Energy Hyperinflation Ship launching from UK in 3, 2, 1… prices so high there is talk of fracking?

The UK “Price Cap” and forecast keep outdoing even the worse case scenarios, but finally the crisis is so calamitous that the UK Conservative Party are even talking of allowing fracking.

As the Wall Street Journal puts it: Household energy bills were expected to rise 40% this autumn, but on Friday the government regulator announced they’ll leap 80% in a single bound. (Who would have guessed that socialist price fixing would fail to cap the price?)

The current energy costs have just risen again, now “capped” at £3,549 per household, a horrible $4,200 USD or $6,000 Australian. But the future cap is headed for the mesosphere boundary layer at a shocking £7,000 by April. It’s so blisteringly bad that it’s being described as “worse than the GFC” in terms of its impact. It’s so bad, two out of every three Pubs say they are likely to close this winter, with the “monster hikes” to energy prices. That’s despite the Christmas season rush, and hopes that it will be finally free of Covid restrictions. The whole social care system is using the word “collapse” given that the price of a care bed will rise by seven fold thus wiping out their profit margins. It’s only a half a million bed industry…

At this rate there are estimates “half of British households could slip into energy poverty ” in less than six months. (Presumably someone will have to change the definition of “poverty” or it will be a real crisis.)

UPDATE: Things are finally so bad that the PM-in-waiting, Liz Truss, has said she will lift the Fracking Ban. Wow. It’s probably not a coincidence it happened on the same day the shocking new price rises were announced. One fracking company even say they could be pumping gas by January (if given a license immediately). But this move could signify hope that the NetZero serpent will lose some venom. If the UK starts fracking soon and discovers that houses don’t collapse in earthquakes and there are no rivers of fire, it will be impossible to put this genie back in the bottle.

h/t to NetZeroWatch

Look at those prices lift off

Even middle income earners are going to need government help to pay their energy bills:

Daniel Martin, The Telegraph

“We are in a national economic emergency,” Mr Zahawi said. “This could go on for 18 months, two years, if Putin continues to use energy as a weapon.”

Dear Mr Zahawi, Putin has been using energy as a weapon for decades and you have only just noticed. Putin didn’t force Britain to stop fracking gas and build windmills, he just paid green groups to trick you into it...

The Quickening is here. Things are suddenly already at the point of second level consequences where the whole of the economy starts to unravel. There is now an expectation that small businesses will go bankrupt over winter so that means the energy companies are demanding small businesses pay steep deposits in advance for energy, which will break some of those businesses sooner.

Net-Zero Emissions Policy Bankrupts Britain

Wall Street Journal

And that’s merely what households will spend directly on energy. Britain is also in the grip of an energy-price crisis for businesses, whose rates aren’t subject to a cap. Some small businesses report they can’t get any utility to supply them without paying a steep deposit up front, because energy companies are concerned that high prices will push more small firms into insolvency.

To adapt Hemingway, net zero drives you bankrupt gradually, then suddenly.

Worse than the GFC:

UK Household Energy Bills Will Triple On New Price Cap

Irina Slav, OilPrice

“The impact to society will be higher than the 2008 crash in terms of the impact on households,” James Cooper, partner at consultancy Baringa, told Bloomberg a day before the Ofgem announcement. “We’re now moving into territory where a majority of households are placed into debt or a very fragile financial position.”

Earlier this week, French utility EDF warned that as many as half of British households could slip into energy poverty by the start of 2023.

All profit margins in the care sector are wiped out by energy price increase which makes the 450,000 bed industry “insolvent”. Presumably these sort of calculations apply to many industries and prices will rise accordingly. Energy inflation will become CPI inflation:

Social care faces collapse as soaring energy prices push up costs almost tenfold

The entire social care sector faces collapse in the wake of soaring energy bills with the cost of running care homes rising tenfold, experts warned.

The chief executive of Care England said providers faced a staggering 683 per cent increase in energy costs during the past 12 months, with bills expected to rise again early next year. For gas and electricity, the costs were £660 per bed, per year, this time last year; this week, care providers have to pay an astonishing £5,166.

With research from the Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI) estimating the sector’s total pre-pandemic profits before tax, rent payments, directors’ remuneration and repayments on loans at £1.5bn per year, and the rise in energy prices will eradicate profit margins generated across the sector, driving many providers into insolvency and eliminating scope for investment.

Real change coming — Fracking ban to lift soon?

There is hope.

Liz Truss pledges to overturn ban on fracking in bid to end reliance on foreign energy imports

Tom Witherow, DailyMail

Liz Truss will end the ban on fracking as part of a plan to make the UK an ‘energy-secure dynamo’, she writes in the Daily Mail today. The Foreign Secretary said Britain cannot be ‘held hostage’ by authoritarian regimes and must end its reliance on foreign imports within a decade.

She pledged to win the support of local communities for fracking by ‘ensuring’ they see the benefits, and said new projects will only go ahead if there is a ‘clear public consensus’ in their favour.

It came as one fracking company in the North of England claimed, in a letter to the Treasury, that it would be likely to be able to inject shale gas into the energy market by January if it were granted a licence immediately.

Support for fracking has grown as soaring gas prices have hit household budgets, with Tory members voicing their support for new drillings in leadership hustings.

A mining engineer, speaking at the hustings in Manchester, said: ‘You cannot run, you cannot grow, you cannot progress a modern economy without a secure supply of cheap, abundant, readily available energy. ‘Right below our feet is the largest energy bonanza this country has ever discovered, bigger than coal and bigger than the North Sea.’

Most of the other solutions on offer by UK politicians involve printing more money, not finding more energy:

Mr Zahawi [UK Chancellor of the Exchequer] has drawn up a menu of options for the next Prime Minister amid calls from Ofgem for urgent help. Options under consideration include freezing the price cap as suggested by Labour, increasing benefits, handing extra support to small businesses and a loan scheme for suppliers that could shave £500 off bills.

As we discussed a few days ago, printing money from nothing is what got us into trouble in the first place, creating inflation, feeding sharks and corruption and punishing prudent savers.

The Government can “cap prices” but someone somewhere always has to pay the bill.

9.9 out of 10 based on 104 ratings

171 comments to Energy Hyperinflation Ship launching from UK in 3, 2, 1… prices so high there is talk of fracking?

  • #
    Scissor

    Just declare CO2 to be carbon free. Everything else is transitioning.

    520

    • #
      Fuel Filter

      Sure do hope Britain still have some people that actually know something about fracking.

      I mean, how long has it been since they did a any fracking?? At all? It’s gotta be at least a decade since they did. Right? Maybe more? The technology has been advancing rapidly here in the states. That is until the occupant of the White House cheated himself into power.

      They are gonna need a whole lot of Americans to bring them up to speed unless they still have failed and pulled their heads out of their behinds.

      Hmmmmm…

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  • #
    MrGrimNasty

    UK fertiliser manufacturer forced to halt production by cost again.
    Loss of byproduct CO2 could have food supply impacts.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62673421.amp

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    • #
      J Burns

      UK politicians are brilliant at pledging, not so good at doing.

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      • #
        watersider

        Now come on Mr Burns — lets be fair to the politicians. All those young male “refugees” mainly from Albania recently, are put up in hotels,given £40 per week pocket money, mobile phones, free food, and clothing allowances – and oh I forgot free electricity in their hotels. So the politicians are getting something right!

        10

  • #
    David Maddison

    Surely the answer is just to build more windmills?

    Once Great Britain only has 11,000, after all.

    They keep saying windmills are the cheapest of all power generators…

    LoL, Lol, Lol, LoL.

    Oh, wait.

    Building more economy-destroying wind subsidy farms IS THE PLAN.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-60945298.amp

    Mr Johnson has said previously that he wants all of the UK’s energy from “clean sources” by 2035. To meet this goal, offshore wind capacity would need to quadruple by 2030, and onshore wind capacity double. This would require between 1,000 and 2,000 new wind farms.

    It looks like Once Great Britain will cease being a “green and pleasant land” as once described by William Blake with an additional 1000-2000 wind subsidy farms, apart from the millions of legal and illegal immigrants who go there to not work.

    840

    • #

      What we need are lots more solar panels. It’s well known we have lots of sun during our UK winter months with the long nights being especially good for generating solar power.

      On the other hand, those who are on green energy contracts should only receive power when windmills and solar are working, which will leave more grown up power for the rest of us.

      802

      • #
        ExWarmist

        Indeed, David and Tony.

        If people freeze in England this winter, it’s no doubt due to climate change and Putin, and can be solved by spinning up the money printing press.

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      • #
        Robber

        Wait, they just need moon panels – with a giant reflector op the moon:-)

        180

      • #
        wal1957

        TonyB

        It’s well known we have lots of sun during our UK winter months with the long nights being especially good for generating solar power.

        And of course if I use the “science”, since England is near the top of the Earth that means that it gets more sun than us in OZ because we are nearer “the bottom”.

        Haha.
        It wouldn’t surprise me if some “unreliables” supporter actually used my “scientific” analysis shown above as proof of how reliable the “unreliables” are.

        310

        • #
          Ted1.

          England near the top? So they say, but that defies logic.

          As any fool kin plainly see, (quoting Li’l Abner), the northern hemisphere is heavier than the southern hemisphere. So gravity must take it to the bottom.

          It’s the Northerners, not the Southerners, who are in danger of falling off.

          40

    • #
      MM from Canada

      It looks like Once Great Britain will cease being a “green and pleasant land” as once described by William Blake 

      That is a beautiful hymn.

      I hope your prediction does NOT come true.

      210

    • #
      Graeme#4

      Please correct me if I’m wrong, but the UK only obtains 5% of its energy from renewables, including hydro.

      50

    • #
      StephenP

      Who in the UK is currently making the profit from wind generators, and who is working in the new well-paid green jobs?
      For most of the past month the performance of the wind sector has been dismal, and even if we had 10 times the number of windmills we would only just provide enough electricity for a summer bank-holiday Sunday.
      What the situation would be on a normal cold and wet winter’s evening, with EVs and heat pumps in addition, defies logic.
      No-one in politics seems to have twigged the amount of CO2 that would be emitted when producing the new wind generators, as well as the likely shortage of materials to produce them.
      Also we are just kicking the can down the road as regards producing the next generators in 25 years time. “Think of the grandchildren!?!” is their mantra, well, we will be leaving them some big problem unless they get fracking and then cracking with nuclear power generation.

      130

  • #

    The price cap covers a lot of eventualities and is by no means typical of all households. We received our gas and electricty increase today and with the govt cash help that had already been agreed our energy bill for the next three months will be no more than the same time last year.

    Liz truss will no doubt advance additional monies so we shall have to see if they will cover the next round of increases due in January 2023 .

    Other households will have a different equation of costs and outgoingsc but my concerns are mostly for the smaller businesses so again we will have to see what plans liz truss comes up with For the small business sector, such as pubs.

    As I have said previously we have three nail bars in our small town so there is money around as can also be seen with the huge demand for highly expensive replica football shirts, the vast cost of going to a football match, there aren’t enough flights to go round as so many people want to go on holiday and the latest smartphones are flying off the shelves as are expensive tv and mobile phone contracts.

    So there is a lot of slack in the system and many people have money.

    Whether thay would rather spend it on a holiday rather than a energy bill is another matter.

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    • #
      Chad

      So there is a lot of slack in the system and many people have money.

      But not everyone !…sure the top 20% or so can afford to cover the extra $$$ for energy, but….
      ….Many more people simply DO NOT have money for these increased energy costs !
      Apart from Pensioners and unemployed, even those employed on fixed incomes witth tight budgets are dreading how they will be able to afford 3-5 times increase in heating and electricity costs next winter.
      If you (like most Politicians, and civil servants etc) , have never lived on a marginal budger, you have no concept of the ramifications this can have !…..litterally , life and death to some, months of pain and anguish. for others

      390

      • #
        Rupert Ashford

        It’s amazing that the elites are using that line now as an accusation towards the population, and still they hold an election-winning margin. In the not too distant past “having money” was coveted and praised as “making provision for old age and not living off the public teat, but we cannot have that among the middle class any more it seems.

        30

    • #
      Old Goat

      Tony,
      The current strategies only delay the inevitable . The longer the delay the worse the outcome . Enjoy your affluence while you can because soon you will have to burn money to keep warm .

      211

      • #
        tonyb

        Old Goat

        My point was that there are lots of different realities and lots of frivolous spending. Near us a shop opened 2 years ago called “Mary Poppins Balloon shop” selling nothing but balloons. Similarly nail bars and all the associated treatments are not essentials and neither are extremely expensive Football replica shirts.

        A whole generation has grown up expecting to have their central heating on at such a warmth that they can stroll round their often poorly insulated homes in T Shirts and shorts. We wear thick shirts, jumpers and fleece lined trousers during the colder weather.

        So we will presumably see curtailing of the more frivolous things that have developed and presumably the govt will give help towards those that need it. WE must hope for a mild winter otherwise things WILL get even more serious although some will say that in that case the basic message that unreliables don’t work, won’t get through.

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    • #
      MrGrimNasty

      Well yes Tony, a minority of people who use minimal energy and qualify for all the assistance the government is giving generally and to old/low income etc. might actually make a profit!
      But 99% of people are up *!#@ creek.

      40

    • #
      Ronin

      I always wonder if the people crying poor about paying bills such as power and gas, aren’t spending it on other stuff.

      10

    • #
      Steve of Cornubia

      And the recent Reading Festival was a sell-out, with acres and acres of fields turned into untidy campsites. There must have been thousands of attendees camping, all at GBP250 pp. Then there is the cost of getting there, buying food and drink at exorbitant prices, a new outfit – and of course some recreational ‘mood boosters’.

      Now tell me again, just how cash-strapped the UK’s young people are? You know, those poor young souls who can’t save up a deposit for a mortgage or pay rent …

      80

  • #
    Tarquin+Wombat-Carruthers

    Chris Bowen are you watching and learning? Didn’t think so!

    571

    • #
      yarpos

      They clearly just arent doing it right. Bowen will sort it out.

      181

    • #
      b.nice

      Not sure Bowen has learnt anything since primary school !

      Pretty sure there would be many junior high student that would walk all over him for scientific knowledge, rational though and basic competence.

      331

  • #
    erasmus

    The left have planned the downfall of western democracies and have slow marched through all the institution’s for decades. When they say there’s a lot of ruin in a nation, they mean it takes time. But in the end it happens quickly, and it’s now happening.

    511

  • #
    Graham Richards

    Time for politicians to be held criminally accountable for obviously dumb decisions.
    Now that would change the climate instantaneously from net zero to let’s build a couple of nuclear power stations very quickly.

    561

    • #

      Graham

      Good suggestion but assuming that extremely dumb decisions will lead them into jail there will be barely a politician left on the outside as the words ‘dumb decisions’ and ‘ politicians’ fit so perfectly

      360

    • #

      The Rolls Royce led Consortium are promising SMRs (Small Nuclear Reactors) but this is years away from happening. Building large Nuclear Power Plants is very expensive with long lead times.

      The UK can always go back to getting the gas out of coal but this requires many years of effort (and money) as well as most coal mines were shut down in the 1980s.

      And as for those remaining Coal Fired Power Stations, well…………………………

      Time is not on the UKs side here.

      Fracking is a no brainer really as they know where the gas is and an Australian Company (can’t remember the name) has already done most of the leg work on getting the gas out. The earthquake alarmism is just alarmism IMHO.

      400

      • #
        David Maddison

        Building large Nuclear Power Plants is very expensive with long lead times.

        That is a common myth promoted by the Left.

        I see no reasons why they should be intrinsically any more expensive or take longer to build than other proper power stations.

        The only reason they might is because of Green Tape.

        In the case of SMRs it’s a bit different because none have reached the development stage of commercial sale.

        231

        • #
          Old Goat

          David,
          The USA’s nuclear fleet indicates otherwise . We have the technology now but not the smarts to use it .

          200

        • #

          “other proper power stations”………….lol

          Nuclear ones do take longer to build and do cost more. They do in the UK anyway. And it isn’t just because of Green/Red Tape.

          Fracking is the only sensible solution for the UK in the short term.

          The fracking S*x Pistols should know………….lol

          Cheers,

          JR

          50

          • #
            KP

            They should ask the Russians to build one for them- They built Zaporizhzhia, at 6GW its one of the biggest in Europe, back in ’85.

            70

          • #
            Graeme#4

            No they don’t take longer. This is an outright falsehood, because it’s based on only referencing two outliers, Hinkley C and I think Volgte. All other nuclear plants around the world have been built basically on time, on budget.
            As an example, Barakah Units 1 and 2 were each built in 8 years, and are now delivering over 1,000 GW of clean reliable energy for around A26c/kWh.
            And I doubt that SMRs will be constructed on site – the plan seems to be to truck them in and assemble them. Please don’t tell me that process will take many years.

            221

            • #
              Graeme#4

              Sorry, should have added “annually” to the 1000 GW figure. Units 1 and 2 produce around 2.8 GW total.

              10

              • #
                Graeme#4

                Yes I know, I’m still wrong. Should have multiplied 2.8 x 24 hours x 365 days to obtain an annual GWh figure. Sigh…

                20

            • #

              You are obviously too young to remember the Dungeness Nuclear Power Station in Kent in the UK. It took many many years to build and it was way way over budget. UK LayBore were in Guv’ment at the time.

              JR

              60

            • #

              And if you read my comment again, I am all for the SMRs but they are not here yet commercially.

              10

              • #
                Graeme#4

                That sounds like a long time ago John. Modern nuclear plant construction is quite different, as Barakah should indicate. And I’m sure SMR construction will be even faster.

                20

        • #
          Hanrahan

          I’ve always thought that instrumentation and redundancy in safety as a big cost, but surely processors have reduced that cost significantly.

          There are millions of super critical safety systems working today on processors. We know how to do it.

          30

        • #
          RossP

          David I do not have the figures immediately at hand, but when the French started building nuclear plants backs in the 50s/60s they built them relatively quickly. In fact they only stopped building because demand did not keep up with the supply from the new plants.
          I think Graeme#4 is correct. It takes a long time to build is a “leftie driven myth”

          30

  • #
    James Murphy

    What can’t be blamed on Russia will be blamed on Brexit.
    None of the real culprits will take responsibility, and no one will be held accountable.

    420

    • #
      Chad

      Certsinly, gas and oil prices took off way beforeRussia moved on the Ukrain.
      Biden initiated much of that with his manipulation of US regulations, and that allowed corrupt “market” manipulation by the big producers to drive up prices.
      Putin is not even restricting Russian oil supplies in Europe yet !

      250

  • #
    bobby b

    “Most of the other solutions on offer by UK politicians involve printing more money, not finding more energy”

    I’ve seen few sentences anywhere that so accurately summarize what government usually brings to the table.

    Not the production of anything of value, not an increase to what we have, but simply a redistribution of scarce resources so that we all fail, but evenly.

    It’s better that we all fail evenly than some do well and others do adequately. Shades of Ms. Thatcher (pbuh).

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Is it even possible that people can be so stupid as to think you can run an industrial civilisation on weather-dependent electricity?

    I think there are two answers.

    1) Yes. The Sheeple and lower levels of “leadership” really can be so stupid. The Left took over the schools in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Critical thinking went out the window and politically correct Marxist-oriented indoctrination became the norm.

    2) No. At the higher levels of leadership, among “planners” I think it is impossible to be so stupid. Even if individuals are stupid themselves, there must have been someone that told them of the absurdity of their endeavour. Therefore what they are doing is not due to incompetence, it is due to malcious behaviour designed to destroy Western economies and Western Civilisation in general hence the emissions exemption for China, for example.

    550

    • #
      ExWarmist

      The average person, and I include myself in that, (i.e. ‘the sheeple,’) are typically busting a gut to make ends meet and don’t have the time to delve into all the many details of the problem that green energy (renewables driving energy scarcity and consequent price hikes) is but one manifestation of.

      People aren’t stupid, but they are time poor, distracted, and ignorant of the rules of engagement. The ‘hacks,’ on the human personality, and culture are not taught at school in ‘How power and domination work 101.’ We operate in a closed book game of power where the top level power operators know the rules (and have the resources) and the vast majority do not.

      In such an environment, simply finding useful verifiable information is very hard, let alone joining all the dots to produce a comprehensive understanding of what the problems are, let alone the solutions.

      In the meantime, we have current events which are simply reflective of our culture’s current operational frameworks. The key will be which society breaks first, and will it lead to a backlash that reshapes part of our cultural operational framework. The UK might be that society, it could also be Germany, or even Australia. Whoever it is, they will become ‘the object lesson,’ that operates like a hard slap to the face of a sleepwalker.

      I expect that when the backlash begins, our current crop of power operators out of locations like Davos, London, Brussels, and New York will seek to shape the backlash to their own perceived advantage, whether they are successful or not remains to be seen.

      As for our cultural operational framework, will the belief in renewables, net-zero, and man made climate change survive the collapse of a major society like the UK? It remains to be seen, but time to change course and avoid a lot of death is running out.

      381

      • #
        yarpos

        Generally agree, but seriously a third (definitely) to a half (possibly) of “people” are not equipped to understand the problem, let alone determine effectiveness of solutions. Its not a matter of being stupid its just median IQ being around a 100. The rest, sure time poor some of them, lazy, just expect it to work like it did for a century.

        231

        • #
          Terry

          Genius! To increase IQ, just wait for enough stupid people to grow up around you.

          I feel so much smarter now…

          21

      • #
        Plain Jane

        The powers that are setting up this collapse in energy have been very clever and powerful enough to engineer the fall in “lockstep” across so many nations at the same time. Coordinating the collapse of electricity grids and fuel supplies across nations on one side of the world to the other takes some doing and has been decades in the planning and execution. So many politicians must be in on the knowledge of this by this stage that the t word is necessary to explain how this situation has come about.

        231

      • #
        Honk R Smith

        My observation is that a lot of regular folk know something’s wrong but are resigned to it.
        The don’t want to talk about it because they realize their powerlessness and dwelling on it threatens daily emotional stability.
        Folk know they’ve been had and those of us saying ‘told ya’, just makes them really angry.
        There seems not much point in debating science and policy.
        Aren’t we just waiting to see how bad the slow rolling poli-anthropogenic cataclysm will be?
        And which currently living characters will be added to the AH, Stalin, Mao, PP history club?
        I’ve got some good guesses, about you?
        (If History is not erased by Wikipedia.)

        I am a Cold War baby and have been living with impending destruction my entire life. As kids we were taught duck and cover mushroom cloud doom. Kids today are being taught climate and virus doom.
        I’m holding out hope that this impending doom is as much BS as the last ones.
        But I have to admit that the latest version feels different.

        110

      • #
        Gerry

        Yes ExWarmist …….exactly …I think the sheeple word is derogatory and people on here should not assume that everyone else has the time to investigate, read logs, discuss climate issues. Dealing with a family and paying the bills with two jobs and kids sick etc etc takes priority.

        80

        • #
          Terry

          Everybody, regardless of how time-poor, has the ability to switch off the Corporate Media and switch on their brains…

          I know tradies, working 12-14 hour days that “have the time” to know something just ain’t right with “the official narrative(s)”, and yet teachers (admittedly working much harder. 26-28 hours a day and 72 weeks a year – just ask them) are somehow not shrewd enough to understand and resist the propaganda that infests the minds of our future generations, on their watch and too often with their full endorsement and collaboration.

          Nope. Sheeple they are. It is not available time, it is care factor and critical thought. It seems the more bureaucratised, corporatised, and coddled a group is, the easier it is to persuade that the absurd is rational and their stupidity is normal; especially if there is a large bucket of grift on the end of it.

          As stupid as the politicians are, it does seem that they do in fact represent the electorate. Dumb as a bag of rocks. Exhibit A: The Green vote (in the Senate) – Nationally. 12.66%. Look around. One in eight voters think that is okay. And that’s without counting the Teal abomination (same mentality as Greens voters) or the “majors”, both of which seem determined to drive the country into energy, economic, and civil poverty.

          So again, nope. We once rode on the sheep’s back, we now get them to vote and run the place. Lucky Country, Clever Country, Wasted Country – just sad.

          70

          • #
            Rupert Ashford

            Excellent…love the bit about the teachers – we have friends who are teachers and you described them to a “T”…LOL

            50

    • #

      Just send your thoughts to Albo and Turtle Head Bowen then and see how far you get. Good Luck.

      Albo doesn’t listen as he is too busy fighting Tories and telling stories about his upbringing. Or is he fighting sTories? And Bowen can’t see further than his snout.

      Both of them have their snouts in the trough though. Oink, oink.

      JR

      152

  • #
    David Maddison

    Most of the other solutions on offer by UK politicians involve printing more money, not finding more energy:

    That sounds like the South African solution. The South African finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene, said:

    https://newspunch.com/south-africa-print-money-rich/

    South Africans are continuing to be poor when we can print more money to ensure that everybody has it. Our people are poor because there is a shortage of money in the country. It’s not the shortage of jobs that makes people poor, it is the shortage of money. We have paper and ink, so we will print more money and give it to the poor, and make all of them billionaires if that is possible.

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    • #
      Tarquin+Wombat-Carruthers

      … and then provide everyone with a wheelbarrow, in lieu of a wallet, in which to carry their new-found “wealth”!

      200

    • #
      Old Cocky

      Years ago, there was an Uncle Scrooge story in which a tornado hit the money bin and spread the contents over Duckburg. Everybody was happy to suddenly become rich, until they discovered that eggs were $1,000/dozen and spuds $500/lb.

      It was an extremely effective way of demonstrating inflation.

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      • #
        David Maddison

        It was an extremely effective way of demonstrating inflation.

        It’s really not hard to understand at all.

        And yet a vast majority of people including politicians still don’t understand, except the Elites who know exactly how it works and benefit from it.

        For everybody else it’s just a disguised form of taxation, although I’m not sure how widely that is understood either.

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      • #

        Yes, and the current inflation is being caused by supply side issues and NOT demand side issues/speculation issues. So all the interest rate rises in the Universe will not fix this inflation problem. All it will do is cause Recessions and crashes in the Markets and as usual it is the People at the bottom who will get hurt.

        JR

        62

  • #
    OldOzzie

    Electric car users warned as energy price cap makes charging more expensive than PETROL

    AN URGENT warning has been issued to electric vehicle owners as the energy price cap is set to increase in October.

    The RAC has warned motorists across the UK that EVs will be more expensive to run than petrol equivalents from October. It added that the cost of a full charge at home for an EV with a 64-kilowatt hour battery – such as a Kia e-Niro – will be £33.80 under the new cap which comes into force on October 1.

    The unit cost of electricity will nearly double under the new energy prices released this week, taking it to 86p per kWh, up from 56p.

    Petrol prices have fallen in recent weeks and stand at £1.70 per litre, in comparison.

    This, in turn, means that it will cost more to travel long distances in an EV compared with a petrol car.

    According to the RAC, owners of Jaguars i-PACE, an electric SUV, would spend £99 more to travel the same distance as a driver in the petrol equivalent.

    Mr Dennis said those who charged their cars at home would really feel the impact of October’s energy price rise.

    He added: “A full charge of a typical family-sized electric SUV will cost 84 percent more from October than it does under the current cap.”

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    • #
      ExWarmist

      Buyer’s remorse in 4… 3… 2…

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    • #
      Richard+Ilfeld

      Buyer’s remorse will be a long illness in many countries; when they finally decide “OK we’ll produce our own energy” only to discover that the magic trick of passing laws doesn’t work in either direction, and months go by while the personnel are found and trained or retrained, the infrastructure is re-established, machinery is refurbished, spare parts are scrounged, etc. The left’s lack of understanding is truly comprehensive.

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      • #
        RickWill

        Coal combustion courses in Australian University have been ditched. Some universities actually offer an engineering degree in “renewable energy”.

        Any engineer with an ounce of understanding should be able to do the sums to determine that a solar panel will take 80+ years to return the energy that it took to make it and get it mounted on a roof. But Australia is training “engineers” whose career is based on the continuation of subsidies. In time it becomes self-fulfilling because there is no one left who can operate/optimise a coal fired power station.

        As long as Australia continues to supply China with the resources needed to make solar panels and wind turbines, Australia could very well succeed in the transition.

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        • #
          Terry

          Some universities actually offer an engineering degree in “renewable energy”.

          I understand every windmill comes with a free one in the back of the installation manual.

          00

      • #
        Hasbeen

        Surely there should be a host of used [& proven] nuclear plants available in Germany & soon France, at give away prices.

        I hear the Russians have some small mobile nuclear plants for sale, all ready mounted in subs for easy delivery.

        80

        • #
          Graeme No.3

          Recently Poland wanted to ‘rent’ the last 3 German nuclear plants which are likely to shut down at the end of this year.
          The German coalition Govt. said no, and still say they will shut down this year. This decision was explained by a Govt. spokesman as “Yes we have a 15% shortfall likely, and these nuclear plants only supply 4% of demand, so there is no reason to keep them running”.
          I missed his name, but I would guess something like Herr Bowenkopf.

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    • #
      Chad

      The unit cost of electricity will nearly double under the new energy prices released this week, taking it to 86p per kWh, up from 56p.…..

      Take note Australians !…..that is equivalent to Au$1.50 per kWh !
      The UK is deep in a 5hit stormof energy costs and fuel costs, and , for many, is not a pleasant place to be trying to live comfortably .
      And that is not the worst of it yet !
      This could well be a vision of where we in Australia may be headed if we allow it to happen without some serious action to prevent it.
      We have to get more gas resources released..Drilling, fracking , etc) to stop the hike in Gas prices, then seriously lobby for coal and gas generation to be maintained and expanded.
      Personally, for perrol/diesel etc, i favour a total boycott of a prime fuel supplier .(EG, Shell ?), until they are forced to lower prices or quit the market, !…Others will then have to follow to be competitive.

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      • #
        RickWill

        The winter of 2022 in Australia will be viewed as an aberration simply because there is not enough W&S.

        Here we are in late winter 11am Sunday 28 Aug and all regions in the NEM have negative wholesale electricity price. Canberra/ACT is 100% “renewable” and is the only region in Australia where retail electricity costs went down in 2022. So everyone can see that Albo has already got electricity sorted. Just like he sorted the GBR bleaching.

        This giant Ponzi scheme has a long way to run in Australia. I am not at all hopeful of a change in religion in Australia. I will be looking at a bigger battery and a small generator once my current FIT expires in 2024.

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      • #

        Chad,
        They’ll quit the market.
        Socialistic never works.

        Auto

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    • #
      OldOzzie

      Electric cars will be more expensive to run than petrol

      Cost of travelling long distances will be much higher under the new price cap

      Surging demand for electric cars has combined with a supply crunch of vital technology and driven up prices. Figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders showed there was a 50pc increase in registrations of electric cars during the first seven months of the year, compared with the same period in 2021.

      As a result, upfront costs have soared. The Honda-e is 30pc more expensive than this time last year, according to comparison site electrifying.com.

      BMW has also increased its prices. In the past two months, the price for its iX model has risen by more than £7,400 to £77,305.

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    • #
      OldOzzie

      Motorcyclist In Florida Killed After Being Hit From Behind In Tesla

      If the NHTSA is investigating Tesla’s Autopilot use around motorcycles, as we reported it was just days ago, they may want to hurry up.

      That’s because yet another motorcyclist has died as a result of a an accident with a Tesla, this time in Boca Raton, Florida. It is unclear whether or not Autopilot was involved in the accident.

      However, the incident is eeriliy similar to other incidents the NHTSA is already investigating wherein Teslas on Autopilot potentially fail to recognize motorcycles in front of them. In the incidents the NHTSA is looked at, “Teslas collided with motorcycles on freeways in the darkness.”

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      • #
        Philip

        Ive ridden motorbikes my whole life and one should never rely on people to stop behind them. Always watch the mirror and get out of the way (which is usually pretty easy on a bike). I’ve done it twice in 30 years, otherwise Id be gone. With Teslas on autopilot only makes it more dangerous. I’ve often wondered how small an object those things pick up.

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    Serge Wright

    And despite all of this, the BBC will be blaming the current predicament on not enough RE.

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    Neville

    Thanks again Jo for trying to keep us informed of the latest idiocy from the true BELIEVERS.
    What a disaster and yet we shouldn’t be surprised by anything these loonies do anymore.
    In a short while the Albo morons will be trying to steer Aussies down this same super expensive road to poverty. And all a big surprise NOT.

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  • #
    Frederick Pegler

    Don’t blame the politicians they are just don’t what they need to do to keep their jobs.
    It’s time for voters to be held accountable for their obviously dumb decisions.

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    • #

      You can only vote for what is in front of you and here (Horse Trailer as the Queen says) voting is compulsory. The problem is the quality of the ‘Pollie’ on offer. Not nearly good enough at all.

      We should get the ACCC onto this with the Trade Descriptions Act quick smart.

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    OldOzzie

    Wall St Journal Editorial: Net Zero Bankrupts Britain

    The Wall St Journal’s Editorial Board has written a pithy condemnation of Britain’s Net Zero obsession, holding it directly responsible for the fact that up to a third of Britons are about to be plunged into poverty thanks to unaffordable energy bills. “The underlying cause of Britain’s energy misery is its fixation with climate goals, especially the ambition to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050,” it says. No argument here.

    Americans who fancy themselves net-zero climate advocates might want to take a look at Britain for a guide to the future. Household energy bills were expected to rise 40% this autumn, but on Friday the government regulator announced they’ll leap 80% in a single bound.

    This boost follows a 54% rise in April and brings the average household’s annual bill to £3,549 ($4,208). The median household income is £31,400, which gives a sense of the growing proportion of each household’s budget that will go toward central heating, cooking and keeping the lights on. For the ruling Tories, this is a political calamity.

    And that’s merely what households will spend directly on energy. Britain is also in the grip of an energy-price crisis for businesses, whose rates aren’t subject to a cap. Some small businesses report they can’t get any utility to supply them without paying a steep deposit up front, because energy companies are concerned that high prices will push more small firms into insolvency. Lower-income households in particular will bear the brunt of this as prices for goods and services skyrocket and companies lay off employees.

    If you think this couldn’t happen in America, think again. The underlying cause of Britain’s energy misery is its fixation with climate goals, especially the ambition to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050. To meet that goal Britain has grown hostile to domestic energy exploration, banning shale-gas fracking and slapping windfall-profits taxes on North Sea oil and gas producers that will deter investment. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has hurt, but the U.K.’s policies made its citizens vulnerable to such a global shock.

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    • #
      RickWill

      USA has spun the message. It is now inflation reduction rather than Net Zero. Still aimed at polluting the land and oceans with bird choppers but a different name.

      In reality, the US has an Inflation Export Act. At least until more countries stop accepting US debt for tangible stuff.

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    • #
      Klem

      The WSJ authors make it sound like people don’t want high energy bills. Think again, high energy costs have been a utopian goal of the Left for decades and everyone knows it:

      “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I’m capping greenhouse gases,” – Barack Obama

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  • #
    Serge Wright

    I was reading reading those old links which date back to 2015, where green groups were being covertly funded by Russia to make sure fracking was banned across Europe, to create the scenario we now see, with a massive humanitarian crisis and gas price surge. It was revealing at the time, but now the situation is unfolding in it’s final stages, you still wonder how and why governments, academia and the media allowed this to happen. We all knew this was coming, because what else would happen when you shut down your reliable and cheap energy sources. Surely, security agencies would be advising government of what’s happening ?. You would certainly hope that a royal commission would occur in the UK to examine how this allowed to unfold, who were the players that prevented sensible discussion and policy and why academia was providing false advice to society and government. Many thousands of people will die across Europe this winter, through a combination of starvation, cold and disease and those who survive will experience the kind of poverty not seen in a lifetime. What’s unfolding across Europe right now is the “Social Cost of Renewable Energy”. This is a cost to society so hideous that it’s difficult to define, but those that caused this to happen must be held to full account.

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  • #
    • #
      RickWill

      Would be interesting to investigate the sequence.

      Probably a similar sequence to the twin towers. Burning oil in the nacelle flooding down the tower causing it to weaken and collapse.

      The downside of any steel structure is its rapid weakening when exposed to relatively low temperature. Wood is weakened over time by rot and infestations but endures heat from a fire longer than a steel structure.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Margaret Thatcher was a great PM, but in an effort to fight the communist coal mining union thug leader Arthur Scargill she tried to render coal permantly obsolete.

    To do this she introduced in a speech to the Royal Society in September 1988 the idea that fossil fuels were harming the environment.

    She said:

    “For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world’s systems and atmosphere stable.

    “But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.”

    She said she believed money spent on “cleansing” polluted areas such as the Mersey Basin to “be money well and necessarily spent” and that “protecting” the balance of nature to be “of the great challenges of the late twentieth century.”

    THEN, in November 1988 she went before the UN and talked about the

    insidious danger

    climate change posed by

    the prospect of irretrievable damage to the atmosphere, to the oceans, to earth itself.

    Talk about the law of unintended consequences….

    Ultimately, you can blame it on Arthur Scargill, an early activist who tried to destroy Once Great Britain before the current efforts.

    Indirectly, he succeeded.

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    • #
      GlenM

      Many people have tried to deflect Thatcher’s intent, but there is no doubt she said what she said. Still, a fine pragmatic political figure and an adherent of the Friedrich Hayek school.

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      • #
        Gerry

        I’m fairly certain the story goes that she recanted before her death and lived briefly in climate denial world.

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        • #
          cadger

          Paywalled

          https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7823477/Was-Margaret-Thatcher-the-first-climate-sceptic.html

          In bringing this about, Mrs Thatcher played an important part. It is not widely appreciated, however, that there was a dramatic twist to her story. In 2003, towards the end of her last book, Statecraft, in a passage headed “Hot Air and Global Warming”, she issued what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views.

          She voiced precisely the fundamental doubts about the warming scare that have since become familiar to us. Pouring scorn on the “doomsters”, she questioned the main scientific assumptions used to drive the scare, from the conviction that the chief force shaping world climate is CO2, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, to exaggerated claims about rising sea levels. She mocked Al Gore and the futility of “costly and economically damaging” schemes to reduce CO2 emissions. She cited the 2.5C rise in temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period as having had almost entirely beneficial effects. She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer. She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind.

          In other words, long before it became fashionable, Lady Thatcher was converted to the view of those who, on both scientific and political grounds, are profoundly sceptical of the climate change ideology. Alas, what she set in train earlier continues to exercise its baleful influence to this day. But the fact that she became one of the first and most prominent of “climate sceptics” has been almost entirely buried from view.

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  • #
    robert rosicka

    Was looking up the parliamentary interest register to see if our local Green – Teal – Non Teal – Green / independent MP had any interesting skeletons in the financial closet . Seems there is a love for shares – (ironically) in a UK company that appears to specialise in fracking and oil search .

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  • #
    el+gordo

    I’ve been scouring the interwebs for a long range UK winter forecast, but nobody can see that far ahead. If the NAO goes sharply negative, like in 2010, then we can expect severe weather disruption.

    https://www.climate.gov/media/13591

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  • #
    TdeF

    Another crisis from man made Global Warming. Perhaps if we hadn’t stopped the warming we would not need the heating?
    Why don’t they turn up the windmills? The savings should kick in soon.

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  • #
    Zane

    It almost seems a deliberate ploy to create inflation, crash the economies of the West, and move energy prices to a permanently higher plateau.

    Hmmm. Who would benefit from that?

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  • #
    TdeF

    But unlike all other PMs, Margaret Thatcher before she became a barrister had a B.Sc(Hons) in Chemistry at Oxford university. So she understood equilibrium. The basic proposition of an overwhelmed system which took a long time to recover also made sense.

    What she did not know was that this had been completely debunked in the 1950s through the new science of Radio Carbon dating and even today few know.

    The actual growth in fossil fuel CO2 in the air is from 2.3%+/-0.15% in 1957 to at most 4% today. And there is no problem at all and never was. The question is not whether CO2 warms which it clearly does not as you can see in winter but whether mankind can alter CO2 at all. And the CO2 exchange is so great that no natural events are visible on the graph of CO2.

    Nett Zero is a fantasy based on a falsehood.

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  • #
    RickWill

    The GFC was based on fear of an economic collapse that was easily corrected by guaranteeing the insurer of last resort, which happened to be AIG. The cost was zero because it required upfront creation of USD182bn and was recovered with interest by 2015.

    The economic collapse currently under way in the UK is real because it is based on the availability and cost of energy. The economy has been sliding badly since Covid began. The UK can create as much money as they like and it will just pump inflation. It does not address the shortage of energy and energy infrastructure does not materialise over night like money can.

    UK is like all those sailing ships that founded on the southern coast of Australia; relying on wind energy. Shipping became a lot more certain once fossil fuelled.

    There is a good chance there will be riots and deaths across Europe and UK as winter approaches.

    If only Australia was looking at the UK energy situation and taking lessons!

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    • #

      Australia is looking but Albo and Bowen are not. They both need to get along to Specsavers asap.

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      • #
        Gerry

        Nothing short of an ethics and morality transplant will work on those two. And then the surgeons can work on Dan. Might take a while on him.

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    • #
      Steve of Cornubia

      “If only Australia was looking at the UK energy situation and taking lessons!”

      Well Albanese and Bowen, along with all the other Green zealots here in Oz, are indeed looking at the UK and learning from it. Sadly for us, they are learning that zero carbon policies have exactly the effect that they’re hoping for – the economic ruin of hitherto capitalist democracies. Then out of the ashes will spring the New World Order.

      What you and I call a disaster they will call ‘mission accomplished’.

      10

  • #
    Robber

    “the cost of running care homes rising tenfold, experts warned.”
    Always beware “experts”.
    I would have thought wage costs are the biggest cost?
    “For gas and electricity, the costs were £660 per bed, per year, this time last year; this week, care providers have to pay an astonishing £5,166.”
    So care homes are less efficient than the average house?

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  • #
    STJOHNOFGRAFTON

    I think the UK’s slavishly profligate and foolish Net-Zero policy equilibrates to a Zero-Sum game where the UK give up their valuable energy resources but shrewd countries like China and India grab them up and reap the benefits. The UK’s Net-Zero is China and India’s Net-Tripple Plus.

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  • #
    OldOzzie

    Relevant to the UK as well – except UK has less land for Wind Farms

    Some Things to Remember about the ‘Energy Transition’

    According to S&P Global:

    The top wind and solar developers plan to build a collective 92,105 MW of capacity in the U.S. through 2026.

    That’s terrific. But some perspective is helpful.

    According to the Energy Information Administration:

    At the end of 2021, the United States had 1,143,757 MW—or about 1.14 billion kW—of total utility-scale electricity generating capacity.

    Of that, 43 percent is currently generated by natural gas, 18 percent is generated by coal, and 8 percent is by nuclear. All renewables combined account for 27 percent of electricity-generation capacity, with 9 percent hydroelectric and 16 percent non-hydroelectric.

    That means if all 92,105 MW of new renewable construction through 2026 goes to replacing existing nonrenewable forms of utility-scale electricity-generation capacity, renewable’s share will increase from 27 percent to 35 percent.

    But remember, each person in the future will be using more electricity as well. Environmentalists want everything that’s currently powered by other energy sources to go electric. That means electric cars and trucks, electric stoves, electric heaters, etc. Let’s say for sake of argument that electricity-generation capacity per capita would need to increase by 20 percent (which is probably a conservative estimate) by 2060 to accommodate these changes. That puts us up to 1,681,947 MW needed by 2060, which would be a 47 percent increase over 2021.

    U.S. renewable electricity-generation capacity is currently 308,814 MW. To get to 1,681,947 MW by 2060, we’d need to build 180,675 MW every five years, or roughly double what we are actually projected to build over the next five years.

    The environmentalist could look at that and say, “See, that’s why we need more funding for renewable construction.”

    But remember, wind and solar suffer from intermittency problems, which means we’d need backup sources of electricity for cloudy and calm days. And those backup sources would need to be pretty large, even if they wouldn’t be used all the time, because they may need to supply power to entire cities, depending on how bad the intermittency issue is at a given moment.

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    • #
      TdeF

      Don’t you love understatement. “wind and solar suffer from intermittency“.

      So not having the sun up for 24 hours a day is only seen as a slight and unexpected problem? And strangely coincident with winter.

      But don’t panic. The Science will find a solution. Soonish.

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      • #
        TdeF

        And the common abuse of language. Intermittent means unpredictable or random. What is unpredictable about night?
        Perhaps predictably useless solar would be a better description?

        Or those hot still and humid nights without a breath of wind when you need the airconditioner? What’s unpredictable about the lack of wind? I can see windmills working in the tropics. No intermittancy there either. No wind either.

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    • #
      Gerry

      There’s that “capacity” word again ……it sneaks into the conversation and pretends to be something else altogether.

      20

  • #
    John B

    Not the UK. But does anyone have news on Twiggy’s new ‘Green’ Hydrogen plan for the Esperence region? From the Financial Review, August 24 (unfortunately, this article is paywalled).
    Fortescue Plans New WA Port as Farmers Warm to Wind Turbines.

    Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) is scouting for port sites on Western Australia’s south coast near Esperance after pitching plans to local farmers to turn the region into a major green hydrogen hub .
    The green energy arm of Fortescue Metals Group has signed exclusivity agreements with some farmers, and other deals are sitting on kitchen tables as the company looks to gain access to enough freehold land to build …

    40

    • #
      Philip

      I don’t have any information, no. But I believe farmers are a big problem. I dwell in that world and notice they are becoming more and more green with time, or extremely apathetic. Their eyes light up at the prospect of money from the green energy sector. I always thought they’d be the last line of effective resistance.

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    • #
      RickWill

      Twiggy could very well end the world’s riches subsidy farmer. It will rely on the continuing demonising of CO2 and that religion has a firm grip right now. Will need to be reviewed next year.

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  • #
    Philip

    All so predictable. That’s the sad part.

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  • #
    Philip

    I used to agree with solar and wind energy (a long long time ago). “If the sun shines and wind blows we may as well use it” I would say. In an online debate someone explained to me how it will increase energy prices and is the poor subsidizing the middle class for things they themselves will not be able to afford. I couldn’t defeat the argument, it made perfect sense. I thanked him for it. And here we are today.

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    • #
      Rupert Ashford

      Are you the same Philip that’s been active on a variety of the sites for many years? Although I believe Jo banned that one so probably not. But if you are, I’m grateful you’re still around and also saw the light…it is a hard slog to make sense in all the stuff we’re bombarded with.

      20

    • #
      Rupert Ashford

      @Jo, I notice you have the combo qualifications of Science and Media? Am I correct? Where/What did you study? I have a daughter needing to make those decisions now and I also have a colleague (Boss’ wife) whose daughter is really interested in this combo qualification. They’re very “progressive” so will probably not want to speak to you, but I can always pass on good information…:-)

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  • #
    Tel

    https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/britain-becomes-net-exporter-of-electricity-for-first-time-as-power-prices-in-europe-remain-volatile

    The UK has been a nett exporter of electricity to Europe in 2022 … mostly driven by LNG imports and gas turbines.

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  • #
    Peter Fitzroy

    As Europe’s energy costs skyrocket, Russia is burning off large amounts of natural gas, according to an analysis by Rystad Energy indicates that around 4.34 million cubic metres of gas are being burned by the flare every day. Damn cunning those Russians, and they are helped by the west blaming renewables.

    [What is your point?]ED

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    • #
      Peter Fitzroy

      have you read the series of posts relating to the need to frack instead of increasing renewables in europe? The problem now is not missing gas supply, but pigheadedness on both sides, much to the pain of the general population.

      In this case the Russians prefer to destroy the gas, rather than sell it to the EU and the UK. So by limiting energy supply, Russia has caused massive problems.

      This doubles the pain felt in these western states, not only is the energy cost going through the roof, but rather than make profit for Russia, the gas is just flared.

      Sorry, I thought that this would have be clear to you

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      • #

        Good point Peter but there are many reasons why the Russian Gas is being ‘flared’ and not all of it is to do with what people are thinking here. The Russians are not idiots. Well, not all of them anyway. The Gas not being sold to Europe will go to China and other places.

        The US instigated economic sanctions have not worked for the West. They have never worked ever against any Nation. They have however worked for Russia and the East which is why China and the East will be the epicentre of the World around 2032.

        The USA is committing suicide right now. Well the Guv’ment is, but not all of the people that live there which is why the USA will break up. And just like the Phoenix, a new Nation State will arise.

        Australia needs Nuclear weapons, Hypersonic Missiles and a Guv’ment that really represents us the People.

        Oh, I just woke up and I was dreaming again…………………………………

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      • #
        Graeme#4

        Truss has indicated that if she is elected, she will promote gas fracking with locals.

        40

      • #
        Tel

        In this case the Russians prefer to destroy the gas, rather than sell it to the EU and the UK. So by limiting energy supply, Russia has caused massive problems.

        Gosh you say some silly things … Russia is under sanctions … they cannot sell their gas to Europe.

        Go and look up why the Nordstream 2 was shut down, and who made the decision.

        The weird thing is that many of the European leaders are now acting surprised that they cannot sanction Russia and still have their gas. It’s like there’s nothing in their heads at all.

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      Graeme No.3

      They are burning lots of natural gas in flares in North Dakota.They drilled and found gas, then the Biden administration blocked the pipeline to the potential customers. The gas keeps flowing out, so they “flare it off’. Better turning it into CO2 as methane is XX times worse** as a “greenhouse gas”.

      The Russians have a problem in that the EU has banned the use of Nordstream 2, so the Russians are doing the right thing by the environment.

      ** Don’t know how bad it is. John Tyndall measured it as 4.8 times, the IPCC had it as 12 times worse in their first report, but since then it has got worse and worse. The last I saw was 84 times worse.

      30

      • #
        Ross

        In a lab experiment CH4 might absorb radiation more than CO2, molecule for molecule, but that doesn’t mean it traps heat in the atmosphere. It cant, you measure atmospheric CH4 in ppb (CO2 in ppm) and it oxidises to CO2 anyway. Its a cow burp, that’s all.

        30

    • #
      b.nice

      2013…

      Russia’s annual economic losses from petroleum related gas flaring are more than $5 billion per year.

      https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2013/11/12/igniting-solutions-to-gas-flaring-in-russia

      So.. nothing untoward or unusual !

      30

    • #
      b.nice

      “about 0.5% of the bloc’s gas demand”

      Wow.. that’s gunna make a huge difference.. not 😉

      Seems to be yet another CNN/BBC leftist beat-up, doesn’t it !

      10

  • #
    Geoffrey Williams

    And if the government breaths life back into the gas industry what will happen to all those heat pumps in the pipeline ?!

    30

  • #
    Robber

    Buy a portable diesel generator if living in UK or Europe, or buy shares in the manufacturers?

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    PADRE

    The origins of the IPCC can be traced to the Club of Rome and Agenda 21. Maurice Strong was one of the leading bureaucratic instigators of this organisation whose political aim was to set the ground rules for climate ‘science’ to pre-determine their claim that CO2 was the problem. Maurice Strong’s aim is revealed in his rhetorical question, “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrial civilisations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring this about?”
    Of course, the IPCC cannot determine the human contribution to atmospheric CO2 or methane or nitrous oxide etc., without knowning the natural contribution – which it doesn’t.
    As far UK, parts of Europe, the USA, and shortly Australia, are concerned, Strong’s plan will come to fruition. In spite of the growth in China, although shaky, and India, the demise of Western industrialsed nations will not help the poorest people in the world.

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      Graeme#4

      What Strong did was a setup a climate “scientific” conference in Rio, then he flooded the conference with his greens mates and activists. Caught the honest scientists out, who were expecting a proper scientific discussion of the subject. This conference agreed to setup the IPCC.

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    Ross

    The UK just like Australia- all these crazy green blob policies were brought in under a supposedly “conservative” government. People get really political on this blog at times blaming the “left”, but really, nearly all the damage has been done by the “right” side of politics. Maybe under Labor some of these policies get accelerated, but when the Conservatives/LNP get back in government, they don’t try to reverse any policies. Apparently, that’s all too hard.

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      TdeF

      What ‘right’ side? There is none. The traditional belief of Labor/Democrats in the fiscal rectitude and common sense of the ‘right’ has been a real disaster. The right no longer balance the budget, make the hard decisions, cut back on wild useless spending, invest in defence and chase fantasy issues as if they were the left. Land rights for gay whales. And how the left miss conservatives.

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        TdeF

        Which is very funny in Australian politics as an avowed Trot in Albanese tries to channel Bob Hawke and finds himself to the right of the liberals and far right of the Greens. Even the farmers seem to want to shut down farming to save the planet. And the whole nation from Andrew Forrest down wants to bury CO2, nasty poisonous stuff.

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    Phillip Bratby

    But Sir Ed Davey is proud to have stopped fracking and caused fuel poverty:
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/08/27/ed-davey-proud-have-stopped-fracking-despite-energy-crisis/

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    el+gordo

    ‘Apparently, that’s all too hard.’

    Dutton is our last chance, otherwise our democracy will be in free fall.

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      Tel

      Democracy rests on the people, not on the leaders.

      Thus far, most people in Australia have simply shrugged and gone along with whatever comes. Politicians have come to understand that if no one stops them, then whatever they are doing must be OK.

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      Honk R Smith

      Snow covered solar panel farm.
      They could install heating elements to melt the snow?
      Wait, that would require a continuous baseload power grid.
      We could click our ruby slippers and return to Kansas?
      Clown World.
      I take that back, clowns might be an improvement.

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    DOC

    All the current fiasco was foretold the day the UN put its Anthropogenic Global Warming plans on-line. Critics pointed out the obvious end-stage of wealth redistribution, primarily from Western nations to the third world, ending up as impoverishment at the hands of the ever more powerful UN.

    Our politicians seemed to assess the debacle as providing a well-paid secure, post politics job for many of them with the international, power grabbing UN beast.The last 15years was when we appeared to be electing politicians acting at the beck and call of international organisations rather than acting for the betterment of the people who elected them and pay they wages.

    Our current governments, State and Federal epitomise our disastrous position, even if not as bad as Western Europe, Sri Lanka and Denmark – yet. For Western Europe and the UK, their governments have had the guillotine of their climate stupidities fall on their necks. They have people facing death, if this is a severe winter, as a consequence of unaffordable power collapsing their bank accounts from buying everything. They are forced to slam the brakes on climate and pursue fossil fuels asap.

    Australian governments are internationally blind, totally incompetent or simply lack fortitude to admit their own actions – destroying the old before having a proven, reliable energy replacement system. They have us facing the same oncoming disaster. Bowen ‘doubles down’! They call multitudes of Inquiries and worry about’Morrison’. They are incapable of making independent government decisions. The danger is here from multiple sources but the government cannot face the problems and is paralysed; too much pride, or is it ignorance?

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    Brian Watson

    Re David Maddisons post on Margaret Thatcher who originally embraced the Climate Change Movement. When she saw what the Movement was about her scientific background led her to to question the motive and direction of the Movement.
    She then became an avid Climate Change Denier she was not fooled.
    Her conversion is detailed in her Autobiography “Statecraft” 2002.
    The Ecologist published a good article on the !7th October 2018 summarising the reasons for her “U Turn”

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      TdeF

      As a very qualified scientist, Margaret Thatcher accepted the views espoused by scientific leaders like NASA. It was only later that, like everyone else, when you examined the facts there were none. There was no scientific evidence of man made Global Warming at all. And now more than three decades later, it is well established as the most costly fra*d in human history.

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    Dwight Vandryver

    We can blame the EU fairly and squarely for the UK’s predicament. The UK is pretty much tied to Europe’s energy prices.
    The EU’s sanctions placed embargoes on Russian oil and coal. The EU discontinued with commissioning the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The Nord Stream 1 pipeline required the refurbishment of a turbine, or turbines, by Siemens based in Canada. Where those devices are now is anyone’s guess, probably stuck in some legal quagmire of the EU’s own making.

    Not only are gas prices rocketing, so will the prices of petrol and diesel as China has decided to reinvigorate its economy, which will cause yet more demand for oil. So, both Europe and the UK are looking at a winter of discontent and real hardship. Meanwhile in Russia, the shops are full and nobody is going to freeze to death there.

    The EU’s actions have backfired spectacularly, hurting 600 million people. The solution to these woes is simple: negotiate peace with Russia, remove those sanctions, and resume gas, oil and coal imports. And get those pipelines fully operational.

    Is it going to happen? Are there any peace moves being made by the EU or UK? Not a sign of them. Our politicians are determined to make us suffer and to see our economies crumble. It won’t be confined to this and next year either: the effects will linger for far longer.

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      Tel

      The solution to these woes is simple: negotiate peace with Russia, remove those sanctions, and resume gas, oil and coal imports. And get those pipelines fully operational.

      The USA would not allow them to negotiate peace with Russia … and they are too stubborn to admit that the sanctions are hurting Europe more than Russia. If this episode has the long term effect of shifting Russia’s focus over to doing business with Asia … and seems like that’s what is happening … it will leave the entire EU worse off.

      There’s an argument to be made here that Washington and New York are more worried about rivalry with the EU than they are really worried about Russia. Keeping the EU down might well be intentional policy, although they wouldn’t say it openly.

      Then again, knowing Biden he might well say that part out loud.

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    David Maddison

    Energy Starvation policies such as described are in part inspired by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

    In this video Calvin Robinson gives a 5 min 24 sec critical overview of the WEF.

    https://youtu.be/JQlPDaQOMM8

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    David Maddison

    Macron announces an end to abundance and the “good life” in France, mainly in reference to Net Zero and Energy Starvation.

    Comments on Sky News Australia:

    https://youtu.be/xjR4-DhGaKw

    13 mins.

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      David Maddison

      In the above video Nigel Farage reminds us that Boris Johnson once announced that Once Great Britain was going to be the “Saudi Arabia of wind”.

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    David Maddison

    Energy Starvation is also about destroying everything that is good about Western Civilisation.

    This article discusses the corruption of the interpretation of classical literature by the Left in schools, as part of the overall agenda to destroy our civilisation.

    The Woke Erasure of all That’s Good About the West

    27th August 2022

    https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/education/2022/08/the-woke-erasure-of-all-thats-good-about-the-west/

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    Ronin

    It’s time for the next UK PM to call a halt to the march of greenism and call for an examination of the state of the nation and the latest updates on the ‘settled science’, after all, the James Webb telescope has just trashed the ‘Big Bang’ theory.

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    Ronin

    If a pub in Blackall can install a diesel generator and make it work, why can’t UK pub landlords do the same and run it off their chip cooker oil and that of nearby pubs, also heat the joint for free off the hot water coolant.

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    OldOzzie

    Bloomberg – Energy Crisis Tearing Through Markets Leaves a Trail of Losers

    The surge in power prices, along with threats to supply, is affecting businesses from China to Germany to the US. It jacks up costs and threatens margins, while also sucking money out of their customers’ pockets, destroying demand. And from industrial gas guzzlers to retailers who rely on consumers with money to spend, the damage is proving widespread.

    Germany’s heavy reliance on Russian fuels has left its corporate heavyweights particularly vulnerable. A Citigroup Inc. basket of stocks sensitive to a gas shock that includes Covestro AG, Thyssenkrupp AG and Siemens AG has underperformed Europe’s broader Stoxx 600 market this year.

    The surge in power prices, along with threats to supply, is affecting businesses from China to Germany to the US. It jacks up costs and threatens margins, while also sucking money out of their customers’ pockets, destroying demand. And from industrial gas guzzlers to retailers who rely on consumers with money to spend, the damage is proving widespread.

    Russia’s chokehold on gas supplies to Europe means that power prices there are spiralling out of control. UBS Group AG economists say the euro-area economy has already entered a recession, and Morgan Stanley last week cut its growth forecast. In the UK, energy bills are set to almost triple this winter, adding to the squeeze in a country where inflation is already the highest in four decades.

    But the pain from higher prices is being felt everywhere, and governments are looking at dramatic options. Japan is planning to shift back to nuclear power, and Germany is reviving old coal-fired plants. Kosovo has started rolling blackouts, something that could spread to other countries as the need to conserve resources becomes more pressing.

    Power rationing would affect multiple sectors, including chipmakers which use vast amounts of electricity to make ever-smaller semiconductors.

    The damage is already ripping through industrial and chemical firms. Yara International ASA and Grupa Azoty SA have slashed output, and lower fertilizer supply could hit agriculture, with repercussions for food costs. UK carmakers said soaring energy costs are threatening output, while a Honda Motor Co. plant in China has been shut amid an order to curb power use.

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    Rupert Ashford

    “…new projects will only go ahead if there is a ‘clear public consensus’ in their favour…” Any bets she will actually deliver once she gets her hands on the power she craves?

    and then:

    “Options under consideration include freezing the price cap as suggested by Labour, increasing benefits, handing extra support to small businesses and a loan scheme for suppliers that could shave £500 off bills.” Hmmm, are you sure Albo and Chris and the rest of their gang are in Aus? Sounds like they’re doing consulting work up north…

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      Rupert Ashford

      That seems to be the way they do vaccines nowadays – same applies for Flu vaccines – no human trials anymore.

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    Mike

    FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!

    Who is actually benefiting the most from the price increase and WHO is invested in that happening?

    The family members of every single “green” politician who carps about limiting FF need to be investigated.

    If you had the power to limit the production of bakeries wouldn’t you tell your brother to invest in the bread futures market?

    The futures price of oil began increasing days after Biden was declared the “winner”. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/RCLC3D.htm

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