“We were the only MPs to vote against the 2008 Climate Change Bill, which is to say we had by then considered all the evidence and found it wanting.”
“We were the only MPs to vote against the 2008 Climate Change Bill, which is to say we had by then considered all the evidence and found it wanting.”
Howdy RV
I agree almost entirely with your points, so here’s a bit of the almost.
You say that the failure to close any conventional generating facilities means that wind farms can’t reduce CO2. If the windfarms reduce production at conventional plants, then they would reduce CO2 even if they don’t eliminate it. In fact most conventional plants continue to run near capacity because varying them is more difficult than I’d have thought — but “renewables” potentially can reduce CO2 from conventional.
If they’re not reducing CO2 much, what’s the point? Since CO2 actually doesn’t matter, there would be no point even if they did reduce CO2. But displacing coal or petroleum would contribute to reducing actual pollution, things like soot and nitrous oxide.
The problem with all this, and the reason that I do agree almost entirely with you, is that the “renewables” are inconsistent and they are expensive. On net, they almost certainly produce more pollution than they displace, including the chimerical “carbon pollution”. As you note, they are least reliable when needed most, on top of all their other problems.
The UK government has a bad case of mandatoritis, a common disease among governments. If it’s any comfort to you, the rest of the EU has a worse case of it and the US is catching up.
It is good to that the UK media are beginning to give some cover to stories that question AGW, and the debate being over. Should there be more cold winters and ever increasing energy prices, then it is likely that these reports will become more frequent. Whether this will achieve anything is moot since AGW is more of a cult than a reasoned science and many politicians are heavily connected to the green industry/loby.
I am not surprised by Ms. Wiiddecombe’s comments. Indeed, prior to the passing of the Climate Change Act, a committee in the House of Lords held that the Al Gore film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ contained many inaccuracies. Presumably the MPs had read that committee report and from a reading of that one would immediately know that the large uncertainties, the science could not be regarded as settled and there was a need to carefully scruitinise both the science and the proposed response before formulating policy.
Indeed, it would appear that MPs have never even ascertained how we could achieve the unrealistic reduction in emissions and what effect that would have on industry and the consumer.
As soonas you realise that every windfarm requires conventional generation backup due to the variance and unreliability of wind, and as soon as you learn that there has not ben one single conventional power generating station closed down in Europe as a consequence of building a windfarm, it is immediately apparent that windfarms do not and cannot reduce CO2 emissions. That begs the question, if they do not achieve any significant reduction in CO2 emissions what is their point?
Solar has equal problems, particularly the fact that in the UK peak energy is winter evennings. First, the sun does not shine at night! Second, the low incidence of sunlight in high northern latitutes in winter means that solar is weak. Third, the UK is notoriously cloudy being surrounded by oceans and weather fronts coming over these oceans.
One does not design an energy system which is at its weakest when demand is at its highest. This is all just basic stuff and the sort of thing that a 14 year old school child would learn
I consider the passing of the Climate Change Act without thorough debate to be the greatest deriliction of public duty committed by MPs. All those that voted in favour should be held to account. .
Yes, I believe there were exactly 34 doubters out of 33,700 scientists, because Al Gore surveyed them all. And again just recently, according to his Twitter. Although he didn’t say, I think it must be the same 34 that were unbelieving in 1998 when he first reported this statistic. I guess none of them one changed their minds in 15 years.
I’m sure MP Widdecombe is getting a deeply satisfying “I told you so” out of this. I would and I say that with no scorn at all. I also like her point that, if she could see the lack of evidence in UAE numbers, surely the scientists should see it.
Some scientists have changed their opinions on global warming as new evidence came in. Many were doubters from the word go, though, far more than UAE or Mann or Gore have ever acknowledged.