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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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.
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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).