Y2Kyoto: You Don't Need No Stinking Natural Gas

Drill Baby, Drill !!

Who coined that ?

I guess it's only "natural" to freeze like a pathetic sob in the winter.

As kiteboarding is one of my hobbies, I am super frustrated with the lack of wind this winter so far. I have never remembered it to be so calm in Southern Alberta.

What is all this instability people are talking about?

When the wind isn't blowing why don't they use some big Duracell batteries to turn those windmill blades.

I know that sounds silly, but not any sillier than the the wind mills themselves.

"When the wind isn't blowing why don't they use some big Duracell batteries to turn those windmill blades."

As a kiter, I am all in to that :)

So where the hell is Don Quixote?

Ah come on now ... can't they use solar power to heat their homes. I mean, after all, how often is it cloudy in Britain?

If you are going to freeze, it is much better to do so in the dark. Sleep comes easier that way.

Send the fruit-fly over there, maybe he can help.

Simple solution . . . open the grid to private generators who can provide - without any taxpayer subsidy, electricity to consumers at whatever market price they need to charge to be viable. Doesn't matter if it is wind or run of river or harnessing political fartcatcher musings.

Then all the greenies can sign up and pay a 400% premium for their electricity and be proud they are saving the planet. They'll all sign up becaue the progressives are sooooo moral.

The rest of us can laugh at the morons while we enjoy cheap power to heat our water.

Where does England get its gas these days? They used to get it from coal. but don't they have a big North Sea reserve?

Maybe this will give them a sense of scale, when it comes to energy requirements. They've talked themselves into believing that green power is all they need.

When I was a kid in Scotland everyone had coal fireplaces. I bet there are more than a few people missing them now.

Don Quixote, aka Don Kyoto, is now enjoyably tilting at steam turbines in the heart of the Alberta Oil and Coal Fields. He was recently quoted (quixoted?); "The pain in Spain falls mainly on the inane."

gord, if it is that cold in Scotland, now would not be the time to wear your kilt in the regimental fashion.

A foretaste of what's ahead for Ontario? McGuinty has made no provision for increased electrical needs, through investment in nuclear or fuel fired plants. Instead he puts all his planning into giant wind mills, (smoke and) mirrors.

Trou (I gathered a kind of cotton boxer short) are worn under the kilt unless you're in a tropical environment where fungus is a problem. So I was told by a great Scottish Veteran. May he rest in peace.

coal was replaced by natural gas but the North Sea is already seriously depleted. the north sea is primarily oil and gas is mostly a by product, but as the oil production drops so does the gas supply.

I think the Brits were going to do something for the green economy like insulate their houses.

Natural gas is the future, not the past. Far cleaner than coal(real pollution, SOx and NOx) abundant and with new production techniques it's also cheaper to get.

We should toss all of our coal plants in Canada and switch to natural gas. Coal is nasty.

allan- Natural gas is far too valuable to use for generating electricity. Coal is cheaper, simpler, and much more abundant. The shallow gas fields in Southern AB are pretty well depleted. It took less than 100 years.

Coal is not nasty. I don't understand why anyone would say that. Coal is our future. Once the domestic oil and gas reserves dry up, we don't want to be slaves to ME oil. I'd rather breathe brownish-yellow air, than give money to a bunch of savages.

> Of course, we coulda warned 'em that the
> wind don't blow when it's cold

The hell you say. We've had freakishly cold temperatures combined with freakishly high wind chills since November out here in east central Alberta.

Not that it would help out much with wind power. I don't imagine the lubrication on wind turbines works any better than the lubrication in my car's engine at -30C. Bloody windmills would be frozen solid while a gale force wind whipped through their blades.

General comment about oil refining: A barrel of crude oil poured into a refinery will result in a fraction of various products, including gasoline (light) and diesel (heavy) products. The amount of each will vary with the type of crude input.

Since diesel and heating oil are very similar fractions, and Canada is often a cold country, the refineries spend much of their production time producing and storing fuel oil (because our winters are cold enough that we cannot keep up with the seasonal demand), the results is diesel is a tight commodity and gasoline is a surplus commodity. Thus you see the price of gasoline often swings up and down (Economics 101: Supply and Demand) while diesel prices vary very little.

In fact, one of the concerns in the refinery business is an energy crisis similar to that of the 1970s where government would (for political expediency) impose gasoline rationing; this would immediately create a shortage in diesel and heating oil as the refineries would necessarily curtail production in order to reduce the output of gasoline.

And with respect to renewable energy, the current Feed-In Tariff in Ontario is 13.5c/kwh for wind and 30c/kwh for solar. The current charge to residential electricity users is 5.7c/kwh and 6.5c/kwh (over 650kw/m). Consider also that every watt of that highly subsidized renewable energy must be baseloaded with a watt from a more conventional source.

I leave it to your imagination as to who will pay.

Yeah but Sean I hear they are going to put up some windmills between Halkirk and Castor AB. I didn't know that the wind out there was that steady. Well not like Lethbridge or Taber anyway.

Wind-mills....
They became obsolete, except in remote spots off the grid, in the 1800's globally.
Holland abandoned theirs at that point and had to rebuild refurbish them for the tourists posy WW2.
Other more reliable power sources had arisen.
We didn't abandon wind because we didn't run out of wind anymore that the stone age ended because we ran outta rocks.
An interesting piece of trivia, the "great age of sail" occurred after steam ships took over.
Steel hulled "windjammers" with steel masts and steel cable rigging----set by steam power----lower the labour requirements and were cheaper than steam ships on long voyages, where timeliness was not so much a factor----such as hauling coal to distant coaling stations and hauling Australian Grain to Europe.....a wind-jammer could sit and wait for the seasonal winds to change---due to their low fixed cost.

Ron said,

Drill Baby, Drill !!
Who coined that ?

I don't know but... Discovery channel has a new series called
"License to Drill"
which I believe is a beautiful title.

There is something almost poetic about it!

There is nothing like the smell of fresh drilled oil in the morning...

I don't believe most of these overhyped stories about people not coping in the UK, this really plays into stereotypes and prejudices in both London and Canada, it seems to me.

Let's see how well Canadians cope if somebody comes here and bombs our towns and cities for five years.

My father bought a 20KW wind turbine and started selling power to Manitoba Hydro on the grid in 1986. The turbine is now sitting for sale to any one who want to part with green to be green. Other than the occasional lightening strikes [3] it did work fine but would take 40 years to pay for itself. He was also working on a cast nickel battery. He also used a home built solar hot water supplement.
The old Fort at Battleford [fed gov]had a wind turbine turbine but is has been down for repairs more than it has run. the last time I checked it was sent back to PEI to be fixed and hasn't been very succesful.

Wot, me get me knickers in a knot?

Current contribution of WIND to the UK's current power generation capacity?

>>>0.7%

http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm

When the wind doesn't move those blades, it is time for some Al Gore heat . . .

"Hard-up pensioners have resorted to buying books from charity shops and burning them to keep warm, we are told. Volunteers have reported that "a large number" of elderly customers are snapping up hardbacks as cheap fuel for their fires and stoves.

One assistant said: "Book burning seems terribly wrong but we have to get rid of unsold stock for pennies and some of the pensioners say the books make ideal slow-burning fuel for fires and stoves. A lot of them buy up large hardback volumes so they can stick them in the fire to last all night.

Looks as if someone has finally found a use for al-Gore. "

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/807821-pensioners-burn-books-for-warmth

There is a poll at http://en.canoe.ca/home.html that could use some more votes.

"Do you think that the Earth is in peril from greenhouse gases?"

Al Gore . . . the new Global Warming Santa Claus because the "Gore Effect" can be in so many places in just 24 hours.

"Arctic air and record snow falls gripped the northern hemisphere today, inflicting hardship and havoc from China, across Russia to Western Europe and over the US plains.

There were few precedents for the global sweep of extreme cold and ice that killed dozens in India, paralysed life in Beijing and threatened the Florida orange crop. Chicagoans sheltered from a potentially killer freeze, Paris endured sunny Siberian cold, Italy dug itself out of snowdrifts and Poland counted at least 13 deaths in record low temperatures of about minus 25C (-13F).

The heaviest snow yesterday hit northeastern Asia, which is suffering its worst winter weather for 60 years. More than 25 centimetres (10in) of snow covered Seoul, the South Korean capital — the heaviest fall since records began in 1937.

In China, Beijing and the nearby port city of Tianjin had the deepest snow since 1951, with falls of up to 8in and temperatures of minus 10C. In the far north of China, the temperature fell to minus 32C. More than two million Beijing and Tianjin pupils were sent home and 1,200 flights were delayed or cancelled at Beijing’s international airport"

harryR

'don Kyoto"

good one !

"Let's see how well Canadians cope if somebody comes here and bombs our towns and cities for five years."

No one will have to "come" from anywhere to do that. They're already here.

Hey, what's important here is that a bunch of superannuated hippies running wind generator companies can still make the payments on their Rolls Royce, and licensing commission budgets are up for fiscal year 2010.

Lets keep things in perspective, shall we?

Kate, I see by that remark that you've visited the remains of down town Hamilton.

From Britain

Wind, in all its glory, managed to deliver a risible 0.4 percent – which is hardly even a rounding error and amounts to an insignificant contribution to the national electricity supply. Producing a mere 163 MW at around midnight last night, against an installed capacity of just over 4 GW, that represents a load factor of four percent.

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/01/monument-to-folly.html

"Coal is not nasty."

Yeah ok, I take it you've never been to a smog infested city, that's downstream of at least one coal plant? The pollution coming out of coal plants hurts farmers crop yields as well. "Clean coal" holds some promise, but that's ~20 years away at least.

Coal is a historical fuel, not a future one. I could care less about how much carbon dioxide coal puts out, the air quality concerns is more than enough.

I'm sure the Koran burns nicely.

Allan, you don't think its possible to burn coal cleanly? Up until a couple years ago it was impossible for bumblebees to fly. Oddly they flew anyway.

Clean coal is a solved technological issue, if nothing else you can burn it in a plasma arc and sell the left-overs. What has yet to be solved is scaling something up to generating station size, and getting past the regulatory nightmare such things face. The regulations cost more to deal with than the research phase to invent the damn thing in the first place.

-That- is why we don't have clean coal.

I fail to see how the windmills are causing a natural gas shortage.

On the other hand, they use natural gas to generate 45% of their electricity - a most inefficient process. CCGT has an efficiency of 60% at most. So they are throwing away 12,000 MW. A massive waste of natural gas. And you guys yammer about a few windmills?

By switching electrical generation to nuclear, coal, and yes, wind, they could mothball all CCGT plants, and burn the gas for direct uses only, like heating and transportation.

Don Kyoto indeed (Harry R). Thanks for that one. Part of me indulges in an "I told you so" moment whenever the inadequacies of wind power are revealed but then I mourn the fact that so much has been invested in this lame energy source. If the problem of storage of excess power could ever be solved, it would make wind power a more viable alternative. However, we are wasting resources building these behemoths and ignoring energy sources which COULD actually deliver. So folks in Europe are paying huge subsidies to wind power but still unable to heat their homes. Where is the sense in that? As far as coal, I'll be all for "clean coal" if the technology does indeed exist but after living for a year beneath the smokestacks of Nanticoke I'd say we're a long way away from that.

We have been sidetracked from pursuing the technologies that actually could deliver our energy needs because certain folks have been persuaded they are dangerous or morally dirty. If these gullible types would only look a little farther, they would see a lot of "fat and despicable" capitalists getting quite wealthy off their naivete.

Nothing kicks ass like Juxtapose does !!

HarryR, that's a money quote, and if there is any justice in the world, that will go viral

"The shallow gas fields in Southern AB are pretty well depleted. It took less than 100 years."

Which ones? Last I heard, comanpies were drilling horizontally into hitherto ignored formations that didn't have the economics to be produced. Technology has changed and with it natural gas reserves.

Check the price these days - natural gas is in a price slump because there is so much of it available. I'd bet that natural gas now rivals coal for longevity of supply in North America. Probably why US states, Alabama Tennessee and Kaintucky asare against natural gas development in their states - coal unions. Gas may be cheaper than coal to produce. Bye bye unions.

Every penny they spend on wind is "thrown away", because it's a penny not spent on a reliable source of energy. That's the point, GN.

The next time the Chronicle Herald waxes lustily about Nova Scotia Power's plans to expand their wind farms, I'm gonna come on here and get y'all to comment. Few Nova Scotians want to believe that wind power is NOT our energy saviour.

Gimme coal.

Gimme nuclear.

GO CANADA!

Peter O'Donnell at January 5, 2010 2:56 AM
"Over-hyped"? I doubt it.

And you'll have to explain how being bombed during WWII has anything to do with the problem.
Pensioners with too small pensions and too high costs are the problem. Uninsulated homes and single glazing also add to the problem. I know. I visited my friend in Scotland in July 1967 and we used the fireplace in the evenings and I froze to death in the bedroom.

Also, far too many lazy welfare bums taking money that would be better spent on increasing their pensions.

Buying books to burn if you have a fireplace sounds like a good idea. For pennies they get heat and the second-hand book stores can clear out some musty books. Match made in heaven.

Anyone recall when the last nuclear power plant was built in Canada? North America?? How about a new high tech efficient oil refinery? Or even a low tech one...

How much money has been spent on wind?

I guess the Brits can always go back to burning peat.

That's funny. Gore's book loses its 5-star rating. It's now rated in calories (BTU in the UK).

There is not much 'smog' coming out of modern coal plants because they remove both SOx and particulates from emissions. From what I understand Ontario Power decided not to install electrostatic precipitators and other emission controls. Blame the ON government for being cheap and irresponsible not the coal plants.

"I fail to see how the windmills are causing a natural gas shortage."

Drill or build nuclear, as France did, and Brit's seniors would not have to be burning Al Gore's fiction to stay warm.

Freezing to death !? Not burning to death, as Big Al ... oh forget it. This is all so pathetically laughable.

Arts graduates applying Popular Science "science" will result in failures.

Always has, always will. It is just that climate-alarmism will result in failures that are orders of magnitude larger than all previous failures put together.

jt @ 12.44
Alberta stopped counting additional coal reserves when the number "1100 years remaining" came up, it seems that some thought it was rather pointless to count 1200 years of reserves... I don't thing their is more than a couple of hundred years of natural gas remaining, but who know? I'd hope that methyl hydrates off the B.C. coast will have come into play by then. Or we'll be burning korans for heat as well...

"A foretaste of what's ahead for Ontario? McGuinty has made no provision for increased electrical needs, through investment in nuclear or fuel fired plants. Instead he puts all his planning into giant wind mills, (smoke and) mirrors."

McGuinty has NO PLAN to close the coal plants (actually he has no plan at all). That was just a political ploy. He's already extended the deadline once, and has nothing else in the pipeline to cover the power presently generated from coal....

Thankfully the sheeple of Ontario-ari-owe are waking up to his incompetence. His union pandering has put us in a hole we will never recover from. He's just an NDP in disguise....