UK: The eco-zealots' demands verge on the lunatic. The fact hardly anyone dares say so is the triumph of unreason
Until recently, political discourse in this country was usually conducted on a rational basis. There were sometimes bitter differences but even extremists made some sort of sense.
Just Stop Oil protesters, who yesterday again brought the M25 to a halt and caused injury to a policeman, are of an entirely different stamp. Their objectives verge on the lunatic, and their tactics are deeply anti-social.
Even if the Government wanted to cave into their demands — an instant moratorium on drilling for new gas and oil — it would be crazy to do so since the economy can only function at present if petrol is widely available, while some 25 million households depend on gas for heating and cooking.
As for the tactics of the activists, they go far beyond the inconvenience caused by trade union picketing in the 1970s. Patients being rushed to hospital are impeded, mourners on the way to funerals delayed. Thousands trying to go about their business are prevented from doing so.
Even the Greenham women, who demonstrated against nuclear missiles being deployed in Britain in the early 1980s, were not asking for the undeliverable — though I think history confirms that they were misguided — and their protests didn't mess up the lives of ordinary people.
This is something new, ugly and alarming. The protesters are fanatical and unreasoning in a way that is alien to our experience. They want a world without fossil fuels — instantly, not prudently achieved at some stage in the future — and are eager to force their priorities on the rest of us.
For an insight into their cockeyed thinking, I recommend looking at the video of Louise Harris, who was one of a number of activists who scaled the gantries over the M25 on Monday, causing miles of rush-hour queues for angry, helpless drivers.
Early in her tirade, Miss Harris (who, notwithstanding her frail grasp of reason, is a recent graduate of Cambridge University) started to cry. Because I don't like to see people upset, I briefly felt sorry for her.
But my sympathy swiftly receded as she warmed to her theme. She declared that she was perched on her gantry because she didn't 'have a future', which even by the hysterical standards of these protesters is obviously untrue. Of course she has a future, though some may wish it could be spent as far away as possible from these shores.
She invited us to direct our 'anger and hatred' at the Government, which she described as 'murderous', and then demanded an immediate end to new oil and gas exploration before making the preposterous assertion that 'Just Stop Oil offers the only chance of a future that we have left'.
In her frankly unhinged statements, Louise Harris seems typical of thousands of like-minded protesters. Many of them say they don't have a future — in effect that Armageddon is nigh. (Shades of 17th century religious zealotry here.) Theirs is the only way. The Government and big business are evil.
It seems never to occur to these deranged activists that the Government was elected, whereas they were not. They claim to be exercising their right to peaceful protest, but of course their actions aren't peaceful. They are coercive and disruptive. I fear it won't be long before someone dies.
The prescriptions offered by these eco-fanatics would, if adopted, lead to widespread poverty and the breakdown of society. We wouldn't be able to heat our homes, and the economy would collapse if oil were suddenly no longer available.
The success of the agitators is the triumph of unreason. Earlier this week, the charity War on Want, which I had previously thought sane, suggested that Britain give £1 trillion to poor nations affected by climate change in recognition of our contribution to greenhouse gases.
Never mind that since 1850 China and the United States have been responsible for vastly greater carbon emissions — and continue to be so, with Britain said to account for roughly 1 per cent of the global total.
One trillion pounds is appreciably more than the Government spends in an entire year. It is about 40 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. Even spread over many years, handing out such an enormous amount of money to supposedly victimised countries would impoverish millions of Britons.
In other words, it doesn't matter whether extremists are climbing gantries on the M25, or sitting behind desks in the offices of War on Want, their 'solution' to climate change is equally calamitous.
And yet almost no one dares say so. The danger exercising our rulers is not the one represented by the eco-maniacs with their grotesquely exaggerated accounts and shock tactics. The Government is preoccupied with the less concrete threat of climate change.
On the whole, the authorities have been remarkably relaxed about anti-social protests by extremists. It took the police months to take them seriously. Now they are beginning to do so, yet in their new officious mood they have arrested three journalists for doing their job.
It's no surprise to me that Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride should have said in an interview on Tuesday that Just Stop Oil protesters 'do have a point, in [a] sense'.
Maybe he meant they are right to be worried by climate change. But he didn't seize the opportunity to take issue with their hyperbolic language (e.g. the Government is 'murderous') or criticise their success in bringing the M25 and other motorways to a halt.
Meanwhile, at the Cop27 Climate Change conference in Egypt, officials have been lining up to deliver dire warnings calculated to make our flesh creep. These are dutifully handed down by the BBC and other media as Holy Writ.
On Monday, that anti-democratic horror show, President Sisi of Egypt, said the planet had 'become a world of suffering'. He could more honestly have thus described his own benighted country.
Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, declared that the world was on a 'highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator'. Countries must 'cooperate or perish'. Why can't these people speak in a more measured, and less hackneyed, way?
How I long for a statesman brave enough to say: 'Yes, we are taking climate change seriously. That is why we have set out plans to be carbon neutral by 2050. But we will not allow extremists to falsify the true position, or to terrorise ordinary people.'
For we mustn't think that what has happened on the M25 over recent days is a flash in the pan. It will manifest itself in other ways. Irrational forms of opposition will draw many followers, and there are lots of people sympathetic to the cause who won't quarrel with extreme tactics.
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UK cannot afford to pay climate change ‘reparations’, warns Boris Johnson
Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson on Monday said the UK did not have the financial resources to pay “reparations” to low-income countries affected by climate change.
Speaking at an event organised by the New York Times at COP27 in Egypt, Johnson said climate action had been “one of the most important collateral victims” of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called for leaders not to give in to “energy blackmail”.
He said net zero would have to be achieved through investments from the private sector in partnership with the international community rather than through taxpayers in western countries.
“Per capita, people in the UK put a lot of carbon in the atmosphere,” Johnson said. “But what we cannot do I’m afraid is make up for that with some sort of reparations, we simply do not have the financial resources.”
https://www.ft.com/content/532e3c47-e4cc-4e37-bc4a-4810b76d4a4b?mc_cid=d2d8990a39&mc_eid=cc88839e92
**************************************************Australia: The voice of energy realism
The transition from coal is limited by the lowest level of renewable energy input to the grid on windless nights… Until that rises to meet the full demand, we had better keep all the coal and gas capacity that we have at present or be prepared to eat breakfast and dinner cold.
Reading literacy appears to be in decline – and that is causing concern – but spare a thought for the prevalence of ‘wind illiteracy’. This means a lack of awareness regarding the capability of wind supply, especially at the continental scale.
Wind illiteracy has enabled the biggest peacetime policy blunder in our history – connecting intermittent energy sources from sun and wind to the grid. That mistake has been compounded by subsidising these providers and mandating the use of the product.
The result is a mortal threat to the electricity supply which is the lifeblood of modern society since the horse and buggy days. At the very least the price of power will rise sharply, crippling energy-intensive industries, wrecking household budgets, and feeding inflation in every sector of the economy where electricity is an input.
The root of the problem is the combination of extensive and protracted wind droughts, the need for continuous input to the grid to match demand, and the lack of grid-scale storage to fill the gap in supply on windless nights.
Did anyone involved in planning the transition to intermittent wind and solar power think about the wind supply in the way that irrigation planners presumably pay attention to the water supply?
Did anyone call the Bureau of Meteorology or seek advice from some wind-literate person who might have warned them about the widespread wind-lulls that occur when high-pressure systems hover for a day or three, as they do, several times a year?
These are not the result of recent climate change. In the history of the Lameroo district in the Mallee of western Victoria:
‘A drought of a very different kind occurred in March and April of 1934. Because Lameroo sits above our underground water supply, windmills (wind pumps) were used to draw water to the surface for stock water and personal use. The period from mid-March to the end of April was almost completely windless; therefore no water. Farmers were soon desperate for stock water…’
Paul Miskelly accessed the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) records of the power delivered from wind farms attached to the grid. During the calendar year 2010 the total wind output across the entire grid fell rapidly to zero or near zero on 109 occasions in the year.
He showed that these droughts occurred when high-pressure systems fell over the area, these are visible in the weather maps that show the high and low-pressure systems that move from west to east across the continent.
He flagged the need for a fleet of fast-acting gas plants with enough capacity to match the installed wind capacity, on standby mode ‘to balance the wind’s mercurial behaviour’.
In 2010, there were only 23 wind farms with less than 2GW of installed capacity and it was anticipated that the supply would become more reliable as the number of sites increased. John Morgan reported that the situation was much the same in the 12-month period from Sep 2014 to Sept 2015 when the capacity of the wind fleet was approaching 4GW.
The problem persists with almost 9GW of installed wind capacity at present. Mike O’Ceirin, an independent analyst working with the Energy Realists of Australia, has an interactive site using the AEMO records.
The records can be interrogated to the depth and duration of all the wind droughts from 2010 to the latest serious episode which lasted over 40 hours through the 7th, 8th, and 9th of August.
People need to become wind-savvy and alert to the Achilles heel of the intermittent energy system, that is, the nights when the wind is low and there is next to no renewable energy input. During these periods, no amount of additional installed capacity will help until there is grid-scale storage to save the excess power generated on sunny afternoons.
Renewable energy promoters celebrate record high inputs like the wind just before the drought in August and the solar input for an hour in South Australia on the afternoon of October 16.
AEMO recently started to give out potentially misleading information (to the wind-illiterate user) on the data dashboard with a record of Renewable Penetration. (See the tab at the top of the page.) Admittedly, it is labelled ‘highlights’ but it could mislead the unwary casual viewer who doesn’t realise that the highs are useless as long as the lows persist. It is directly comparable to the fence around the cow paddock where the gate is always open or there are permanent gaps. Doh! The cows will get out regardless of the height of the fence.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/the-voice-of-energy-realism/
*****************************************************Sydney council warns residents against taking dangerous risks to charge EVs
A Sydney council has warned residents against running power cords onto the street to charge their electric cars.
It comes after several reports that residents had run hazardous extension cords from inside their homes out onto the street through trees and over public footpaths.
In one incident, a resident hooked a power cord through a tree over public land to charge their electric car.
Mosman Council was forced to issue a public warning urging residents to use the three publicly available fast charging stations in the suburb instead.
“Connecting power to a vehicle using this method is potentially unsafe to the public,” a Mosman council spokesman told The Daily Telegraph.
Sydneysiders took to social media to share their thoughts on the bizarre charging techniques.
“Still waiting eagerly for the first huge slip and trip injury claim against a council for allowing cables to be lying all over the footpaths,” they wrote.
Other commentators noted the lack of charging stations for electric vehicles throughout the city.
“Who would have thought … No infrastructure. But a race to get into overpriced throw away transportation … Now that’s moving forward,” one user wrote.
A NSW Fire and Rescue spokesman said failing to use an approved charging system would add increased fire risk to homes.
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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
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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