This happened last Saturday December 1st, but I just now became aware of it. From their website the photo looks like a lot of people, but the video that follows shows it to be a rather modest affair.
I think they might be a bit unclear on the concept:
Thank you to everyone who turned out on one of the coldest days this year. With our 7.2m fracking rig, we took a clear message to Parliament – “No Fracking in the UK”, a message backed up by other actions around the country, and one that was picked up by the BBC (see here and here) amongst others. Not only that but there could hardly have been a more critical moment to stage a conspicuous show of opposition to the the government’s unfolding plans for an expansion of fracking and a new dash for gas.
And what did they do to warm up afterwards? Chances are they went to a nice fossil fuel (gas) heated pub or their home.
From the video, it looks like there might be 200-300 people at this “national” event standing out in the cold.
I wonder what sort of yelling we’d hear if they couldn’t retreat to a nice warm place afterwards, and they were forced to stay out in the cold for a few days to experience firsthand what they preach?
h/t to Fay Kelly-Tuncay via facebook
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So just what exactly are they protesting for? Government policy to bring in dry and warmer summers and slightly warmer winters?
Its beginning to dawn on me. They’re protesting for colder miserably waterlogged summers and icy winters, hopefully closing the growing season, pushing bills up and pushing food prices up. I always get things in reverse
Why are the Australians sending us all their lunatics?
“And what did they do to warm up afterwards? Chances are they went to a nice fossil fuel (gas) heated pub or their home.”
Such is the hypocrisy of the modern CAGW climate “science” movement/religion.
DirkH says:
“I fully agree that Brits are wimps and should experience some real cold. They don’t even know what winter tyres are”
I hope that comment is in jest!
SOME of us know what winter tyres are, and I have a full set of Vredestein Snowtrac’s fitted on my car as of last week – I’ve been using them for 8 years. I also have a set of normal wheels & tyres for the rest of the year. I’ve been using various Mud/Snow and more recently dedicated winter tyres since the 70’s, and contrary to Silver Ralph’s comment, I do not find them dangerous in warmer temperatures – just that they don’t last as long as normal tyres.
I agree that we don’t know what real cold is, although I have distant memories of snow drifts still piled 4ft high in April, during the winter of ’62-63. I also used to motorcycle a lot when I was younger, and thought nothing of once setting off in falling snow to travel 20 miles to my “local” pub, before drinking and driving became socially unacceptable. And I made it there and back without falling off…
However I despair at the total inability of the current generation to cope with even a light dusting of snow. Hardly anyone makes preparations, and will always blame someone else when they get stuck. Modern cars with wide, low profile tyres and little ground clearance are totally unsuited for snow, anyway.
Bill Illis says: December 9, 2012 at 4:33 am
One thing that is clear is that the new enhanced frac(tur)ing techniques are nearly doubling recoverable reserves in almost all fossil fuel fields that it has been tried on – oil and gas.
Its here to stay and “peak oil” is now pushed off several decades.
________________________________
You are equating apples and oranges here.
Peak Oil is a reality. It states that maxumum oil recovery (per anum) from the world oil reserves will continue to reduce, once Peak Oil is reached (which is either now or in the next decade). Oil production is reducing in all oil reserves, that is the reality.
What you are talking about is Peak Gas, which is entirely different prospect. A new gas reserve has been discovered, which pushes Peak Gas into the far future.
But regards Peak Oil, do you really think there will be another massive oil discovery on the scale of shale gas, that will push Peak Oil into the fsr future? Unlikely.
.
I’d like to send the lot of them to Siberia in winter. Preferably in a Gulag. Harsh?
Jimbo says: December 8, 2012 at 3:51 pm
quote
I lived in the UK for many years and understood what gas central heating meant. Before I had it unstalled it was expensive with electric heaters. No heat in bathroom mid winter.
unquote
Electric? You ‘ad the electric? You was looky! Not only did we not have heat int’ bathroom, we didn’t have a bathroom. Heating was coal on a little iron range or a paraffin heater. When we moved here we had one really hard winter when frost formed inside the windows. The children thought this was great, and no doubt they’ll bore their children with tales about how tough things were.
I like the equation of energy with civilisation. It’s so obvious that one wonders how the refugees from CND who make up GreenPeace and FOE and the rest haven’t noticed.
JF
Oh, yes, radioactivity. For a long time the most radioactive place in the UK outside a nuclear facility was a khazi in Cornwall. But that was nice and natural, not like the nasty dangerous stuff you get from fracking.
Silver Ralph:
re your post at December 9, 2012 at 8:09 am.
‘Peak oil’ is a nonsensical proposition which has been repeatedly refuted on WUWT.
Learn some economics and you will understand that ‘peak oil’ is an irrelevance to everything including this thread.
Richard
richardscourtney says: December 9, 2012 at 9:15 am
Silver Ralph:
‘Peak oil’ is a nonsensical proposition which has been repeatedly refuted on WUWT.
Learn some economics and you will understand that ‘peak oil’ is an irrelevance .
________________________________________
Rich – Peak Oil in the UK is an undeniable reality. It does not matter how much money you throw at the problem, you ain’t going to get UK production back to the 1980s levels.
Peak Oil for the world? It more debatable when that will happen, but oil is a finite resourse, so it WILL happen sometime. That, is simple logic. And it is an undeniable fact that all recent oil finds are small in comparison to the huge 1970s finds, making sustained or increasing world oil production very debateable.
But whatever the case, please don’t confuse Peak Oil with Peak Gas. New shale gas finds will be very helpful to our economies, of course, but they are not much good for vehicular, shipping and aviation purposes – not at least without a great deal of conversion to liquid form.
.
Silver Ralph says: December 9, 2012 at 8:09 am
That’s the problem with misanthropists like you, it’s always ‘Doom tomorrow’. I’m getting really tired of this now. Will you please just tell us when the damn asteroid is gonna hit; when the world is gonna end – so that, at the very least, I can plan for the End of the World Party.
In the meantime, I continue to believe that we have in the world three times the amount of oil ever used still in the ground. And by the time we really start to run out I think mankind (they’re the ones you truly hate) will have come up with some new ways to extract energy.
As a simple thought experiment, just think that you might have been around in 1912 exhorting the Wright brothers against flying – as it would be the death of humanity. And here we are, a hundred years later having advanced so far in aviation that man has been to the moon and back. And freedom reigns across the globe (OK, not everywhere, but in a lot more places than before).
You really have a serious problem with your vision – and I don’t mean you need glasses.
richardscourtney says:
December 9, 2012 at 9:15 am
‘peak oil’ is an irrelevance to everything including this thread.
“Peak oil” and “easy oil/cheap oil” are related and if it was not for the easy oil running out large scale fracking would not have been considered.
So one could conclude that peak oil is at the heart of fracking.
To Silver Ralph:
Global oil reserves rose by 31 billion barrels to 1,653 billion barrels in 2011
Iraq added 28 billion bbls and Russia, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia all increased reserves by 1 billion bbls. Proved reserves remain concentrated in OPEC which controls 72% of the world’s oil reserves, the highest proportion since 1998. Overall, the long-term trend is the world continues to add more reserves than it uses while the global R/P ratio stands at 54.2 at the end of 2011.
http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle800.do?categoryId=9037157&contentId=7068604
High prices result in soaring oil reserves: John Kemp
By the end of 2011, the world’s proved oil reserves stood at 1.65 trillion barrels, enough to last another 54 years at present rates of consumption.
Proved reserves have risen 20 percent, from 1.36 trillion barrels (45.7 years worth of production) in 2005, even though 180 billion barrels have been produced in last six years.
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/06/29/column-kemp-oil-reserves-idINL6E8HT43B20120629
And that’s just oil.
Peak Oil is right answer to wrong question
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/08/04/columns-us-column-peakoil-idUSTRE57335G20090804
You argue from a point of ‘stasis’.
You fall into the same trap as those who were concerned about the Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894.
Sorry, my previous post was directed at ‘Silver Ralph’
It would be nice to have an edit function some time after posting…..
Friends:
The nonsense of ‘peak oil’ was raised in this thread. So, at December 9, 2012 at 9:15 am I attempted to avoid the diversion of this thread by the nonsense and I wrote
My attempt to halt diversion of this thread failed, so I now copy below one refutation of the nonsense which I have published on WUWT. It was on the thread at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/09/peak-oil-platitude-or-pragmatism-point/
Fracking is one of the “alternatives” explained in the post I copy below.
Richard
******************************
Richard S Courtney says:
August 11, 2011 at 12:52 pm
Spector:
At August 11, 2011 at 11:31 am you say to me:
It seems that you really don’t get it. So, I will explain the matter for you.
For all practical purposes every resource used by humans can be considered to be infinite.
We did not exhaust the supplies of flint, antler bone, bronze, iron or anything else.
And we will not run out of oil, either.
When something is cheap nobody bothers to look for an additional source of it or an alternative to it.
When something starts to become scarce its value increases, so people look for additional sources of it and alternatives to it.
Found alternatives often prove to have advantages (which is why we are not still in the bronze age although iron is more difficult and expensive to obtain than bronze).
Developments of technology assist both the finding of new sources and the finding of alternatives.
In the case of oil, new technologies provide a variety of new sources; e.g. improved amounts of oil that can be obtained from existing wells, creation of wells in previously impossible places such as deep ocean, etc. And new technologies provide a variety of alternatives; e.g. by conversion of tars, gases, and coals to synthetic oil (syncrude).
Syncrude from coal could be made at competitive cost to crude oil now. But the infrastructure for crude oil supply exists and there is no shortage of crude oil. In the unlikely event that Peak Oil were reached then the infrastructure for syncrude from coal would be built.
There is sufficient coal to provide syncrude to meet demand for at least 300 years. Nobody can know what energy supply sources will be needed 300 years in the future, but they are not likely to rely on crude oil.
Peak Oil? It is a silly idea. We have real problems in this world so I see no reason to worry about imaginary ones.
Richard
dave ward says:
December 9, 2012 at 6:40 am
“DirkH says:
“I fully agree that Brits are wimps and should experience some real cold. They don’t even know what winter tyres are”
I hope that comment is in jest!”
Yes it was. I knew I don’t have to add a smiley when talking to Brits. But in earnest, an ex colleague from Yorkshire who settled in Germany told me he learned about winter tyres first in Germany.
What do we want? We are not entirely certain, when do we want it? As soon as possible as long as it doesnt inconvenience us in any way.
A confused bunch these CAGW believers, they hate the energy they all rely on and yet would never live without the comforts fossil fuels bring to their lives. Yes, they would demonize air travellers while using air travel, use a car while calling for everyone else to be priced out of car ownership, turn up the gas central heating even as they call for fracking to be banned. They hand themselves a form of moral immunity from their own demands, it must be quite a strange place inside their minds. Every aspect of their daily lives from the second they were conceived let alone born has been cushioned and protected and helped by fossil fuels, there is simply nothing that has touched their lives more than fossil fuels. Fossil fuels has kept them warm and fed and healthy and safe from the first cell division and will continue to do so until they buy the farm.
In fact fossil fuels should be worshipped for the incredible wonders they have provided for humanity over an incredibly short time frame, a bare two centuries ago most people lived the same hard short terrible lives that their ancestors endured for the previous hundred generations. And then fossil fuels and the industrial revolution arrived and we built the modern world overnight almost, hospitals and schools and houses and clean water and fresh food and warmth and light and cleanliness and when we get sick we go to wonderful places of healing and its all due to the wonder of fossil fuels. These protesters dont know what its like to eat rotten food or go hungry as a matter of course or risk illness with every bite of unrefrigerated and often putrid food or a time when the only safe liquid to drink without the real risk of dying a terrible death was beer and ale, a time not so long ago when most people were always cold and always hungry and always afraid of getting sick.
All this luxury taken so much for granted from a warm clean bed and warm clothes and shoes washed every week to the bath or shower that not so long most people simply never enjoyed at all. We live the life of the Gods themselves today when you compare the lives our recent ancestors lived, our every basic want is fulfilled almost, the poorest among us enjoy far more than the poor of undeveloped countries and its all due to fossil fuels and the use of these wonderful gifts. Wake up in the morning and clean your teeth with clean safe water using implements that would not exist without fossil fuels and their derivatives, eat a good breakfast from the fridge that would not exist without fossil fuels and even the food you eat would not be there without fossil fuels and its derivatives. Take away everything that you use every day that has fossil fuels at its root and you would end up with what our ancestors had, nothing.
I apologise to the moderators for going beyond the bounds of decency and due deference but I would like to give those utter fools the mother of all slaps to wake them up to the reality of fossil fuels.
Theses guys a priceless, it was -8 C at night in some parts of the UK last week. Where do they imagine their energy is coming from, do they really want to prop up Tehran and Moscow? Sorry I asked, of course they do. Thugs and zealots have always been supported by the left. Its just how things are done in a one party state.
Stephanie Clague:
Thankyou very much indeed for your excellent post at December 9, 2012 at 11:42 am.
I have often said that fossil fuels have done more for human kind than anything else since the invention of agriculture. You eloquently express the reality of that.
And many people in other countries now need the benefits which you relate. As I often say to people, “You don’t know what poverty is until you have experienced the smell of it”.
Richard
Other_Andy says: December 9, 2012 at 10:53 am
To Silver Ralph:
Global oil reserves rose by 31 billion barrels to 1,653 billion barrels in 2011 — Iraq added 28 billion bbls.
__________________________________
You totally miss the point on two levels with these increasingly hysterical posts.
Firstly, Peak Oil has nothing to do with reserves – its about production rates, not reserves. And production is getting harder and harder by the year.
And if Richard Courtney likes to tout economics as a cure-all, well there is also the economics of pricing yourself out of the market to consider. Oil prices cannot and will not rise to unimaginable levels, to stimulate more exploration and stem the onset of Peak Oil Production, because economies will simply contract, and oil production will continue to decline because of that reduced activity. Economics can trigger its own Peak Oil decline, no matter what the reserves are.
Secondly, if Andy believes anything that someone in the Middle East tells him, he is even more misguided than his post suggests. If you have ever lived in the Mid East, you will soon realise that every deal, every transaction, and every utterance during every day is based upon a distortion of the truth. Fabrication and falsification is a way of life out there. If you truly believe that Iraq has suddenly discovered 28 bn barrels of reserves, I expect you will be showing us pictures of the fairies at the bottom of your garden next.
.
You fall into the same trap as those who were concerned about the Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894.
________________________________
Not at all. Man has faced many crises in the past, some of which were solved and the civilisation continued, some of which were not solved and the entire civilisation collapsed and millions died. Look around the world at the number of civilisations that have crashed and burned. We do not have a god-given right to have a prosperous technological civilisation, and all of this great morass of humanity could be history tomorrow, especially if the Greens get their way.
So yes, the UK had a wood crisis, and then discovered iron for shipbuilding. We also had a manure crisis, and discovered external and then internal combustion vehicles instead. We also had a transport crisis, until we invented railways …. etc: etc: and etc: In fact, most of the modern solutions to historic problems in the world today came from Britain. But note the difference between British history and your irrational hysteria about any mention of Peak Oil. The British Victorians recognised they had a problem (in fact, many problems), and instituted reforms and new technologies to overcome those problems.
Burying your head in the sand and claiming that oil production rates (Peak Oil, or Expensive Oil) are not a problem is not a solution. And claiming that economics will solve the problem is not a cure either. When I refuel my car I spend €100 instead of €10. That is an early manifestation of Peak Oil – because easy oil is getting more scarce and much more expensive to extract. This is the great problem that approaching Peak Oil gives us, for expensive energy can stagnate the entire world economy. This is why we always need to look for cheaper and more secure energy sources (who wants to be at the mercy of Russia and Saudi Arabia?)
In great contrast to Richard Courney’s ostrich-like approach to Peak Oil, the Victorians would already be looking at alternative solutions. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, for instance, would already have a thorium reactor bubbling away in a workshop somewhere in the Black Country. But do we see the West investing in viable solutions, as Brunel would have done? No. And this is when Peak Oil or Peak energy (ever more expensive energy) becomes a real problem.
Ok, shale gas is a partial fix to Peak Oil (expensive oil), but it is not going to make the problem go away. The fix is going to be technological, because mankind cannot go on relying on burning Cretaceous plants forever. Thorium is one possible solution, fusion is another, but we are not going to solve a looming energy crisis (expensive energy) by denying that the problem exists. We need to invest in modern alternatives, and that is simply not happening at present.
.
.
Silver Ralph:
My post (at December 9, 2012 at 11:05 am) explained why your assertions of peak oil are nonsense. It included these statements:
and
At December 9, 2012 at 12:20 pm you have replied
Your reply indicates that either you did not read my rebuttal of your ‘peak oil’ assertions or you have severe problems with reading comprehension.
‘Peak oil’ is not a problem, and never will be a problem, because it cannot be a problem.
Read my post which you claim to be answering and you will understand why this is so.
Richard
Silver Ralph:
At December 9, 2012 at 12:56 pm you write
I was part of the team which perfected the Liquid Solvent Extraction (LSE) process which can produce syncrude from coal at competitive cost to crude oil. The existence of the LSE process sets a limit on the long-term cost of crude.
Which “alternative solutions” have you worked to develop?
And when are you going to stop your “ostrich-like approach” and admit ‘Peak Oil’ is bollocks?
Richard
Richard Courtney
At Dec 9th, 2012 at 1:48pm
“I was part of the team which perfected the Liquid Solvent Extraction (LSE) process which can produce syncrude from coal at competitive cost to crude oil. The existence of the LSE process sets a limit on the long-term cost of crude.”
Silver Ralph,
The above comment from Richard has given you a very large verbal slap.
Richard works in the industry and knows what he’s talking about. He’s right: you’re talking bollocks.
Now, back to the main topic of the thread:
I’ve never seen such a bunch of mis-informed and fact-free plonkers as that anti-fracking crowd. It was almost painful to watch their lack of knowledge about science, economics, politics, etc
I noticed that some of their demo took place in front of the US Embassy. I use to sit in the park outside the embassy and eat my lunch when I worked near there many years ago. However, I only went there in the summer when it was warm. On a cold day like the day of their demo I was happy to be inside eating my lunch in my fossil-fuel heated cafe 🙂
I don’t understand why these people don’t see some counter-demonstration by regular people. I don’t mean an organized march with signs and stuff, I mean some regular old heckling and maybe showing them the business end of a tomato or two. Why don’t these people have a crowd of regular citizens around them telling them how tired we are of having our energy costs artificially increased? Tell them we are tired of being fleeced so that their pals can wallow in our money. I think it’s about time the regular folks started standing up to these people.