Altering a country’s energy strategy is like altering a submarine’s air supply. It’s not something you can play fast and loose with. Yet that’s exactly what the Scottish Government is doing.
Excellent review, the reading of it a pleasure in itself. All of that darkly offset, of course, by the most cursory consideration of what is being proposed.
Is it just the growing cynicism of my advancing years or do I correctly observe that the proposed/planned solution to all of the world's problems right now stand to generate obscene amounts of money for already extremely wealthy global interests at the expense of the impoverishment (or worse) of ordinary folk?
Marvellous article Richard. Exposes many of the incredibly stupid and incompetent policies proposed by this farcical Government. They clearly have absolutely no conception of the damage that they are doing or it is a deliberate attempt to impoverish the people and destroy our economy....
All the green and sustainable energy plans have the same problem, there are too many people creating too much demand for them to cope. At what reduced level of population could they cope and why are governments around the world trying to enact policy that could only work with substantially less demand? It's almost as if they are anticipating a huge decline in population numbers.
I worked for a short time with an engineer who had worked for a renewable energy company. Her information about wind turbines etc were not that complimentary although she acknowledged that they do have their place along with other renewable sources plus nuclear etc.
I note from your reply that you mention hysteria related to climate change. What are your views on climate change? I hope it isn’t that it is, ‘just weather’ as I heard fairly recently on Question Time.
I want to be as informed about all of this as I can be whilst at the same time keeping an open mind about solutions, the government’s part in ‘the solution(s) and indeed what I/we can do to improve our situation on a personal level but also on a grander scale.
Hello David - thanks for reading my essay, and for sharing your feedback about the turbines.
I suspect my answer on climate change may disappoint you - it probably deserves an article to answer properly. In short, part of my background is in Earth sciences. Paleoclimate data shows that there is no correlation in climate history between CO2 and temperature. The failure of climate models that incorrectly assume there is one -- i.e. that increasing CO2 levels causes significant temperature increase -- is the expected outcome.
I also have a background in simulation (we use models to simulate oil reservoirs). One of the ways you test them is to initialise them to some point in the past and see if they predict today's conditions. (We call it 'backcasting' - the reverse of forecasting). If they can't do that, they can't predict the future.
When you initialise all of the models that the IPCC use to predict climate catastrophe to the climate in 1980 and see if they predict today's temperature, they all significantly overestimate it. The ones that correctly predict today's temperatures (temperatures vary over a wide range naturally) are the ones that assume little or no anthropogenic influence
The indicators that climate catastrophists have identified as relevant to their hypothesis are mostly all going the opposite direction now. For example, it predicts that cyclone energy should be rising: 2022 cyclone energy was 29% below the ten year average.
Discovering that the climate catastrophe hypothesis is wrong ought to be an occasion for enormous celebration. But since the climate industrial complex is now a multi-billion a year business, an enormous effort is made instead to sustain it.
Excellent article Richard. Thank you for laying out the information in such a way that it is understandable for the layman. What alternatives would you suggest to the government’s proposals. And how do we stop them (the government) from proceeding with what seems to be a mad strategy.
David - thank you for taking the time to read my essay, which I appreciate. In my view, any solution will have to rely on nuclear power for generation - probably, fusion for creating fissile fuel, and fission for the reaction. We'll also have to find sensible ways of reducing demand and reconfiguring our financial system to accommodate our energy limitations. "Stopping them" is hard. We have somehow to put an end to the mass hysteria of the climate catastrophe hypothesis which, fortunately, is unraveling quickly. Then we'll need a solid grounding for everyone - citizens and lawmakers - in energy literacy, which has been badly neglected in our basic education system. Future essays will explore some of these, and I'd be glad of your thoughts on them too.
I have always been all electric ( 35 years) using mainly storage heaters, and can proudly boast using 100% renewable energy. But the cost is more than 3 times that of gas a fact that seems to be ignored. When the reality of being forced to give up gas strikes home there will be even more issues of fuel poverty.
The Scottish government, at present, have not shown they are capable of grasping the technology required to meet their own targets. Practical pragmatism is required to implement a gradual change on our dependency in using gas. Or the price of electricity will have to be reduced considerably for it to be affordable.
Well said Dick. The voices of reason and experience are sadly lacking on the policy making forums. I hope to hear more from you in the future. Of course it is always good to come to the table with solutions too. What would you propose?
Excellent review, the reading of it a pleasure in itself. All of that darkly offset, of course, by the most cursory consideration of what is being proposed.
Is it just the growing cynicism of my advancing years or do I correctly observe that the proposed/planned solution to all of the world's problems right now stand to generate obscene amounts of money for already extremely wealthy global interests at the expense of the impoverishment (or worse) of ordinary folk?
Marvellous article Richard. Exposes many of the incredibly stupid and incompetent policies proposed by this farcical Government. They clearly have absolutely no conception of the damage that they are doing or it is a deliberate attempt to impoverish the people and destroy our economy....
All the green and sustainable energy plans have the same problem, there are too many people creating too much demand for them to cope. At what reduced level of population could they cope and why are governments around the world trying to enact policy that could only work with substantially less demand? It's almost as if they are anticipating a huge decline in population numbers.
This whole thing has a definite idiocracy feel to it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMHfBobgLSI
Richard
I worked for a short time with an engineer who had worked for a renewable energy company. Her information about wind turbines etc were not that complimentary although she acknowledged that they do have their place along with other renewable sources plus nuclear etc.
I note from your reply that you mention hysteria related to climate change. What are your views on climate change? I hope it isn’t that it is, ‘just weather’ as I heard fairly recently on Question Time.
I want to be as informed about all of this as I can be whilst at the same time keeping an open mind about solutions, the government’s part in ‘the solution(s) and indeed what I/we can do to improve our situation on a personal level but also on a grander scale.
David
Hello David - thanks for reading my essay, and for sharing your feedback about the turbines.
I suspect my answer on climate change may disappoint you - it probably deserves an article to answer properly. In short, part of my background is in Earth sciences. Paleoclimate data shows that there is no correlation in climate history between CO2 and temperature. The failure of climate models that incorrectly assume there is one -- i.e. that increasing CO2 levels causes significant temperature increase -- is the expected outcome.
I also have a background in simulation (we use models to simulate oil reservoirs). One of the ways you test them is to initialise them to some point in the past and see if they predict today's conditions. (We call it 'backcasting' - the reverse of forecasting). If they can't do that, they can't predict the future.
When you initialise all of the models that the IPCC use to predict climate catastrophe to the climate in 1980 and see if they predict today's temperature, they all significantly overestimate it. The ones that correctly predict today's temperatures (temperatures vary over a wide range naturally) are the ones that assume little or no anthropogenic influence
The indicators that climate catastrophists have identified as relevant to their hypothesis are mostly all going the opposite direction now. For example, it predicts that cyclone energy should be rising: 2022 cyclone energy was 29% below the ten year average.
Discovering that the climate catastrophe hypothesis is wrong ought to be an occasion for enormous celebration. But since the climate industrial complex is now a multi-billion a year business, an enormous effort is made instead to sustain it.
Thanks Richard. Your comments about climate change are really interesting. I’m going to dig deeper
Excellent article Richard. Thank you for laying out the information in such a way that it is understandable for the layman. What alternatives would you suggest to the government’s proposals. And how do we stop them (the government) from proceeding with what seems to be a mad strategy.
David - thank you for taking the time to read my essay, which I appreciate. In my view, any solution will have to rely on nuclear power for generation - probably, fusion for creating fissile fuel, and fission for the reaction. We'll also have to find sensible ways of reducing demand and reconfiguring our financial system to accommodate our energy limitations. "Stopping them" is hard. We have somehow to put an end to the mass hysteria of the climate catastrophe hypothesis which, fortunately, is unraveling quickly. Then we'll need a solid grounding for everyone - citizens and lawmakers - in energy literacy, which has been badly neglected in our basic education system. Future essays will explore some of these, and I'd be glad of your thoughts on them too.
Fascinating and scary.
I have always been all electric ( 35 years) using mainly storage heaters, and can proudly boast using 100% renewable energy. But the cost is more than 3 times that of gas a fact that seems to be ignored. When the reality of being forced to give up gas strikes home there will be even more issues of fuel poverty.
The Scottish government, at present, have not shown they are capable of grasping the technology required to meet their own targets. Practical pragmatism is required to implement a gradual change on our dependency in using gas. Or the price of electricity will have to be reduced considerably for it to be affordable.
That's an interesting perspective, Charlie - thank you.
Well said Dick. The voices of reason and experience are sadly lacking on the policy making forums. I hope to hear more from you in the future. Of course it is always good to come to the table with solutions too. What would you propose?
That’s easy. Scrap Net zero...