The Virtual Pub
Come Inside... => The Commons => Topic started by: Snoopy on July 20, 2008, 03:56:31 PM
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It is probably obvious to all that I tend to agree with much of what Christopher Booker says in his Sunday Telegraph column each week. From this week's offering he has this to say on the subject of "Renewable Energy". I do not disagree with those who say we need to find alternatives to buring fossil fuels (although I do not believe in "Global Warming") but these damned windmills are NOT the answer and never will be ~ if for no other reason than that the wind does not blow all the time at a speed suitable to generate electricity via wind turbines
Anyone wanting final proof that Gordon Brown lives on another planet should consider his boast to last week's EU "Mediterranean summit" that "Britain's North Sea could be the Gulf of the future for offshore wind".
To help Britain meet its EU target of generating 32 per cent of our electricity from "renewables" by 2020, Mr Brown says he wants to see 3,000 giant wind turbines built round our coasts.
The "optimum" capacity of an offshore turbine is 3 megawatts (MW), so the nominal capacity of Mr Brown's turbines would be 9,000MW. But due to the vagaries of the wind, they would produce on average only a third of this, say 3,000MW.
The Drax coal-fired power station in Yorkshire has a capacity of 3,800MW. Thus the entire output of Mr Brown's "Gulf of the future" would be less than that of a single conventional power station.
The cost of building his turbines, estimated at £2.3 million per MW, would be at least £20 billion (the £10 million cost of the solitary 3.5MW turbine recently built in Cromarty, Firth, ran out at £2.8 million per MW).
In addition, someone (who?) would have to build up to a dozen gas-fired power stations just to provide backup for when the wind is not blowing. We could get considerably more electricity from two new nuclear power stations at a fraction of the cost.
Fortunately, there is no possibility that Mr Brown's 3,000 turbines, each the size of Blackpool Tower, will get built. It is impossible that they could be erected at a rate of one every working day for 11 years, not least because the world has only one ship of the size needed to install them.
Such fantasies are only made possible by the fact that we are all forced, through our electricity bills, to pay a hidden subsidy to the turbine developers, which is 50 per cent higher even than the near-100 per cent subsidy we pay towards onshore wind energy.
But if Mr Brown is living on the Planet Krypton, he has, alas, been joined by David Cameron and our entire political class. Not one MP, it seems, dares question a policy the total insanity of which they could work out for themselves just by spending 20 minutes on the internet.
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It is probably obvious to all that I tend to agree with much of what Christopher Booker says in his Sunday Telegraph column each week. From this week's offering he has this to say on the subject of "Renewable Energy". I do not disagree with those who say we need to find alternatives to buring fossil fuels (although I do not believe in "Global Warming") but these damned windmills are NOT the answer and never will be ~ if for no other reason than that the wind does not blow all the time at a speed suitable to generate electricity via wind turbines
Anyone wanting final proof that Gordon Brown lives on another planet should consider his boast to last week's EU "Mediterranean summit" that "Britain's North Sea could be the Gulf of the future for offshore wind".
To help Britain meet its EU target of generating 32 per cent of our electricity from "renewables" by 2020, Mr Brown says he wants to see 3,000 giant wind turbines built round our coasts.
The "optimum" capacity of an offshore turbine is 3 megawatts (MW), so the nominal capacity of Mr Brown's turbines would be 9,000MW. But due to the vagaries of the wind, they would produce on average only a third of this, say 3,000MW.
The Drax coal-fired power station in Yorkshire has a capacity of 3,800MW. Thus the entire output of Mr Brown's "Gulf of the future" would be less than that of a single conventional power station.
The cost of building his turbines, estimated at £2.3 million per MW, would be at least £20 billion (the £10 million cost of the solitary 3.5MW turbine recently built in Cromarty, Firth, ran out at £2.8 million per MW).
In addition, someone (who?) would have to build up to a dozen gas-fired power stations just to provide backup for when the wind is not blowing. We could get considerably more electricity from two new nuclear power stations at a fraction of the cost.
Fortunately, there is no possibility that Mr Brown's 3,000 turbines, each the size of Blackpool Tower, will get built. It is impossible that they could be erected at a rate of one every working day for 11 years, not least because the world has only one ship of the size needed to install them.
Such fantasies are only made possible by the fact that we are all forced, through our electricity bills, to pay a hidden subsidy to the turbine developers, which is 50 per cent higher even than the near-100 per cent subsidy we pay towards onshore wind energy.
But if Mr Brown is living on the Planet Krypton, he has, alas, been joined by David Cameron and our entire political class. Not one MP, it seems, dares question a policy the total insanity of which they could work out for themselves just by spending 20 minutes on the internet.
Excellent! happ096
Also, these things have thousands of tonnes of concrete in them - 8% of world CO2 output is already from concrete manufacture so building all these ridiculous structures is going to significantly increase our 'carbon footprint'...
noooo:
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Exactly ~ there really is no justification. The whole thing has been proved to be wrong but they simply will not admit it. Not least because some people are making shed loads of money out of it and their voices will always drown out the truth.
The biggest joke is that the turbines they are currently erecting (and those already up and "working") have a working life expectancy of 30 years and will not, in that time, produce enough electricity to pay for the cost of building them, let alone pulling them down again ..... and still the madness continues.
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Exactly ~ there really is no justification. The whole thing has been proved to be wrong but they simply will not admit it. Not least because some people are making shed loads of money out of it and their voices will always drown out the truth.
The biggest joke is that the turbines they are currently erecting (and those already up and "working") have a working life expectancy of 30 years and will not, in that time, produce enough electricity to pay for the cost of building them, let alone pulling them down again ..... and still the madness continues.
Indeed...
Watched a programme on the telly a while ago about them demolishing the first (I think) wind turbine in the UK... took explosives to destroy the concrete and that was after draining thousands of litres of hydraulic oil and other pollutants from the thing...
Madness... noooo:
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http://www.marineturbines.com/3/news/article/10/world_s_first_commercial_scale_tidal_power_system_feeds_electricity_to_the_national_grid__/
rubschin:
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Probably a better and more reliable source of energy than wind power. There were plans to install something like this in the River Severn but they were, if I recall correctly, cancelled because the tidal flow was too extreme. Of course we could simply dam rivers and use hydro power ~ they have been doing this in Scotland for years but such schemes are, I assume, not considered "sexy" enough for the eco warriors and they do, of course, attract other eco warriors who complain about the effects of damming on the wild life, the surrounding countryside etc. (See USA Colorado Dam schemes and in China where the bloody dolphins got every one excited)
Given current technology and assuming that Captain Kirk's Dilithium Crystals are a non starter then Nuclear is the best answer we have.
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I find myself agreeing with Simon Heffer a lot too. I must be getting old!
Indeed I think he must read this pub, cos so much of what he fastens on and says was posted here first. rubschin:
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McGordon McBroon's recently announced "£100bn green energy package" includes plans to build 3,000 more wind turbines across Britain's countryside, despite the fact that the 2,000 we already have generate between them less electricity than a single gas-fired power plant, and far less than a nuclear station. If you include the massive planned wind-farms offshore, there will be 7,000 extra turbines, but even so their output won't come close to matching that of the coal-fired power-station at Drax in Yorkshire.
So, you might ask, what's the point? Why spoil thousands of acres of beautiful coast and country just for a few ethical megawatts?
Well, the point is much the same point as in most government initiatives - and we're not just talking about this government, either. When Thatcher privatised the railways they were transformed into not one business but a lot of inter-dependent firms, some to run the trains, some to own the trains, some to maintain the trains, one to own and maintain the track etc. This meant that businessmen - no doubt friends of Thatcher and the rest of her government - could buy shares in several different companies and reap the rewards from each one. It also meant that the consumers - British railway passengers - were providing not one profit-stream but any number, so that the new owners could get even richer.
In this present case the beneficiaries of McBroon's generosity will be the share-holders of the firms that own the turbines. Each turbine, up to 350 feet high, generates only a quarter of its notional output because of our fickle weather, but even so it produces about £450,000 a year for its owners. £230,000 of this comes from selling the electricity to the grid, but £218,000 comes from the government's "renewables obligation" which compels the electricity companies to pay over the odds for all wind-generated power. No prizes for guessing who pays in the end.
No doubt greedy land-owners will snap up the chance to get as much as £17,000 a year for 25 years for letting the wind industry put each turbine on their land - a wind-fall (pun intended) of £425,000 for doing nothing.
Even so, the land-owners are getting ripped-off just like the rest of us. While they'll get a mere £425,000, over the twenty-five years the wind company will have trousered £11 million of our money for producing a paltry amount of electricity which can be generated far more cheaply by conventional means and, in the case of nuclear power, with virtually no impact on the environment.
Still, I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies. Once all the MPs who voted for this iniquitous scam have finished their political careers, they'll be rewarded with seats on the board to keep them solvent in their old age. Can't think of anything worse than packs of feral bag-lady ex-MPs pushing shopping-trolleys, begging on the streets and sleeping in railway arches. Anyway, at this rate the railway arches will be needed for the rest of us.
(based on an article by "Muckspreader" in this week's "Private Eye")
From the Grumpy Old Sod Website. Some good 'articles' on there.
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No doubt greedy land-owners will snap up the chance to get as much as £17,000 a year for 25 years for letting the wind industry put each turbine on their land
eeek: eeek: eeek: eeek: eeek:
You are seriously mis-informed.
It is a bit less than that. whistle:
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The stupid thing about this green energy crusade is that with 2 simple words Brown could easily cut down on the amount of electricity that is used if he wanted to.
We've all seen the adverts about turning lights off and turning the heating down to save the environment. Why not just say something that will appeal to the majority of people, especially in the current climate - turning heating down and not putting appliances on standby saves MONEY over the year.
Then again smaller electricity bills means less VAT being grabbed by this bunch of snake oil salesmen so its only green if it makes them cash. cussing:
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I find myself agreeing with Simon Heffer a lot too. I must be getting old!
Indeed I think he must read this pub, cos so much of what he fastens on and says was posted here first. rubschin:
rubschin:
i suggest we conclude each post with (C) Virtual Pub 2008 in that case... whistle:
And get the lawyers onto this straight away... ;)
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I find myself agreeing with Simon Heffer a lot too. I must be getting old!
Indeed I think he must read this pub, cos so much of what he fastens on and says was posted here first. rubschin:
rubschin:
i suggest we conclude each post with (C) Virtual Pub 2008 in that case... whistle:
And get the lawyers onto this straight away... ;)
It would explain why so many 'guests' have been busily printing out threads.... rubschin:
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I find myself agreeing with Simon Heffer a lot too. I must be getting old!
Indeed I think he must read this pub, cos so much of what he fastens on and says was posted here first. rubschin:
rubschin:
i suggest we conclude each post with (C) Virtual Pub 2008 in that case... whistle:
And get the lawyers onto this straight away... ;)
Do you mean "It would explain why so many 'guests' have been busily printing out threads.... (C) Virtual Pub 2008" ?
(C) Virtual Pub 2008
It would explain why so many 'guests' have been busily printing out threads.... rubschin:
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Do you mean © Virtual Pub 2008?
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Do you mean © Virtual Pub 2008?
Yes... I couldn't be arsed to copy it from Word... even with two screens... noooo:
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point: Idle bugger!
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point: Idle bugger!
redface:
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And yet more evidence presented by Mr Booker:
Considering that the measures recommended by the world's politicians to combat global warming will cost tens of trillions of dollars and involve very drastic changes to our way of life, it might be thought wise to check the reliability of the evidence on which they base their belief that our planet is actually getting hotter.
There are four internationally recognised sources of data on world temperatures, but the one most often cited by supporters of global warming is that run by James Hansen of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).
Hansen has been for 20 years the world's leading scientific advocate of global warming (and Al Gore's closest ally). But in the past year a number of expert US scientists have been conducting a public investigation, through scientific blogs, which raises large question marks over the methods used to arrive at his figures.
First they noted the increasingly glaring discrepancy between the figures given by GISS, which show temperatures continuing to race upwards, and those given by the other three main data sources, which all show temperatures having fallen since 1998, dropping dramatically in the past year to levels around the average of the past 30 years.
Two sets of data, from satellites, go back to 1979: one produced by Dr Roy Spencer, formerly of Nasa, now at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, the other by Remote Sensing Systems. Their figures correspond closely with those produced by the Hadley Centre for Climate Studies of our own Met Office, based on global surface temperature readings.
Right out on their own, however, are the quite different figures produced by GISS which, strangely for a body sponsored by Nasa, rely not on satellites but also on surface readings. Hansen's latest graph shows temperatures rising since 1880, at accelerating speed in the past 10 years.
The other three all show a flattening out after 2001 and a marked downward plunge of 0.6 degrees Celsius in 2007/8, equivalent to almost all the net warming recorded in the 20th century. (For comparisons see "Is the Earth getting warmer, or colder?" by Steven Goddard on The Register website.)
Even more searching questions have been raised over Hansen's figures by two expert blogs. One is Climate Audit, run by Steve McIntyre, the computer analyst who earlier exposed the notorious "hockeystick" graph that was shamelessly exploited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore. (This used a flawed computer model to suppress evidence that the world was hotter in the Middle Ages than today.) The other site is Watts Up With That, run by the meteorologist Anthony Watts.
It was McIntyre who last year forced Hansen to publish revised figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest years of the 20th century were not in the 1990s, as Hansen had claimed, but in the 1930s. He has now shown that Hansen had been adjusting almost all his pre-1970 global temperature figures downwards, by as much as 0.5 degrees, and his post-1970 figures upwards.
Although Hansen claimed that this only resulted from more careful calculations, McIntyre pointed out how odd it was that the adjustments all seemed to confirm his thesis.
Watts meanwhile has also been conducting an exhaustive photographic survey of US surface weather stations, showing how temperature readings on more than half have been skewed upwards by siting thermometers where their readings are magnified by artificial heat-sources, such as asphalt car parks or air-conditioning systems.
All this has raised such doubts over the methodology behind the GISS data that informed observers are calling for it to be independently assessed. Hansen himself is notoriously impatient of any criticism of his methods: earlier this month he appealed to Congress that the leaders of those who question global warming should be put on trial.
It is still too early to suggest that the recent drop in temperatures shown by everyone but him is proof that global warming has stopped. But the fact is that not one of those vaunted computer models predicted what has happened to temperatures in recent years. Yet it is on those models (and Hansen's alarmist figures) that our politicians are basing all their proposals for irrevocably changing our lives.
Meanwhile anyone who, like myself, takes an interest in the Social History of our country will know that diarists down the centuries have recorded variously extremely hot weather for tens of years whilst others have spoken of "Skating on the Thames". Climate change has always been with us and always will. Whether we are right to use up fossil fuels at the rate we do or should seek alternatives is another argument all together. I do wish the politicians would recognise the difference.
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And for those still arguing the case for more wind turbines Mr Booker has kindly clarified his comments of last week by providing the breakdown and source of his calculations
Several readers ask me to substantiate my claim that the combined electricity output of all the 2,000 wind turbines so far built in Britain is less than that of a single medium-sized conventional power station.
According to Table 7.5 of the "Dukes" energy statistics on the Department for Business website, the latest annual figure for wind energy shows that it contributed 4,225 gigawatt hours. Dividing that by the 8,760 hours in a year gives a total average output of 482 megawatts.
Table 5.11, listing every UK power plant, shows that nearly 50 conventional power stations were each capable of contributing more than that.
Even if we could build the 7,000 additional wind turbines Gordon Brown dreams of, their combined output would not be much more than that of the single coal-fired power station at Drax.
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And still they continue with their folly.
Mr Booker tells it as it is in today's Telegraph:
Ed Miliband, our new Energy and Climate Change Secretary, has committed Britain, at this moment of financial meltdown, to an 80 per cent reduction of “carbon emissions” by 2050 – which must go down as the most fatuous utterance ever made by a British Cabinet minister (immediately supported by the Tory shadow spokesman).
The only way this goal could be achieved would be to shut down almost the whole of our economy.
A slightly firmer grasp on reality prevails in those countries, led by Poland and Italy, which were last week in Brussels urging the EU to moderate its plans to reduce carbon emissions, on the grounds that this was not the moment to be piling onto Europe’s economies costs amounting to trillions of euros.
But Gordon Brown, alongside the Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, was at the forefront of those insisting that the EU must stick to its guns.
Brussels’s only concession came from the Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas, who said he would increase from 35 per cent to just over 50 per cent the amount of “carbon credits” which European industry would be allowed to buy from the developing world under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
In other words, for the right to continue emitting CO2 in Europe, firms would be permitted to pay hundreds of billions of euros to China, India and elsewhere.
The net result would be to impose astronomic costs on those firms, such as electricity suppliers, which cannot move their operations outside Europe (costs to be passed on to their customers) with little or no effect on emissions.
Just how crazy this system is already becoming was illustrated by a programme broadcast by the BBC World Service last June (and reported here) which highlighted several examples of the CDM in action.
A small Indian chemical firm, for instance, already receives up to $60 million a year for eliminating emissions of CFC greenhouse gases from its process.
A company spokesman admitted that it would have eliminated the CFCs anyway.
The $500 million it is due to receive over the next 10 years is just a free gift, to achieve nothing.
So this insanity gathers way on every side, creating fortunes for the “carbon traders” who broker the deals, all in the name of preventing global temperatures rising.
Yet for several years now, while greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, temperatures have ceased to rise, and even fallen, making a nonsense of all those computer models that predicted that one must rise with the other.
Arctic ice, which this year we were told might melt altogether, now covers an area 28.7 per cent greater than it did at this time last year (see the Watts Up With That website).
Has there ever been such a flight from reality in the history of the world?
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I think it is absolutely terrifying Snoops...
Not only does Call me Dave agree with everything that is said about it, the media doesn't even question them when they come out with it! Banghead
Yet it is clear from the world service programme he mentioned that information on how farcical the whole thing is exists... noooo: