At the Bootle by-election of May 1990, the continuing rump of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), headed up by David Owen, an old grandee of the Labour Right, won fewer votes than the Monster Raving Loony Party – a group of weekend enthusiasts who stand in elections as a joke. For Owen, this was the final insult. The continuing SDP was immediately wound up, and Owen retreated into a life of Crossbench quietism.
But was he right to? To all observers, there could be no recovery from the humiliation of losing to the Monsters. But this is contradictory. If everyone knew who the Monsters were and what a defeat to them would mean, including Owen, then this would imply the existence of a well-established party brand. Clearly there is something else going on here.
A brand the Monsters are; more than this, they are a permanent fixture of national life. Britain’s media cannot stop reminding us of their existence, and make claims to their wit and eccentricity that are more asserted than shown. Few dare fail to be amused by their antics – not least the candidates themselves. The ostensible purpose of the Monster Raving Loony Party is to satirise our political system, and to embarrass the overmighty. Like all party platforms this is a conceit; it is Spin. It is Spin that can no longer be sustained. If the Monster Raving Loony Party is engaged in satire, then it is official satire. Far from being subversives, the Monsters are a powerful force for consensus.
Consider its choice of targets. The Monster Raving Loony Party seldom afflicts politicians at the height of their powers, but instead swoops down on beleaguered or insurgent candidates – that is, candidates whom the British media have declared to be beleaguered or insurgent. Their deployment is strategic; and always conforms to the prejudices of Britain’s governing classes. The Monsters dog the steps of Nigel Farage and Piers Corbyn, but were nowhere to be found during New Labour in its full pomp. The political purpose of the Monsters is to imbue any dissenting candidates with a vague air of silliness. It is a form of barracking, and a very selective one at that. The Monsters, along with latter-day contemporaries like Count Binface, reserve their greatest mockery for failure, not for Power. True to form, they are always found at the sight of any serious political reversal – no sooner had Matt Chorley declared Theresa May in 2017 to be “a busted flush”, there were the Monsters. One gets the sense that the Party is a little too eager to take on this role.
But where are the jokes? The Monster Raving Loony Party rarely treats us to any pranks, stunts, or capers. Little is ever made of their ‘Manicfesto’ – a list of Monster Raving policies. Instead, the Monsters assume that their presence at an election is ipso facto funny.
This scarcely matters. To Britain’s media classes, political satire is not meant to entertain us. Its role is a constitutional one, on the pattern of late Weimar Germany – it is a last line of defence against tyranny, or, latterly, Populism. Satire ‘holds power to account’. Ask someone to recount a funny sketch from Spitting Image and they will come up short, or, when pressed, will recall a fairly mirthless number about the internal politics of South Africa. During the loving Newsnight retrospectives on this programme, we are shown no ‘Dead Parrot’ analogue. As Paxman narrates, the puppets gesticulate in silence. When Spitting Image is on television, Satire is occurring; what is happening on the show itself is of no moment.
So it is with the Monsters: when they stand silently next to a candidate on camera, we are assured that power is being held to account. As satire, it is cliquey rather than witty. It aims to embarrass, not to mock. It is premised on the idea that to sic the weirdos on a candidate is to discredit them by mere association. It is passive-aggressive. It wrongly assumes that no one can be mocked and retain their poise. It is premised on the idea that democratic politics has no essential gravitas, and can be thrown off by the mere presence of kooky characters. It assumes that any blemish put on a politician’s carefully-cultivated image is death to their career. In other words, far from being a satire of political Spin, this brand of humour is entirely reliant on it. Like Alastair Campbell, the Monsters and their admirers assume that the worst thing that can happen to a politician is to be briefly laughed at; Charles James Fox, or a candidate for the Roman Senate, would not have cared.
As an organisation, the Monster Raving Loony Party flatters the tastes and prejudices of Britian’s ruling classes. For one, it embodies a supposed British eccentricity that is, again, asserted rather than shown. The knickerbocker style of the Party is much younger than, say, the Hellfire Club – but somehow feels much more dated. If this is eccentricity, then it is an official eccentricity, an eccentricity that always happens to be on the side of the winners.
What the Monsters also speak to is a crude anti-politics – authoritarian in premise. In a liberal democracy, we are at least supposed to believe that the elections themselves are in some way sacred, that this is a gathering of free citizens to deliberate seriously about the issues that will affect their lives. Other countries take this idea much further than we do, and would not tolerate the Monsters and their antics. Their disdain for the electoral process is surely of some note: they are the ultimate parachute candidates, and think nothing of wedging themselves into what are local democratic exercises, the outcome of which will not affect them. Britain’s establishment think little of electoral mandates either national or personal, and will come up with any thin excuse to cancel them. A mandate to sit in a national assembly is increasingly reimagined as a mandate only to serve as a local social worker; the twee of ‘Constituency Work’; the twee of ‘Dogs At Polling Stations’; the twee of bucolic local capers – this is the idiom by which MPs, and voters, are made faintly ridiculous characters in a general picaresque.
In this, the Monster Raving Loony Party is only too happy to oblige. A mandate from such a system is of little moment, and so it has proven. In the election of 2019, the British people were offered two real departures from the status quo. Would Britain choose a renewed Keynesianism, or an implicit British nationalism? These were real questions. The moment demanded more than the Monsters and Count Binface, who barracked proceedings endlessly. It tried to cheapen an event that Britain’s governing classes badly wanted to be cheapened. Both of the 2019 contenders have now been harried from national life by legal and bureaucratic methods; in this, the Monsters, with their breezy contempt for elections, have proven a useful adjunct. A showy disdain for politicians is a useful idea. No would-be despotism should do without it.
The Monsters, then, are not quite insiders – but are certainly part of an Establishment. We are told that they are funny. Everything about them is pro forma: pro forma interviews; pro forma praise; pro forma laughs. The whole thing reeks of obligation. What one encounters with the Monsters isn’t a parody, but the radical id of Britain’s rulers. There is, in other words, no shame in losing an election to them. David Owen should’ve fought on.
None of this may have convinced you. But consider this. One frequent refrain from the Party is that British politicians keep stealing their Monster Raving policies, from their Manicfesto. Well, quite.
J. Sorel is a pseudonym.
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In the long run it would be more effective AND cheaper to knock down the poorly insulated housing and build new ones.
Sadly us NIMBY’s will not allow that.
there are various solutions insulating walls, floor, ceilings/roofs in old housing stock – and probably far less expensive and more efficient then installing heat pumps
My uncles home in Sweden could pretty much be heated with a 100watt bulb – and the air is kept fresh and warm with a heat exchanger in the ventilation.
That’s the thing, in order for a heat pump to be viable, you need to insulate the home to the point where your use of gas would be minimal anyway, and you won’t have to gut the property to rip out and replace pipework and radiators.
All total bullsh*t – except for the landed rich with bulging pockets.
Take comfort that the “Royals” with be just fine!
Everyone gets this wrong. In order to estimate cost/benefit, the cost of heating with the cheapest available energy source must be compared with cost of electricity for a heat pump. Insulation is irrelevant since presence or lack thereof would have the same effect on consumption of whatever energy you use.
For example, I switched from oil-fired heating to heat pump in a French house because the cost of oil or LPG (piped gas is rare in France) was much higher than cost of electricity which in France was cheapest in Europe – thanks to nuclear.
Also I got 25% subsidy for equipment cost, and the internal infrastructure – underfloor heating – was already there.
Break even – installation cost amortised was 4 years, after that I was about 1 000€ a year better off.
In UK if you are comparing conventional electric central heating with heat pump, then heat pump will be cheaper. If you compare heat pump with gas, there probably will be no significant difference and indeed an irrecoverable capital cost for heat pulp and changes to internal pipework.
You also have to factor in – if the Net Zero lunacy continues – that electricity prices are going to rocket to cover the cost of the increased generation capacity and infrastructure required and in order to ration use at least until enough capacity and infrastructure can be built.
Subsidies – for those who can afford this stuff from those who can’t. Good stuff.
Ask a conservation officer, over insulating old homes is a recipe for disaster – condensation, rising damp, dry rot etc. Old houses need constant air flow aka draughts.
this is true and a new concern is air quality. reducing air changeover just results in higher pollution – mainly from cooking. house pollution levels (PMs) are worse the the busiest roads as it is. we might save energy but we’ll give everyone lung cancer
But they will suffer and die in a good cause, saving the Planet, something…
Same for new homes. All that moisture from humans and their activities needs to go somewhere.
constantly replacing the stale inside air with fresh outside air would not solve that?
and the air is kept fresh and warm with a heat exchanger in the ventilation.
My house, built 1926, has cavity walls, with air bricks at the bottom to circulate air in the gap. I understand that pumping the gap full of some insulation material, which then hardens, is about the quickest way possible to having serious wall damp problems.
My in-laws’ 1970s bungalow is near enough hermetically-sealed, such that I gasp for air. The gas central heating pipes are mainly contained within the concrete floor. Jack-hammering them out to replace them with larger bore pipework for these unicorn heat exchangers is no more practical, than tearing up my wooden floors, over two storeys, for the same purpose.
Lifting flooring, other than concrete, isn’t possible in many properties. There are parquet floors etc., and I know of properties where the floorboards have a groove between each, filled with a brass strip. To lift those boards, you have to start at the edge and rip up each nailed one to get to anywhere towards the centre.
I spent years of my early life alternating between “going out” by Comet and Britannia BOAC aircraft, to Singapore, Aden and other hot places for my school holidays. It was quite nice to be warm, as my boarding schools in England required the ice to be scraped off the inside of the windows in even mild winters, let alone that of 1962-3, where we were frozen into the Norfolk countryside for several weeks. I’m damned if I’m going to reprise those years to satisfy the idiots that want all this.
Indeed, I live in a 200 year old listed house with solid walls. It actually holds heat well but since new non-draughty windows and closing off the old chimney with a wood stove, I have had problems with mould. The solution? I have to run a dehumidifier at certain times and around the house to manage it. Gas boiler, no other options will ever work here.
Daikin sell a photcatalytic air purifier which is a low noise hepa filter and UV lamp for your air, but fresh air is better.
Keeping the upstairs windows open on the draught setting should help stop mould.
Of course – the stupid “targets” are ridiculous Green Fascist BS nothing to do with saving the earth, energy conservation or the environment.
The crazed Marxist Greens are murdering our civilisation and breaking up our societies , and we are piously and stupidly helping them.
The worst possible people have hijacked and are now running our politics!
Correct. I’ve lived in one such property and renovated five. Without airflow aka managed draughts older properties rot from the inside out. Properly maintained such housing stock will last for another 100 years. At least.
One recalls those fab triple glazed super eco homes that were to hot too live in in the summer, and the inhabitants got all sorts of nasty respiratory ailments as a result of captive air.
One of the reasons respiratory viruses thrive in Winter, is the air in our heated, insulated, drought-free homes dries out. First line of defence against respiratory tract viruses is the mucus in our nasopharynx. This sticky stuff traps the bugs and stops them invading the cells lining our airways. The thicker that mucus the more the protection.
in low humidity our nasopharynx dry out making invasion by viruses easier. This is why you need plenty of ventilation and/or humidifiers indoors during the Winter months.
Solutions to WHAT?
“What?” The “problem” they have manufactured to dispossess people of their property to hand it to the Banks, desperate for solid assets after they have ruined the world economy with their corruption of course!
Nothing to do with the thread whatsoever. Maybe worth reading the post I responded to?
Let me explain. Shut up!
If our houses were large enough then we could line every room with 3” of insulating board, but they aren’t, they are the smallest in Europe, largely because of the greed of builders aided and abetted by fellow Masons on the planning committees.
I’ve replaced the old painted wood cladding on the 1st floor with a fibre-cement cladding, AND added insulation underneath at the same time. It cost about the same as 2 rounds of repainting. I now have a warmer and lower-cost to heat house and no more repainting to do. The recent storms have also added to the freely available woodburner fuel supply, having brought down many already dead trees in the village. My ‘reward’ to help clear them – the wood.
You’re a complete Bastiat
Thats just what Black Rock want….compulsory purchase at rock bottom
prices , rebuild and add massive asset value, rent back to the poor plebs at highest rent possible with ‘Vax/Digital Pass’ required Rental Contracts.
“You will own nothing and be vaccinated ( ten times a year – it’s in your lease – public duty to “to protect others”!)”
Not funny being a serf with no bodily autonomy in crazy-man “Schwab’s Dream”!
With what effect? Making people homeless, misallocating capital and resources to replace the already serviceable with no benefit… like locking down the economy to eradicate a virtually harmless, ineradicable virus.
And in the short run it would be cheaper to send all the climate change apocalypse cult members to live in a detention camp in North Korea and pay for their accommodation.
They tried that didn’t they, with “slum” clearance, and ended up breaking up settled communities and causing a lot of social prblems.
Energy independence is what we should be working towards. gas, coal, wind turbines, whatever. Its going to be fusion as soon as we’ve put the money into it
yes, a decade or two of gas until some serious nuclear fusion can produce unlimited electricity on demand – wind turbines will be redundant – and as for solar in the UK…..
Viable nuclear fusion for commercial use has been a decade or so away for many decades now!
As ever it shall be.
And of course all this ‘free’ energy will come from fusion reactors that cost nothing to develop, build and maintain.
And… hands up all those who want to leave next to a hydrogen bomb. (Those are fusion reactors – portable too,)
Fusion should be considered an interesting hobby: what we need is more nuclear fission power plants.
And shale and coal, obviously.
Fossil fuels have made an inhospitable planet hospitable.
Thorium’s time has come.
It’s been coming for decades but never gets here.
Imagine for a second if we’d spend the Coofs money funding fusion research.
if you add up all the money the world has/spent/lost through covid we could have fusion, cured cancer and colonised mars
we’ve colonised the seas with mega yachts for billionaires.
but don’t worry we can simply print more if we need it!! Nobody has to pay a dime!
With the same likelihood of success.
It’s been going to be fusion since I was doing physics at school in the 1960s.
Fusion is, and always will be, the energy of the future. But let’s just keep throwing money at it because that’s how science works. Let’s push the boat out and toss a few trillion around and get transporters: Beam me up Scotty.
In Caithness earlier this week, which has been turned into a turbine farm.. wind was blowing a hoolie. Most of the turbines were not turning!!!! Landscape trashed, and obviously it was the wrong sort of wind.
If they turn too quickly they become fire bombs.
It gets better (well, worse). When they’re featured like that, kept turned sideways to the wind, they’re actually drawing power from reliable sources.
* feathered, dammit.
Birds of a feature?
They have to be turned off if it is too windy.
When it is cold and still, i.e. on cold Winter days, they don’t turn anyway.
Has to be absolutely perfect conditions. I’ve driven past some windmills near Avonmouth regularly, and at a rough estimate they are going round (slowly) perhaps a tenth of the time. They may be whirling round madly when I’m not there to see it, but somehow, I doubt it. Most of the time, there they sit…….unmoving.
When they’re moving that slowly they’re using power to turn them in order to keep the bearings lubricated.
Never thought about that.
Neither did I, but it makes sense.
And from developing eccentricity in the bearings.
Never thought of that, either!
On very cold days they take power from the grid to heat the de-icers on the blades.
Indeed and it is spreading West. A new one is being built south of Altnaharra, ruining the unspoilt countryside and views and drying up the peat bogs, which is rather ironic since peat bogs are one the most efficient carbon sinks and we are told carbon dioxide needs lowering. They are planning to dry out another area of peat bog with the stupid rocket site near Talmine. There is nothing environmentally friendly about any of this crap.
Everything they tell us is the diametrical opposite of the truth .
There are quiet a few of them in South Wales these days; many of them are not far from the sites of old collieries, in effect. Mounted on the hight ground, above the valleys.
It is the same wherever these useless abominations are erected.
And drawing (fossil fuel generated) electricity from the grid to power their electromagnetic brakes to prevent the blades spinning out of control in the high winds.
The inevitable response will be to roll out some more “success stories” for reverse-fridges. You know “Ian, 48, an IT Manager from Chelmsford is delighted with the performance and running costs of his heat pump”.
Not telling you that Ian lives in a torn-down-rebuilt-and-fully-insulated farmhouse with two acres of land sufficient for a ground source pump.
Putting an air source pump into a typical British semi will be a disaster, getting worse the further North and up you go. And if you’ve got microbore pipework (hello), it will require an effective gutting of the property to replace.
With the necessary wall, ceiling and underfloor insulation, you’ll be lucky to see change from £30K, let alone £10K.
Then you’ll get a COP of 3 when you don’t need it, closer to 1 when you do, and bills that will make the installation costs look like a bargain.
If there was enough power to run it. But there won’t be.
Check my sums here.
29 million properties in the UK. Let’s say a very optimistic 4kW of demand per home in the morning in Winter (you’ll see claims as low as 2K but that’s for the fantasy situation of a COP 4 ground source pump operating in Summer when you don’t need it in a fully insulated home).
I make that 116GW of demand, right? And that’s new demand, just for domestic heating.
For reference, the current demand on the entire UK grid is 37.54GW (see https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk)
Electric heating in the UK is both unaffordable and actually unachievable. No rational adult involved in the process can believe otherwise. And yet we plough on, hand waving physics away and saying “Oh, Science will find a way.”
THE science will find a way.
Honestly, the numbers are so far from reality that only Professor Pantsdown’s version of The Science is viable.
His is the only one the listen to – he tells them what he is paid to say!
Yes, more experimental mRNA “Gene Therapies” on the way!
Fewer people = less energy required. Not Einstein is it?
Someone sane, thank goodness. People in the remoter parts of Scotland have been duped into installing heat pumps. In one area, they used taxpayers money, at something approaching £30k per property, to install heat pumps in houses where people were in fuel poverty. Contractors scarpered soon after, so most of these white elephants don’t work. And the people in those households ended up even colder and poorer, with even higher heating costs. Absolute scandal.
Indeed, the £10K we see bandied around are for best-case installations into properties that don’t need anything else done, except maybe a few radiator swaps. That number is only going up from there, and up sharply in many properties which will essentially need an internal rebuild that will render them uninhabitable for days or weeks. Where is everybody going to live and store their possessions while their homes are being torn apart?
As for running costs and effectiveness, as I listen to the snow howling in the flue of my gas boiler, I doubt there’s an erg of usable energy that could be extracted from it.
Your numbers are wrong, “we globalists” just “shrink” the population!
Vega wants to remove the carbon units infesting the planet.
Where’s Mr Spock when you need him!
Working for the WEF?
There you have it! Halve the population and meet your Carbon Zero target in “one fell swoop” !
Pure Evil is Riding Out !
I would have faith MAYBE if the free markets were responsible for heat pumps – but that would be based on the following -> venture funded R&D -> lots of iterative dev and prototypes -> loss leaders and expensive products -> prove effective -> price comes down -> competition -> improvement -> next generation.
As it happens, the govt will pick a supplier based on a deliberately lowered bid, which will increase exponentially and not deliver and tax payers will pay for the a) crap product and increased bills b) the write off as the contract is terminated c) further increase through carbon taxes
Heat pumps are so complex and gains so marginal that maintenance becomes the over riding factor. That level of complexity in domestic dwellings will never work. Voltage surge through the mains, circuit board fried, the soft start boards cost best part of £1000. The practical realities remove any advantages. Dozens of heat pumps on the grid, each drawing huge ampage when they start up, will make the grid even noisier.
And many of them will be deliberately timed to start up on the hour or half hour.
Smart meter says no. The meters will all be talking to each other to ensure even distribution of power consumption, so don’t think you will be getting heating on demand.
And that would be on top of the doubling of output needed to charge all the electric cars. It’s all completely ridiculous.
If it all continues like this, there won’t be any cars on the road, never mind electric.
It is not all countries – it’s the Five Eyes West and Europe destined for the chop!
You have to factor in their planned ‘Population Reduction Target’ – what did Gates say? 15% ? – only one billion worldwide – they surely can do better than that?
Bozo’s Dad reckons a UK population of 20-25 million by 2025 will be ample, thank you very much.
Cars aren’t actually anywhere nearly as bad. I make it “only” about 10GW of constant new load. Although of course it won’t be anywhere near constant: it will be very peaky in the evenings.
Same time everyone gets in and fires up their heat pumps, kettles, lectric ovens, TVs
And don’t forget the symphony of dozens of fans blowing air over the heat exchangers in a typical street… the music reaching a climax during the wee small hours of a cold night.
“two acres of land sufficient for a ground source pump.” – that isn’t quite true is it? I looked into ground source for our place (six beds, smallish sloping garden) and the solution was three bore holes 120m deep, so almost no land area required. The temperature down there is constant all year round, about 12C, so COP 4 all year round is reasonable for bore hole ground source heat pumps.
I agree, ground better than air source. More efficient when you actually need heat, plus air source units are ugly.
External insulation seems the best way to go, unless you’re already gutting a property and can sacrifice a bit of floor area.
My house, which is bigger than average and has about 40% well insulated, peaks at 100kWh gas per day, which averages 4.2kW. So my bigger than average house, suboptimally insulated would need about 1.1kW of electricity to replace our gas usage in the coldest winter months.
Bear in mind that with a well insulated house the heating is not whacked up to full in the morning because the house is freezing, but is left on to maintain a stable temperature throughout the day.
I agree, it will take a lot of new electricity generation, but I think it will be less than your calculations indicate. This will not happen overnight, capacity will increase with demand.
“They” are clearly trying to inflate the cost of a kWh of gas (previously around 4p a unit) to the same as a kWh of elec (20p per unit). That is the only way that electricity becomes viable for heating. The heat pumps, if you are lucky and it’s not winter, might give you a coefficient of performance of 3 or 4. Heat pumps are not only expensive, they are prone to failure. Plenty of folk are discovering these issues, having to replace heat pumps after only a few years. It’s unsustainable, most families can’t afford £10000 every few years for a new pump.
I got this letter last night from my utility company – increase to my projected dual fuel bills of £550 a year. DESPITE being on their smart metre programme.
despite now means because
My landlord instructed it but either way – we have so far used less power and I changed the lightbulbs which should save a fortune in the long run. I am on the fence with it so far
Difficult to read, but I think that’s close to 75% increase in gas and 50% for the electricity. It’s taking the p!$$.
No – reducing your standard of living as Johnson is committed to “Levelling Up” – ( so that means confiscating your assets and giving them to the rich – you have too much and they are not rich enough) it is all a matter of semantics!
Should clear up if you expand the image i get a full res on my macbook
The Smart metres are for them not you – anything called “Smart” is your enemy!
Just a couple of days since mine arrived from another firm – OVO (which bought the business from SSE) in this case. The one below does include 5% VAT in the figures presented. I don’t use SMART metering, not that it has anything to do with pricing.
I guess the best you can say about that is that once you’ve had your pipework and radiators ripped out and replaced and a warm (I won’t say “hot”) water tank put back in again, replacing just the heat exchanger unit itself will be cheaper than a full new installation.
But, yes, it’s a big concern. Best of luck with any warranty claims, or getting a service contract.
Air source heat pumps cannot get the water hot enough to kill off any bugs…so you still need an immersion heater!
It’s a long time since I got rid of using hot water storage for gravity hot water. Instead, my place uses mains pressure warm water, heated in a heat exchanger in a storage tank, in which the water is heated by solar collection tubes on the roof, and topped up by an immersion heater through the dull times of the year. It is the largest tank that would fit in – 190 litres, made by Gledhill https://www.gledhill.net/product-category/thermal-storage/ . It’s been in service since 2006, with roughly biennial servicing, and a couple of fault repairs (a failed pump, and a failed control unit), but it’s doing a good job.
Note that this is only used for tap water, showers etc. Not for space heating – that’s electric and a gas fire.
wood for our stove seems to be the only thing that hasn’t gone up in price
Gove will be confiscate all wood burners to “Save the Planet” not to worry though, we will be able to burn all the frozen bodies soon!
At it’s core, a totalitarian globalist ideology, in practice, the biggest transfer if wealth from the 99% to the 1% in history!
Let’s have a referendum on this malevolant shit for brain’s zealotry. In fact, let’s have referenda on all major political decisions that effect the long suffering disenfranchised masses of Bolloxed Britannia…Coz we obviousy can’t trust our representative “democracy”? any longer, tis buggered and broken!
I’d love a referendum on NATO membership.
They would just rig it.
Do you really believe Trudeau ‘won’ the Canadian election or that Biden “won” the Presidential?
Calling an election vote counting technology “Dominion” means just what it says! They always tell us exactly what they are doing: “You will own nothing and be happy” remember?
It is nothing less than the organised melt down of Western civilisation and the planned impoverishment of the surviving population – we had better wake up soon or we may no wake up at all!
Seriously how much truth is there in the idea that “harnessing power from fusion is possible but will take decades to develop”?
How can “scientists” reasonably say that?
How do they know there won’t be a breakthrough in physics that either makes harnessable fusion developable within a year or else makes it seem obvious that it can’t happen?
They’ve lied enough about nuclear fission, for goodness sake! I wouldn’t take what they say about nuclear fusion at face value.
Perhaps if someone is reading this who believes it is true they can be so kind as to explain it in two or three sentences? Because I am sceptical – that’s why I come to this site!
What other examples are there of this? I mean where the position is supposed to be “We know this can be done. We don’t yet know how. We expect to have the technology in somewhere between 10 and 100 years?” (Software analogies aren’t sought here. What hardware analogies are there?)
we’ll have fusion when we’ve put the money in. a ‘Manhatten’ style project would see it done in 5 years
You are probably right. From what I see ( and I’ve been following the project over 40 years now ! ) a lot of the problems have been solved in recent years.
Ironic your handle is “Star” and you’re asking about Nuclear Fusion
I’m halfway through my life and have a very keen interest in science and technology and one of my dearest wishes is that Nuclear Fusion becomes a commercially viable technology in my lifetime.
I believe there are two main problems to solve for this to happen
1) Containment of the superheated plasma so it doesn’t destroy the reaction vessel.
2) Getting the reaction to be self sustaining e.g. more energy out than you have to put in .
From my understanding 1 is almost solved
2 is the hard one for instance the latest runs I’ve heard of produce around 50 MW of continuous heat output, but take about 500 MW of energy input to sustain and contain the reaction.
But I genuinely believe we will solve these problems – let’s just hope I live to see it !
they are not far off. its the lack of investment. We have JET which proved the concept and ITER which is supposed to actually run and get more energy out than in – and would prove the basis for a commercial reactor. But they spent 10 years arguing about where to build it – 10 years building it and want to run it 10 years. There are lots of smaller versions which show promise but need funding better. ‘Let a thousand flowers bloom’ etc. A lot of private investment – just needs ramping up
if the world was serious about climate change they’d do it. if we were really all going to burn to death by 2050 they’d have some 2% of GDP fund for fusion and everything else. but they aren’t – its just virtue signalling
2% of world GDP is 1,680 billion a year. like what we spend on the military.
ITER(the majority of fusion funds) is costing 22 billion over 20 years. its chump change
I’ll believe ‘the elite’ are serious about global warming when they do something about it rather than pretending to do something about it. In the meantime I’ll continue to believe its a mixture of virtue signalling and opportunism (to fleece the 99% of our money)
CO2 taxes are merely there to gather as much of other peoples wealth creation as possible and divert it to the globalist title.
I mean, look how they’ve shortened “vaccine” development time. 10 – 15 years to six months.
Fusion can’t be more than a couple of years tops.
In other news – OK, off-topic, but this may be extremely important to many of our lives quite soon: Lithuania has declared a state of emergency.
I wouldn’t it past the US and NATO to attack land communications or at least to attempt to undermine military support capability between Kaliningrad and the rest of Russia. (Kaliningrad borders only Lithuania and Poland and then on the other side there is Belarus before you get to the main part of continental Russia.)
That would be portrayed as “defending NATO’s northeastern flank”.
If this happens then you would certainly get outright war between Russia and NATO – not through proxies, but outright direct war, between two nuclear-armed adversaries.
All military strategists in all major powers are aware of that. It would amount to an attack on Russia.
The situation is very dangerous.
If there is a power that can suddenly mount a big cyber-attack in Kaliningrad, even without any movement of military matériel to a “defence line”, that could be the trigger.
If such an attack happens, there would be various possibilities for who that power might be. It might be a NATO power, it might be Russia itself, or it might be a third party.
I don’t know what WW3 will look like, but WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
Poking the bear is a fool’s game.
Lithuania has no land frontIer with Russia except for the Kaliningrad enclave
(Northern East Prussia). Kaliningrad is an armed camp and I suspect the Russians are fully prepared for any cyber attack in their direction. Berlin and Warsaw are both very close.
Putin has made it absolutely clear that he has directed that any interference by an alien power in this “local dispute” would result in a massive Russian Military response. It is time the war-mongering NATO goons took him seriously.
I agree that a NATO cyber attack on Russia would be seen by Putin as an act of war. He will already have planned his reaction.
Looks like the time might be right for China to re-take Taiwan?
I wonder if Gates has taken to his Nuclear Bunker yet to direct his Global Health policies from there . Whatever nightmare they have planned for us, the Globalist elites intend to survive!
If the government is so keen on renewables, why doesn’t it insist on housebuilders putting solar panels on roofs of new builds? Any number of new houses have been built around us in the past couple of years, many of which are ideally situated for solar panels. No doubt a lot of lobbying from the big housebuilders would put a stop to this sensible idea if it was suggested.
Why would the big housebuilding companies be opposed? It could be a selling-point, and also ceteris paribus it might go down well with the financial interests that the builders “work with” because bigger loans would be involved and purchasers could be got over a barrel even more than they are already. That said, other things aren’t equal and the same financial interests also “work” with traditional energy concerns. It’s financial capital that has the upper hand in the capitalist class whatever the specific sectoral or new-tech considerations may be.
Trees are renewable, so wood stoves are the relatively low tech solution to heating needs. Burning tech has come on leaps and bounds, so needn’t be polluting. Anything over complex in houses is doomed to failure, once routine expensive maintenance is involved.
Here we are in the 21st century, and the globalists have ensured we will all be living in miserable conditions.
These “elites” are so damn clever we lurch from one bloody problem to the next.
The UK lies 50 to 60 degrees north. In addition it is cloudy half the time, it is on average dark half the time, and low light 2 thirds of the day time. In winter the sun is weak when power is needed most. It’s like an employee working on the gritting lorries that shows up for work when he’s not needed (summer lunchtimes) but is missing in action when there’s work to do (cold winter nights).
And no, you can’t store the power from one scenario to be used for the other. Electricity needs to be made at precisely the time you need it, and not made when you don’t. Any suggestion that batteries can be used is made by people who are clueless to the amount of power involved.
I think it’s because no rent changes hands. I assume the big landowners whose fields are covered with solar panels or turbines are receiving large sums as rent, paid for by you or I. Mandating solar panels on new builds is a good idea, but how are the rich going to get richer?
gas prices just jumped 50%
Piers Morgan and Matt Hancock have heat pumps
The mind boggles!
We assume a referendum would win in the abolition of net zero, there would be so much fake news and lies parroted by the legacy meeja that the average joe or jane who already actually thinks that man made climate changed is settled and will sit back and take it, infact will signal their virtue in doing so.
If there is a referenda, the govt should be banned from making any statement about it or funding any advertising etc.
We should be out on the streets protesting the price hike, the rate my fuel bills are going up it would be cheaper to burn cash.
They loved the lockdown. They loved the jab. They love net zero and will do as they are told
(These are people who spend their Saturday evenings watching two cretins dance. This is the highlight of their week, there is no hope)
The adults left in the country should get together and agitate for proper grown ups to be put back in charge of government and key institutions.
The root of most of our problems is that we live in a society dominated by people with the minds of children, obsessed with stupid, inconsequential, made up problems like the nature of gender, the minutiae of racism, the global temperature or diseases that are barely distinguishable from the common cold.
While our society bickers like narcissistic children about these matters and making sure each our feelings don’t get hurt, someone like Putin comes along and reminds us what a real, grown up world is actually about.
Ourociety can now grow up and.man up and start worrying about big boy problems or it can sit around debating which are the right pronouns to use and get completely clobbered.
Its shown in the quality of “debate” in parliament. Its all curated soundbites that come across punchily on twitter or instagram.
The only way to achieve net zero is to tow the British Isles out to the mid Atlantic and sink it
Depopulation would be much easier. Stanley Johnson favours around 15 million!
I’ve seen a number of polls that show the British public don’t believe the climate con and education, housing, immigration, wages and healthcare – the difficult things to do, rank far higher. Stop electing political parties, vote on policies (as long as they publish them!!!). Personally I will never vote Blue ever again.
Brown went to court to ensure he didn’t have to follow what was in his manifesto.
Energy Insecurity: Biden’s Policies Leave Americans Vulnerable to Unreliable Wind & Solar
https://stopthesethings.com/2022/02/24/energy-insecurity-bidens-policies-leave-americans-vulnerable-to-unreliable-wind-solar/
by stopthesethings
Thursday 24th February 4pm to 5pm
Yellow Boards
A321 Finchampstead Rd
Junction Sandhurst Rd & B3016 Finchampstead Rd,
Wokingham RG40 3JS
Stand in the Park Sundays 10am make friends, ignore the madness & keep sane
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Telegram Group http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Off topic, but after 2 years of non compliance I’ve decided to start wearing a mask. Just in case a nuclear bomb is dropped, it’ll protect me.
Masks have magical powers, don’t they? The only reason my recent flight from Lisbon was able to take to the air was because all the passengers and cabin crew wore them. Thankfully, the air hostess, a Portuguese teenager, educated me on this subject. I was ignorant. And yes, as soon as I put it on, the plane took off. Amazing!
Obviously we were never told that Orville and Wilbur discovered the missing component to heavier than air powered flight was a bit of fabric over their mouths and noses. I am going to request from Kill Devil Hills museum that they add this information to their wonderful displays.
You can get a fantastic fabric mask.
It has an image of a hot woman in stockings legs akimbo printed on it, as you are wearing the mask it looks as if you are providing her with a special service.
I wonder what the air hostess would makeof that?
Let me check The Science. I’m a bit out of date, the flight was on Saturday.
Dont be silly. It wont protect you but it will your neighbour. And make sure they know you are talking those iodide tablets to protect them. And dont forget to duck and cover.
The bomb is also there to protect others, all at the same time, permanently.
Should I put my fingers in my ears or in my neighbours ears as I’m not sure who to protect from the bang?
Well the kind and caring option is to put them in your ears to help keep them safe from said bang. The selfish option being to let them borrow your ear defenders.
Mind where you put your fingers in your neighbour – I see a potential “sex crime” possibility!
Those cupboards under the stairs were built with a cunning purpose- (another hint: newspapers over the windows too, to deflect the blast of course!)
“Nut zero” Are you hinting at Princess nut-nut zero?
Carrieservatism is a total disaster.
She should stick to showing off at ‘Annabel’s’.
The Queen gets paid an estimated £200 million a year rent for the inconvenience of having off shore wind turbines disturbing her sea bed.
The likes of Cameron’s father-in-law gets £600 000 a year for hosting a dozen turbines on his estate.
The ruling class are making out like bandits from all this eco guff, this is the only reason they support it.
It’s taxpayer farming AKA stealth-feudalism, let’s plan to ensure the globalists reap the whirlwind.
Same thing with Boris and the covid fraud.
Boris has sold access rights to British people’s bodies to big Pharma.
The whole idea of the vaccine passport is to make life impossible for people unless they submit to being perpetual pharma customers that are injected with whatever is demanded whenever it is demanded -thus giving pharma a perpetual profit stream.
Undoubtedly the Tory party and the top players in the Tory party will get their cut in due course.
Book deals with ridiculous advances for pulp autobiographies is one of the more obvious ways.
Nothing but scams from the moment Johnson took over – including carrying on the scams of his predecessors!
Have we ever been the victims of such overt corruption in the entire Body Politic?
There is not even attempts to hide what they are doing. This is not euphemistic ‘daylight robbery’ this is in your face and what are you going to do about it THEFT?
That’s what’s most scary. They’re not even trying to hide the looting.
Time to realise that like the sanctions on Russia that will not affect Russia, who will merely lean more on China, but will create shortages and hyper inflation in the west , this is all about ‘Taking Down’ the western ‘democracies'( sic) and our own Governments and 90% of our politicians are in lock-step collusion with the WEF are out to pile on the pressure ruin our lives our livelihoods and impoverish us. They have now seen an example form Canada on how to steal our bank balances too!
We are under a crazy assault from a bizarre and deranged alliance of enemies of the Western World and those who despise ordinary people- but ironically that does not include the Russians!
The first principle is to believe absolutely nothing any Western politician or media source ( bar those few inanely bleating “why oh, why” all the time) tells you – the world – in fact the whole last crazy decade of Culture Wars – begins to make more sense.
When Trilateral Globalist Useful Idiot Kneeler Starmer succeeds in fulfilling his orders to prime Johnson into taking down ‘Russia Today’ , we shall have no world news source not locked into his and his party’s Great Reset agenda.
“Mushroom Man” – Kept in the dark while the mountains of BS rise ever higher!
(I wonder how Gates is getting on with his fun project to fire dust into space to block out the sun? Oh yes, it is true! Still, more vaxxes on the way no doubt!)
This goes hand in hand with their digital harms bill.
Misinformation will become a criminal offence and is being defined as a path to terrorism.
So anyone guilty of posting misinformation will be a criminal/terrorist.
Naturally misinformation will be defined by the actual terrosists sat in Cabinet.
The stated aim of Schwab is One World Government.
I stand by comments made yesterday that our so-called leaders deserve to be tried for treason.
‘we’d have enough gas to be self- sufficient for 50 years.’
Not really true as things stand because all that gas would have to be sold on the world markets at world prices, we are globalists don’t you know.
When Maggie shut the pits I said at the time we will have to re-open these in 50 years.
I might be slightly out on the timing but the pits will have to be opened again at some point, shale gas notwithstanding. We’ll probably need Indian and / or Polish expertise but 300 years coal supply cannot be left alone while the nation goes cold.
Utter bloody madness.
A bit like the national food policy. Oh, whoops we haven’t got one of those either.
Thye were on sale for a single pound.
The NUM didnt want to buy them, they wanted to be subsidised, bit like the owners of wind totems do now.
Can we just help these people (the net zero lobby) reduce their own carbon footprint? If you get what I mean
We could all just move somewhere warmer. Syria, say. I don’t think their military would pose any serious impediment to us establishing colonies there.
‘Nut Zero’, eh? Please be careful in creating terms with ambiguous meanings or we’ll all be a laughing stock.
Eco craziness was gifted us by the Nazis…
https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1155&context=hist_fac
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35941487-green-tyranny
And much is still held in common – for example, for Greens, however much pollution, child labour and related diseases are caused by rare metal mining for turbines and solar, that we get “clean” energy at the end is all that matters; that old Fascist mantra – “The end justifies the means”
Excerpt from Link #1
“”We recognize that separating humanity from nature, from the whole of life, leads to humankind’s own destruction and to the death of nations. Only through a re-integration of humanity into the whole of nature can our people be made stronger. That is the fundamental point of the biological tasks of our age. Humankind alone is no longer the focus of thought, but rather life as a whole . . . This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest meaning and the true essence of National Socialist thought:'”
As a scientist who worked in the energy field as a ‘day job’ for 40 years, I find that the DS discussion of energy and climate change consistently fails to be as sharp and incisive as its discussion of COVID. The latter has been a breath of fresh air.
The DS position on climate change slightly reminds me of Piers Corbyn’s website. I’m afraid most people dismiss Piers’s views as being not quite credible, although they could of course be tested by having him in a TV debate with a Met Office person.
To see a country that’s got to grips with declining fossil fuel resources, I suggest a visit to Denmark. They had a coherent energy policy in the 1970s, long before CO2 was discussed. This was because of the effects of the 1973 and 1979 oil crises; they were much more oil-dependent than the UK.
Danes mostly expect their houses to be heated to 20 to 24 degC. By comparison, it’s the UK that has freezing cold homes, even with natural gas still being available. But as usual with the press, never expect reality to get in the way of a good story.
I’m also a retired research scientist. I seem to recall that Denmark went heavenly into wind turbines to supply most of there electricity. Unfortunately due to the vagaries of the wind the Danish electrical supply network became unstable and they had to export some of their wind generated electricity to other countries and import hydroelectricity from Norway to maintain a stable supply.
Why “unfortunately”. We import and export pretty much everything else, so why not energy? Moving electricity around like this is a great way to stabilise power systems and use the cheapest available source at any given time.
“declining fossil fuel resources,”
Um even Moonbat has agreed that peak oil is rollocks.
Interesting viewpoint.
Fossil fuel resources are increasing rather than declining?
How does that happen?
I agree entirely.
Chris Morrison clearly does not have a clue, or he is deliberately mangling, exaggerating and omitting to promote a particular narrative. Employing him as Environmental Editor is bringing the Daily Sceptic into disrepute and casting shade on their excellent informed work on COVID.
“fails to be as sharp and incisive” – something of an understatement!
Please, please don’t print anything that favours fracking in the UK. It’s one of the few things worse than Andrew Neil opening his mouth.
or what?
Will you report us to your Sgt?
The effects of supposed ‘climate change’ and response to it is all based on computer models, constructed by charlatans… just like CoVid.
And as with CoVid observation diverges widely from prediction. There is no evidence that weather patterns are trending in any direction or moving outside natural variation for the last Century.
The average global temperature, for a long list of reasons, is accurate to about +/- 3C, so nobody actually knows true global temperature; there is no way to monitor supposed reduction in global temperature if we ‘decarbonise’ with any accuracy. So keeping global temperature changes within 1.5C is absurd – we can’t do that in our living rooms!
Climate is an average (as such it doesn’t exist, like the ‘average family’) of meteorological events which in the short term, 24 hours, we call weather, over the long term we call climate. Thus 50% of the data is above, 50% below average, with 5% at each extreme. There is no default climate therefore.
Climate can only be considered retrospectively over thousands, tens of thousands of years. Making prediction about future climate is fortune telling and hucksterism.
Planet’s been cooling for 7K years, and this interstadial is following exactly the previous ones
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/holocene-context-for-catastrophic-anthropogenic-global-warming/
The level of wilful ignorance re climate is a disgrace.
Add to that that the models are beyond useless; even Gavin Schmidt, recently NASA GISS head and a climate change crazy has admitted the models run too hot (and we base our policy on these nonsense projections, not on real world data, such as the current Grand Solar Minimum {not predicted by the models btw)
https://www.cosba.com.au/2021/07/climate-change-science-magazine-article-blows-the-whistle-on-model-failure/
“Leading climate scientists conceded that models used to estimate how much the world will warm with rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are running too hot.
“It’s become clear over the last year or so that we can’t avoid this,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Science magazine.
The admission is seen as a significant development by scientists who argue that not enough attention has been paid to natural cycles in the earth’s climate.”
And two other NASA scientists blow the whistle on how bad the models are.
https://principia-scientific.org/top-nasa-climate-modeler-admits-predictions-mathematically-impossible/
https://notrickszone.com/2019/08/29/nasa-we-cant-model-clouds-so-climate-models-are-100-times-less-accurate-than-needed-for-projections/
Svenmark’s work on cloud nucleation by cosmic rays is critical to the above. Cosmic ray intensity varies hugely according to solar activity – the less there is, the more cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, the more clouds.
Not to mention this article from 2004
https://www.mpg.de/research/sun-activity-high
The Sun is more active now than over the last 8000 yearsAn international team of scientists has reconstructed the Sun’s activity over the last 11 millennia and forecasts decreased activity within a few decades
OCTOBER 28, 2004
The activity of the Sun over the last 11,400 years, i.e., back to the end of the last ice age on Earth, has now for the first time been reconstructed quantitatively by an international group of researchers led by Sami K. Solanki from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany). The scientists have analyzed the radioactive isotopes in trees that lived thousands of years ago. As the scientists from Germany, Finland, and Switzerland report in the current issue of the science journal “Nature” from October 28, one needs to go back over 8,000 years in order to find a time when the Sun was, on average, as active as in the last 60 years. Based on a statistical study of earlier periods of increased solar activity, the researchers predict that the current level of high solar activity will probably continue only for a few more decades.
Yet apparently the short burst of warming at the end of the last century was caused by CO2. Whereas the identical one at the start of the last century was the result of natural variability.
Right….not to mention that geological history shows no correlation (not that that’s science anyway, just a pointer) between CO2 levels and temperature. Indeed, CO2 levels are historically low.
Don’t be a sucker. The reality is all out there if you look, and this site
https://notrickszone.com/
has links to hundreds of sceptical papers from the past 1 years, and a good search – I suggest start with this one.
https://notrickszone.com/?s=solar
I think you are all being remarkably restrained. I find it impossible to comment effectively on the situation without profanity and abuse.
‘… – all ultimately passed onto the consumer; the poorest, as always, paying the largest relative share.’
It’s a Pigou Tax, the purpose being to ‘internalise’ the cost of a negative externality – that is a cost not included in the price to a consumer of a good, but a cost borne by some other who does not benefit from the good but will be made worse off.
it is meant to be an end-user tax to encourage decreased use of a good and encourage a move to an alternative. It is an indiscriminate, regressive tax like VAT so it hurts the poorer most. It is noticeable that the cheerleaders for all this tosh are well-off, many nice comfortable, middle-class Tofu-munchers.
The problem with Pigou Taxes is there is no way of determining the ‘correct’ level. Too low and they fail in their objective, too high and they cause economic harm. And the other big issue is Governments get addicted to them, so even if they do have the desired effect, Government will continue with them or seek alternatives to tax to maintain revenue.
The assumption is we are enjoying the benefits of fossil fuels but not paying the full cost, part of the cost will be borne by future generations who will not benefit but will be worse off as a consequence.
The ‘cost’ to future generations is entirely confected, assuming that climate change will bring about catastrophic changes to the environment, like droughts, flooding from rising seas, spread of malaria, huge migration of people, etc.
None of this allows for a wealthier society, more technologically advanced who can mitigate and that any changes which will take very gradually allowing adaptation.
it also presumes the change in climate can be predicted into the future, it ignores the possibility environmental balancing effect that may naturally occur. It also assumes that fossil fuel CO2 emissions have a significant effect on the Earth’s heat budget and climate with no proof of thus whatsoever.
In three words… computer modelling fantasy.
‘Oh, and they cost around £10,000, plus another substantial bill for all the building work.’
Plus the huge electrical bill for pumping the system 24/7.
If you put your money in shale gas in the UK you will lose your shirt – something you might need to keep warm. The UK has a highly complex structural geology that will make extracting the entrained gas very difficult and costly, not to mention destructive of the environment. The one thing most of that land, beneath which the gas hides, can do well is raise woolly pigs aka sheep, good as a source of ‘clean’ meat and wool for the jumpers we should be using to keep warm rather than expecting to heat our homes to subtropical temperatures.
There’s a lot of truth in that but at present the market price of wool is not good for the farmers in the UK. Most of the woolly things you can buy in typical stores come from the far east.
The zero carbon policy makes about as much sense as the failed zero COVID policies.
If we’re smart, we won’t insist on finding this out the hard way.
We have the solution. Nuclear and shale gas.
But Carrie and co plus Zac Goldsmith (another rich modern pirate) are ruling Boris.
This is basically a war, a war on life as we know and want it to be.
WE are the ones who must find a way to defeat the eco loons and climate warriors.
And we must start now.
Glad to see Allison Pearson etc. have started writing about this issue, but you have to ask, where have they been all these years, when so many have been highlighting the utter folly, even impossibility of what is now known as net-zero?
Will our idiot climate change believing MPs now start to understand, grasp the mettle, and start pushing back against Boris and the CCC, or will doing a political U-turn be considered a no-go area?
Allison P says: ”We need a petition….” There is one, growing suspiciously slowly. Closes on 27 April. Perhaps she should promote it.
”Hold a referendum on whether to keep the 2050 net zero target”
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/599602
The more I learn about the Great Climate Scam the angrier I get. This MUST be stopped.
Have you signed the petition? Doesn’t do much to help, I know, but you can see that others agree with you.
In the meantime, look what’s happening in China. This article might be interesting: https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2022/02/china-ramps-up-coal-based-steel-and-power-plants-despite-net-zero-goals/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_campaign=New%20EandT%20News%20-%20Automation%20FINAL%20-%20MEMBER&utm_medium=Newsletters%20-%20E%26T%20News&utm_content=E%26T%20News%20-%20Members&utm_term=740166 They will be using coal for decades ahead as a power source.
And getting much of it from Australia, which is doing away with its use. Barking mad.
Epitaph for a Wind Turbine
Here lies a mighty work of man,
Many a furlong encompassed its span.
Sadly it served a foolish conceit,
That man in his greatness would the world overheat.
An egregious presumption of laborious fools
That all would die unless we followed their rules.
When these goliaths were put in the bin,
One was left, memento of our most besetting sin.
Folie des grandeurs, hubris and fear,
Made man this monolith high to uprear.
They stood in their legions on sea and on land,
Blighting all beauty and dismaying the mind.
One small oversight had these masters of science,
That wind’s not a thing on which you place much reliance.
This a child could have foretold,
But the wise never listen and we got very cold.
Michael Sangster.
There are other answers that don’t include fracking:
Build cleaner coal power stations (yes they exist) to suplement power generation in the short term.
Invest in major new nuclear power stations.
Build new nuclear tech such as Thorium reactors.
Other non-energy policies to uptake:
Stop uncontrolled mass migration; Parts of England are more densley populated than Hong Kong.
The above point is underrated. All these extra people each year have to live somewhere, have to eat, have to bathe, travel on the much applauded public transport system. That is all carbon requiring energy. Stopping them arriving removes the need for more energy that way we can have a natural increase as would otherwise have been the case.
Properly managed estates e.g heather and bracken management needs to be made an issue as poorly maintained areas create flooded areas etc and this can lead to more issues down the line.
Remove all levies and subsidies to energy production and let there be a level playing field.
I seem to remember that there were outline projects to introduce carbon capture sequestration (CCS) in some existing coal fired ones, using redundant gas fields or oil wells for long term storage. However, money said no, so places like Drax switched to burning wood chips transported across the Atlantic, then by train to Yorkshire, touted as environmentally friendly and so on.
In the meantime, this story https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2022/02/china-ramps-up-coal-based-steel-and-power-plants-despite-net-zero-goals/ about China may be of interest.
Pearson says “Their idea is to phase out sales of wet wood and house coal. (Bye bye, log burners!)”
Why? Does Pearson’s log burner only work with wet wood, rather than the kiln dried stuff that burns cleaner, gives out more heat and doesn’t soot up your chimney?
I have a lot of respect for you Alison, so please don’t make stuff up.
“These specialist ‘heat’ pumps require houses to be more or less hermetically sealed (excellent conditions for winter viruses to spread)”
Chris Morrison has clearly never heard of heat exchangers, so how come he is the Daily Sceptic‘s Environment Editor? Couldn’t you find someone that is familiar with the subject matter?
Let me explain Chris. Fresh air is brought into the house via a heat exchanger. Heat from warm air leaving the house is transferred to the cold air coming into the house. The result is lovely fresh air and very little heat loss.