Amusing Reason Strata Tower Roof Turbines Cannot Be Used
The Strata SE1 Tower in London was billed as a modern source of ‘green’ energy, but it hasn’t panned out that way
When the Strata SE1 tower in Elephant and Castle opened in June 2010, it marked the latest step in the area’s regeneration and was heralded as a fine example of ‘eco-friendly’ architecture.
However, Londoners have noticed that one of the striking features of the 482ft residential building is never in use.
The three giant turbines built into the roof of the £113.5 million structure were meant to be a source of ‘green’ energy and the building’s potential to generate ‘renewable’ power was key to securing its planning permission.
A promotional video for the building shows the turbines rotating, with one of the developers saying:
“We’re sending a message that you can incorporate new technologies…and we can reduce the carbon footprint.”
An engineer adds:
“The three turbines are on and running.”
Critics have since accused the developers of “greenwashing” and in August 2010, the Strata SE1 was awarded the 2010 Carbuncle Cup for bad architecture.
The unwanted gong recognised it as one of the “the ugliest buildings in the United Kingdom completed in the last 12 months”.
Since finishing construction, the residential bloc’s turbines were shut off, so they no longer spin.
In 2023, the chair of Southwark’s planning committee revealed that the turbines had been shut off due to the excessive noise and vibrations that permeated throughout the building.
Labour councillor Martin Seaton, who was not in post when the Strata SE1 was built, told MyLondon:
“In the very early days on my first term, I received some complaints that residents were being disturbed by the blades spinning.”
He added:
“The wind turbines haven’t worked since, mainly because of complaints of the noise disturbing residents.”
It doesn’t work, it’s a white elephant. [The developers] didn’t take into account when the turbines span they’d vibrate throughout the building.
It seems obvious to you and I, but the designers and planners are infinitely cleverer than us, and missed the blindingly obvious.”
He revealed that the chief-complainers lived near the top of the building:
“The closer you were to the top, the louder it was, but it propagated throughout the building. How on earth the planners and designers missed it, I have no idea.”
Despite its critics, the Strata SE1 Tower is home to more than 1,000 residents and has 408 flats.
Boris Johnson once dubbed the building ‘The Lipstick’ and added it had “a bit of oomph about it”.
https://principia-scientific.com/the-ridiculous-reason-strata-tower-roof-turbines-cannot-be-used/
**************************************************‘AVOID FALSE BALANCE’: AP Style Guide Aims to Silence Dissent From Climate Alarmist Narrative
Most news outlets rely on The Associated Press style guide—officially known as the AP Stylebook—as the arbiter for grammar, spelling, and terminology in news coverage. While AP puts forth its style guide as an impartial rubric for fair coverage, its rules often exclude conservative views from the outset.
Take AP’s latest round of updates, released Friday. The updates include guidance on how to avoid “stigmatizing” obese people, admonitions to avoid calling people “homeless” as it might be “dehumanizing,” and warnings to avoid the term “female” since “some people object to its use as a descriptor for women because it can be seen as emphasizing biology and reproductive capacity over gender identity.”
AP’s style guide prefers “anti-abortion” and “abortion-rights” as adjectives, urging journalists to avoid “pro-life,” “pro-choice,” and “pro-abortion.”
Yet one of the largest sections of the updated style guide involves “climate change,” a term that AP says “can be used interchangeably” with the term “climate crisis.”
“Climate change, resulting in the climate crisis, is largely caused by human activities that emit carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, according to the vast majority of peer-reviewed studies, science organizations and climate scientists,” the AP style guide intones. “This happens from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, and other activities.”
“Greenhouse gases are the main driver of climate change,” the guide adds.
AP insists that this is true, with a capital T. When “telling the climate story,” the style guide urges journalists to “avoid false balance—giving a platform to unfounded claims or unqualified sources in the guise of balancing a story by including all views. For example, coverage of a study describing effects of climate change need not seek ‘other side’ comment that humans have no influence on the climate.”
Naturally, this is a red herring. Those who doubt the climate-alarmist narrative don’t maintain that “humans have no influence on the climate.” Rather, we say that the direct impact of human activities—including the burning of fossil fuels—is poorly understood and that efforts to predict future events based on various climate alarmist models have repeatedly failed.
In the 1970s, alarmists warned of a coming ice age. In the 1990s, the form of the destroyer would be global warming. Now, the alarmists have adopted the catch-all term “climate change,” so they can retroactively assign human agency to any disaster that strikes us at the moment.
It’s quite clever, if you want a perpetual fear-mongering tactic. Of course, the narrative is rather inconvenient for the rest of us who want cheaper energy and wish to solve the humanitarian crisis of extreme poverty in other parts of the world.
In fact, The Associated Press tacitly admits that the climate alarmists have no smoking-gun evidence that human activities are bringing about Armageddon.
“Avoid attributing single occurrences to climate change unless scientists have established a connection,” the style guide advises. “At the same time, stories about individual events should make it clear that they occur in a larger context.”
AP’s willingness to completely write off the “other side” proves particularly instructive, considering the style guide’s claim that climate change affects many other issues.
“The climate story goes beyond extreme weather and science,” the Stylebook notes. “It also is about politics, human rights, inequality, international law, biodiversity, society and culture, and many other issues. Successful climate and environment stories show how the climate crisis is affecting many areas of life.”
If journalists can throw out any pretense of objectivity on climate, and insist that climate change impacts all other social issues, can they also safely dismiss the obligation to cover “both sides” on politics, inequality, society, and culture? How does AP aim to prevent this rot from spreading across other topics and preventing fair coverage entirely?
The prognosis is not good. AP has repeatedly put its thumb on the scale to silence criticism of abortion and gender ideology—even going so far as telling journalists to avoid the term “transgenderism” because it “frames transgender identity as an ideology.”
Even while urging journalists to avoid using the terms “climate change deniers” and “climate change skeptics,” the AP style guide suggests a more “specific” alternative, such as “people who do not agree with mainstream science that says the climate is changing” or “people who disagree with the severity of climate change projected by scientists.” Talk about “stigmatizing.”
AP doesn’t admit that the supposed unanimity of scientists on man-made catastrophic climate change is based on a lie—that 97% of scientists don’t actually believe the world is going to end because we burn fossil fuels.
The study claiming to reach that conclusion merely analyzed peer-reviewed research papers, put them in seven categories, and then artificially claimed that the vast majority of the papers making any claim favored the alarmist view. Many scientists have said the study mischaracterized their research.
It remains unclear exactly how greenhouse gases are affecting the planet, mainly because the global atmosphere is extremely complicated. Most climate models fail to predict exactly what will happen. Perhaps decreasing carbon emissions will help the climate, but the science is far less settled than AP would have journalists believe.
If news coverage dismisses all skepticism of an alarmist narrative, it will skew the information ecosystem and disincentivize the very research that helps determine what precise impacts greenhouse gases have on the environment. It may also lead skeptical Americans to dismiss climate science altogether, in the same way that the medical establishment squandered much of its public credibility by suppressing concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
So why does The Associated Press put its thumb on the scale? The creators of the style guide may legitimately believe there is only one perspective, but they also have a hefty economic incentive to act like it.
AP has received large grants from left-wing foundations, particularly for its climate reporting.
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation spent $2.5 million on AP’s climate and education reporting, the Washington Free Beacon reported. That foundation also funds Planned Parenthood.
The Rockefeller Foundation awarded AP a $750,000 grant in 2021 for a climate change initiative to report on “the increased and urgent need for reliable, renewable electricity in underserved communities worldwide.”
The KR Foundation, a Danish nonprofit that seeks the “rapid phase-out of fossil fuels,” gave approximately $300,000 to The Associated Press in December 2022, but AP appeared to hide that donation until late last year.
AP may push climate alarmism even without these funds—the latest style guide appears to feature left-wing groupthink on a host of issues—but the money still provides extra incentive.
The AP’s increasingly leftward tilt—and its attempt to force its groupthink through its style guide—creates a rather hostile climate for actual journalism, let alone good science.
**************************************************
New EPA Emissions Standards Defy Reality
The recent stringent Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) carbon emissions standards for internal combustion engines defy economic realities. The EPA would have us believe that coercing folks to buy electric vehicles (EV) will somehow reduce alleged climate change extremes. The new rules will negatively affect California and the entire nation.
Obviously, most folks want to maintain clean air, land, and water ecosystems. However, scientists haven’t agreed on what degree human activity adversely impacts global climate change as opposed to natural causes for extreme climate events. Several dire predictions of rising seas haven’t panned out over several decades, while cooling and warming trends haven’t been too much out of the ordinary.
The new EPA standards are part of a government plan to make EVs two-thirds of new car sales by 2032. Thirty percent of heavy duty commercial vehicles have to be emissions-free by 2032 and 40 percent of short-haul trucks by the same time frame. Emission particulates must be reduced to nine micrograms for each cubic meter of exhaust. Spokespersons from the American Petroleum Institute stated that the new regulation “threatens consumer freedom, energy reliability and national security.”
These EPA goals are unlikely to eventuate due to several factors. First, Americans bristle when they are pressured into purchasing products that haven’t proven their worth over an extended period of time. Electric vehicles can be expensive and heavy due to large batteries that are costly to repair when they break down. They take too long to charge up when contrasted with diesel or gas refilling times. How will the grid handle millions of EVs when it can’t even cope with current electricity demands?
Next, electric vehicles lose power in wintry weather, thus increasing the already existent range anxiety. What if an owner needs to charge up the vehicle and the charger doesn’t work at a chosen location, or it has an incompatible charger? Moreover, owners must keep in mind that criminals cut charger cables for the materials, something they aren’t tempted to do at diesel or gasoline filling stations.
The car rental company Hertz learned a hard lesson when it purchased a fleet of EVs and hardly anyone wanted to rent them for reasons already noted. Hertz is now trying to sell 20,000 of these vehicles and adding back gasoline-powered cars. Other car rental companies will likely see the writing on the wall and follow suit. A similar scenario is unfolding with some bus and van companies as well.
Third, purchasing these vehicles benefits China, because the PRC controls most of the rare earth minerals that go into batteries, as well as the lithium battery industry. Products that are manufactured in China might have questionable quality control standards as they move through the production process. How reliable are these heavy batteries, and how often do they catch on fire? It is unwise to surrender critical facets of our national and technological security to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Fourth, mandating a rapid transition to EVs puts government policies way ahead of actual innovation in the free market. Consumers want choices when it comes to making big purchases, and if they want an EV or hybrid vehicle that’s fine, but buying an internal combustion vehicle ought to be an option, too. With decreasing options, the costs of energy will skyrocket and healthy competition will be stifled.
Fifth, although the new EPA guidelines would further reduce carbon emissions, the earth needs these emissions because plants turn CO2 into oxygen. Furthermore, climate alarmists ignore the fact that fossil fuel emissions have become much cleaner over the last four or five decades due to catalytic converters and pollution controls on industry. Extracting and refining fossil fuels have undergone a purer process.
Sixth, has the EPA thought about the pollution generated by the recycling of large batteries, car bodies, solar panels, and wind turbines? Fossil fuel energy will be needed to carry out this process, just as oil products keep the electric grid in operation. Solar and wind power are unreliable sources of energy and would result in brownouts and power shortages if petroleum products are left out of the energy equation.
Seventh, do government officials and well-heeled climate “progressives” truly believe what they are preaching? Most of them have fine cars, big homes, and they jet around the world leaving a huge carbon footprint in their wake. Their hypocrisy is staggering as they attempt to impose a minimalist lifestyle on other Americans while they live the high life. They don’t have to face the repercussions of their shortsighted mandates, yet they want the masses to regress back to a pre-industrial stage of existence.
Finally, America has plentiful supplies of natural gas and petroleum that could last more than a century. Transitioning to an emissions-free society will take several decades if it happens at all. Until then, cleaner and reliable fuel sources will be in constant demand to drive a modern economy and lift people out of poverty. Indeed, energy autonomy is a crucial aspect of economic, informational, and national security.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/new-epa-emissions-standards-defy-reality-5622137
************************************************UK: Revealed: Renewable Energy Jobs Are Being Subsidised by £250,000 Each, Every Year
Recently, Shadow Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has been promoting his party’s ‘Green Prosperity Plan’ again, promising more jobs, more investment and lower bills. However, these claims do not stand up to scrutiny. Currently each job in the wind and solar power sectors is being subsidised by the taxpayer to the tune of over £250,000 per job, every year. This is the path to penury, not prosperity.
Miliband was ‘ratioed’ on X, meaning he received more replies than likes, so maybe the public is starting to rumble his ruse. Nevertheless, he is likely to be in the Cabinet after the election, so we need to pay attention to what he says. Time to work through the data to find out how much these mythical jobs in the renewable sector cost us.
From time to time, the ONS publishes an assessment of Low Carbon and Renewable Energy Economy (LCREE). This covers the number of businesses, turnover and how many jobs are involved in the LCREE sector. Helpfully, it breaks down the figures by sector, including offshore wind, onshore wind and solar power. The latest available figures for 2021 show the number of full-time equivalent jobs in the U.K. for these sectors was 10,600, 5,000 and 6,400, respectively.
There are three subsidy regimes for renewable energy in the U.K. These are Feed-in-Tariffs (FiTs), Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) and Contracts for Difference (CfDs).
Each year Ofgem publish the FiT report and dataset that details the total amount of electricity generated, total payments and the capacity installed by technology. In scheme year 12, running from April 2021 to March 2022, 79.4% of FiT capacity was solar and 11.9% wind. The rest was made up of hydro and anaerobic digestion plants. The total payments under the FiT scheme were £1,557m. If we split these payments by capacity, we can determine that solar power received £1,236m in FiT payments and wind (assumed to be onshore) received £185m.
Details of ROCs issued cab be found on the Ofgem portal. The value of ROCs related to the output period of the whole of 2021 was £2,009m for offshore wind, £1,251m for onshore wind and £493m for solar power.
The Low Carbon Contracts Company publishes a database of CfD payments that can also be split by technology. This shows that offshore wind received £612m in 2021. This figure is lower than might be expected because gas prices started to spike in late-2021 and so some CfD-funded wind farms started to refund money under the CfD scheme. Because strike prices for onshore wind and solar power tend to be lower than for offshore wind, these two technologies paid back £22m and £204m, respectively.
The total subsidies in 2021 for these three sectors is around £5.56bn. This compares to the ONS estimate of £14.56bn turnover for the same sectors. Putting it another way, 38% of the turnover is pure subsidy.
Pulling all this together, we can add up the total subsidy received for these technologies and compare it to the number of jobs in each sector.
We can see that each offshore wind job cost £247,000 in subsidy, each onshore wind job nearly £283,000 and solar £238,000. The average across all three sectors is nearly £253,000 per job.
Now remember, this is not a one-off payment to get a new industry up and running, it is an ongoing annual payment. The ONS does not publish its estimate of the salaries in the sector, however, the annual subsidies are far higher than any reasonable estimate of the average salaries paid in the sector.
It is crystal clear that all talk of a “green revolution” is simply a pipedream. These green jobs are only a façade: Potemkin jobs to give politicians and policymakers a good sound bite and make them feel good about themselves. The idea that we can move to “green prosperity” by subsidising each job to the tune of over £250,000 each year is plainly absurd. If we take any further steps down this “green prosperity” road, we risk bankrupting the nation.
***************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
*****************************************
Jim Hansen and his twin
No comments:
Post a Comment