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/
When humanity is starving and shivering in the dark, the warmunists can congratulate themselves on having “won”.
Increase risk of blackouts? With our climate policy I feel like fainting dead away.
There are already thousands of deaths per year due to energy poverty in the UK, and it does not concern either the government or the media. They do not care. They have an agenda and they are sticking with it. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead….
The Eloi are here already?
As every WUWT reader knows, we are and have been going through a cool period, In the past two weeks I have seen 20-30 foot snow drifts and I have experienced 7 blackouts. During the warm period that was blamed on anthropogenic climate change I experienced none that’s 7-0, its clear that heavy snow has away of bringing down power lines, causing widespread havoc while killing thousands of people and animals in the process. I’m not being alarmist about cold weather, I am, like everyone else with a bit of commonsense left, saying; don’t take chances when it comes to cold winters. Political propaganda on the Issue has now changed/morphed from Man made warming will cause warmer seasons to man made warming causes the Arctic to melt which somehow causes Colder seasons. Man Made Climate Change is now Null and void, Remember Cold Weather Kills.
Anthropogenic Climate Change Proponents, are now officially the dumbest looking people on the planet.
Thanks to Viv Forbes for a great article. As usual, no one will take the slightest notice as it is the truth and mankind prefers to learn its lessons from bitter experience that could have been foreseen and avoided rather than reading the truth.
Peter Miller says:
April 1, 2013 at 2:18 pm
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.
*
I’m waiting for both of these to happen. Pity the world will have to suffer the blackouts first.
**
Viv paints a very scary and very accurate picture. We think of blackouts in terms of personal heating and appliances. When we see the bigger picture – banks and petrol pumps, water pumps, supermarkets and farming – it makes the whole “It pays to be sure” green cr@p totally intolerable.
For those few thinking Viv’s message is “alarmist”, you are clearly not paying attention to what the CAGW crowd have been up to for years. They’ve been ranting, raving, screaming, demanding, manipulating and emotionally blackmailing non-stop. Pointing out the real consequences of deep-green policy is hardly “alarmist”. Perhaps you feel all those people dying of cold across Europe are showing poor form and that when the lights do go out, no one will suffer. Wake up already. Green policy is killing us.
To the left of centre says:
April 1, 2013 at 1:30 pm
This all seems a little alarmist.
coeruleus says:
April 1, 2013 at 1:46 pm
The alarmism in this post makes me wonder whether this is an April Fools Day joke.
I think it is actually more realist.
The energy generating companies in UK have actually warned the politicians to expect rolling blackouts. UK is in the process of decommissioning perfectly serviceable coal fired power generation sites just because of ‘carbon’ rules from the EU. They envisage more close downs. They are building windmills (as the politicians are getting kickbacks from that) but not the gas fired backup systems for when the wind is not sufficient.
I was in the UK for the programmed rolling black outs of the Heath government. I still have the oil lamps to prove it. These came in useful as I was under the series of hurricanes in 2004 that crossed Florida. A couple of these resulted in 3 – 5 day total power failures. It is amazing how quickly communications with the outside world go down. The last being telephones and cell phones. Florida is used to hurricanes so people keep ‘hurricane stores’ of food, cooking supplies, water purification etc. It is apparent from Irene and Sandy that the same is not the case in other states.
Most supermarkets only hold 3 days supply of food.
A 5 day power out in a major conurbation would not be pleasant.
You may wish to remain unprepared because being prepared is alarmist Aesops fable of the ant and the grasshopper come to mind.
I wish the article would end with, “April Fools”, but sadly this isn’t a joke and the outcome is the logical end to where we are being pushed to.
BREAKING (h/t Tom Nelson):
Climate Alarmist Jim Hansen leaving NASA on Wed. to devote himself to legal and political activism:
Hansen retiring from NASA to press legal and activist efforts
You forgot the blackout people impose on themselves, as they struggle to pay renewables inflated power bills.
Poor people freezing to death, because they couldn’t afford heating, is a growing scandal in “green” Europe.
I love your post, to the point and no BS. However, I do think you are being too dramatic about empty supermarket shelves. The reason I say so is because before then people would have had enough and booted out the relevant political fools. The UK came very close with gas running out over the past 10 days. Scotland was forced to import French nuclear electricity a few years back when its windmills failed.
A WUWT post earlier this year should focus minds about the benefits of fossil fuels.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/07/life-after-energy-what-if-fossil-fuels-disappeared-tommorrow/
PS I have had many experiences with electrical blackouts. So have over 1 billion people to participate in Earth Hour EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR.
I did not take time to read all of the comments,so if
someone has said this,sorry.
Smart meters,smart meters. They turn mine off, leave
others on. I am not saying this is a bad thing???? Help
Alfred
Next time a Warmist complains about fossil fuels ask them to kindly get off the grid and use their pv panels and windpower.
Sean says:
April 1, 2013 at 2:45 pm
There are already thousands of deaths per year due to energy poverty in the UK, and it does not concern either the government or the media. They do not care.
============
dead pensioners can’t vote out the government that killed them.
“Which is worse – gradual man-made global warming or sudden electricity blackout?”
The answer is obvious. Since an objective look at the genuinely empirical evidence on warming impacts indicates that warmer is better. Better for life in general and humanity in particular.
A.D. Everard says:
April 1, 2013 at 3:03 pm
Peter Miller says:
April 1, 2013 at 2:18 pm
………………………………………. We think of blackouts in terms of personal heating and appliances. When we see the bigger picture – banks and petrol pumps, water pumps, supermarkets and farming – it makes the whole “It pays to be sure” green cr@p totally intolerable.
——————————–
You need not worry about that…..That’s what the smart meters are for.
To make sure they open the right circuit to stop power as they see fit.
cn
Dang, I forgot to call Lew before posting.
cn
Spot on article. UK nearly made it a few months back. The tragedy is that people only seem to come into reality when it hits their pockets. $. Or when they go to the power point switch in their homes to discover nothing happens when they flick the switch. Black out. Then reality will hit home. What a terrible man made disaster!!! Oh for common sense and reality!
There are a variety of “structural factors” that make this sort of disruption a little less likely in the USA (yes, I worked for two Utilities for 20 years, and have some pretty good insights. Our “peaking plants” in the USA, which can run primarily on CH4, can spool up about 25% of total capacity if the need to, for example.)
BUT, as you’ve noted the “green policies” are going to come home to rooste in Germany and England and a couple other European nation states. RUSSIA and FRANCE, meanwhile, will probably fair quite well. (I’m thinking Sweden and Denmark here for another couple of “greenie wennies who might hurt.)
All in all, considering the mechanisms of the British and the Germans in dragging us into two world wars (and, by the way, the Brits almost “reverse action” of Lincoln’s, “With malice towards none, and charity towards all…” i.e., the “with complete and punitive malice towards Germany, and NO Christian charity or forgiveness at ALL…”, really set the stage for ‘Dolf and WWII. SO, Brits and Krauts, having to suffer…hum, I’m struggling with this. “Sins of the Fathers, visited on the Sons, etc.” In the Swede’s case, what I find is a SMUG, “Socialist” society, that worked VERY WELL when everyone WAS a Swede, and they were not “diverse”. Now that they have “opened the doors”, and run to that point where 27% of the population is supporting the other 73%….I’m finding the concept of “compounded misery” because of the Green Dragon, to be perhaps a fitting reward for “smugness”.
SO…Mr. Forbes: A “toast” to your work. But, don’t plan on doing it with an electric toaster.
To the left of centre says:
April 1, 2013 at 1:30 pm
This all seems a little alarmist.
==============
Yep, but you gotta set the first bar high.
Then the walk back appears to be a return to sanity/voter preference.
Obviously, those days are long past.
Spot on, Viv. Your posts are always illuminating.
Economically suicidal energy policies in UK and Aus. will produce serious social unrest.
Letters from the ‘big blogs’ signed by everyone with or without ‘letters’ after their names is an urgent priority.
While there will be some consequences to blackouts, this article overstates the risk. Using the US Northeast Blackout of 2003 as a case study (a blackout that lasted just under a week and affected about double the population of Australia), yes there were business shutdowns, shortages, people trapped in elevators and even some deaths – mostly due to auto accidents because the traffic lights were out. But there was little looting and no “old, sick, incapacitated or alone … forgotten as able-bodied people focus[ed] on feeding and protecting their own.”
Participants at this site rail against the hyperbole of the AGW crowd. It is even more important to be disciplined against the hyperbole of your friends.
The following is rated “M”, for mature audiences
After thinking about this for some years now, the only conclusion I can come to is that gorebull wurming seems to result in earlier onset of adolescence while also extending or arresting onset of further maturity.
Applied in this instance it can be readily recognized in a minimum of two significant synaptic prunings associated only with the generation of wind and solar power. (“The pruning that is associated with learning is known as small-scale axon terminal arbor pruning”. – Wikipedia). The first is energy density. Neither have very much. This requires at the very least cognition that land requirements for generation of both are dramatically larger than for any other form of modern energy generation, and frequently must therefore be located in transmission remote locales (transmission lines and grid integration are left for the more mature). The second large one consists of the requirements for rare earth elements, the majority mining of which is presently being done in countries without significant health and environmental oversight. The political, economic and strategic ramifications of this boggle the mind, but I progress……
An undesirable synaptic connection, such as recognition that storage is presently the third rail of renewable energy as it is presently deployed, can be a challenge at such a developmental stage. No particularly efficient methods of renewable energy storage on the scale required for modern industry yet exist. The technology itself is immature in this regard.
Even more glial cells are needed to process the obvious results. If you can’t store enough of it, you must have an alternate supply, or compliant industry, workforce and therefore economic system. And right now alternate supply means lesser efficient simple-cycle gas turbines (not combined-cycle) or, at best, at least 40% efficient pumped water storage reservoirs (which have water enough to do this without beaching everything downstream while “charging”, or washing it away when turned on). Without a viable storage buffer, the fastest power-generation is opening the battery known as dams, next comes single-cycle inefficient gas turbines. Longer booting industrial/residential sources such as combined-cycle gas, coal, nuclear etc. would have to stay booted-up, negating any benefits attributable to synaptic immaturity.
No one really knows what the optimum number/ratio etc. of glial cells et al is (from Wikipedia, and no, I do not like quoting this source at all):
“In terms of humans, synaptic pruning has been observed through the inference of differences in the estimated numbers of glial cells and neurons between children and adults, which differs greatly in the mediodorsal thalamic nucleus.
“In a study conducted in 2007 by Oxford University, researchers compared 8 newborn human brains with those of 8 adults using estimates based upon size and evidence gathered from stereological fractionation. They showed that, on average, estimates of adult neuron populations were 41% lower than those of the newborns in the region they measured, the mediodorsal thalamic nucleus.[6]”
“However, in terms of glial cells, adults had far larger estimates than those in newborns; 36.3 million on average in adult brains, compared to 10.6 million in the newborn samples.”
When you stop and think about it, isn’t this somewhat akin to single versus multi-variable processing?
In terms of speciation, we took our first steps about 2.8 million years ago when as H. habilis we learned how to fashion a cutting edge on a rock. A million years later we fashioned a second edge on even better rocks and set off the Acheulean tool period. A second variable? Something like 5,000 years ago we learned how to cook metals out of rocks and things progressed somewhat rapidly to alloys and semi-conductors. Lots of variables now. More than any one of us can really profess to know.
At this half-precession cycle old (and change) extreme interglacial, I find myself wondering just how many synapses does it really take to comprehend when we live and what we are thinking about and/or are doing.
And then something like this flits across my event horizon some weeks ago…….
http://americansecurityproject.org/featured-items/2013/white-paper-fusion-power-a-10-year-plan-to-energy-security/
……and I wonder again if we, H. sapiens, are really wise enough to contemplate the possibility that every penny not spent on fusion research might turn out to be a penny wasted.
Great piece Viv. Apologies for the long comment, but it was indeed thought-provoking.