From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Building new gas power plants will, of course, “only make the transition to renewables-based power unnecessarily costly”. How do I know? Because I heard it from a bunch of climate activists calling themselves Beyond Fossil Fuels. What’s more, building new gas plants runs contrary to the “emerging consensus” that Europe must phase out all fossil fuel-generation of power by 2035.
I’m used to activists making sweeping assertions and talking in generalities rather than addressing the boring old details like how we keep the lights on when there is little in the way of wind and solar energy on offer, but this really does take the biscuit. Only a “consensus” of climate activists with their heads in the clouds – plus Ed Miliband – thinks we could save consumers money by closing down all our gas power plants in the near future. Judge European governments by their actions rather than their words and the clear consensus is that we are very much going to need gas power in the future. As Beyond Fossil Fuels itself reveals, Britain is not the only country that is building new gas plants. Across Europe, 72 gigawatts-worth of them are being planned. This may well be contrary to the targets governments have set themselves to decarbonise their power sectors, but when forced to make a choice between virtue-signalling and keeping the lights on they are invariably choosing the latter.
It ought to be obvious that you cannot construct a national grid on solar and wind power alone. Renewables are great on a sunny, windy day like today when wind and solar farms between them are generating 21 gigawatts of power. It is rather less good on calm winter evenings when they can struggle to generate 1 gigawatt. What makes it possible to incorporate so much wind and solar power in our energy mix is gas power plants, which can be turned up or down at short notice to balance variable and unpredictable renewable power.
Only a “consensus” of climate activists with their heads in the clouds – plus Ed Miliband – thinks we could save consumers money by closing down all our gas power plants in the near future
Take gas away and you have a serious problem. We could store energy in lithium batteries or pumped storage reservoirs – but at a very high cost. We could theoretically use surplus power to generate hydrogen via electrolysis of water, store the hydrogen in underground caverns and burn it to generate power on windless and sunless days – except that the technology doesn’t yet exist on a commercial scale and when it does it is likely to be as expensive, if not more so, than lithium batteries. It certainly won’t be saving consumers money.
Rather than seeing gas a great evil, green lobbyists should see it for what it is: part of a system which has allowed us hugely to reduce carbon emissions from power generation over the past three decades. It has enabled us to all-but banish coal power plants – a form of energy which, gigawatt for gigawatt, produces around twice as many carbon emissions. And it has enabled the rollout of wind and solar by providing reliable back-up. Moreover, it may be possible in future to fit gas plants with carbon capture technology – although that won’t be cheap, either.
Green lobbyists are making themselves an irrelevance by turning against all fossil fuels in all circumstances. Governments may have nodded along with their demands up until now, by setting net zero targets. But clearly, when ideology collides with reality, governments are not going to sacrifice the well-being of their citizens. The move to build new gas plants is yet one more sign of Europe’s retreat from unrealistic net zero targets.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/27/europes-net-zero-retreat-is-gathering-steam/
When first conceived, wind and solar were seen as an “add-on” to other forms of generation, not an alternative. It’s only virtue-signalling idiots like Milliband who believe that they could replace traditional fuels.
The big secret is that renewable power output in Europe peaked in 2017! Oh, they added a bit more since, but all the first generation “farms” (47 Gigawatts as of 2019 – not a word since- were awaiting decommissioning). Their reporting is hiding several issues. 1) they had shutdown coal and nuclear plants and reported increased ‘percentage’ of renewables.but but did not mention actual total of power produced was declining! 2) In reporting output from the fleet, they used nameplate capacity totals, but its well known that average output at real capacity declines on average 1.5% a year! and 3) 25 year windmill useful lives turned out to be 15 to 20 years.
Yes we are in panic mode for sure.
Well said!
Ed Miliband is a bit like dad…
Gordon Brown’s spin doctor Damian McBride argued that Ed Miliband was obsessed with maintaining his father’s legacy. Winning the leadership was Ed’s ‘ultimate tribute’ to his father – an attempt to ‘achieve his father’s vision and ensure David Miliband did not traduce it’.
…
‘The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world . . . you sometimes want them almost to lose (the war) to show them how things are. Ralph (Adolphe) Miliband
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2435751/Red-Eds-pledge-bring-socialism-homage-Marxist-father-Ralph-Miliband-says-GEOFFREY-LEVY.html
He’s chip off the old block A really nasty elitist – with two kitchens
Ed Miliband: we only use the smaller of our two kitchens Labour leader confirms his house has two kitchens, but says he and his wife barely use the larger one
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/13/ed-miliband-two-kitchens-use-smaller-one
Political meetings at the Miliband manor must be very cramped.
Miliband’s father was a self declared Marxist. Ed is a closet Marxist but just as deluded as his father. His brother is just a socialist as far as we can tell.
Miliband’s The Climate change Act in 2008 was a classic, destroy the economy act perfectly designed by the Marxist mind to traduce a profit based economy such as the UK.
The puzzle is why the Theresa May premiership endorsed the nonsense of the Climate Change Act with her own amendment called Net Zero. No debate in Parliament she just appended that destructive policy to the 2008 Climate Change Act of Ed Miliband.
Why a so called Conservative would do that is beyond reason? Sadly Theresa May was a well honed failure at the Home Office before she took over the top job, so maybe it just became a natural desire feature of her political career to be a failure?
Who knows, but she certainly achieved being a complete failure. I say this without even referencing the Brexit farce period she headed up.
British politics is a mess run by failures for failures to run. The USA has Biden we have Sunak.
It’s the Uniparty or Parliamentary dictatorship
Mrs May was no failure, she succeeded in nearly everything she was sent to do. Thankfully she eventually failed to keep the UK in the EU. Mostly. She has been well rewarded for her service since her political demise with multiple payments of £100k+ for speeches that most people wouldn’t bother to listen to.
Psychopathy, narcissism and stupidity in varying proportions are the qualities looked for by those who place our “leaders” into power, in addition to a means of control. We (UK) are about to be subjected to the latest and most groomed of these, a hack drone with zero imagination or initiative, exactly as required by the PTB. The next five years will be interesting, or terminal.
Clever people can sometimes say idiotic things but Ed Miliband seems incapable of showing any intelligence at all about either electricity or energy policy and so why the hell is he in that job and receiving pay under what seem like very false pretences? Like Starmer he is just another virtue signaller with bells on.
It’s a distraction. Make no mistake, Starmer wants to complete Blair’s work and Miliband is there to shout “don’t look there, look here”.
He cannot eat bacon sandwich…
If you want a real laugh, google up the Ed Stone….
…without undue embarrassment!
In Australia we have Chris Bowen. From what I have read, Bowen is even dumber than Ed Miliband but it does not really matter. Both are willing to sacrifice everyone else to achieve their climate change fantasies.
While Europe, et al, were chasing after Net Zero, China and India were constructing every type of fossil fuel power station possible, meaning the net effect was global increase in carbon dioxide (an important plant food). Everyone in “Beyond Fossil Fuels” (and similar groups) can’t be stupid, so I wonder what their actual agenda is? Follow the money? Follow the political agenda (BRICS)?
‘But clearly, when ideology collides with reality, governments are not going to sacrifice the well-being of their citizens.’
False. They began sacrificing our wellbeing from their very first mandates to curtail CO2.
Ok so I just read this and copied that same sentence. Smart people write really stupid things at times.
Should I list ALL the countries that have shown this statement to be completely wrong.
Start with EVERY socialist country.
Add every communist country, which socialist countries will soon become.
Add every dictatorship, which communist countries will soo become.
Add the EU government, a dictatorship of the elites is coming there soon. There is the potential of more Brexits from the conservative eastern European countries.
Add the Brandon administration, looking to create a permanent one party system, no matter the costs.
Brazil is a really scarry example of the Courts deciding the allowable candidate and picking the one previously convicted of corruption in office to be the next president. Then blocking his opponent on every front. Seems that Brandon and the Democrats like that and wish to use it in the US. The Communist Brazil leader and his crony courts are all in with China now, communist dictators through and through.
The oligarchs, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates, etc. etc. MUST be handled by the next TRUMP! administration. Perhaps a massive one time WEALTH tax? Every dollar over 1 BILLION to be taxed at 100%, including all monies previously transferred to trusts of EVERY kind, so that the ongoing use of so called philanthropic trusts to effect politics will be GONE? Just think of how that will put thousands, or tens of thousands, of leftists out of jobs running the trusts, and all the NGO non profits they fund.
So the only way to prevent communism is by implementing communism?
BTW, a country can’t implement communism, without becoming a dictatorship first.
Story Tip
OH NO !!!.. another Arctic sea ice all gone prediction !!
Desperate Academics | Real Climate Science
When will these so-called academics ever be held accountable for this nonsense !!
Same “we’re doomed in 5 years” prediction we’ve had for the last 40 years
Ain’t gonna happen
“…a “consensus” of climate activists with their heads in the clouds – plus Ed Miliband” – whose head is stuck in a different, more odorous location.
His own, presumably…
Or Keir Starmer’s. Might be the only reason he’s been kept on.
No, that is not what’s going on. Its not backup. The right way to describe it is we have hybrid systems of wind + gas, where the wind is supplementing the gas, not the other way around. When there is wind, you use it. But gas is running all the time as steady generation in the background.
Stop the gas, and the lights go out. Totally.
Even when wind and solar are producing 100% of your needed power, gas is still running. It has to be so that it can take over in a matter of seconds whenever a cloud passes over the solar farm. As a result, the amount of gas that is being burned, day in and day out, is not reduced by much. In addition you have to pay to build, operate and maintain two complete power systems, instead of just the one you have to pay for without solar. Add in wind, and costs go up even more.
The consensus is in that early attempts at preventing global warmening by curbing reindeer farts was a monumental failure-
Mile-Long 11,000-Year-Old Wall Discovered Off German Coast: Likely the Oldest Structure in Europe (msn.com)
With such a drastic loss of ice to keep venison from spoiling and the beer cold mankind would go on to invent refrigeration in a futile attempt to avoid global boiling yet still the reindeer are farting in their general direction.
From article you linked:”…possibly used to trap reindeer.”
Always thought reindeer were well north of Germany.
They trapped ‘em all….
They are today, it was colder back then as evidenced by the fact that the wall was found offshore.
Story tip:
Nut zero support might be eroding away, but mis application attempts run rampant:
https://www.foxnews.com/world/uk-force-oil-gas-platform-companies-convert-rigs-green-energy-face-shut-down-reports.amp
I cannot imagine for the life of me how the North Sea Transition Authority could see this happen in one of the harshest sea environments. Winds, when gusting are likely to topple turbines and pretend the latitudes supported solar, sea spay certainly doesn’t.
Guess it is anback door attempt to shut down jobs and quality of life.
The climate changers get crazier with their schemes the more they fail-
Biden’s electric road to nowhere: Two years after he vowed to spend $7.5 billion building 500,000 charging stations only SEVEN have been plugged in (msn.com)
Same in Oz as the pace of transition to renewables falls hopelessly behind their fantasy timelines so next thing Albo and Bowen come up with a brainfart tossing $1billion at making solar panels on the site of the old Liddell coal fired power station in coal country. Meanwhile the nickel miners and refiners are already sqwarking they can’t compete with Chinese investing in nickel rich Indonesia and their local coal fired refining. Even the lefty Grattan Institute is struggling to be diplomatic about the prospects of $1billion in taxes creating sound future jobs for Labor’s union mates out of work in the Hunter Valley.
Dawn is breaking on some in the states too.
https://apnews.com/article/michigan-nuclear-plant-federal-loan-cbafb1aad2402ecf7393d763a732c4f8#
Ross Clark has been writing about climate change for over a decade, including a satirical novel, The Denial, and a Spectator article with this tidbit that many can identify with:
Just reading his book
‘NOT ZERO How an Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (and Won’t Even Save the Planet)’ Forum paperback (UK 2024)
Lots of pertinent facts and information. Well worth the £12.99
Older folk like myself also remember the Global Cooling Scare of the 1970’s, which was a real thing despite the efforts of Alarmists to deny it.
I remember the Human-caused Global Cooling era, too.
There is a reason climate alarmists deny the cooling from the 1940’s to the 1970’s. Well, actually, they don’t deny the climate cooled during this period, they just want to deny that the cooling was significant.
If you look at the bogus Hockey Stick chart, you see that the cooling from the 1940’s to the 1970’s only appears to be about a little more than 0.3C. This small amount of cooling is not enough to get climate scientists concerned about another Ice Age coming down the pike. So, to keep up the fiction that the bogus Hockey Stick temperature chart represents reality, they lie and claim there was no concern over a new Ice Age beginning at that time.
If the Climate alarmists acknoledge the fears of the Ice Age coming back, then they invalidate the bogus Hockey Stick temperature profile. So they lie and say there was no “New Ice Age Scare” in the 1970’s among climate scientists.
Here is a bogus Hockey Stick chart. Note the small amount of cooling from 1940 to 1980 (0.3C).
And here is a U.S. regional temperature chart covering the period from the 1940’s to the 1980’s. Note that the cooling from 1940 to 1980 in the United States was 2.0C or more.
A temperature drop of 2.0C is enough to get climate scientists speculating that another Ice Age may be in the offing. This is what caused the concerns at that time.
What this tells us is that the bogus, bastardized instrument-era Hockey Stick chart does NOT represent reality. The “Ice Age Cometh” puts the lie to the bogus Hockey Stick chart.
The U.S. temperature profile, which is similar to regional charts from all over the world, is the real temperature profile of the Earth, and it tells us CO2 has had little effect on the Earth’s temperatures, which means CO2 is nothing we need to worry about.
They are inept scientists if they believe that glaciation is caused by cooler conditions. The cooling comes after the ice.
Over the last 1000 years, Antarctica has been bathed in the most sunlight for the last 20,000 years. It is still an ice block. Every month of the year it gives up energy despite getting the highest average monthly sunlight for any location on the planet each December. Snow/ice is highly reflective particular at low angles of incidence. All land south of 60S is covered in permanent ice. And it remained there despite the solar intensity peaking there 500 years ago.
Most of the ocean surface in the Northern Hemisphere will reach the 30C limit in a couple of hundred years. The water in the atmosphere over the NH in September will be twice what it is now. A good deal of that will come down as snow and it will take longer to melt. Within 200 years, the permafrost will be rising and advancing south.
The Northern Hemisphere will cool after the permanent ice spreads southward and forms ice mountains. The oceans will not cool much but they will drop and the lapse rate to the top of the ice mountains will ensure the ice stays cool. Thereby causing the temperature of the land (or ice on it) to be much cooler.
Greenland is trending toward 100% permanent ice cover by 2075.
I won’t argue against any of that, but it is not really relevant to my comment on why climate alarmists downplay “The Ice Age Cometh” scare in the 1970’s.
So real that the BBC had a flagship programme on it called ‘The Weather Machine’ scripted by Nigel Calder, a respected science writer and published a book by Calder called The Weather Machine and The Threat Of Ice in 1974.
The text is 138 double column pages and contains only 3 chapters. On p135 Calder lists the countries which are most likely to be affected by the new theories –
Countries in danger of obliteration (complete or almost complete) by ice sheets
Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Irish Republic, UK, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, New Zealand.
Countries in danger of extensive glaciation –
USA, USSR (including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belorussia), Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Netherlands, West and East Germany, Poland, Austria, Afghanistan, China, Australia
Countries in danger of severe drought during the onset of an ice age
41 countries in total
Again, look at the UK, where they are making their pending disaster available in real time to the whole world.
At the moment gas is delivering 6.5GW.
Wind, from faceplate of 28GW: 4GW.
Solar: 5.7
Imports: 6.12
This is a quiet low demand period on a Saturday afternoon. So, when they close the gas, where is the 6.5GW going to come from?
Suppose its to come from wind. They will need another 46GW of wind just to cover this. And the current 4GW is actually not that bad, it very often falls below 1GW and quite often below 0.5.
Do the basic math again for the 1GW periods. You’d need 182GW of faceplate to deliver the current 6.5GW they are getting from gas.
And then consider this. Its now 4pm in the UK, so in a couple of hours solar is going to vanish. That’s another 6GW to be found from somewhere. At present rates of wind, that is another 42GW.
On another not atypical day in autumn, winter or spring, you’d be trying to make that up too from wind. About 360GW of wind to be added in total, over and above the 28GW they have now.
And what happens when wind falls to under 0.5GW, as it does? What happens if imports are not available in enough quantity?
Cannot be done. And yet there we have the prospective new Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, claiming that they will get to Net Zero in electricity generation 6 years from now.
At the same time as they get on with doubling demand by banning ICE cars and light vans, and force everyone they can to heat pumps rather than gas boilers.
We are talking either blink & back off, or carry on regardless into nationwide, black start blackouts.
About 360GW of wind to be added in total, over and above the 28GW they have now
I mean, in the 1GW actual per 28GW faceplate scenario.
For the most part, the best locations for wind and solar have already been taken. As a result, you can expect even lower utilization rates from the new wind and solar being built.
Can someone please explain to me why we even need to transition to net zero? Why do we have to worry about CO2 at all? I’ve been hearing for 40 years that increasing CO2 is the doom of mankind. But it’s not. Despite the increasing temps and increasing CO2 nothing bad has happened. Absolutely nothing.
There has been no increase in the frequency or severity of hurricanes, floods, droughts, or severe weather of any kind. Crop yields are at or new all-time highs. The Great Barrier Reef recently set its largest extent in history and the Antarctic recently experienced its coldest winter on record. No island nations have been swept away by rising sea levels. Sea levels are rising at an easily manageable 13 inches per century.
The increased CO2 has literally greened the planet. With more CO2 in the atmosphere, more green plants can grow and in places where they couldn’t before. Ten times as many people die from cold each year than from heat. With the warmer temps, more people have died of heat, but far more people have been saved from the cold. That’s a good thing.
So, what’s the problem? What danger are we trying to prevent from rising CO2, because so far, there haven’t been any and I don’t think we are ever going to see any problems. Am I wrong?
You are not wrong. There is no evidence that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth.
There is no evidence that CO2 will overheat the Earth or cause the Earth’s climate to change.
CO2-phobia is a mental illness.
The warmer temperature is unrelated to CO2. The notion that a non-condensing, non-solidifying trace gas could alter Earth’s energy balance is a fable.
The increase in ocean heat content is occurring in the Ferrel Cells. These are condensing zones and the result of more atmospheric water due to oceans warming up as the solar intensity progresses northward due to Earth’s axial precession.
The story of ocean heat retention on a single page attached
The Ferrel Cell bumps are also clearly evident in the UAH trend and not quite so evident in the Berkely trend across the latitudes. The higher atmospheric water in the NH in September means there is also more atmospheric water in the SH in Decembeer. December is up by 1.5mm in 33 years of the record with a present December average of 30mm.
There is no problem with CO2. It is all beneficial and any increase will be appreciated once the dimwits playing with climate models realise CO2 does nothing to the energy balance.
EU building 72GW of NEW gas plants after the collapse of the Net Zero concept. Green lobbyists are making themselves an irrelevance by turning against all fossil fuels in all circumstances. Governments may have nodded along with their demands up until now, by setting net zero targets. But clearly, when ideology collides with reality, governments are not going to sacrifice the well-being of their citizens. The move to build new gas plants is yet one more sign of Europe’s retreat from unrealistic net zero targets.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/27/europes-net-zero-retreat-is-gathering-steam/
30.03.2024
Better late, than never.
The politicians are not going to sacrifice favorable votes, citizens be damned.
It’s good to see that the Europeans are coming to their senses and realizing that fossil fuels will continue to dominate their energy supply for a long time yet. They’re also realizing that Net Zero is unattainable as well, at least with the current technologies. Now the trick is to get Canada, the US and Australia to recognize what is still essential and which is wishful thinking.
Why would anyone want to banish something that is demonstrably good for the biosphere and, consequently, the stability of the the climate.
As the peak solar intensity continues its northward progression, time will come when every molecule of CO2 in the atmosphere will be appreciated for its contribution to sustainability of the biosphere. In fact, encouraging vigorous natural habitat may be one means of slowing the rate of descent into the coming glaciation.
Imagine we lived in a world where all cars were EVs and then along comes a new invention, the “Internal Combustion Engine”.
Think how well they would sell: a vehicle half the weight, half the price that will almost quarter the dameg done to the road.
A vehicle that can be refulled in 1/10th the time and has a range of up to 4 times the diatnace in all weather conditions.
It does not rely on the environmentally damaging use of non-renewable rare earth elements to power it and uses far less steel and other materials.
Just think how excited people would be for such technology. It would sell like hot cakes.
(Author unknown)
It was the electric starter motor that caused the demise of the early electric vehicles. Once the crank was no longer required, gentlemen could drive themselves rather than needing a driver to turn the crank to start the engine.
Kettering was granted the patent in 1911 fo an improved version of the Coleman starter patented in 1903 and GM had a winner. Ford was a late comer to the starter motor.
The Model T Ford truck, equivalent to today’s utility, had the same payload as its own mass. But it did not have electric starter until late in life.
When are these, often well meaning journalists and commentators, going to wake up to them selves and stop using the language of warmist retards, like “carbon emissions or carbon pollution”, which should be “carbon dioxide emissions”. Also they should free themselves of that idiotic narrative, that CO2 is pollution, causing Earth’s temperature to increase. There are even in this blog several articles that report on scientific research showing this not to be true. Another (and not the only one) source of such information is https://notrickszone.com/ . It would be most helpful if these journalists and commentators did their research and stopped pushing this moronic nonsense.