Windmills are not for turning

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Windmills are not for turning

Mr Peter Mosley of Croachy, Inverness has a letter publishedtoday noting that he got into his car at 9am on Tuesday and the display said that the temperature outside was -13°C. On his journey he went past a windfarm and observed that the turbines were not turning. They had been the same for the previous few cold days. 

Does this mean, he asks, that the 132,000 homes this installation claims to supply are without power, or do they manage to get electricity somehow from elsewhere? He thus concludes that, "Wind power does not appear to be a very good solution to the country's energy problem."

Mr Mosely is, of course, dead right. In the last three days, the coldest so far this winter and colder than we have experienced from some considerable time, we are effectively becalmed. As can be seen from the real-time wind map, barring the tip of Cornwall, where the wind speed is rated at 20 mph, the UK is effectively in the state of no wind generation. Here, the highest point in this part of Yorkshire, Emley Moor, the windspeed is officially recorded as zero.


We noted this same phenomenon last May, which was bad enough, but today in bitter winter conditions, the National Grid is under pressure. The demand for electricity will be high. Had we reached the mythical 35 percent – or whatever – wind generation target, we would now be in serious trouble.

Even then, this is but one consequence of the "weather". The Guardian has another. It headlines, "UK on cold weather health alert as temperatures tumble," telling us: "Fears that below-freezing temperatures could threaten vulnerable groups". Mortality is set to soar as the thermometer plunges. Our local paper also tells us that one in four pensioners, unable to afford their heating bills (inflated by the "greenie" levies), are spending their days in bed in order to keep warm.

Bizarrely, while The Daily Telegraph is telling us that, "New Year return to work could be hit by snow flurries," in the print edition there is a picture of the freezing conditions, alongside the statutory "warming story".

This is from an old favourite, the curator of Kew Gardens, who is telling usthat, "Oak tree deaths herald new pest threat to traditional plants." Traditional British plants from the oak tree to the garden cabbage, he bleats, "are under threat because of the effects of climate change."

Well, Mr Curator, currently, "people deaths" are a much bigger problem. And unless the politicians get their act together and recognise that we have a crisis in the making if cooling sets in and becomes a trend, there will be many more – completely avoidable - "people deaths". But then, the chances of that are about as good as a windmill producing electricity on a day like this.

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And that goes for me, too

As the clock strikes midnight: Happy New Year to all our readers. It's 2009 and may it bring us all some cheer.

Happy New Year

If there ever was a time for "bah humbug" it is perhaps this particular day – freezing cold, light snow on the ground with heavy falls forecast – and the economic situation just as bleak. And with the Met Office forecasting a hot summer, you can be assured that we will be in for a damp, dismal and cold year.

That apart, we have a government that is clearly incapable of running any sort of celebration in a brewery, even if tap water was the drink of choice, while all the pundits tell us that, if 2008 was bad, you ain't seen nuffink yet.

For all that, there is as good a reason for being happy as any, for a few hours at least – simply being miserable is highly unproductive and terribly boring. So, for those few hours, running into tomorrow, we might just as well pull down the booze and make the most of it – it ain't going to last.

Happy New Year!

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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Pictures that tell a thousand stories

The story behind these pictures (see also below) is told on Watts up with that. In a nutshell, these are "before and after" pictures of the Dye 3 radar warning station in southern Greenland, one taken in 1967 and the other in 2006, after it had been abandoned due to the encroaching snow.

At a direct level, this gives the lie to the oft' repeated mantra of the warmists that the Greenland ice cap is melting, adding to the growing body of evidence that suggests that their alarmist creed is totally misplaced.

The wider lesson, however, is that despite the evidence, not only does the warmist creed survive and prosper, but it is embedded so deeply in the body politic that it has driven out any discourse. It has become the received wisdom amongst all the major political parties, not only in this country but elsewhere, not least in the United States.

Driving this is the leaden doctrine of consensus, so beloved of the "colleagues" in the European Union. This is a close relative to totalitarianism, where only the party line is permitted. Any disagreement is treated as heresy, a political crime which must be punished.

Yet, in the "real" world, as demonstrated by Booker's column last Sunday, there is anything but consensus. Over 1,000 comments on the piece attest that the doctrine of global warming, or "climate change" as the believers now like to call it, is hotly disputed and subject to a vibrant – some might say vicious – debate.


The point here is that is debate takes place not in the media proper or within the political classes, but outside on the periphery. Yet there is nothing more inherently political than global warming, driving as it does huge areas of public policy, distorting government responses to a wide range of problems – not least energy – and costing us a fortune in taxes and hidden levies.

That the debate takes place outside the normal political cockpit illustrates one thing – that the political classes have, in effect, opted out of politics. Instead, they entertain themselves prattling about the things they want to talk about, and then expend their energies on trying to tell us that we should take them more seriously than our own concerns.

Therein lies the heart of the disengagement with the political process. It is not, as many politicians would aver (and like to believe), that we have lost interest in politics. It is more that they the politicians – and their groupies - have lost interest. They have become totally detached from reality, wrapped up in their tiny, putrid bubble of self-interest which dominates their lives.

To that extent, global warming is the model. As with this subject, we have the leaden consensus on immigration, on the European Union, on public finance, on law and order, and a host of other issues. Where the public at large would like to see radical change, the political discourse is limited to tiny movements within rigidly defined boundaries.

The political classes will entertain discourse only within those boundaries so that, while we are permitted to have a discussion about how we manage the effects of global warming, we are not allowed to dispute the central premise. We are not allowed to argue that the phenomenon is not man-made – rather it is part of a normal climate cycle and that, quite possibly, we are now entering a much more dangerous cooling phase. That area, to the political classes, is totally out of bounds. 

For "global warming" substitute immigration, or a wide range of issues, and the treatment is the same.

In their own way, however, these pictures could also be used to illustrate another story, the fate of those self-same political classes. They are represented by the radar station, built with high hopes twenty feet above ground level, dominating the ground. For "snow" read "public opinion" and the picture is complete. Unable to shift their ground, the political classes have become submerged, wholly irrelevant and useless.

But, buried in their deep cocoon of "snow" they – like the Met Office - have not yet looked out of the windows. When they do, they are in for a shock. And soon after, the oxygen will run out.

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We are supposed to take this seriously?

Next year in the UK is set to be one of the top-five warmest on record,according to the Met Office.

The average global temperature for 2009 is expected to be more than 0.4 degrees celsius above the long-term average, making it the warmest year since 2005. The Met Office also says there is a growing probability of record temperatures after next year.

The record year was 1998, says the Met Office, and this one, we are led to believe, will not be far behind, even if it will not beat the hottest year. Thus, says Professor Phil Jones, director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia, "global warming had not gone away despite the fact that 2009, like the year just gone, would not break records."

Taking a quick reality break, courtesy of Steven Goddard over at Watts up with that?, we are reminded that the Met Office in April last year predicted that the 2008 summer would be "warmer than average" with "rainfall near or above average."

That was immediately picked up by The Observer which happily reported: "Britain set to enjoy another sizzling summer after new evidence from the Met Office suggested above average temperatures for the season."

As the country basked in warm spring sunshine over the Easter weekend, the paper went on, "the new research suggests that it could be time to say goodbye to defining features of British life, like rainy picnics and cloudy sunbathing."

By 29 August, however, someone had obviously been looking out of the window, allowing the Met Office unashamedly to report that the summer of 2008 had been: "one of the wettest on record across the UK." And here they go again, "predicting" that 2009 will give us another warmer than average summer.

Meanwhile, as we shiver in the unaccustomed cold, The Daily Telegraph is telling us: "New Year's Eve set to be colder than in Iceland." Even then, the memory-free journos - Duncan Gardham and Jon Swaine – have imbibed the fantasia and are solemnly repeating the Met Office mantra. 

Funny enough, all Met Office forecasts carry a health warning. We are told that, "Our long-range forecasts are proving useful to a range of people, such as emergency planners and the water industry, in order to help them plan ahead." 

They are not, we are cautioned, "forecasts which can be used to plan a summer holiday or inform an outdoor event." But, it seems, they are good enough to predict global warming well into the next Century.

And we are supposed to take this seriously?