In October the Daily Sceptic reported on a paper written for the Royal Society led by Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith of Oxford University that concluded batteries were not the answer to the huge storage requirements of intermittent ‘green’ electricity power. Despite the prestigious academic fire power on parade, the paper died a death in the popular prints, presumably because of its unwelcome message about the much-touted battery solution. But recent revelations suggest the report could act as a loose thread that helps unravel the collectivist Net Zero agenda in the U.K. The Royal Society analysed decades of local wind speeds and found the electricity system needed the equivalent of at least a third of green energy to be stored as backup. Such a cost would be astronomical. Now it appears that the Government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) fudged the issue by using just one year of high wind data in persuading Members of Parliament in 2019 to donkey-nod through Theresa May’s insane legislative rush to Net Zero by 2050.
Sir Chris’s report showed that wind could fall away for days at a time during periods of intense cold dominated by high atmospheric pressure. It also found wind speeds varied between years, all of which is in fact known and has been studied widely by other scientists. The Telegraph has reported on remarks made by Sir Chris after the paper was published in which he noted that the CCC has “conceded privately” that reliance on one year’s data was a “mistake”. It appears that the information given to MPs committing to 2050 Net Zero assumed there would be just seven days when wind turbines would produce less than 10% of their potential electricity output. According to Net Zero Watch that compares with 30 such days in 2020, 33 in 2019 and 56 in 2018.
In reporting that the CCC has conceded the “mistake”, the Telegraph noted that Sir Chris said the committee was still saying it doesn’t differ much from Sir Chris’s calculations. “Well that’s not quite true,” observed the Oxford Emeritus Professor. Asked by the newspaper if it disputed the account of Sir Chris, a CCC spokesman said it had “nothing further to add”.
Of course the ‘Noble Lie’ that Net Zero must be foisted on an unwilling population whatever the economic and societal cost will need to be preserved. Nothing to see here, move along please, is likely to guide most mainstream media in covering these latest revelations. The investigative science and Net Zero writer Paul Homewood is less inclined to ignore the serious matter. “It is now clear that Parliament authorised Net Zero without any proper assessment, whether financial or energy, and the whole Net Zero legislation must now be suspended until a full independent assessment is carried out.” He goes further and states that current and past members of the CCC must be held to account, and “excluded from any further influence over the country’s energy policy, or indeed on any issue of public policy”.
In general, nobody wants to talk about the lack of wind and solar backup, so there is a widespread pretence that the problem will somehow be solved in the future. But having dismissed any role for batteries, the Royal Society suggested hydrogen as a solution, an idea, alas, only slightly less dumb than batteries. Highly explosive, low kinetic energy compared with hydrocarbons, expensive to produce, difficult to store and move around – the disadvantages are all too obvious. Francis Menton of the Manhattan Contrarian saw the report as an “enormous improvement” on every other effort on the subject of large scale energy storage systems. But in the end, the authors still have a “quasi-religious commitment” to a fossil-free future, and this means that the report, despite containing much valuable information, “is actually useless for any public policy purpose”.
What is becoming clear is the level of statistical deception that is practised across climate science and the promotion of Net Zero. Surface temperature measurements are frequently adjusted upwards on a retrospective basis despite ignoring growing urban heat corruptions, activists use computer models to run up garbage-in, garbage-out scares on an almost daily basis, and bad weather is deliberately confused with long-term climate to suggest the latter is changing due to human caused carbon dioxide. All lapped up without a critical word between them by members of the mainstream media increasingly funded by elite billionaires.
The donkey-nodding politicians and the poodle media often hide behind the notion that they are just following the ‘science’. There is no such thing as the ‘science’, settled or otherwise, just the ongoing scientific process. The distinguished scientist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman captured the integrity of the process when he wrote: “If you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid – not only what you think is right about it. … Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them.”
Renewable energy is not a low-cost substitute for fossil fuels, notes a forward in Rupert Darwall’s recently published report on Net Zero and Britain’s “disastrous” energy policies. High and rising energy costs have locked Britain into economic decline, a suggestion given weight by last week’s savage destruction of the steel economy of Port Talbot. Renewables are not cheap, nor can they provide the reliability that modern societies expect and on which they depend. His report is said to convincingly demonstrate “how Britain was conned into Net Zero by deceptive and illusory promises of cheap wind power”.
The CCC is a dedicated green activist group that sits at the heart of U.K. Government. It is a pernicious, untrustworthy force in British politics giving cover to policies that will lead to de-industrialisation and massive changes in future lifestyle including restriction on diet, transport and personal freedoms.
Here’s hoping the wind scandal blows the damn thing away.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Stop Press: Watch award-winning journalist, Alex Newman, explain why the “human-induced climate change” narrative is finally crumbling.
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You can’t power an industrial economy on wind, anyone who believes so is either corrupt, mad or stupid.
Didn’t we try that in the past?
Yup. There is a good reason that coal then oil tool off and windmills and sailing boats got relegated.
You cannot run a country on wind and that is why as well as the wind we have the Smart Meter to ration energy use. ——–Energy is the new currency. Carbon taxation is the new wealth redistribution tool.
Clearly the intention is to make sure that we are no longer an industrial economy.
Net Zero Means Powerless Defenceless –
latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online.
12.000 Bird choppers in the UK coving an area almost the size of West Sussex. 500 dead large birds per chopper every single year. Producing at best 15% of our energy needs. They are not Gaia friendly. Capacity is at best 50% given wind intermittency and the poor quality of battery storage. Per Chopper:
There are not enough rare earth elements to power a wind grid to sustain our economy. Not enough in the entire world and you need to move gigatonnes of tender Gaia’s skin to get at them. All done with hydrocarbon (clean, abiotic) power.
There is not enough land (must be flat, in a wind zone etc). Each MW eats up 50 acres of space (most farms are 3 MW to 5 MW in size). To treble wind production you would have to carpet the equivalent of Kent, Surrey and the Sussexes with the Bird manglers. It is insanity, not ‘green’. The Choppers are placed on farmland or once wild areas. This is not eco-friendly.
Follow the money. Lots of millionaires in the supply chain of the Bird Eaters.
I hear in Germany the Red Kite is virtually wiped out. —Birds of prey are always looking down. They don’t see the blades coming.
Used to see lots of birds of prey in the hover in Caithness when driving down the A9. Haven’t spotted one in ages now, but the area has been industrialised with turbines.
In many areas in Scotland the formerly beautiful landscape has been ruined by bird choppers. Who would want to go hill walking in apparently remote areas if these areas have disfiguring structures, concrete and roads all over them, and you have to listen to woop woop turbine noise instead of wildlife and the breeze?
When you return from holiday and are emitting all the “dreadful CO2” you look down at Scotland and it is starting to look like a giant pin cushion.
I didn’t think the models were GIGO, I thought they were just GO
All these scams such as ‘green energy’, electric vehicles, HS2, Cv-19 ‘vaccine’ etc should be filtered out by honest and wise politicians to whom we cede responsibility to make decisions on our behalf. They in turn are answerable to the PM who we trust will be a wise and pragmatic leader. Where are they? They’re certainly not to be found in Westminster.
Without the above, any pseudo-expert, fake, charlatan, flanneler, cheat or phony (yes, Ferguson, I’m looking at you) can hold sway and stuff us all.
The Simpsons monorail episode comes to mind. Sinking our money into inadequate solutions to a made-up problem.
Those who claim to ‘follow the science’ clearly don’t understand the scientific method.
I keep wondering where all the British green jobs are. Minus 3000 in Port talbot is the only relevant statistic I can think of.
It’ll be minus 6000 in Port Talbot by the time the knock-on effects of destroying the steel plant there play out.
Indeed, as I have been pointing out since this criminal and sad announcement.
No need for coal, much of which used to come from a relatively local open cast colliery (Felin Fran, near Merthyr – although I think that is now our of action), nor any iron ore, which arrives by sea via the local docks, or else by train from other ports. Quite a while back, when there was another steel plant at Llanwern, east of Newport, all the iron ore arrived by sea at Margam, which can handle the large ships, and a large chunk of it was hauled by train from there to Llanwern.
Worth observing that the Met Office uses 1991 to 2020 for long term average sums at present. Incidentally, another story that undermines the concept of “Net Zero” is the latest delay to the Hinkley Point C project – now delayed to 2029 at the earliest.
“[Hydrogen] Highly explosive, low kinetic energy compared with hydrocarbons” surely chemical or potential energy, not kinetic?
We know the drill by now and that is to destroy our economy, our society and our way of life. None of this surprises me. What really does surprise me though is the level of abject ignorance demonstrated by MPs. You would have thought that the people actually representing us would have some inherent ability to discern, to weigh information, to be curious, to have some innate intelligence… Apparently not. They, almost as one body, seem to possess no curiosity, no outrage (when the only steel furnace is about to be extinguished), no ability to discern or to look further than the end of their paychecks and expenses and the possibility of jumping on a gravy train here or there, usually funded by some billionaire or other, to endlessly pontificate on matters on which they are not fit or able to speak about. As a whole, bar a very few, they have let us down badly. They give credence to organisations like the CCC because they’re just too lazy to do any digging into the subject themselves or they’re too cowardly to sabotage their careers by speaking out. These are the best in the land?? How the F did they end up where they are? Perhaps it is us who are the lazy ones in not skewering their nominations to be MPs to forensic examination in the first place. One thing I know, from the council politics down here in the shires, is that only those people who know the game and tow the line will be put forward onto the ballot – basically they’ve already been corrupted before they’ve taken one step through the doors of Westminster.
“No outrage”???—-Correct, but plenty of outrage if we want to process illegal aliens in Rwanda who chucked away their documents. Plenty of outrage if someone swears at a Muslim. Plenty of outrage if Braverman uses a perfectly good word that appears in the dictionary—“Invasion”. Plenty of outrage if a father does not want a man that has suddenly decided he is a woman in his daughters toilet. ——Yes outrage is very selective for the parasite class of UN lackeys pandering to pretend to save the planet politics who don’t give a jot whether it impoverishes us all and is actually doing that RIGHT NOW. Just take a look at your energy bills. Just ask people in Port Talbot.
Why would they (establishment, career party politicians) change when the people continue to go out and vote for them time and time again no matter how incompetent, disinterested or morally corrupt they undertake their role.
The most important commodity is ENERGY.———— Price and availability of energy is directly tied to prosperity, good health and life expectancy. The one billion people in the world that don’t even have electricity and the other 2 billion that only have enough to power a fridge will testify to that. So why are our politicians seeking to take away cheap reliable energy and replace it with expensive unreliable energy? ——-Hey Jim Dale answer that question will you? For anyone who does not know who this idiot Dale is, then tune into GB News where he is the resident climate change activist. Well Dale won’t answer that question because he thinks if a Mars Bar goes up 1p it is all because of “Climate Change”. He will claim the cocoa beans got wet or some other squirmers excuse. But enough of silly activist weathermen. ——-Why do government want to remove cheap reliable energy? ——Do they have evidence that the CO2 from the coal and gas is causing or going to cause dangerous changes to the climate? NOPE. The Chinese and Indians who emit 40% of that CO2 don’t think so and continue to use reliable affordable coal. They are using more coal than we did since the beginning of time, so there cannot be a climate apocalypse heading in past Jim Dales house now can there? —So WHY? ———-Because of UN politics. The Politics of Sustainable Development that says the prosperous west has used up more than its fair share of the fossil fuels and we are to leave it in the ground. Eco Socialism with climate as the plausible excuse and we all fall for it. Ask your friends and family. They will almost all think that the climate is changing and it isn’t the same as when they were young. They think they can look out of their bedroom window and see climate change. They see storms on the telly and think “Wow Greta was right”——Wakey wakey people you are being manipulated. —-Look at your electric bill and if you thought that was bad “You ain’t seen nuthin yet”
The good thing about CLS’s Royal Society report was that they looked at 37 years of weather data and considered the impact of variable weather on electricity supply from renewables (see image from their report below). That’s what’s blown the CCC out of the water.
But the RS report had a big weakness in that it didn’t consider the impact of variable weather on energy demand. It turns out that back-to-back low wind years like 2009-11 are also colder than normal so demand for heat is higher. Once we’re all using heat pumps (!), that demand will have to be met with electricity, so we’ll need even more storage than RS calculated. So, the RS has blown themselves out of the water too.
It’s like a green circular firing squad.
The costings in the RS report were a total fantasy too.
Covered in depth here:
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/royal-society-large-electricity-storage-report.
Perhaps you could use wind power to manufacture gas, oil and coal.
Not really. The first large-scale practical application of a steam engine was using the Newcomen atmospheric engine to pump water out of collieries. This superseeded horse-powered pumps, not wind-powered ones.
Aside: Why haven’t the netzeroes thought about horse-powered dynamos for electricity generation so far? Horses not being sufficiently renewable because they fart?
They never used to give it a name when it was a bit blustery. I agree that the climate in this country has deteriorated very rapidly but I think the reasons are entirely deliberate and man-made and not a by-product. Just look at how many measures have been introduced recently in order to reduce the worldwide harvest and thus reduce worldwide population. They will carry on un until about 7 billion are dead and they are convinced of their righteousness.
I agree that the climate in this country has deteriorated very rapidly but …
How does climate “detetiorate?”
It might help persuade the zealots that they are on shaky ground if they were forced to relinquish all items that they own that are dependent on fossil fuel, in particular oil. All plastics? No more Nespresso? No phones, tablets or desktops? A large proportion of their wardrobes? It would be interesting to determine exactly what they would have to do without…
It’s like being in a recurring nightmare. Doesn’t matter how much the obvious lie is exposed the zombies keep moving in the same direction towards destruction of our country.