The recent actuality is full of news concerning UK’s air industry, whose symbol of Heathrow airport is again under the fire from critics. This time it’s almost look like everybody is guilty in the affair, BAA for its management failures especially since its recent takeover by the Spanish firm Ferroviara and British Airways for having an appalling record when it come to delivering luggage.
Yet behind the scenes the current government is also guilty in the affair. Guilty for not having a clear policy toward airport expansion, guilty for granting Heathrow terminal 5 planning permission a few years late, guilty for supporting the ‘ecologists’ arguments that air travel is bad for the environment; when in fact it only account for at best 2% of the UK’s carbon emissions.
While it is very easy to lambaste British Airways when it comes to the lost luggage, when an airport such as Heathrow is completely saturated, understaffed (clear failures from BAA here) and mismanaged. There are clearly other factors at play, undercapacity being one of them. Thence, since air travel WILL increase in the future no matter what the green lobby twats think, we need to plan future needs in advance.
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With the ever increasing debate on the possibility that oil production may have peaked, and the need to find new ‘green’ energy sources, a resource better known for its black smoke and ‘dark satanic mills’ is slowly making a comeback.
While I have said in the past, which it would be highly desirable if 80% of UK’s electricity would come from nuclear power plants, in order to phase out gas and coal fired power stations. Nuclear electricity will never be able to meet all energy’s needs. This even if all British households switch to electric stoves and heaters, which is highly improbable. Even if the whole of UK railway’s are electrified, which is certainly desirable but, might take up to 30 years to be achieved. Gas and oil will still be needed in industrial and transport sectors.
Moreover until 80% of UK’s electricity comes from nuclear power, the current electrical infrastructure based on coal and gas fired power stations, will have to be maintained for some time. We can also add that even when 80% of UK’s electricity will come from nuclear power, some electricity will still be produced from other sources, mainly in order to meet extra demand, renewable could do part of this job, a few coal fired power stations can do it as well.
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In today’s Daily Telegraph, there was a very interesting article concerning the carbon footprint of different types of foodstuffs, either locally produced or produced overseas.
‘Buy locally produced food’ is a motto commonly used by groups such as Greenpeace, the LibDems or whoever you want. Yet according to this article, the carbon footprint of a tonne of lamb produced in the UK is equal to 2,849 kg against 688 kg for one produced in New Zealand. The comparison is also valid, for products like apples 271 kg for British ones versus 185 kg for New Zealanders ones, lettuce with 3,720 kg versus 3,560 kg for Spanish grown lettuce.
The causes for this are numerous to say the least but I can certainly quote a few, in an area where soils are of a better quality, the use of fertilizers and thence of CO2 will be reduced. More extensive rearing of lambs in the wide open spaces of New Zealand, allows better yields, through better feed and healthier animals. What is striking however is the fact that in this case, what is ‘green’ is meeting what is cheap.
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The announcement of a government consultation about nuclear power made the headlines of today’s newspapers. Among fears concerning gas supplies from Russia, nuclear power seems to be back on the agenda.
Yet despite nice words Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling, nothing is set into stone. Planning applications are yet to be granted; protesters are yet to be convinced that their opposition to nuclear power is anything but environmentally friendly, and finally no choices have been made over which type of reactor should be used.
Since decommissioning of the few nuclear power stations we have, has already started, one can perfectly say that the Energy White Paper, is at least five years if not ten years late. The ’dash for gas’ which happened in the nineties, was understandable on a financial point of view, moreover since North Sea supplies were still plentiful, there was a strategic case as well, albeit a very weak one. The case for new nuclear power station was understood during the eighties; despite this nothing happened for much of that decade, and from 1997 Tony Blair’s successive government did absolutely nothing, even if one can argue that Energy is part of the ‘public services’ whom they cherish.
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Yesterday, David Cameron visited the University of Bath and gave a speech to the local party faithful at the Saltford Hall in Wansdyke. Only the previous night, members of the public assisted the local Conservative association in selecting Fabian Richter as the new Conservative candidate for Bath in an Open Primary; a decision which Mr Cameron took the chance to endorse.
David Cameron visited the University of Bath to discuss environmental and sustainability issues with local researchers and view some of the modern research and development facilities that had been constructed on site. He later gave a speech in the Wansdyke Room of the Saltford Hall in which he spoke out to previous Liberal Democrat voters to stand up to an authoritarian Gordon Brown and vote for a modern compassionate liberal Conservative party. A recording of his speech and the questions taken afterwards can be downloaded here (35mins – 8.2MB.)
Notably David Cameron is the only current leader of a major political party to visit Bath recently, taking the time to prove the Conservative party’s commitment to the people of Bath and the students at the University. Photographs from the day can be found here.
Channel Four broadcast the supposedly ‘controversial’ documentary, ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ last Thursday. I recommend that everyone takes the time to watch the programme which is around an hour and a quarter in length – click here to view.
Many of the arguments put forward in the film challenged the growing consensus that carbon dioxide and human activity are the cause of climate change, and instead the programme laid claim that it was the sun’s activity that was by far more important. This was in striking contrast to the conclusions drawn in the film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ by that great left-wing spiritual and moral leader, self proclaimed pseudo-scientist and failed US Presidential candidate, the Rev. Al Gore.
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The case for Nuclear Power can be summed up into three main points: cost, carbon emissions and power density.
Nuclear Power is cheap. Even today with the 1970’s generation of reactors only coal powered plants are less expensive to run. It is considerably cheaper than wind and other renewable energy sources.
When taking into account building, lifetime and decommissioning, Nuclear Power emits the least amount of CO2 at around half that of wind power and a tenth of solar. Power density or Power per unit area is the real advantage to Nuclear Power over renewables. If a nuclear power station takes up x amount of land, it would take 6x of wind turbines and 30x of solar panels to achieve the same amount of power. A recent milestone of 2GW was reached with wind power. There would have to be a three hundred fold increase in the number of wind turbines to come close to powering our national grid. Roughly 300,000 extremely large wind turbines. Of course the sun doesn’t shine at night and it isn’t always windy so the Nuclear Plants would have to be built alongside renewables anyway. The availability of wind power has been massive overestimated. A recent study showed that wind turbines are only 7% efficient. Nuclear is the only sensible option for the UK.
The issues people have with Nuclear Power arise mostly through people’s irrational fear of that which they don’t understand. The worst accident the world has experienced, Chernoybl (caused by human incompetence) has had no impact on health. The UN scientific committee on the effects of radiation conducted two large studies into the events. The accident caused the death of 28 people, none from radioactivity. There is no higher incidence of cancer in the surrounding area. This is far from the scaremongering “100,000 people will die” line that Greenpeace portrayed. In fact the exclusion zone around Chernobyl had been good for the environment. As an example it now hosts the largest population of wild boar in the Ukraine.
Whilst our present governments frets about waste, other countries like Finland have made the hard choice and taken action. They are too bury their waste in a secure underground site where it will lie undisturbed and harmless. Our needs to make the hard choice and commit us to Nuclear Power immediately if we are to secure our energy future. Nuclear Power is the only logical choice.
The Lib Dem society at the University of Bath has invited us to view their showing of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ – the Rev. Al Gore’s film in which he preaches the good word about the human causes of climate change and the apparently cataclysmic events that lay ahead for humanity should we not suddenly change all our consumer habits and live in mud huts for the rest of our days.
However, as Mark Steyn observed in Sunday’s Chicago Sun-Times, Al isn’t quite the self-righteous, upstanding carbon neutral kinda guy he makes himself out to be:
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the other day the Rev. Al Gore declared that ‘climate change’ was ‘the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced.’ Ever. I believe that was the same day it was revealed that George W Bush’s ranch in Texas is more environmentally friendly than the Gore mansion in Tennessee. According to the Nashville Electric Service, the Eco-Messiah’s house uses 20 times more electricity than the average American home. The average household consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours. In 2006, the Gores wolfed down nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours.
Should you wish to question the Lib Dem leader of Bath Council on his dream vision for a carbon-neutral Bath, or alternatively, back in reality, the Bath Spa project which, due to his and the Lib Dems’ complete incompetence was delayed by over two years and on which millions of pounds was wasted – feel free to turn up.
However, of more interest (on the same night at 9pm on Channel 4) might be a programme entitled ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ which the C4 website describes as:
A polemical and thought-provoking documentary, film-maker Martin Durkin argues that the theory of man-made global warming has become such a powerful political force that other explanations for climate change are not being properly aired. The film brings together the arguments of leading scientists who disagree with the prevailing consensus that a ‘greenhouse effect’ of carbon dioxide released by human activity is the cause of rising global temperatures.
If it’s any good, I hope David Milliband will be sending a copy of this to every school in the country as he did with the Reverend Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’… Yes, unlikely I know.
Even if I don’t watch TV anymore, I am sure that the BBC mentioned either on friday or yesterday that a UN summit was held in to order to debate about a report, that states the responsibility of humanity in the recent global warming as very likely. As usual with this kind of reports, trends and model are discussed, the most extreme of them, being a possible rise of the earth mean temperature by 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit, which is equal to 5.8 degrees Celsius. And as always the medias and groups like Greenpeace are prompt in taking the most extreme scenario as the shape of things to come.
Such an increase of the average mean temperature on earth is in my opinion impossible considering carbon dioxide only and for very simple reasons. The first one being that carbon dioxide only accounts for approximately ten percent of the total greenhouse effect, as water vapour has and will always have a higher effect in terms of proportion. The second one is that the effects of carbon dioxide, as a greenhouse case follows a logarithmic curve, not an exponential one thus the more you had the less important the effects becomes. By consequence, a doubling of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, would not necessarily be translated by a doubling of the greenhouse effect caused by the same gas.
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Approximately two centuries ago, a man named Thomas Malthus said that the increase in population that Britain was experiencing at the time could lead to “unprecedented disasters” stating that famine and “ultimate misery” could be the norm for futures generations. Two centuries later the British population is four times higher than during Malthus’ life and average food intake per individual is without any doubts higher. Yet despite some evident problems, since around the fifties, “ultimate misery” on a large scale is now largely a thing of the past.
Now a similar kind of discourse is occurring; just replace population by carbon dioxide and ultimate misery by “gigantic catastrophe” or for some “Venus like conditions in the next millennia”. Population growth during the Victorian period was very high at first due to large families and the ever decreasing mortality rate thanks to better access to medicines and a better hygiene. Yet it then decreased partly thanks to the same innovation, having huge families in order to have “some surviving children” was not needed anymore thanks to the drop of child mortality. In this case the spectrum of a demographic catastrophe was made redundant by technological advances which then triggered a change in human attitudes. Thus “using public force in order to curb fatality” in the words of Malthus was not needed and the problem was seemingly solved thanks to the great advances permitted by the industrial revolution.
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