Coal should be our future but politicians have now commited themselves to the flawed science of global warming and so we mess up yet again

Heaven help us.

I keep trying to find new ways to let people know what is really going on, here’s my latest.

Imagine yourself in 16th century Britain riding through the countryside in a coach, when your coach is suddenly stopped by that Famous highwayman, Dick McTurpin…..hand over your money he demands, why should we you shout in response to which he replies….well it’s to help combat global warming, to save poor african children and to save the lives of baby polar bears who have nowhere to live because the north pole has melted.

If CO2 levels were a problem, would a better ploy be to shut the borders and plant Billions of trees to soak it all up.

But no, they want the UK’s population to go up to 100 Million, it’s a Tax scam, it’s simple theft….The emperor really is naked.

Did Marks & Spencer need government regulation to do that sound green thing ? No it did not !

This proves that you can help the environment without dictates from the man in Whitehall.In fact a poll done by M&S asked its customers whether or not they should take action on matters on issues of social justice & environmental importance.The result was overwhelmingly positive and so Plan A was launched !

Plan A chimes with the kind of common-sense Green Capitalism that John is trumpeting on this well written and first class blog.This is a progressive way of ensuring future prosperity is kinder to the planet.

This is the sound approach of David Cameron and proves that if you want Britain to go Green then you have to vote Blue !

If Redwoodians want to see where your gas and electric are coming from have a look at the following.

http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Gas/Data/EFD/

http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm

You will see from the graphs that coal is now doing what we old hands call “two shifting” through the night. It was the heavy oil plants a decade or so back.

You will see the very small contribution wind is making; but these are grid connected / metered wind farms; there are a lot more connected to lower voltage systems.

I think Mark would agree. You should start worrying about what you see on these sites.

I agree, it is nonsense and doesn’t hold water. Frankly I would look to the sun for the answer. Did we imagine that this Star was immune to cyclic warming? We only need a very small brightening of the sun to produce a big effect here. Don’t worry the sun is not going to expand to red giant size just yet. The truth is we do not yet no the causes of the warming. The RMCS would be the best institution to charge with getting an independent answer in my opinion. The Earth has been warming since the mini-ice age, man may be adding to an effect that is natural in origin.

Thanks John for your article and the good work on holding back the tide of errors.

Yes the sects are very bad indeed and are full of numerous examples of misleading that I could point out. What is unacceptable in my eyes is (a newspaper article ed) damming God. Such an attack is unacceptable and yet another example of why our nations press are currently incompatible with good governance. If we accept that all people of good will are equal in the sight of God, then any attack on religion is an attack on us all. Sadly intolerance leads as we have seen to blood shed in the US. Lets be better than that here. So I would ask (any writer-ed) to think carefully before damming God again after all it is very offensive to many different people.

CO2 is not a pollutant, there is peer reviewed challenge to the main plank of the AGW theory, that CO2 emitted now will warm the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

Residence Time Of CO2 Is About 5 Years, (5 Aug 2009)

In a paper recently published in the international peer-reviewed journal Energy & Fuels, Dr. Robert H. Essenhigh (2009), Professor of Energy Conversion at The Ohio State University, addresses the residence time (RT) of anthropogenic CO2 in the air.

He finds that the RT for bulk atmospheric CO2, the molecule 12CO2, is about 5 years, in good agreement with other cited sources (Segalstad, 1998), while the RT for the trace molecule 14CO2 is about 16 years.

Coal is cleaner now than it has ever been because of particle and gaseous filtration, (NoX and SoX). Its CO2 content is not driving global temperatures which are currently in a cooling cycle in spite of still rising CO2 from ocean outgassing resulting from earlier warming.

Carbon capture and storage is a nonsense. It was captured and stored for free, millions of years ago. Why do we need to waste energy and resources on the highly questionable process of injecting it back underground.

Controlling CO2 emissions will have almost zero effect on global temperatures. It will have a massively detrimental effect on domestic and industrial electricity users.

Anyway humans, and flora, thrive in warm conditions and retreat in the face of cold. And he points out glasshouse growers use levels of CO2 three times that in the wider atmosphere to encourage growth. CO2 is the basis of life, not a poison.

It is just risible to think that anything we can do would globally alter the weather. Canute proved that to his vainglorious courtiers over a thousand years ago. Read Plimer on the awesome power of sub-ocean volcanoes and what they emit – and by us not keeping warm or feeding our ever-growing population (sorry Malthus) all will be well. In the present argot: Pleeease!

I have often commented on your blog before on your green policies, I recall you don’t like public transport, preferring Jags. How efficient are they? 15-25 MPG? Some cars get 70 mpg!

Renewables and energy saving are the answer, but we have seen very little action from Lab or Cons on this. What happened to ‘vote blue, go green’?

I’ve often wondered if Maggie did the right thing in the 80’s – i.e. leaving our coal in the ground for future generations when it will be worth a lot more. Don’t think thats what she was thinking of at the time though

I hope that, with regard to transport, we must stop using road travel as a whipping boy. Tax fuel for all transport modes. That means the taxation of aviation fuel and a revision to international agreements. In the case of electrified rail, the incremental emissions at power stations should be taxed. Let us apply “the polluter pays” principle in a manner that creates a level playing field. And we should always remember that travel by sea has the lowest fuel consumption rate per tonne-km.

We are going to be very short of central government cash for the next 5 years, so the stick will have to be used more than the carrot. Perhaps householders should be obliged to install, at their own expense, cavity wall insulation and solar panels over a ten year period – always assuming that the houses were suitable. Regulations could be applied to new build houses.

Agricultural production: If you don’t like fertilisers and GM crops, you have to acknowledge that yields will be limited, which necessitates limiting the world’s population soon. (words left out ed)

Finally, let us suppose that there has to be a steady reduction in the level of CO2 in the atmosphere – i.e. negative NET emissions of CO2. Does anybody know a better way than planting more trees?

BOE to Move the Goal posts?

Great, they print a shed full of money then DEMAND price controls!!!!

Just Like Peter Schiff said they would.
Mike

http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file43846.pdf

Oil supply became much more localised as freight rates soared, and we are heavily dependent on Norwegian oil to supplement our own production, with Russia as the second largest source of imports by a large margin over the next ranking sources. We have lost self sufficiency in refinery capacity, and now rely on imports of aviation and motor fuels in particular to meet demand. Refinery closures (and our lack of import of higher sulphur ME crudes) have in part been motivated by environmental laws. Our dependence on foreign oil is now becoming real and fast increasing simply because our North Sea production is falling rapidly, so we no longer produce enough to trade for the crudes and products we need. Oil is at least freely traded on international markets, and unless we become an embargoed destination (picking silly arguments with Russia over minor issues doesn’t seem like a smart idea, whatever Miliband thinks), we will be able to maintain supply.

The situation for gas is very uncertain. Our North Sea production is falling rapidly, and we will depend increasingly on imports. This document

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/POSTpn230.pdf

gives some indication of the problems the UK faces with gas supply. Only our Norwegian imports by dedicated pipeline are secure. We are tail end Charlie on the pipelines that feed continental Europe, dependent on the goodwill of Europeans to keep us supplied when Miliband’s Lord High Poo-Bah antics as EU High Representative or similar cause the Russians to cut supply as they periodically do already.

The development of the LNG market is crucial to maintaining any kind of gas supply security. Unfortunately, that DOES leave us dependent on ME sourcing since world gas reserves are much more concentrated than oil, dominated by Russia, Iran, Iraq, Qatar and Saudi. While there are suggestions from the industry (BP’s Tony Hayward in particular) that gas supply is improving globally – particularly for the US (deep offshore USG, Canadian shale) which will be a big LNG buyer, there is much work to be done to bring these supplies into commission, with the very real prospect of a supply squeeze in the next few years. Meantime, having just two enormous ports (Milford Haven and Isle of Grain) that handle LNG imports is a risk of itself. The lack of (distributed) storage capacity leaves us vulnerable to supply shocks. A further dash for gas in power generation may seem superficially attractive from a perceived energy efficiency point of view, but not from a risk diversification angle.

Turning to power generation itself the economics of wind are becoming clearer, and are less attractive than once they seemed. Firstly, there is the need for 100% reserve capacity to cover for when the wind conditions prevent generation. Secondly, the engineering experience gained by the Danes suggests that offshore turbine life is rather shorter than originally assumed, and maintenance cost is higher. Don’t break too much wind – it really isn’t the panacea that greens claim.

That leaves coal – where we have several hundred years’ reserves securely beneath our feet, nuclear, and conservation (since solar is not practical for anything other than heat top up at our latitudes and given our weather).

It is a nice paradox that we ignore the secure supply we have because we are being “good environmentalists” while China builds one new coal fired generating station EVERY WEEK. Here is a similar picture for coal to that for oil:

http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file43926.pdf

Once again, we can see that we are dependent on imports, which are dominated by supplies from Russia (AGAIN!) and South Africa. Our domestic production remains muted. A previous generation of UK coal miners literally fought battles which you will remember all too well. That should not determine policy today, 25 years later. Modern coal generating plant is not too far behind gas in efficiency, albeit slow fire-up means that it is best suited to a baseload role rather than meeting daily demand peaks. A reminder that wind paragon of virtue Denmark consumes 7 times as much coal energy generating electricity as the total output of its wind farms. It is likely that we will need to secure a derogation from the EU on closing coal fired capacity if the lights are not to go out. Plan on it, and plan a more coal friendly future (preferably without econut carbon capture at ridiculous expense unless the Chinese retrofit all their stations).

Likewise with nuclear capacity we are going to need derogations to keep stations on stream. We need to reinforce our engineering expertise in nuclear: abandoning to the French is not smart. There are those who argue that uranium supplies may become scarce in future. These arguments ignore the workings of geologists and markets in exploration and production. They also ignore the potential for breeder reactors to stretch uranium supply by a factor of around 40 – albeit with the nasty problem of plutonium as a side product and secondary energy source. Here is another take on the issue:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last

Longer term we may be able to supplant fission and fossil fuel by fusion, but the earliest estimated date for commercial fusion has remained 2030 for 40 years (when JET at Culham was started), and may will slip back: ITER won’t meet that target, but perhaps the US research at Lawrence Livermore on laser based methods will be successful sooner.

Official attitudes to conservation are often based on poor science that fails to recognise economics or full energy budgets. Thus we see more fuel efficient cars being favoured by taxation that encourages scrappage of vehicles with useful life remaining, with the result that more energy is required to build the new vehicles than is saved by the early scrappage of the older ones. We are told that low speed limits increase fuel efficiency, which flies in the face of the experience of drivers who get their best fuel consumption when allowed to drive at a steady speed. We build ecohomes miles and miles from jobs instead of bringing jobs to where people live. The ecobulbs we are supposed to use have much shortened lives if we switch them on and off regularly, changing the economics and energy budget compared with the propaganda that relies on continuous burn lifetimes. The nonsense and value judgements need sorting from the realities. The market is probably more efficient than regulation in doing just that, judging from current experience.