low carbon plan collapsed yesterday when Poland vetoed plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically after 2020. If the Europeans can’t agree on a climate plan, the prospect that the rest of the world can agree is less than zero. Every dime spent by climate activists on this goal was wasted. Every white paper on the subject was a folly. Every global conference was a grotesque and pointless boondoggle. Every pundit who supported this agenda was blowing smoke and every politician who endorsed it was either an idiot or a demagogue — or both. This dog won’t hunt. This pig won’t fly. This horse can’t win. This parrot is dead. None of this will stop green scam artists raising money from naive and goodhearted donors. It won’t stop bureaucrats who have a vested interest in eternal international processes and immortal, salary paying institutions devoid of all purpose or use. It won’t stop people who don’t understand the international system dreaming up new and equally unworkable unicorn catching devices. It won’t stop socialists, Malthusians and other anti-capitalist activists from using green rhetoric in attempts to whip up resistance to progress and change. –- Walter Russell Mead, Via Meadia, 10 March 2012
A senior MP has demanded answers from Energy Ministers as support for the Green Deal appears to have started crumbling away. The Green Deal is scheduled to be launched on October 1 but reports this week suggest the full rollout may be delayed until next year in a wrangle over the payment mechanism. Critics are accusing the Green Deal of being a flawed policy, which could actually double the cost of installing energy efficiency measures, once a list of extra costs are factored in. —Green Click News, 11 March 2012
DECC have spent millions of pounds of tax payers money to arrive at a Green Deal scheme that is nothing more than a very expensive and complex ‘buy now, pay later and pay much more’ finance offering. A scheme that will lead to consumers receiving extremely poor value and that will harm the UK economy and destroy jobs. A way of using subsidies to destroy tens of thousands of longstanding non-subsidised jobs, that’s all that DECC have achieved, is it any wonder they are desperate to promote the Green Deal. –John Oddi, Green Click News, 11 March 2012
Wind power – more accurately wind impotence, since turbines operate at just 24 per cent of capacity – is the curse of Scotland. One of the most beautiful landscapes in Europe has been brutally ravaged, families have been driven into fuel poverty, pensioners have been presented with the lethal dilemma “heat or eat” – all to appease the neurotic prejudices of global warming fanatics. –Gerald Warner,Scotland on Sunday, 11 March 2012
No green policies needed:
Abiotic Oil: http://ep.probeinternational.org/2009/09/14/endless-oil/
Here an interview with Professor Vladimir Kutcherov about ABIOTIC OIL
http://soundcloud.com/leopoldopapi/vladimir-kutcherov-interviewed-at-esof2010
It seems bizarre for an organization named “Greenpeace” to be supporting the return of the “dark Satanic Mills”. William Blake’s coffin probably sounds like a turbine at the moment.
We should harness the energy of dead actual scientists, statesmen, and others as a renewable source. XD
cui bono says:
March 12, 2012 at 1:38 pm
So I’m even more confused because I live in Ontario. Coal has largely been replaced by gas so I would assume a 50% reduction of 23% (39.9 reduced to 39.9 – (0.23*39.9*0.5) ~ 35 and not 15 . I think the government is lying to us. Where did you get the numbers from?
Cheers,
Steve
[snip. Read the site Policy. Insulting WUWT readers by calling them “deniers” is not acceptable. If that is how you “debate”, expect to be snipped. ~dbs, mod.]
Adolfo, my dad once drew up the molecules of a hydrocarbon and an organic carbon and swore to creation that one couldn’t become the other.
Old England says:
March 12, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Lest Any Forget the statement :-
“Every dime spent by climate activists on this goal was wasted.
and Every Dime or Pound Wasted has been Ours, the Tax Payers’.
_____________________________________
I think this is the key to the whole issue of waste of public monies, I have always like the idea that taxpayers should have a direct say in how at least a portion of our tax is spent. Citizen Directed Taxation gives every taxpayer the right to say where you want a discretionary portion of your tax directed and targeted.
Then we might have lobby groups trying to convince us of the validity of their case i.e. please tick this box on your tax form, rather than just bypassing us, heaping scorn on us, calling us d****ers and worse.
The discretionary portion could be adjusted for social bias against groups like elderly care, medial access or other social, gender or self interest, but the government overall take for such experimentation and abrupt change agenda could be curbed by the economic need to live within a limited budget.
I kind of like the idea of pressure groups begging us to support their cause, instead of slagging the hand that feeds them.
Darn Medial should be medical !! dangfangled computers can’t spell!!
Can someone ask David Cameron how much electricity his household wind turbine generated, before he was forced to take it down?
How can Britain ever have a considered and rational energy policy, with cognitively challeneged imbeceils like Cameron in power?
.
Sorry boys and girls. False alarm. We’re gonna have to call it off.
Blackie explains it all here.
Its because its ‘French’ you see, we can’t go just handing our electrickery over to them pesky frogs, or so say former ‘Friends of the Earth’ Jonathan Porritt, Tom Burke, Charles Secrett and Tony Juniper.
They may claim to be FoE but its they obvious they don’t visit the place very often or even the balancing mechanism website that using tells us that the UK is always importing electricity from France, typically 1GW, sometimes 2.
NB The bmreprorts web-page doesn’t seem to work in Chrome
James Ard says:
March 12, 2012 at 5:24 pm
“Adolfo, my dad once drew up the molecules of a hydrocarbon and an organic carbon and swore to creation that one couldn’t become the other.”
Don’t algae like Botryococcus Braunii produce oils that are next to indistinguishable from Diesel?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel_applications_of_botryococcene
I’d be surprised if individual countries can continue to pay for these Green obligations until 2020. If they can stick with it that long and their economies don’t completely implode in the meanwhile, there won’t be much left to stage a recovery anytime soon.
If renewables lose credibility, much mainstream support for CAWG will evaporate, because many supporters of mitigation do so primarily because they have been sold on the idea that renewables are–or soon will be, when oil becomes more expensive–practical, reliable, wise-in-the-long-run, etc. This is our opponents’ greatest weak point, and we should pound it hard–although in a way, it’s not necessary. The emptiness of the promises made about renewables cannot be concealed for long, and the politicians who are watching the numbers will begin to cool to the whole crusade and backpedal to nuclear.
This whole mitigation business hasn’t been about CO2, but about establishing a Green utopia and a permanent green veto-power over the world’s countries (via treaties and the UN). Thy aimed to hit a home run, and as a result they may wind up striking out (becoming a global laughingstock).
Personally I think that more money should be spent on catching Unicorns (their poop is apparently very beneficial), and converting rainbows into useful energy…
(Whoops – channelling my inner Warmist for a moment…)
If you listen carefully, he says the planet will be fine, but the people will have a really hard time living on it. He’s hard-core warmista. With his own techno-fix to sell.
The big clue is that he calls himself “the Honest Broker”. No honest man calls himself honest, because he’s too honest to do so. Nocera is obviously not.
@roger Knights says:
March 12, 2012 at 11:24 pm
Hi Roger,
WRT peak oil – ref Shale Gas and Gas to Liquid technologies.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/03/china-finds-the-odd-200-years-worth-of-fuel/
and http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904353504576568872584676488.html
As oil production winds down, the world will shift to Gas. (No Mad Max – Road Warrior scenarios required).
The UK including CCS in its “competing” “low-carbon technologies” is a total crock, of course. CCS is a 40% or so dead weight added cost on hydrocarbon combustion of any kind, and cannot “compete”. It can only be subsidized or larded onto energy bills.
Thanks to the Canadian lead, it looks like the UK ‘s politicians may be growing some balls at last.
This today on the BBC news site: The beeb’s resident eco-fascist Richard Black is resorting to the RACE CARD to oppose nuclear energy in the UK, showing his desperation at the unravelling of the watermelon agenda:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17344263
Title: “UK nuclear plans ‘put energy in French hands’ “
So if nuclear cant be shown to be uneconomic or unsafe, it can be attacked if it is FRENCH!
Appealing forlornly to Fukushima, he talks about “policy failure”: he needs to have his nose rubbed in the fact that his darling technology – wind power – is shaping up to be the technological-economic policy failure of all time in the UK and elsewhere. Wind-power has succeeded in making nuclear power look cheap!
The problem with nuclear in the UK is that we have lost nuclear engineering expertize. Our new nuclear stations are to be built by those cheese eating surrender monkeys the French. We sold Westinghouse, our nuclear reactor designer?builder, to some foreigners for peanuts. Just proves what stupid governments we have had in the UK for the last 40 years.
Steve from Rockwood says (March 12, 2012 at 5:19 pm)
“Where did you get your numbers from”
———
For 2005 (or 2006 – there are 2 sets of figures, but they don’t differ substantially):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_electricity_policy
For 2012:
http://www.ieso.ca/imoweb/media/md_supply.asp
All I noted was the shift from coal to gas, and the relative constancy of nukes & hydro.
Maybe this is apples vs. oranges, but shifting c. 12% of electricity production from coal to gas hardly seems revolutionary, however desirable it may be.
Windpower was, unfortunately, shown as ‘generation capacity’ (4.4% in Jan 2012) which we all know overstates the actual contribution to the energy mix (in the coldest day of 2012 in the UK, the actual wind energy produced was < 10% of 'capacity'). See:
http://www.ieso.ca/imoweb/siteshared/windtracker.asp
It states:
"Unlike some other generation resources, wind farms cannot be called upon to generate specific amounts of megawatts on demand. Wind power generation is dependent on weather conditions, temperature and even the season."
"From month to month, wind capacity (the amount of energy actually produced compared to the amount the turbines are capable of producing given perfect conditions) can vary. In April 2009, the average wind output was 41 per cent of capacity, while in June it was 14 per cent, reflecting the fact that the summer months aren’t as windy."
So, 14% of 4.4% capacity = 0.61%. 41% of 4.4% = 1.8%.
If the government is saying Ontario has had some sort of wind energy revolution, the only response would be 'meh'!
And why not rely more on nuclear? I always thought Canada had the best and safest designs in the world in the Candu plants.
It’s not bad news for everybody: across the UK a dozen landowners (including the Prime Minister’s father-in-law) are sharing £850 million in subsidies for wind turbines. Some people claim to regard turbines as beautiful; that aesthetic prejudice is understandable if you are the owner of a turbine earning £250,000 in subsidies to generate £150,000 worth of electricity.
A study by Professor David MacKay, of Cambridge University, estimated it would require an area the size of Wales completely covered with wind turbines to supply just one-sixth of the UK’s energy needs.
Brian H says:
March 13, 2012 at 12:10 am
If you listen carefully, he says the planet will be fine, but the people will have a really hard time living on it. He’s hard-core warmest.
================
You heard what you wanted to hear. That’s not what he means, his concern is energy and the inability to provide it in the future.
View the other posted video, it’ll open your eyes.
Brian H says:
March 13, 2012 at 12:10 am
////////////////////////
Agreed.
He is clearly a warmist. You could tell from his pitch that he has his own agenda.
phlogiston says:
March 13, 2012 at 2:40 am
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What a stupiod argument. Does Richard Black not know:
(1) Much of the UK energy suppliers are are foreign; and
(2) Wind is foreign; and
(3) There is all but no UK manufacturing.industry left, so it follows that any new industry will very likely be foreign.
His argument does support the case for shale gas. The UK has plenty of this mineral reserve and one of the few industries that The UK still has is the petro-chemical industry.
Bring on shale gas.
John from CA says:
March 13, 2012 at 7:40 am
…. You heard what you wanted to hear. That’s not what he means, his concern is energy and the inability to provide it in the future.
View the other posted video, it’ll open your eyes.
________________________________________________________
It is all based on the Population Explosion myth and his assertion that it is up to me to provide energy for some African country.
See Falling World Population Much Bigger Than The Banking Crisis And Scientists predict global population to fall
Sorry we have been through that a zillion times with over 60 years of U.S. Foreign Aid and over 2.3 trillion $US spent (not including the $300 billion to the World Bank). The money just goes into some dictators pocket and is spent on guns or tazers or whatever to keep his people in abject poverty. Or it is used to the benefit of the banks and their corporate cronies. See http://www.whirledbank.org/development/sap.html
…. Foreign countries completing the 2010 Top 15 List include: Egypt $1.269 billion, Haiti $1,271 billion, Iraq $1,117 billion, Jordan $693 million, Kenya $688 million, Nigeria $614 million, South Africa $578 million, Ethiopia $533 million, Colombia $507 and West Bank/Gaza $96 million.
More of the foreign aid recommendations for 2012 are most disturbing. The repressive regimes of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Omar al-Bashir in the Sudan are recommended for $109.9 million and $518.2 million respectively.
Further, Russia $64.6 million, Mexico $333.9 million, Cuba $20 million, Somalia $82.3 million, and China $12.8 million are once again on the list for foreign aid next year…. http://www.hillarynme.com/2011/06/24/why-is-a-cash-strapped-u-s-giving-away-billions-in-foreign-aid-to-some-of-the-worlds-richest-countries/