New Gas Technology Torpedoes High-Cost Renewable Energy Plans

Huhne/ConDem ideas will ruin the economy, generate unemployment; won’t save the planet

Gas-fracking promises plentiful, clean energy, lower prices and a kick in the teeth for Putin and his ilk

“don’t let them scare you into thinking that the Huhne way makes sense. That route points to hairshirts and the caves”    

    To use a Jeremy Clarkson analogy, someone should put Chris Huhne down before he plunges Britain’s economy into depression with his high-priced energy programme which won’t save the world.

    Maybe we shouldn’t shoot him, but at least this childish, arrogant motor-mouth of a politician should be fired by Tory Prime Minister David Cameron before he does irreparable damage to Britain. Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, wants us to meet the ludicrous pledge to the European Union made by the previous Labour government that 20 per cent of our energy should be provided by renewable sources  by 2020. Now that would be an admirable plan if it was remotely possible, but it’s not. It might be one day when the technology is available, but it isn’t now. Renewable energy, mainly wind power augmented with a bit of solar when the sun eventually comes out will add a huge amount to our monthly domestic bills as we are forced to pay the massive subsidies for this uneconomic way of generating energy. The lights will go out too because not only does it cost a huge amount, there’s no way we can generate enough energy to meet demand. This will also force many jobs out of the country in industries which consume large amounts of power, like chemicals, pharmaceuticals, steel-making and aluminium smelting, which simply means that the climate saving aim becomes completely pointless as other countries steal our jobs and wealth and proceed to generate our share of carbon dioxide into their bit of the atmosphere.

    And yet the media gives Huhne a free ride.

    Huhne’s lies

    The other day on Radio 4’s Today Show, James Naughtie came up with that familiar line – I’m sorry we’ve run out of time, after Huhne had made his breathtaking assertion (I actually mean lie) that energy bills would be lower by 2020. A few days earlier Huhne did it on BBCTV’s NewsNight, when a pathetically ill-briefed Jeremy Paxman could tell that the man was lying in his teeth, but didn’t have the factual ammunition to make him eat his words.

    Huhne’s case for renewable energy might have made sense when it was hard to argue that because we will run out of oil soon, drastic and revolutionary changes would have to be made. But the emergence of gas-fracking technology has changed all that and destroyed the green agenda, which would have enslaved us all as well as bankrupting our economy. It is simply amazing that the editors at NewsNight and Today don’t appear to know anything about this, or they’re deliberately censoring your news to keep it quiet. So let me help you out. 

    Gas means bountiful energy scenario

    Gas-fracking might sound like an insult but it promises to revolutionise the world’s supply of energy. Until a couple of years ago, the conventional wisdom threatened Western Nations with the scary prospect of dwindling supplies of energy with at least two unattractive consequences. High energy prices would torpedo their economic viability, while their political clout would be diluted because countries like Russia and Iran might use their monopoly of energy resources to increase their influence.

    New supplies of gas throw that scenario up in the air. Another great by-product of this development is the people whose noses it gets up. Fascist bullies like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Mad Mahmoud Afterdinnerjacket will be grinding their teeth, as well as the egregious Huhne.

    Gas-fracking could double the world’s available supply of natural gas, according to Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), and extend the world’s supply at current rates of use to over 250 years from the estimated 120 years of conventional supply. Natural gas will provide power for heating, energy and industrial feed stocks. Even cars could be powered by gas from these new sources.

    Conventional natural gas is discovered by drilling into rocks to find pools of the stuff, which is then pumped to the surface. Gas-fracking exploits an old discovery that shale rock itself contains massive amounts of gas, which can be exploited by new techniques. You drill down to the shale layer, and the well then turns horizontal, parallel with the surface. Small holes are blasted in the rock (the “fracking” bit), to release the gas, which is then pushed back up to the surface using water, sand and chemicals.

    Powerful critics

    America is leading the exploitation of “unconventional”, or shale gas. In 2000, shale gas amounted to about one per cent of U.S. supplies and it imported a huge amount. Now shale gas accounts for about 30 per cent of the market in the U.S., and exports are rising. Britain has big potential supplies of shale gas, as does China, France, Poland and Australia.

     But gas fracking has powerful critics. Environmentalists say it pollutes local supplies of water, and can cause earthquakes. One video on UTube called Gasland shows someone innocently turning on a water tap, only for flames to gush out, apparently from a badly drilled shale gas well. Recent drilling at a site in Blackpool, England, caused local consternation when minor earth tremors were apparently set off. But this is nonsense. The so-called “earthquakes” were tremors felt through the ground from the explosives used in fracking and aren’t earthquakes at all in the accepted sense of the word. The flames emerging from the tap were a setup by environmental maniacs in the U.S.

    Warmists loathe it

    Politicians like Huhne and other hand-wringing climate change warmists don’t like the idea either. Plentiful supplies of shale gas will force energy prices lower, making the drive to renewable energy using wind, wave and solar power hugely expensive in comparison. Government climate change targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions will suffer if clean natural gas use accelerates over renewables.

    Environmental lobby group Friends of the Earth has called for a moratorium on fracking until concerns are addressed. France, Switzerland and some U.S. states have called for a ban. These concerns come from those who believe that against all sensible, reliable and untainted evidence, man is capable of changing the climate.

    An article in Britain’s conservative Spectator magazine by environmental writer Matt Ridley said arguments for renewables are made obsolete by this new source. “We’re entering an era when gas will be cheap, plentiful - and green,” he said. Some experts think plentiful supplies of gas will bypass renewables entirely on the way to a hydrogen economy.

    Huhne’s hair shirt

    So the future for energy is not remotely like the one Huhne in particular and the ConDem coalition in general is pushing. Because of the prevalence of new sources of natural gas, cheap energy is back on the agenda for us. Don’t let our politicians pretend otherwise. Demand that they push for gas-fracking. By all means insist that investments in future renewables that might work well one day are made, but don’t let them scare you into thinking that the Huhne way makes sense. That route points back to hairshirts and the caves.

    If you let them get away with it, you’ll be priced out of your car and onto the bus, you’ll be shivering at home, and holidaying at Blackpool, where there won’t even be any proper earthquakes whether gas is fracked or not.

 Neil Winton – December 7, 2011 

Curb Union Power With Voting Hurdle, New Contract Law

50% plus one makes good sense; outlaw short-term action with tighter contract law

“24 or 48 hour strikes or temporary walkouts bring pressure to bear on employers at relatively little cost to themselves”  

    Now that the dust has settled after a small minority of public sector workers threw their toys out of the pram, we ought to think about new laws to make sure unions can’t impose their will on us in the future.

    There are two actions the government should take.

    Firstly, insist that for a strike to be legal, it should have the support of more than 50% of the membership. Secondly, adopt the U.S. law that says if a union breaks its contract, the membership can’t return until a new one has been agreed. This would outlaw the kind of action that allows London’s transport unions to regularly cripple the capital, at very little personal cost.

    It’s no use the union bigwigs saying this is inconsistent and unfair because a government that emerges from a general election with less than 50% of the vote would have no mandate to govern.  Unions and governments are very different things, are they not? Unions are relatively small organisations that exist for narrow reasons, so if they seek to act in the name of their members with the potential for great disruption to express their selfish interests, demanding support of at least 50% of the members is a perfectly reasonable barrier to erect. When you realise that the unions which caused disruption on November 30 had the support of not more than 30 per cent of their members, if newspaper reports are right, then this is a reform of the system which  would be very effective.

    Unions in this country are able to break their contracts with impunity by calling 24 or 48 hour strikes or temporary walkouts to bring pressure to bear on their employers at relatively little cost to themselves. In the U.S. this isn’t possible because if a union breaks its contract, it can’t return until a new one is agreed. If Britain did this, it would outlaw this short term activity er at a stroke and render impotent those power hungry socialist maniacs like Mark Serwotka of PCS, Dave Prentice of Unison and Tony Woodley.

    Incidentally, I found out during the latest strike activity that the civil service First Division Association had changed its name to FDA. This isn’t surprising because when they called themselves First Division, this group of arrogant pen pushers, box tickers and jobsworths tried to pretend that they were an elite group, and used this football analogy, Since then of course we all know that First Division means League Three in football terms. Hence the FDA, until it is sued by the Federal Drug Administration.

St Paul’s-like protests using physical force must be halted quickly

Political protest and democracy is all about freely-expressed opinion, not compelling you to listen  

“They can gather in halls or fields to have their voices heard. They can write opinion pieces on the internet or in newspapers, or even run candidates in elections. They can be heard on radio and TV”

In a spirit of generosity, here’s some free ideas for the protestors, who don’t seem to have any of their own

    Let’s get one thing straight. If you commit a crime by invading a public area like St Paul’s Cathedral and stop citizens going about their business, and if you are asked to leave and refuse, any violence is the responsibility of the invaders, not the police. That’s why using direct action a la Greenpeace or marching through the streets blocking the traffic and causing citizens to miss cancer appointments or flights or weddings or even a planned visit to meet your friends in the pub is a violent act because unless the perpetrators cease and desist, physical force is required to stop it.

    Also, it’s not exactly a great way to make friends and influence people, if you are making their lives miserable in the process.

    Protest should be all about the free expression of opinion. As soon as you use your physical presence to underline your opinion, that becomes violence and should be quickly ended by police action, unless it is channelled into areas like the grass area outside Parliament, or Trafalgar Square on a Sunday (and don’t “march” there. Get the tube).

    There’s nothing stopping the protestors outside St Paul’s gathering in halls or fields to have their voices heard. They can write opinion pieces on the internet or in newspapers, or even run candidates in elections. They can be heard on radio and TV, and the BBC is doing its best to force the sophomoric opinions of the demonstrators down our throats. By using the politics of violence, the demonstrators calculate, correctly, that the media will instantly be all over them. That should be nipped in the bud and not be allowed to give them a long-drawn out publicity bonus.

     J.C.Flannel

    They cannot be allowed to flout the law and make the rest of us suffer. That’s why listening to the reaction of the Church of England to the St Paul’s protestors was so sickening. Talk about a parody of the Rev J.C.Flannel from Private Eye. The hand-wringing and  desperation not to have to say or do anything that might have consequences is pathetic to see. Mind you, I did hear something interesting from a wringing-wet Church of England representative on BBCTV’s NewsNight. He said that if a similar ragbag of protestors appeared on the steps of St Peters in Rome, they would be gone in half an hour,  floating away on a wave of water-cannon blasts. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to think was a good idea. I’d guess that 90 per cent of the nation would say “Yes Please” to that suggestion. Why are our leaders too cowardly to act?

    As for the opinions expressed by the protestors at St Pauls, it is amazing the incoherence and negativity we hear. They all seem to know what they don’t like, but nobody has any idea about what they want to change, except the lone (to me at least) call for a “Tobin” or Robin Hood tax on banks. That’s a non-starter and monumentally silly too given that it would require a) impossible world-wide agreement and b) would cripple the world’s economy and make sure the recession turned into a global depression.

    Ideas for the protestors

    Keeping to the British spirit of generosity, let me offer some suggestions for reforming our broken and out of touch political system which the great unwashed outside St Pauls might like to use. Firstly, our Parliamentarians are controlled from the centre by the political parties, making them unresponsive and remote. To change this, why not take on the American system of primary elections. That means power to select candidates would be moved from political headquarters back to the localities. Just look at what the Tea Party has done in America by forcing local Republican parties to field candidates local people want, not those approved by Central Office. If that’s not acceptable, why not push for Proportional Representation, which would allow small parties like UKIP to get some seats in Parliament.

    Secondly, insist that government cannot be run by anyone in Parliament. Isn’t it ludicrous that Parliament is charged with calling the government to account, but is controlled by government? If an MP was appointed to government he would have to resign his seat. That would mean the end of the Whip system that is a running sore on our so-called representative democracy. And elect the House of Lords.

    That would shake up our system some, would it not? And make sure that our MPs had to listen to their constituents, finally. So, protestors, if you are in it for the long haul, why not take some serious, intelligent and workable reform ideas on board?