Good at Boasting Bad at Emission Reduction

The government of the United Kingdom have boasted that in the past twenty years the UK has cut its emissions of greenhouse gases by 25%. The government is very good at boasting boasters are invariably liars.

Burning the Unburnable

The London School of Economics and NGO Carbon Tracker made the news when they found that fossil fuel exploration companies spent £440 billion in 2012 looking for oil, gas and coal. They postulated that if this continues for ten years (reasonably likely in my view) the oil gas and coal found could not be burnt if governments adhere to their fossil fuel emission targets (unlikely in my view). The study points out that if the level of global warming was restricted to three degrees as opposed to the present two degrees, much of the fossil fuel found would be unburnable because of the three degree global warming target.

This study does not show that investors in fossil fuel companies are being misled because they are putting their savings into businesses that will be forced to fail because of the world’s global warming targets; this study shows that investors know that governments of the world will not stick to their global warming targets. The short term chase for money takes precedence over everything on our planet, even our planet.

Desperately Trying to Become a Cuckoo

If it were lawful for a multinational corporation to make money by breeding people in order to kill them and processing bones from specially bred humans fattened on special diets into expensive products, they would do so. If such a venture were profitable there would be many investors whose money would finance such venture. If the venture was very profitable and brought some poorly paid employment to a section of their governed, the business would be protected by governments and there would be many people (provided that they were not victims or likely to be victims of such ventures) who would be capable of expounding rational and wonderful arguments why such venture should be permitted. There would also be fine rules about corporate governance and spellbinding rhetoric as to the importance of these ventures.

Emissions Trading – a triumph of hope over reality

The European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme was doomed from the start. I have always held that you cannot use the devices of the casino to reduce emissions. You can tax emissions, making them more costly to produce and creating an incentive to encourage ways of using clean renewable emissions, but to set up a system where emission producers can speculate on the price of carbon dioxide, which is a commodity that no one wants and no one can use, as a way of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, will make no difference to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are produced.

The Renewable Heat Incentive

It is just not possible to run a renewable heat business in the United Kingdom.  Government politicians Mr Greg Barker and Mr Ed Davey who are in charge of renewable heat policies simply cannot be trusted to tell the truth when they publish a plan and they certainly cannot be trusted to stick to their announcement. You cannot simply believe anything that the Department of Energy and Climate Change publishes on its website about its plans for the Renewable Heat Incentive.

We shall force the future generations to make sacrifices for us…

As the United Kingdom and EDF are working out the final terms of the long term contract that EDF requires before it builds a nuclear power plant in Hinckley Point in Somerset, Tokyo Electric Power Company announced that the electricity supply to the cooling system at the damaged Fukushima power plant had failed for four spent reactor ponds at three reactors. Apparently a rat had bitten through the electrical supply shutting down some of the cooling systems.

396.8 Parts Per Million and Rising

The Mona Loa laboratory in Hawaii has published the monthly mean reading of atmospheric carbon dioxide for February 2013. The figures make uncomfortable reading. In February 2012 the content was 393.54 parts per million. In February 2013 this had risen to 396.80 parts per million.

Biofuels – a bad day for the environment

It is a sad day for the environment. The United Kingdom has decided that burning biofuels should happen in the United Kingdom’s power stations. Not only are biofuels – things like wood and palm oil- going to be burned to provide electricity for our televisions and luxuries, but these biofuels are going to be heavily subsidised.

The Bloodhound Super Sonic Car Project – How to mix horsemeat with beef

People love breaking records but sometimes they try to break the wrong kind of records. Certainly breaking a world record usually means learning something but with learning you have to prioritise. It is better to learn to read than it is to learn how to disguise horsemeat as beef. Both are, of course, useful occupations but reading is more important. So it is with record breaking. For some reason a group of British engineers have their hearts set on breaking a world speed record for a car.

Energy Prices Will Rise but the Problem is More than Rising Prices

The British consumers of energy, both domestic and industrial, face the inevitability of even higher energy prices over the next few years. At the moment electricity prices are about the same in the United Kingdom as they are in continental Europe, but natural gas prices are just over half the price of natural gas. All that is going to change and if you feel that you are paying far more than you envisaged for energy now, then you will have to budget more carefully in several years’ time.