Guest post by David Archibald
Next week I am hosting a dinner party at which a Fellow of the Royal Society will be guest of honour – one of the Gang of Four who got the Society to tone down their position of global warming alarmism. So it is apposite to consider the outlook for energy and food supply in the UK. Peak coal production in that country was 100 years ago at 292 million tonnes. The UK’s peak oil production was in 1999 with production continuing to fall rapidly. The UK is now importing almost all of its fossil fuel requirements. It decided to switch to relying upon wind power, but recently found that turbines were lasting only about half as long as the wind industry said they would. The Climate Change Act, effectively de-industrialising the country, was passed in the House of Commons in October 2008 by 463 votes to three, even as snow was falling outside. The winters since that act was passed in 2008 have been particularly bitter, but that is only a taste of what is to come.
The UK imports 40% of its food requirements but is still accepting immigrants while having a high unemployment rate of 7.8 per cent. With respect to the 60% of the food requirement grown in country, the length of the thermal growing season for crops has been calculated back to 1772. The longest growing season in the 241 years back to 1772 was 300 days in 2000. The average growing season in the mid-19th century was 240 days with the shortest growing season being just 181 days in 1859. The world is returning to the climate of the mid-19th century as a best case outcome, as will the UK.
Figure 1: Length of thermal growing season in central England
The Dalton Minimum, caused by Solar Cycles 5 and 6, is evident as well as the 1970s cooling period.
So how much less food will the UK be able to grow when the length of the growing season is reduced by 45%? That is something for the sceptred isle to ponder on. 1859 is significant in that it is the year that glaciers started retreating worldwide in response to a Sun that was becoming more active. One measure of solar activity, the Aa Index, which is an index of the Sun’s geomagnetic activity, began increasing from a low of five in the mid-19th century to a peak of 37 in 2003. It has now fallen back to a level of about 9, even though we are near the peak of Solar Cycle 24. We should draw inferences from natural phenomena, and we should choose wisely from the phenomena available to interpret. The fact that the temperature of the planet has not increased for 16 years is not important in itself, the fact that the Sun has entered a deep sleep is very important.
Figure 2: Aa Index 1868 – 2013
The 1970s cooling period was associated with an interval of a low Aa Index. The Aa Index has returned to the levels of the late 19th century.
There has already been an increase in winter deaths in the UK as some pensioners have not been able to afford to heat their houses. Starvation, on the other hand, is something you can do all year round, irrespective of the season. As the prices of fossil fuels that aren’t oil converge towards the oil price as the oil price itself rises, physically doing anything in the UK will use energy priced as if the energy source was oil. The UK will find itself bidding for the shrinking supplies of oil and grain, the two basic commodities that keep machines and men fed, on international markets as the decade progresses. It can’t do much about what happens beyond its borders, but it could refrain from doing things that harm itself and it could also be trying to move beyond fossil fuels to an energy source that is less ephemeral than the wind. Never mind, the next 20 years will be a cathartic experience for those living in the UK, and character-forming, and testing. It will be a large scale version of the Darwin Awards in which everyone gets to participate by virtue of voting for politicians who vote for things like the Climate Change Act 2008. Choosing politicians via the ballot box always has consequences for one’s standard of living. As basic commodities become scarcer and the planet cools, that choosing may affect whether or not one gets to live at all.
In a way, what is in store for the UK is their just rewards for a lack of faith – a lack of faith in the religion that their forebears gave them courtesy of the King James Bible, a self-loathing of the culture that gave them a high standard of living, even though that was a relatively brief period in the Thatcher years, and a reversion from the scientific flowering that began with Newton to the witchcraft and voodoo that is modern climate science. Individuals with faith are more successful than individuals without faith. That is also true of nations. Just as the Israelites in the desert began worshipping a golden calf to Moses’ consternation, the scientific establishment of the UK reverted to a form of animism, seeing spirits in living things. The high priest of that movement is a scientist by the name of James Lovelock, who recanted upon receiving a bill of £6,000 for his winter heating. The UK nation as a whole is repeating Professor Lovelock’s personal experience – both the bill and the epiphany.
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We really need to see some cooling soon from the current low solar activity or we’re all going to look like idiots…
Is this data adjusted to allow for modern crop varieties and crop engineering?
By ‘increased solar activity’ do you mean; over time from 1868 – 2008 the sun went from having longer periods of low sunspot activity to having shorter periods of low sunspot activity?
http://thetempestspark.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/greenwich-monthly-sunspot-area-1876-2012/
There is hope, at least as far as energy supplies is concerned, if the politicians can get of the ‘climate change; nonsense:
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/home/10985-too-good-to-be-true
Britain could have enough shale gas to heat every home for 1,500 years, according to new estimates that suggest reserves are 200 times greater than experts previously believed. The British Geological Survey is understood to have increased dramatically its official estimate of the amount of shale gas to between 1,300 trillion and 1,700 trillion cubic feet, dwarfing its previous estimate of 5.3 trillion cubic feet. According to industry sources, the revised estimates will be published by the Government next month, fuelling hopes that new “fracking” techniques to capture trapped resources will result in cheaper energy bills. –Tim Webb, Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson, The Times, 9 February 2013
Lot’s of cheap energy can mean lots of commercial-sized greenhouses growing food – and no pensioners freezing to death
Ouch……
“James Lovelock, who recanted upon receiving a bill of £6,000 for his winter heating”
That is funny because it SO describes my previous flatmate. She was all in favour of Carbon Tax and renewables right up to the moment when our electricity bill came in. Just to add to the mirth of the event I pointed out that since the only wind/solar electricity we had access to was from Victoria and the rate at the time for producers was about four times what we were paying she really should pay her share of the bill four times over. I was happy with coal fired power and would happily pay for what I used.
She was just not interested in paying for ‘green’ power when the time came to open her purse.
Odd that.
I wonder who those brave 3 MP’s were? Maybe they need to introduced to a wider audience!
No one expects the Spanish Climate Inquisition
There is an order of magnitude more coal under the North Sea than all the world’s current proven coal reserves combined.
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2005-12-28/3000-billion-tons-coal-norways-coastline
Fracking and in situ gasification will produce enough gas for generations and the coal itself will last a millenia.
The problem with the oil price, is that Greenie inspired electric cars and equally ridiculous biofuels have captured the policy process. If the money had been spent on natural gas powered vehicles and coal to liquids technology, nobody would be much worried about the price of oil, except the impoverished Arabs of course.
“The UK imports 40% of its food requirements but is still accepting immigrants while having a high unemployment rate of 7.8 per cent.”
So true! Political dogma instead of political realism. We in the UK have leaders who cannot, dare not lead. They follow bigger people like lap dogs. The trouble is, the “bigger people” are clueless idiots.
60 years ago, if nuclear bombs were not on the agenda, the UK would have LFTR reactors to power us through eternity. Not that yellow cake garbage which will be half consumed in 30 years.
As goes 1,500 years of gas under the UK. Not a cat in hells chance of that happening! We had gas to keep us going to 2050, remember. So they installed gas turbines for cheap electricity — gone in 20 years, not 80.
But what does this climate change mean for the spaghetti trees? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICryfLj-hnA
In situ coal gasification is another technology that has been neglected. It was first proven feasible 100 years ago. Somewhat ironically it has come back into focus as a vehicle for carbon capture.
Generally speaking, doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is a bad idea, but this might be an exception.
http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/dei/Ingenia43_Underground_Coal_June2010.pdf
The three MPs to vote against the Climate Change Act 2008 were Peter Lilley (MP for Hitchen and Harpenden), Christopher Chope (Christchurch) and Andrew Tyrie (Chichester). All Conservatives.
History will prove them to be men of honour and integrity.
I don’t wish to be unfair to a fellow Aussie, but this post is blatantly and unpleasantly political. It seems to be trying to appeal to a lowest common denominator in right wing UK politics. and as pointed out in the comments above, its now inaccurate. There is nowshale oil for all in the UK!
The trifecta of government funded science lies are….global warming….green energy…and peak oil. The fraud of Carbon climate forcing is well documented on WUWT. Every form of green energy….wind, solar cells and bio-fuels….consume more fossil fuel in production than they ever return in their service life. Peak oil is a fraud described in “Fossil Fuel is Nuclear Waste” and “Earth’s Elemental Petrol Production”.
All of these frauds are necessary to cover the under-lying giant fraud explained in “Fractional Reserve Banking Begat Faux Reality”. When your monetary system is a Ponzi scheme, then the banksters hire puppet politicians, who hire pseudo-scientists and lap dog media to rationalize stupidity. Freezing in the dark will limit your acceptance of this aberant behavior. End the Fed…End the Fraud.
What are the sources of the graphs? Thanks.
I am not sure that coal has passed it’s potential peak in the UK, rather, its production was curtailed as other sources of energy became easier to implement. Coal really found it’s demise in the 70s and 80s during the Thatcher years that you laud in your text. Margaret was only too keen to crush the coal miners union on the back of North Sea Gas, which has now pretty much run out.
I am unsure what coal resources remain in Britain, but I would expect them to be quite large.
As to the religious diatribe at the end of this comment – I really wish you wouldn’t.
That last paragraph about faith – particularly vis a vis the King James Bible – has to be the most easily ridiculed assertion I have ever read on any scientific blog. And then to lavish praise on Thatcher merely alienates all but the most extreme conservatives.
Anthony, I would be cautious hitching your horse to this author’s credibility. And that’s without even questioning his ties to the fossil fuel industry.
By all means, stand on the pulpit and preach to the converted, but if you want to make inroads into the mindsets of those who don’t share your political or religious convictions, I suggest checking your political and religious bigotry at the door. It mearly serves to alienate.
“With respect to the 60% of the food requirement grown in country, the length of the thermal growing season for crops has been calculated back to 1772. The longest growing season in the 241 years back to 1772 was 300 days in 2000. The average growing season in the mid-19th century was 240 days with the shortest growing season being just 181 days in 1859. ”
wow. I gues the longer growing season is due to UHI. or maybe it is getting warmer
MattN says:
We really need to see some cooling soon from the current low solar activity or we’re all going to look like idiots…
No, Looking like an idiot is neither here nor there. What we really need to see is what actually happens (that is, get the honest, uncorrupted data – which, sadly these days, is far trickier than it ought to be) and go from there so we can find out to the best of our ability what, if anything, is really going on. This is not about some sort of vindication or a game of academic “gotcha!”. It’s about the application of science and following the data where ever it leads.
I don’t see any signs of a reduction in UK growing season. What’s this post supposed to hypothesise?
Peter Lilly, who voted against the Climate Change Act of 2008, is a trained physicist. He has often written and spoken against the AGW mania but his colleagues won’t listen and his leaders sidelined him. Shameful.
I agree that that political and religious undertones of this piece detract greatly from its effectiveness. I could not post a link to it anywhere for those reasons; I wish they had been edited out since it makes valid points
Some complaints about the political nature of the article, I see.
It seems to me that what was said here is exactly what needs to be said.
We have spent too much time being politely silent about the success of conservative policies in the 80’s and the failure of ‘green’ policies thereafter.
I am tired of accommodating the sensitivities of those who cannot face facts. The UK (and the rest of the western world) needs to shake itself out of its coma and return to a few basic principles.
For example recognise that energy is the basis of prosperity and prosperity should be the goal or development. It seems to me that the current block to development is being caused by a group which has become so prosperous and pampered that they have forgotten what it was that got them there and are now in the process of denying that same opportunity to others.
I admir the Victorians like Brunel and Rhodes who dedicated their lives to building, developing and creating opportunity for others. I doubt that anyone will admire the latte sipping celebs of the 21st century who, having reached a comfy level of existence, suddenly want to close off all development and therefore opportunity for those not so lucky.
HB, FauxScience et al.
I ask you for your assertions, nay, PROOF there is enough gas in the UK. Enough to keep the youngest reader on here warm (and in electricity) for his lifetime of British gas. I know for a fact it is physically impossible.
.
And for all who IMAGINE oil is made from the bowels of the Earth then I must remind you of the age of this planet. If that is the natural rate of production the theory is forever, the replenishment of oil is not a happening reality. Is this some form of deliberate coo-coo land strawman loony bin pseudo-scientific clap trap that is attempting to set up this site for a big fall?
.
Sure Thatcher ended the coal mines. Because they were not paying their way any more and the Gov’t were holding up dead ducks. Most from their own pathetic making. If they were viable. I’d be funding new mines right now!
John Hooper – “And that’s without even questioning his ties to the fossil fuel industry.”
Please DO question the ties. Please explain what relevance they are. I have heard this so many times and I just want to know what these ties actually mean. Let’s pretend that David is in receipt of a fat wad of Big Oil money every week for the purpose of fighting for scepticism etc.
What exactly does that mean? Does it mean any facts he states are wrong? Does it mean he is arguing a point he does not really believe himself?
To me it seems an odd to suggest that the person against whom you are debating (and cannot fault in logic) is arguing a false position for cash. It is a bit like being beaten in a boxing match and then trying to recover some dignity by claiming that your opponent does not really know how to box, he was just faking it for the money.