#green deceptions

[man-and-atom]

At 2:40 into this video, there is a remarkable statement.

The primary reason for… the feed-in tariffs isn’t actually to encourage low-carbon generation. It’s actually to encourage customers to engage with their energy. And so what we’ll see… coming from solar panels will be a very, very small proportion of the UK energy generation in the long run.

Now, this raises a question.

Why?

Under the former model of electricity supply in Britain, the Central Electricity Generating Board and the regional supply boards did everything they could to make sure that the customer could rely on electricity being there at a flip of the switch, for the lowest feasible price, without needing to “engage” with anything.

In general, people have enough concerns in their lives already to occupy their minds, without somebody deciding that what they really need is to apply their problem-solving and reasoning abilities to select the most economical electricity price plan for their current and anticipated needs, and then review the selection of plans every few months to make sure that the one they picked is still the optimum. Economists will tell you that this is exactly what people are good at, enjoy doing, and ought to spend their time on. To us this seems good cause to worry about economists and their influence on our society!

One of the key concepts of the “small is beautiful” movement of the early 1970s was that each household should, to the greatest possible extent, produce what it consumed and vice versa. This idea informed much of the so-called ecological thinking of the time (which is strange when we consider that ecology, properly speaking, is above all the study of interconnectedness), and continues to exert a strong influence today. There are good reasons for questioning the principle ― but what we see here is a kind of grotesque pantomime of it.

[man-and-atom]

From forest to furnace: how the U.K.’s wood-pellet plants are driving logging in B.C. | The Narwhal

Environmentalists are concerned the recent move by a U.K. power plant to buy Pinnacle Renewable Energy in Prince George, the second largest wood-pellet manufacturer in the world, means that B.C.'s already over-logged forests will face more pressures

Drax the Destroyer strikes again!

In 2020, 16.6 per cent of the U.K.'s Drax power plant's biomass was sourced from Canada, much of which originated in B.C.'s forests. 

Cutting wood in the Pacific coast forests of Canada, and transporting it to the north of England using oil-burning railroads and oil-burning ships, does not exactly sound like a climate-neutral activity.

[man-and-atom]

In case there is any doubt…

A recent communication from the Green Party in the German city of Cuxhaven begins with the phrase “Raus aus Atom, Kohle und Erdgas”. Opposing nuclear energy continues to be Priority Number One.

And what do they propose as an alternative? A wood-burning power station! Never mind that the supply of wood in Germany was already insufficient to meet the demand for fuel in the 16th Century, leaving the country almost deforested.

Meanwhile in Hamburg, it is proposed to operate a power station on brush and scrub imported from Namibia. Ignore, for a moment, the possibly catastrophic effects of topsoil loss on a country, much of which is a giant sandbar. This vegetation will probably be cleared with power tools such as chainsaws, loaded into trucks, then onto ships to be carried a quarter of the Earth’s circumference. At that point, one is left to wonder whether just burning oil would make more sense!

[man-and-atom]

As in the case of similar announcements elsewhere, such as from the Dutch state railways, this is not just a lie :  it's a fraud.  Kilowatt-hours which come at random are basically worthless to Apple.  The company needs kWh which come on schedule.  But it's being allowed to swap one for the other, as though they were of equal value.