Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Amber Rudd, Britain’s Energy Secretary, has officially stated energy security is Britain’s top energy policy priority, ahead of Climate Change.
According to The Guardian;
The energy secretary, Amber Rudd, is to “reset” Britain’s energy policy on Wednesday in a direction that downgrades tackling climate change from its highest priorities but commits to closing all traditional coal-fired plants by 2025.
In her biggest speech in the job, Rudd will say she wants policy to focus on making energy affordable and secure. She will say the aim is a “consumer-led, competition-focused energy system that has energy security at the heart of it”, and will suggest the balance has swung too far in favour of climate change policies at the expense of keeping energy affordable.
Green campaigners are likely to be somewhat mollified by the fact she is likely to pledge to restrict coal-fired power by 2023 and all but eradicate it within the decade.
Amber Rudd started her Energy Secretary post with an almost evangelical desire to bring leading British climate skeptics into the tent, to persuade skeptics of the importance of tackling climate change. This effort to build a unified position fell apart, when skeptics asked alarmists what they thought of the pause; Royal Society scientists replied that the pause would have to continue for another 50 years, for them to admit that their climate models might be wrong.
Since those early days, the reality of Britain’s desperate energy situation seems to have forced a reevaluation of priorities. To her credit, Amber Rudd has set aside her obvious personal desire to tackle climate change, in favour of trying to ensure Britain doesn’t suffer potentially lethal power blackouts during winter.
I personally have high hopes for Amber. While she obviously completely embraces climate alarmism, my impression is she has a deep seated need for her world to make sense. Before entering politics, Amber worked in banking. If there is one thing dealing with business and finance teaches you, that lesson is not to ignore inconsistencies – an inconsistency is a red flag that something is wrong, that your understanding of the situation is incomplete. This refusal to tolerate unanswered questions, our refusal to be satisfied with blind submission to self proclaimed scientific authority, our need for answers which make sense, is what led many of us into climate skepticism.
One bit of reason coming from the West.
Better than no but of reason, I would have thought.
BIT of reason, that is
She’s saying all these nice things, but intends to do it while closing all coal plants. And for her next trick, she’ll walk on water.
It could be done, even with the proposed closing of all coal plants. The generation would need to be replaced though by an equivalent amount of traditional Nuclear and or Natural Gas fired facilities, that is until Viable functioning Thorium reactors can be proven
The only way to truly decarbonize society would be to develop an energy source that is more readily available in every country than Oil/Coal/Trees, Costs less to produce electricity than Hydro Generation, and requires NO subsidization to be compatible with traditional energy sources
Estimated Grid-Level Systems Cost, 2012 (USD/MWh)
Technology Nuclear Coal Gas Onshore Wind Offshore Wind Solar
Penetration Level 10% 30% 10% 30% 10% 30% 10% 30% 10% 30% 10% 30%
Backup costs (adequacy) 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.04 0.00 0.00 5.61 6.14 2.10 6.85 0.00 10.45
Balancing costs 0.16 0.10 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 2.00 5.00 2.00 5.00 2.00 5.00
Grid connection 1.56 1.56 1.03 1.03 0.51 0.51 6.50 6.50 15.24 15.24 10.05 10.05
Grid reinforcement 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 2.20 2.20 1.18 1.18 2.77 2.77
Total Grid-level Costs 1.72 1.67 1.07 1.07 0.51 0.51 16.30 19.84 20.51 28.26 14.82 28.27
Hurray for common sense, for sanity, for Amber Rudd, for skeptics and for VERIFIABLE DATA!
Not reason, but fear of losing a cushy job. When Brits start dying from cold this winter she wants plausible deniability.
Perhaps then again she may just want to do her job right without harming the people she is responsible to & for.
To the folks in Britain, be supportive, and make sure she Knows it. See what happens.
michael
“Brits start dying from cold”
(It’s well underway)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/9078273/Hypothermia-deaths-double-over-five-years.html
Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the economy, impede the rule of law, and cripple national defense were guided by a coherent ideology instead of smug ignorance.
P. J. O’Rourke
+1
Finally, talk the talk but don’t walk the talk. I’m always surprised when Liberals don’t know how to do this !
Hopefully Amber Rudd reads the WSJ and has seen Bjorn Lomborg’s recent essays as well as his followups with Joe Romm. COP21 and the INDC’s don’t make sense.
Good girl!
Don’t get carried away: what she actually said was that all coal-fired stations must close by 2023, not that any will hang round that long when faced with the U.K. Carbon Tax that was designed to make them uneconomic within the next 3 years.
She’s going with gas as the swing supplier to manage variable renewables input, apparently unaware (a) that it isn’t as responsive to demand changes as coal, and (b) that this will make UK a client state to gas suppliers e.g. Russia, Qatar. OK, we have a connection into Norway, but if supplies are tight to the whole of Western Europe (e.g. because Russia is restricting its exports) Norway won’t let sentiment interfere with its chance to sell to the highest bidder.
Won’t happen. Just won’t. One big power outage during the winter and people start asking who could provide them with electricity. That will not be the greens. Power companies will have interesting times as they understand what will happen but they don’t know when exactly the tide changes.
BTW, she’s not a girl, the picture shows a grownup.
. . . and she knows damn well that by 2023 she’ll be long gone out of the job, and no one’s likely to remember this “moment” anyway. I would predict that by 2023 AGW is one dead dinosaur anyway. And the coal plants will have nice new scrubbers.
Natgas fired, combustion turbine based, generator is FASTER responding to load changes in the grid than coal fired power plant
Fracking will sort that problem out. The Conservative Government may be cumbersome, and(like all parties in the UK at the current time), lack actual statesmen, but they know a business prospect when they see one; don’t think that what has been happening in the USofA has passed them by. They see energy independence tantalisingly within reach, and I believe they may have the ba–s to go for it. Further, whether you like them or not, the current political situation here suggests that they have at least one more term to come. I think I may be able to detect, just a sniff, of that rarest of things in a British political party; long term planning!
Derek
Cojones.
Fixed.
Auto
Once their new terminal is built, Cheniere will start supplying the UK with natural gas that we ordered. We will have switched from a reliance on Russian gas to a reliance on US gas.
True though the business relationship with Norway is contractually shared as a series of projects so it is not like a simple buyer/seller arrangement and the UK should soon have shale gas to look forward to as well, that argument has been won in government at last. The even the EU (though not yet the UK) has now agreed to some GM crops – particularly for maximising energy crops. There’s hope yet… (I think!)
She carefully used the term “traditional” coal fired plants. In Oz, “traditional” means according to Aboriginal culture and ways.
Perhaps she will seek out and shut down all Celtic coal burning plants?
If she is as smart as she seems to be her next task should be to overrule all current objectors and GET FRACKING!
I think a lot of politicians forget how fast time goes by. 2023 is only 7 years away. What can you build in 7 years today given the environmental reviews everything must go through. Look at the Keystone Pipeline, the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, the Aleyaska Pipeline, virtually ANY large project. If the designs aren’t already done, there is no way all the coal fired generation plants can be replaced (by wind?) in 7 years. Unless of course there IS a plan in place. Mini Draxes?
Well maybe they can close the remaining coal fired plants but where will the power come from?
Source: http://www.energy-uk.org.uk/energy-industry/coal-generation.html
In the UK, thirty one percent of electricity currently comes from coal-burning power stations. However, a third of these power stations are expected to close by 2016 so that they meet EU air quality legislation. This means that Britain will become less reliant on coal as a source of energy and will need to look at alternative energy sources.
Working coal powered stations
Aberthaw Power Station 1500MW – RWE npower
Cottam Power Station 2008MW – EDF Energy
Didcot A Power Station 2000 MW – RWE npower (closed 22 March 2013)
Drax power station 3870MW – Drax Group
Eggborough Power Station 1960MW – British Energy
Ferrybridge Power Station 1995MW – SSE (units 1 and 2 will close by the end of 2015)
Fiddlers Ferry Power Station 1961MW – SSE
Ironbridge Power Station 970MW – E.ON (to close by the end of 2015)
Kingsnorth power station 1940MW – E.ON (to close by the end of 2015)
Lynemouth Power Station 420MW – Alcan
Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station 2000MW – E.ON
Rugeley Power Station 1006MW – International Power
Tilbury Power Station 1131MW – RWE npower (to close by the end of 2015)
West Burton Power Station 1972MW – EDF Energy
Wilton Power Station 197MW – SembCorp Industries
In science, the “authority” comes from the model validation process to check for accuracy and consistency. In banking, the authority comes from audits and more audits. For both cases, the risk rises each time the authority is ignored or set aside. Ignoring the authority over an extended period should have consequences and change in a fair and open society. Such outcomes do not apply in dictatorships and dogmas.
I spent a bit of time in banking, in that time I saw the one thing bankers absolutely abhor is bad or incomplete data. Bad or incomplete data, erroneous conclusions, almost always leads to financial losses.
I’ll never forget one time the banker I was supporting cracked it, because the risk system didn’t properly report Rho risk (Portfolio value sensitivity to change in government interest rates). Naturally this missing factor was the cause of a substantial loss that day.
I got Mark Steyn to sign a copy of Climate Change The Facts with a dedication to Amber Rudd. I had a reply that she already had a copy but did not say she had read it.
focus on making energy affordable and secure.
but commits to closing all traditional coal-fired plants by 2025
Cognitive dissonance.
No, rather normal lying/untruth telling from a politician.
The Royal Society said that the “pause would have to continue for another 50 years for them to admit that their climate models were wrong”?
At which point the models would be diverging from reality by ~2D C. In otherwords more that the warming since pre-industrial times. Are there statisticians in the RS? (yes). Are there proper sceptical scientists in the RS? (yes I know a few).
This is another example of national scientific bodies being hijacked by a cabal of warmist fanatics who use their authority of position to override the views of their members.
Ask them for a peer reviewed paper that used the Real Scientific Method of Peer Review? They will have none for they hide all base data, math, computer model program designs, and all other tests behind non disclosure agreements and even court decision that were settled out of court but sealed the case.
All funding if you really research leads back to Government Agencies, NOAA, NASA, EPA, NSF, HHS and others – give grants to e=greens like Sierra Club, Greenpeace and others that then give GRANTS to University researchers that agree with them.
It is all money money and money. The Alarmist accuse the FF companies of funding research when it is them that are the real source of funds tied to the false narrative.
Yep, the left has always been very good at projection.
One small step at a time, the ignorance can’t continue for ever.
Therefore we still have until 2030 to verify if significant warming occurred in the first place. This statement actually unknowingly, falsifies AGW without any significant global warming by 2030.
Dream on Matt.
The bar used to be set at 15 years. When we get anywhere near 50 years, they will reset it to 100 years.
Non-falsifiable science is not science.
A lot will happen in 50 years. And most of the projectionists in the RS will be dead. Show some faith in the intelligence of the next couple of generations! If there has been no CAGW the voting public won’t give a damn about crippling CO2 policies which means the pollies won’t give a damn about CO2. In fact coal might even be given a free run on the basis of it being a forgotten but quite economic alternative source of energy.
Thanks for that citation Bob, you Commie 🙂 While I am not a student or appreciator of the Communist economic model myself, a scientist is a scientist…
Nope, they said another 50 years, they explicitly said they meant another 50 years from now, 2065 at the earliest.
Agreed, claiming 50 years is outrageous and so unscientific. When the warming period originally was shorter than the pause, just shows what non-scientific agenda these had.
There is a falsifiable scientific observation in AGW that needs no extra time-length already confirmed and that is positive feedback. The failed observation of positive feedback has already falsified their outrageous claims. Although they don’t like to admit being wrong, so ignorance is their choice.
Too bad.
I was hoping the CAGW freaks would just keep being unreasonable. The UK (Britain) is a failed empire. The political leadership had to sell out to EVERYONE to survive WWII. Since then it has been a downward spiral of bad decisions (except under Thatcher). The country is rotting at the core due to lack of values, there are big brother cameras and TV and internet surveillance everywhere. To what end? The Muslim invasion is nearly complete in Britain and they know the WASPs that prevail over national politics are too self-loathing to do anything to stop them.
Britain…is a PC self-loathing amoral, rotting empire that has committed political suicide. We are now watching the country chain stoking and convulsing itself into oblivion.
Amber Rudd. Too late my dear. When the Muslims implement sharia I doubt Climate Change will be of concern to your new masters. Then again, neither will equal rights, religious freedom, free speech or the right to pursue happiness. So much for Magna Carta.
I’ll be dead when it all happens since I am getting old.
Apres moi, le deluge.
Well I am British and your view of my country does not seem to coincide with the views of other people in other countries. Fifth largest world economy, despite only a 62 million population. If you don’t believe that your post is not only wrong and insulting both to me and the rest of UK citizens, I suggest that you re-educate yourself by logging on to the following:
http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-kingdom/
http://new.spectator.co.uk/2013/10/why-britains-economy-will-overtake-germanys/
Yes we had to take on huge suffering,loss of life and debts to fight WW2, had we not done so, the Nazis would have taken control; of the whole of Europe. In 1940 we were alone in that conflict as the rest of Europe had been conquered by Hitler. We could have signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler and let him get on with it, but we wanted a free Europe, please see below.
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/defeat/britain-alone.htm
Bigoted and uninformed comments such as yours are an unwelcome distraction from dealing with the real enemy, radical Islam, alarmism about non-existent threats to the planet and solving the misery, deprivation and squalor of nations less fortunate than ours.
An expected reaction from the colonialist PC throwback…
where to begin? At the beginning I suppose:
1) “your view of my country does not seem to coincide with the views of other people in other countries”
2) “not only wrong and insulting”
I intended to insult Britain and the PC amoral Orwellian losers who comprise it. So ? I guess it worked.
3) “had we not done so, the N@zis would have taken control”
I believe the British got their @sses handed to them at Dunkirk and the USA and the “colonies” saved your skins, just so you could put surveillance equipment in every house in England.. Who are the N@zis now? Even Churchill thought you were finished which is why he moved the crown jewels to a rail yard in Halifax Nova Scotia…. I’d be thanking the Japanese for bombing Pearl Harbor instead of puffing like a peacock about days of better men gone by. Britain had its day… now it is a corpse animated by the necromancing vermin that is consuming its putrid flesh.
4) ” distraction from dealing with the real enemy, radical Islam, alarmism…solving the misery, deprivation and squalor of nations less fortunate than ours”
The real enemy of British subjects are the British subjects who haven’t, are not, and will not deal with the socialism, relativism and the whole PC wad. The enemy is you.
The Fall of the British Empire:
Muslin Infiltration of Britain
Surveillance of all British Citizens
If I am a bigot according to a PC self-handcuffed British socialist, for saying objective truths, then bigot I am and chose to be. Britain was great once… now it is inhabited by spineless putz’s.
Paul Westhaver,
I agree with most of what you write in your other comments. Two differences here:
First, GB was on the ropes in the early part of WWII. But after Dunkirk and the aerial Battle of Britain, Hitler had lost any chance of invading (he could have at one point; when the troops were rescued at Dunkirk, GB only had its Home Guard on its island, consisting of old men and inexperienced boys; Hitler could have pulled off an invasion if he’d done it right).
And certainly you didn’t mean that the U.S. saved GB during Dunkirk? Because we didn’t; that was all Hitler’s doing. For whatever reason we can only speculate, but he could have bagged the whole British standing army then and there, thus neutrtalizing GB as an enemy by bringing about a peace treaty with Nazi Germany. IIRC, at the time Churchill even thought that was likely. Privately, of course.
So the British resisted enough to thwart Hitler. He could still have taken Europe and the Soviet Union, but for his most famous blunder: Hitler foolishly declared war on the U.S. just 4 days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He had been goaded by FDR for months, and he didn’t perceive the big change in attitude here following the Japanese attack. But no matter, it was undoubtedly his biggest screw-up. And it is entirely to Britain’s credit that they upheld their treaty commitment to Poland. Would the U.S. uphold our NATO treaties today? One wonders…
Finally, some of the things you say about the UK now also apply to the U.S.:
…distraction from dealing with the real enemy, radical Islam and (climate) alarmism …The real enemy of British subjects are the British subjects who haven’t, are not, and will not deal with the socialism, relativism and the whole PC wad.
That last could as well apply to what the U.S. is becoming, no? Your video of the Islamic takeover of areas in GB are not much diferent from cities in Michigan and elsewhere. And since Islamists are on the ascendant, things here will only get to be more like Europe and GB.
And:
…surveillance equipment in every house…
We’re getting there pretty fast, although it’s technology driven as much as by the NSA.
And:
Britain had its day… now it is a corpse animated by the necromancing vermin that is consuming its putrid flesh.
Pretty harsh. But if that had been written about the U.S., would it be complete nonsense? Or would more than a few readers start nodding their heads in agreement? And some folks in GB disagree with what’s going on there, and here. But they just can’t do as much about it, because their system of government is not based on a legal document like ours is.
That just means the forces operating there have a somewhat bigger job here; it doesn’t mean they won’t succeed. I don’t like writing that, but that’s how I see it. And I’ve always worn my heart on my sleeve.
Yep, we wanted a free Europe.
And look what we ended up with now.
andrewmharding writes: “Yes we had to take on huge suffering,loss of life and debts to fight WW2, had we not done so, the Nazis would have taken control”
Andrew I had the privilege of being educated in Britain during the mid and late 70’s. I am not a British citizen but I have spent enough time in the country to be able to make comments. I was born in the US and have lived the majority of my life there, however I have lived in several other countries including England and Switzerland. I speak 5 languages so I’m not the traditional culturally deprived American, and though I am a critic of what America has become in my lifetime I still love my country and appreciate why you love yours; I share that feeling.
So it isn’t without some self reflection that I advance the hypothesis that the Nazis have in fact taken control and everything our fathers taught us to fight for is again at risk. One of the fronts in that battle is a subject of this publication and having read your prior posts I’ve come to think you share that opinion.
Britain, like the US, has succumbed to creeping totalitarian socialism. The “Climate Change” agenda is one we both recognize and its still a marginally civilized debate, but we haven’t been consulted on the subject of mass surveillance and there are few handles we have on it; there is no debate on that subject. It’s very fair to say we’ve been overrun and that we’ve clearly lost our will to defend our freedom. Paul simply tells the story, I don’t think he’s responsible for the content. I see it makes you angry and I share that anger, but you shouldn’t shoot the messenger. He’s right.
dbstealy,
“H1tler could have pulled off an invasion if he’d done it right).
And certainly you didn’t mean that the U.S. saved GB during Dunkirk? ”
–correct fatal mistake….GB was nearly done in and Dunkirk was an evacuation….prompting the famous Winston Churchill speech memorialized in “Fools Overture” I believe Churchill went to USA and spoke to Congress after that.
“Pearl Harbor”
—agreed
“That last could as well apply to what the U.S. is becoming, no?”
—agreed but I was trying to stay in context and on thread with the GB politicians. Relativism is a western plague.
“We’re getting there pretty fast, although it’s technology driven as much as by the NSA. ”
–I know…and I am not happy about that but Britain lead the way which is why I am angered by it. IBID
“putrid flesh”
–I admit to some poetry there but GB is way down the tubes compared with USA which is 1) a union of Sovereign States, and 2) a Republic, with 3) a second amendment. So there is hope for the west yet but 20 Trillion in debt….now that is harsh!
Cheers.
Bartleby,
“Paul simply tells the story, I don’t think he’s responsible for the content. I see it makes you angry and I share that anger, but you shouldn’t shoot the messenger. He’s right.”
My heritage is German Palitinate. My ancestors were brought to North America by the British circa 1750 after the maunder minimum due to mass starvation in the Rhine valley. I like that. I like the British Parliamentary system, legal system, the language, and dislike a few aspects of their history as well.
What has become of that great empire is not my desire or my fault. It is miserable and a loss to civilization. The world will come to regret it. It is up to the British people to wake up and grow some principles. They do not know the difference between right and wrong anymore nor will they do anything to right the wrongs. Very sad.
Dr.Richard North has a very good book, The Many, not the few, that explains in quite some detail the political situation around Dunkirk. In addition it is very “easy” to put 50 to 80 people on a minesweeper at Dunkirk. To put a tank on a barge and have it cross the Channel is something a tad more difficult. Germany did not have the logistical capability to move an army across the Channel in winter. And I also understand that it is very hard for the British to remember that the ” colonies” came to its aid. Out of memory, Canada declared war on Germany on September 1 or 2 and the first Canadian soldiers landed in GB at the end of 1939. So sorry, GB was not alone, popular misconception notwithstanding.
Joe Prins,
“Canada declared war on Germany on September 1 or 2 and the first Canadian soldiers landed in GB at the end of 1939”
Yes. Many served in the RAF and were involved in the Battle of Britain
My Canadian uncle was captured at Dieppe. 1942
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieppe_Raid
“An expected reaction from the colonialist PC throwback…”
I am neither colonialist, nor PC as you would know if you have ever read any of my other posts.
“I intended to insult Britain and the PC amoral Orwellian losers who comprise it. So ? I guess it worked”
If that is what gives you satisfaction, then fine. Personally I find a more positive outlook on life is preferable.You’re not a j1hadist are you? Because that is the sort of comment I would expect from them
“now it is a corpse animated by the necromancing vermin that is consuming its putrid flesh.”
This confirms my view.
“If I am a bigot according to a PC self-handcuffed British socialist”
I am most certainly not socialist, again you would know that had you taken the trouble to read my other posts, I would imagine that once you saw the spelling of certain words, you would dismiss what was said and move to the next post. As for self-handcuffed, I don’t know what you do in your private life, but that would not be my choice.
“for saying objective truths, then bigot I am and chose to be. Britain was great once… now it is inhabited by spineless putz’s”
You seem unable to differentiate, between objectivity and subjectivity.
You are clearly have some problem with me and my country and whatever I say is not going to change your narrow and closed mind.
Don’t forget your medication!
Mr Westhaver seems to be applying the sort of logic employed by climate alarmists, but to history ? And arriving at similarly strange conclusions 🙂
Paul, I see no muslin in that video!
Hello Paul. “Chain stoking” is actually Cheyne-Stokes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyne%E2%80%93Stokes_respiration
Greg!!!
Thank-you so much. I am most often wrong about everything so I truly enjoy being educated. I barely know the term and have never read it, only heard it uttered by my wife who used to be a palliative care nurse. It always bothered me because I could not assume the etymology of chain and stoking . Now that you have educated me, I am much more satisfied. Thank-you very much.
Paul,
If you are so inclined there is a new book re Dieppe: One day in August by O’Keefe. Gives it a whole new and fascinating light on this raid.
Father in law was on Juno beach on June 6 and came through, may he now rest in peace.
Joe,
Thank-you. I will.
Paul is right in 2 aspects of his somewhat off-topic rant against the UK. Yes we did get our arse kicked at Dunkirk and yes we didn’t stand totally alone in the dark days of 1940 and 1941. We had the support of the Commonwealth countries and fighters from European countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and France that could make their way to us. The only American fighters during those dark days were those were went up to Canada and gave up their US citizenship in order to fight with us. The US didn’t enter the European war until Italy and Germany declared war on the them after Pearl Harbour in December 1941. If Japan han’t triggered things off the US would most probably sat the whole war on the sidelines
The British empire was very successful, and then it failed, like all empires. Creeping socialism became big when Britain joined the common market in the early 70’s IMO. The rot started before that but culminated in a major event called “The Winter of Discontent”, which Thatcher tried to heave Britain out of the hole it dug for herself. Then we had Kinnock, Blair and Brown to, literally, turn Britain back to the carcass it was in the 70’s.
The history of Britain post WW2 is littered with very very bad political decisions. Passenger aircraft, Britain was a world leader. Computers, Britain was a world leader. Car/Bike manufacturing, Britain was a world leader. Britain is now a world leader in race to the bottom. I pity my family there when the energy crunch comes…and it will be a big problem, the 70’s power strikes will pale.
Patrick,
What do see as the underlying cause of the collapse?
IMO, it simply became too big, and expensive, to support itself, and started to crumble. Britain could not afford to defend, manage and maintain colonised countries and leaders in those countries could sense it, especially after the two world wars. The last nail in the coffin was Suez and the aftermath in 1952.
Gee, prioritizing energy security at a reasonable price while reducing the use of coal to the extent possible makes so much sense– hard to imagine it coming from a government office. Kudos, if they follow through on it all.
Why on earth would any rational person want to limit the use of coal?
Money money money – a global tax on CO 2 or life itself?
…a global tax on CO 2 or life itself?
No difference.
Have you ever heard the phrase “honest fool”? This is a person who does foolish things but genuinely believes in their causes. I think most people fall into this group. This is why I advocate the philosphy “not evil, just wrong”.
benofhouston,
Most believers in the ‘climate change’ scare are honest. I agree with that. But a good fraction are not; they are self-serving, from those who are knowing ‘useful fools’ who understand that it’s a scam, to those who are fully complicit in the ‘climate change’ hoax, and dishonestly promoting it for their own self-aggrandizement.
The problem is this: just like good currency is driven out of circulation by bad currency, humans are also subject to Gresham’s Law. The bad ones will drive out or marginalize the well meaning (good) ones.
But if and when evil triumphs, those ‘useful idiots’ are dispensed with. They were just tools, anyway.
The problem is that there are some very evil people, who use the “dangerous man-made global warming” scare for their own nefarious means. It is not hyperbole to say that people like Soros, Obama, and their British and EU counterparts are using that hoax to take more control, and to limit freedom.
So the “not evil, just wrong” folks are just being used. Many of them like being used. But the real threat is from those who hide behind the scenes, and who are controlling the country’s education and media agenda; what the old Soviets would call the “organs of society”. They are truly evil, but they’ve mastered the technique of: “Look over there! A squirrel!”
And the public looks at the squirrel, not at the new Hitler and Stalin wannabes.
benofhouston,
“This is why I advocate the philosphy “not evil, just wrong”.”
I advocate the “philosophy” of not deciding such things in advance . . and am inclined to suspect any who advocate I change that “philosophy” ; )
:
It’s a ray of hope but I’m far from convinced the pendulum has started to swing in our direction enough to make a difference in current policy. I’m thinking that if Obama and his ilk get their way in Paris, we’ll all be migrating to Syria by 2025.
mhjhnsn
November 18, 2015 at 11:03 am
“Gee, prioritizing energy security at a reasonable price while reducing the use of coal to the extent possible makes…” much nonsense
Amber Rudd(erless) said she wanted to remove polluting carbon intensive fuels. Ch4 methane has 4 hydrogen electrons and 1 carbon atom it is a carbon intensive fuel that is why it burns Co2 which has 2 oxygen atoms and 1 carbon atom Rudd still describes as a pollutant, you have to wonder what imbecile drafted her script?
Coal burned as pulverised dust at 1300 C achieves full combustion emitting Co2 as a result, no difference unless burned in low tech generators in China without scrubbers.
It really is quite sad that within DECC there is no one single person who appears to understand in any demonstrable detail the simple nuts and bolts of their job.
I send repeated emails and now Rudd and DECC just cut me off, they really do not want to know. Angela Merkel can burn as much lignite and coal from America, South Africa, Columbia, Australia and Poland but the UK OMG we are all going to die.
There are plenty of people in DECC who know where this policy is taking us – viz. to (a very cold) hell in a handcart.
But the DGs and everyone hoping to reach those dizzy heights are all true believers – they wouldn’t be where they are, or stand a chance of getting there in the future, if they had ever shown any sign of being even slightly off-message.
It goes without saying that successive DECC Secretaries of State have been fully paid up FoE/Greenpiss quislings too. Ms Rudd has had to pull back on some of the most expensive subsidy offers, but she’s as committed to the green blob as Miliband, Huhne and Davey ever were. Most of the junior ministers have been cut from the same cloth too.
Osborne is controlling the money. Rudd has had to agree to a 30% budget cut. She is forced into a more rational way of thinking, but still irrational. Where is the gas to come from? Little progress in convincing the NIMBY’s to allow fracking near their pretty houses and gardens.
Burns CO2? You mean burns to CO2. CH4+2O2 = CO2+2H2O
A skeptic is an alarmist who got mugged by the data. Or a cold winter.
She doesn’t have much choice. Unshackled from Liberal coalition partners, Chancellor George Osborne has cut off the supply of subsidies to dilute, intermittent, unreliable renewables.
He also knows very well that there’s no money in coal and it’s bad politics, but there’s plenty of revenue, energy security and the good politics of a new industry to be found in shale.
Don’t thank Amber. This has George Osborne’s fingerprints all over it.
Hats off to you George.
Another comment:
Everyone acts out of self interest. A sad axiomatic truth. Actions are interest dependent and guided by how the self is served. So what is her interest in this?
I suspect that this new position serves some cryptic purpose of the leftists. ?
Don’t be so conspiratorial. Not shutting off the power is her overt goal, and I don’t see any reason to doubt it after the close calls this weekend, and doubtless a number of people calling for her and everyone in her department to be “sacked”, as they like to put it, for allowing the situation to come to this point.
benofhouston,
“Don’t be so conspiratorial.”
Because . . ?
I’m tired of being told to believe what to me is a fairy tale, about humans seeking or in power being incapable of conspiring . . History begs to differ, rather relentlessly, it seems to me ; )
I realize that, John, but don’t force in conspiracies or subterfuge when the real reason is plain and simple. She’s afraid for her job because her department made a number of well-documented blunders that has put Britain’s electrical system in a precarious state, as many people have been warning will happen for years, and now she’s trying to side-step to keep the lights on while not alienating her power base.
Not just her.
She is part of the British Parliamentary system, not a republic like the USA. Her self-interest is linked to the caucus. She has 3 masters. 1) her constituents.. every 4-5 years, 2) herself and 3) her party power brokers. That is the structure of their system. It isn’t conspiratorial, it is just a fact of life in constitutional monarchies. Her actions are in service to the caucus and had to be approved by the PM. So… what are they really up to?
Paul Westhaver,
Well, it seems possible to me that this is an attempt to soften/deflect the publics reaction to agreements about to be reached in Paris, by generating the impression that it’s all just a sort of a “if we can afford it” commitment. An attempt at “spin” as we often call it in our hypothetical Republic ; )
JohnKnight,
Hmmm. Maybe…Maybe. I am not in the inner circles of the leftists as the co-conspire their roll-out at Paris but you may be onto something. This may well be part of an orchestration to play to both the Paris crowd and the home crowd simultaneously and yield a palatable win, that isn’t a local loss. You know… thinking about it… I bet you are right. This is related to the anticipated extremism at Paris and the realization that they can render a home town win with COP 21 language. It is weasel words. That way they can claim victory in both venues. Ok. I am on board.
IF global warming caused a catastrophe, the blame can be shared with the rest of the world. If the lights go out, the blame rests solely with the government.
Amazing how they have spun this. I think she/they( the UK) have lost the plot. They currently get 29% of their energy from coal. Yes many of the coal fired power stations are old and inefficient –ie. they need replacing with ones like the 1000+ being built in South East Asia , but to abandon coal is mad.
Where are they going to get all the gas from –Russia ?? The Greens object to fracking the vast reserves of gas believed to available in the UK so there will continue to be long running battles on that front.
One word –madness !
Ed Miliband made sure that no new c-f would be build by requiring any new plant to include CCS, adding so much to both construction and operating costs that the generators have just walked away.
See my post upstream. They signed a contract for natural gas with Cheniere, subject to the US lifting the ban on exports (which happened), a year or two ago. All Cheniere have to do is finish their new terminal, then they will start sending the tankers over. As far as I am concerned, switching from being dependant on Russia for gas to the US is NOT energy security: it is remaining a client state of another increasingly unstable overbearing country.
+100
There may be a light on after all….
The War on Coal continues with natural gas filling the void as “renewables” never were a real alternative. A part of me believes this was the plan from the very beginning. And when we reach the point where you couldn’t give a coal mine away they will be snatched up for pennies on the dollar by the very people who pushed the global warming scam.
If you like a good conspiracy (and I do), doesn’t the possibility that government and the oil companies have been in cahoots from the very beginning with this nonsense make some sense, particularly with natural gas gaining much market share at coal’s expense?
Perhaps Dudd has started to realise how much abuse she will get when the lights go out. It’s all far too late to save us. Government interference has scared off any company from even bidding to build new gas generation. The government is reduced to pleading with the French and Chinese (Labour having flogged our nuclear industry off) to build just one nuclear plant and pay extortionate amounts for the electricity. Local small scale nuclear would be one solution that is on our own door step – Rolls Royce makers of submarine reactors. They wouldn’t be able to use British steel as that industry is doomed due to cost. Or aluminium as that has already gone. When the cold sweeps in and the winds drop they will have to fire up the diesels at hundreds of times the rate of coal-fired electricity. Most worrying is that it has already happened once and it wasn’t even cold. And don’t forget that their policy is to kill off domestic gas use as well. Anyone got gas central heating? Imagine all that switched to electricity. Dudd also fired off at the Big 6 suppliers over reducing their prices while her own department was publishing policy to make energy more expensive. As to plans for 2023 or 2025, there is an election in 2020, preceded by the referendum on the EU in 2017.
Not just one nuclear plant. There will be one at Hinkley and one at Sizewell and my nuclear spies tell me there will be two near Sellafield. But as you say nuclear is far too expensive. No one will risk the investment without the prospect of a huge payoff.
Gerry, England: And every offshore wind turbine has a diesel generator in it’s base to supply working power when there isn’t sufficient or there is too much wind. Isn’t that and interesting twist?
The Guardian’s Damien Carrington immediately launched yet another of his trademark handwringing screeds in response to Ms Rudd’s announcement. Suffice to say he’s not happy at all. Amazing how an otherwise intelligent chap still COMPLTELY fails to grasp that ‘renewables’ are currently unable to power a first world economy.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2015/nov/18/uk-energy-amber-rudd-paris-climate-summit
it can be argued that retiring coal and replacing the generation with gas and nuclear is costly, imprudent,and unnecessarily cautious – but it is at least doable. This is a big step in the right direction.
And it buys time without completely destroying the UK’s economy or putting it at risk of losing imported electricity. I don’t think there will be any CO2 induced CAGW but anything that puts the brakes on the current green movement is a help. One step at a time. This pollie has concluded that perhaps destroying the UK economy is just as big an issue as the other greatest threat to civilization.
Some kinds of self defeating policy decisions will eventually reveal themselves to be such, when they demonstrate precisely the effects that the critics of these policies predicted.
In the case of the system of energy subsidies it has been clear all along to sensible observers that the system is designed to reward the most ineffective and expensive forms of “alternative” electricity generation.
And also clear that this would lead to unreliability of the system and rapidly rising costs to consumers.
Since at every turn we have chosen to pour cash into the most expensive and unproven sources of supply, then reality cannot but reveal itself.
Formerly people used planning and thinking ahead to analyze the potential outcome of policies.
These days only Beijing and the Kremlin are taking such an approach.
The west seems to have become caught in a trap of its own making whereby rational criticism of any sort is labelled as “d*n**lism” and heavily censored from the MSM.
Certainly. here in the UK the official state media has placed a total sanction upon any criticism of the dumb leftist takeover of the electricity supply system.
Nobody is allowed to mention that their may be any concerns, whatsoever.
Just as with Lysenkoism, where even the starving peasants were not allowed to believe that peasants were starving.
So facts are disallowed – but eventually the system will start to gobble up so much money that the error will be impossible to hide. Since stupidity is its own punishment.
I’m 82 years old. I’m a Canadian, and I worked and lived in the UK for over a year (1962-63). It turned out to be the coldest winter in decades. The snow never melted. Our house was equipped with a central fireplace that didn’t provide nearly enough heat. The bedroom windows had ice on the inside. I’ve never experienced such discomfort in my life, and I have great admiration for the strength of the British people who cheerfully put up with the cold, often sending their kids to school wearing shorts. Anybody who blithely declares that we can do away with fossil fuels is dreaming in technicolour or hasn’t experienced the reality of trying to sleep through a brutally cold night. Talk is cheap. Promises and commitments about a distant future are easy, but when push comes to shove, I can assure you, altruistic concern for people who will live 100 years from now will quickly give way to the imperatives of self preservation and a comfortable life in the here and now.
Trebla,
The reason we put up with it was back then we didn’t know any different. In the 1960 the UK was still a relatively backward country, at least for the working class. No double glazing – slngle glazed badly fitted windows that let the draft in, badly fitted doors with gaps underneath that let the draught in, no central heating, no carpets on the floor only linoleum which was ice cold on the feet, usually only one room in the house heated and the rest completely unheated, water pipes on the outside of the house so they froze up. My kids just can’t understand how we survided in those days. But as I said we didn’t know, or couldn’t afford, any better.. .
You have just accurately described the conditions in which I currently live, here in 2015 in the UK.
Except that I do not have linoleum. And I also have no mains water or electricity.
So, a slight advance on the stone age.
And whilst I do know better, I cannot afford to significant improve this situation.
Apart from basics such as sealing up the frames with repairs and draught excluder.
I have friends who receive housing and benefits from the state, who appear to live in a far more luxurious condition, and without the burdens and responsibilities of home ownership.
Amber Rudd is a politician. She’s quite smart, but she’s a politician.
This statement of policy is quite smart. It squares the crcle, for a bit anyway.
It’s not a damascene conversion. Expect a promotion.
“…the pause would have to continue for another 50 years, for them to admit that their climate models might be wrong.”
Your models never predicted any kind of a pause, so they’re already wrong.
trebla:
I can assure you that I experienced the same thing in the 1980’s in Northern England. It was, and probably still is, seen as a sign of progress if the unemployed and low paid can afford to shift ice-formation outside of the building during a hard winter spell. A bit of local Global-warming would be a fine thing to escape the misery.
It is still grim up-north when the the wind blows in winter.
Correction: ‘It is still grim up-north
when the wind blows in winter.🙂First, good luck shutting down coal power plants. That will cost you big time. Heading into renew(un)ables. Second, it will not be pause we’ll be seening for the next 30 years, it will be cooling for a degree. The sun has been slowing for years and that will continue. So back to start for AGW. That will be harder for the alarmists to explain than a pause.
Knut
Fully agree.
A bit of a degree warming – at least in temperate or pole-ward latitudes – is to be welcomed.. [I note and appreciate that this will not end weather, and storms/heatwaves/deluges/droughts and so forth].
And, like other posters here, I prefer warmth to chilling.
What’s not to like??
Auto
And should it cool a degree in 30 years, then the pause will go back to 1850!
Even when a Maunder minimum combines with a net-ocean-cycle downtrend, the average global temperature only declines at about 0.18 K per decade. Determined from the graphs in http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com where calculated temperature trajectory matches measured 97% since before 1900.
In the land of the blind the one-eyed woman is preferable. Something like that I would think.
Is this (making energy security #1 priority) about common sense or is it a hint of the health of Britain’s electrical grid? After all if the grid IS going down you at least want to tell people you want to fix it before the first black out.
The positive spin to her stance is that if the continuing solar changes are truly leading into a grand minimum event in the near future, then the cooling conditions should be very apparent prior to 2023. Once that cooling trend is plainly visible for the world to see and feel, then public sentiment will change drastically against the warmists and CAGW. The politicians who haven’t already rejected the CAGW claims will then have to pay attention to the public mood as well as Nature’s mood.
Common sense, concern for the stress of high energy prices on the poor and middle class, finding ways to encourage the economy growing, solving today’s problems instead off 100 years into the future “could be” problems…
They must have put something in the water for this unusual governmental behavior.
Alx, this is what they’re doing:
As energy prices rise (“necessarily skyrocket”), the poor will be squeezed the most. The gov’t will then come in and ‘rescue’ them with handouts, making them not only more dependent on the gov’t, but in fear of losing the crumbs being thrown to them. The message will be clearly understood by all: you get these subsidies as long as you cooperate. And that means: “support us, and vote the right way.”
So the bureaucrats have them by the short hairs. The poor will do as they’re told, in order to eat and have warmth. Yes, it is that insidious.
NEVER take a career politician’s word for anything; always look at their actions. That will clarify everything.
IANAR, and never have been (nor a Dem), but this is how I see it: the Democrat Party used to represent the workers. The Republican Party used to represent business owners. That has been turned on its head. Now the Republicans are supported by millions of donations from taxpaying workers, and the Democrats have carved out a specialty niche of extremely wealthy business owners, and unions; mostly in the public sector.
But the rest of the Democrats’ tenuous support comes from the unemployed, and those on welfare, and now from the fastest-rising demographic of all: illegal aliens, and the citizens of foreign countries that are brought in by the shipload and set up, complete (at least in California) with ballots handed to them to vote. In case everyone doen’t know: in the U.S. it is illegal for any non-citizen to vote.
California just passed a law requiring its Secretary of State to issue voter registration forms to anyone who applies at the DMV for a drivers license, and for anyone collecting public assistance money. The illegals’ friendly neighborhood MS-13 enforcers will make it clear that they must sign and send in their ballot requests. Their neighborhood contact will take care of the rest, including being on hand when the voting ballots arrive.
That follows a law that forbids any state worker from questioning the immigration status of anyone applying for a drivers license or for state aid. Those laws follow the “Motor Voter” law, which paved the way for Gov. Moonbeam Brown’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ immigration policy (the ‘Motor Voter’ law registers people to vote automatically when they renew their annual car registration).
And speaking of Gov. Brown: he is serving his 4th term as governor — after the state’s voters specifically voted to restrict all officeholders, including the governor, to a maximum of 2 terms. Courts ruled against Brown… but he’s still ‘Governor’!)
California leads the country in laws like this. So watch what they do. Because politicians will lie to your face. Watch their actions, and ask yourself: ‘What are they trying to do?’
It is already crystal clear to many state residents: the voting process is being rigged to allow and encourage illegals to vote. That in itself is illegal. Only citizens may vote. But California’s legislature is already three-fourths Democrats, with a state Attorney General and their Governor.
So who is going to stop them? The same folks who tried to stop Brown from illegally running for Governor?
“You get these subsidies as long as you cooperate”. Absolutely, this is the new reality.
Here in the UK, I have just last month installed a stove that burns wood.
I am currently burning wood cut down by myself this last spring on my own land.
My stove is not approved, since it is a beautifully constructed (and super efficient) stove from 1981, renovated lovingly by me.
My flue is not approved, since I used 8mm wall stainless, and the approved flue is 0.5mm crap which corrodes through.
I do not qualify for any subsidy. In fact, a council assessment would doubtlessly require me to remove my stove and fit one according to the rules. Rules created by the intellectually defective.
Whereas, if I used an approved pellet burner, with approved fitting by an approved installer, and then I burnt approved imported pellet chips in it – only then could I receive the approved subsidy payment for heating my own home.
Other people are doing this and my taxes are paying for these people to heat their homes on imported pellets. Meanwhile I am breaking all the regulations by attempting to quietly live my life without intruding upon others and whilst using my own trees as a renewable source of heat.
A world where 5 out of 10 people receive a state subsidy is identical to one in which 5 out of 10 receive a state penalty. Since the state is zero-sum. It giveth as it taketh away.
This is communism by the backdoor.
in..frog;
Google ‘Electricity Freedom’. For about $200 you can build a small composter/generator using any plant debris etc. as fuel and have free power for life. Basically a 40+ gal pressure vessel, pump, and alternator. Scavenge from scrap if $200 is too much. Email me; I paid the full $39 for the designs, but have the right to distribute as many copies as I want. brianfh01@yahoo.ca with subject “Power Generator”.
She is covered, no matter which way the wind blows.
So what ?
Never trust what the Grauniad says. Go the DECC website and read what Amber Rudd actually said. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/amber-rudds-speech-on-a-new-direction-for-uk-energy-policy
“Amber worked in banking. If there is one thing dealing with business and finance teaches you, that lesson is not to ignore inconsistencies ”
For sure, and in banking if you are short at the end of the day it out of your pocket, same as in many stores etc. As it should be for the Warmististas.
getitright:
It seems you need to get it right.
There is only one overarching principle in banking and it is the following.
If you rob a bank you go to jail
but
if a bank robs you the bankers are awarded a bonus.
Richard
It reminds one irresistibly of the dialogue between Thomas Carlyle and Margaret Fuller, the 19C American idealist and transcendalist.
Fuller: I have decided to accept the universe.
Carlyle: Madam, you had better!
Why on earth anyone ever thought that the UK, doing one or two percent of the total global emissions of CO2, could do anything whatever to ‘tackle global warming’ through its energy policy, that’s a total mystery. If the UK were to stop emitting totally tomorrow the effect would be too small to measure.
Sometimes you read that if the UK acts, the world will follow their inspiring example. As if they were all looking anxiously at what the UK does so as to imitate them!
Is it madness? Idiocy? Wishful thinking? A bit of all three?
Yeah, the world is going to follow our inspiring example.
Once the E.U. and U.K. have finished kicking themselves in the nuts, then the rest of the world is going to ask us how we did such a fantastic job of raising out energy costs whilst making no measurable change to the world’s climate. And whilst the U.K. could actually benefit from slight warming even if the theory were precisely correct.
We are now world leaders in off-shore wind.
We are world leaders because nobody else in the world is daft enough to try to imitate our huge error.
“If there is one thing dealing with business and finance teaches you, that lesson is not to ignore inconsistencies”
That’s absolutely false, it implies that people are coherent. Many aren’t and can say contradictory things even in one period.
Hey there is even one ideology made on it: Marxism.
And i even met Communist entrepreneurs, the $$ were all logically assessed, outside that was a mambo jambo of incoherent thoughts.
I often wonder if there’s not a covert agenda behind the “move to renewables”…if governments are reacting to Peak Oil by trying to conserve their coal supplies to make synthetic oil for their militaries and essential transportation. I’ve read the US Air Force is already experimenting with coal-liquefication to keep their planes flying. So they do know about oil depletion and are planning for it. I know the British government put together a panel with some big name British companies to study Peak Oil. By referring to “climate change” instead of Peak Oil, they could be trying to keep the population from freaking out about having no more gas for private use in 25-30 years.
Anyone else think this may be the reality behind the propaganda curtains?
AndyJ:
‘Peak Oil’ is nonsense. It will never happen.
Synthetic oil (syncrude) from coal has been commercially conducted for more than a century by use of the Fischer-Tropsch process and the Sasol process developed from it. Since 1994 syncrude from coal has been possible at economic cost by use of the Liquid Solvent Extraction (LSE) process.
So, no, your suggestion is not the “reality behind the propaganda curtains”.
Richard
I believe peak oil will happen. Not because oil will actually run out but because the “run out” will be manufactured.
Patrick MJD:
“Believe” whatever you want, but Peak Oil cannot be “manufactured”.
Until oil is no longer needed (as food for horses is not now needed for transportation), if existing sources of oil are restricted then others will be found (as last resort by making syncrude). I suggest you research the Oil Crisis of the 1970s.
Peak Oil is a nonsensical notion: it will not happen because it cannot happen.
Richard
The problem with that plan is that we have proven reserves that represent over 50 years supply, and a lot more than that in expected reserves, and even more than that available if prices get high enough. By the time we get there, we expect technological improvement to make even more accessible. There’s no propaganda involved. There is just no shortage of oil in the foreseeable future.
The Coal-to-Oil process was invented in 1925 and made viable under the Nazi regime (Germany has no oil reserves, but a lot of coal and chemists), and it has been improved since then. You can make oil out of anything that can burn. It’s just more expensive than drilling it.
There is no peak oil pushing people to renewables. There never was.
Well whatever her motives sh has got the green ‘blob’ screaming. Take a look at this:
https://youtu.be/zrq-m12Cuhs
Having known some of the climate scientists personally in their young days nothing on earth would get me into their camp. The contemptible comment that the pause would have to be for fifty years to admit they were wrong when they jumped on the band wagon after ten is the sort of base opportunist dishonesty I remember being the hallmark of them way back.
Wait till she discovers CO2 doesn’t affect climate!
The “REAL” reason Amber Rudd is in that position in government has NOTHING to do about “merit or ability”. The only reason SHE was placed into that position is because she is a Woman. No other reason. PC or in that case “Affirmative Action” once again rears it’s ugly head.