Ultimate Climate Hypocrisy: Coal Burning BoJo Demands the World “Grow Up”

“Or perhaps there is another explanation?” – perhaps another Biden ?

What’s happening is that the UK (and Germany) are coming face to face with the fact that renewable generation is not fit for purpose. You have to have so much available backup that you are quite literally better off not having it at all.

The problem is not simply that there are fluctuations. The problem is that these are huge and have very deep consequences. The supply can go from one third or more of generation to close to zero in a matter of hours, and it can remain there for unpredictable periods varying from a few hours to two or three weeks.

In the UK this is particularly likely to happen in the middle of winter, when there are fairly regular slow moving high pressure systems which produce clear skies, very cold weather, and no wind.

This happens at the same time as the days are shorter so solar produces also far less, and does not produce it after 5pm when peak residential demand happens.

The problem comes with the consequences of such a fluctuation, when wind and solar make up a substantial part of generation. The first consequence is that conventional generation has to be switched in. This requires gas, since the greens have turned off coal. This then raises demand for gas just at the point where gas demands for heat and hot water are also peaking. This then raises prices, and it may also mean that industrial uses of gas and electricity must be cut in order to keep homes heated.

We then find that odd critical supplies of apparently unrelated industrial products produce a ripple effect through the economy, as when fertiliser manufacture is suspended with the unexpected consequence that there is no CO2 available for use in meat production and packaging. The whole economy runs on relatively cheap and reliably available energy. Cut that off, and the consequences are huge and far reaching.

You can imagine that if the government’s agenda of moving to EVs and heat pumps for all home heating is really enacted, the failure of supply during January and February will do huge amounts of collateral damage. It will show up in all kinds of unexpected places. Whoever would have thought, after all, that a couple of weeks of calm weather would lead to a shortage of meat and poultry?

To avoid all this you have to maintain a conventional generating capacity and fuel stocks able fully to replace the renewables at fairly short notice. This means running coal plants in standby, and having large amounts of gas capacity ready to go. And, as is becoming increasingly apparent, the green dream of heat pumps and EVs is only doable if you reduce the number of cars by 90% and in addition build or reactivate coal-fired power stations. Heat pumps? Probably impossible to get enough power in the coldest months to drive them.

In short, its becoming clear that the government agenda on energy and climate is simply impossible to realize. That wind and solar are worse than useless. Serious attempts at it will lead inexorably to three day weeks and mass unemployment.

The other thing that is becoming admitted in the run-up to COP26 is that all this will make zero difference to the alleged rationale for it. Its all supposed to be being done because global emissions and climate. But its now increasingly being admitted in the UK, and interestingly in Germany too, that none of this will have any effect on global emissions as long as China, India and the others carry on with their current plans.

The UK is headed for a crisis not only of electricity and energy supply this winter, but also of beliefs. Its getting harder and harder to deny the realities of energy supply and of who is doing the lion’s share of the emitting and how pointless the local green program is.

There are cracks in the wall of denial appearing now in the BBC. Coverage of Germany and its energy crisis the other day, interview with a small business owner sadly wondering what effect ‘little Germany’ could have on global emissions, even if it does limit its own. The first small mentions in the Guardian that the recent shortage of wind has something to do with the problem.

There is reason both for pessimism and optimism. Be pessimistic about the coming winter, if you live in the UK, and prepare for the worst. But be surprisingly optimistic about COP26, which seems increasingly likely to confront the crazed climate alarmists with inescapable political and energy realities.

They are starting to recover their senses, one at a time and slowly, but its happening.

As all the Planet’s anthropogenic problems stem fundamentally from runaway, overpopulation are we seriously to be lectured on green issues by a man with six children who is still happily pumping them out? Grow up, indeed. This is weapons grade hypocrisy.

Well the jury is still out on that Cumbrian coal mine…

Meanwhile the UK still has just 3 coal power plants, all with a hard ‘must close’ date of 2024.

I would point out the coal plant came on line after 55 days with no coal running at all due to unplanned maintenance at UK nuclear plant. Coal coming onstream late summer to cover maintenance is a pattern seen also last year.

What this article ignores is the enormous scale of UK planning towards net zero and renewables: the article quoted is just representing an opinion even that huge amount isn’t enough.

I reiterate the current crisis is because of the price of natural gas, not any shortage of gas available to the UK this winter. If we get our usual windy conditions – and 2021 summer has been the lowest wind in 60 years, an extreme end of the variability, then we’ll be using less gas this winter and saving as a result.

Has any UK renewable policy contributed to this price crisis? No, though perhaps there is an issue around how much gas storage we retained.

I am not a political supporter of Boris, but please realise that he didn’t come up with UK green renewable policy, he didn’t get the idea from Carrie, rather that even he has been persuaded by the weight of evidence, though it goes against his own political preferences.

He is putting forward the view held by the overwhelming majority of UK govt, political parties (fringe like UKIP excepted), industry and science, based on the science.

The BBC does not originate this stuff: it represents the mainstream view.

He is not loony, but Luvstruck, every night gazing into these green googly eyes and listening to climate drivel pillow talk, that’s what’s addled his brain. We heard that when in the USA, he’d struck a deal to have Westinghouse build the UK a new fleet of conventional pressurised water nuclear reactors at the old existing sites. Timescale 10-12 years and costs min £15 billion per site. They’re having a larf, John. We taught them all they’ll never know, those jokers at Westinghouse …. Hey, Rolls-Royce Civil Nuclear makes all their spare parts and services all the American, French, and even yes Chinese reactors. Without R-R, they’d all beef hooked !

You know, that’s the same Westinghouse that was wholly owned by the British Government, until that half-witted Gordoom Brine sold it for just 10 million sobs, when it had almost tens times that in orders on the books. We don’t need the Chinese, Japanese, or indeed Americans to build us nuclear reactors.

We have in Rolls-Royce Civil Nuclear, (a wholly owned subsidiary of British Aerospace, the UK government’s arms and munitions business), a company that’s capable of building a fleet of reactors at around £1.5 Billion per Gigawatt per 12 months, at the very minimum. That’s about HALF the cost, in HALF the time as anything we’ve seen from foreign interlopers.

Not only that but the Royal Navy has at least 8 working nuclear reactors, in laid up reserve submarines, each capable of generating over 300MW of electrical power, and a further 150MW at the prop shaft. There’s an instant two and a half GigaWatts, if we’re really that desperate. Do tell those foreigners to shove it, sling their hook, and beetle off; we don’t need em Boris !

“Is Boris simply mouthing a bunch of politically convenient words, with no intention of following through?”

Hopefully, after COPS and Robbers 26, he will quietly walk away from the worst extremes of this nonsense. He is famous for U-turns. It depends how much push back he gets. He has an eco-warrior family in addition to his ultra-green wife. Dad Stanley is “International Adviser” to the “Conservative Environmental Network”, journalist sister Rachel is a director of a Conservative millennials think tank which is pushing Net Zero, called “Bright Blue”, but are dark green.

in a decade or so when all this nonsense really bites the architects of this lunacy will be long gone, retired in some warm country.