25 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans”

  1. A few points to note. “Other” is primarily the wood-burning conversion of coal-fired stations, mostly Drax. The import numbers are all nuclear from France. Britain imports about 20 TWh per year from France, enough to fully occupy two large reactors full time.
    Also, the green slime are fond of saying that hydro can be used as backup for wind. Alternatively they say that gas is the backup, but the above chart gives both those claims the lie. Gas in fact tails off from late afternoon on. What picks up the slack is coal.
    What’s also interesting here is the maximum 5000 MW supplied by wind. The British have spent 45 billion pounds building their wind system. That same investment would have purchased between four and six nuclear reactors, providing between 4,000-6,000 MW and at least four to five times as much actual energy.

  2. That’s a perceptive comment CGH. With about 10 GW installed wind, UK gets up to 6 GW production when its very windy, but not too windy then they have to switch them off. With only 1.5 GW of hydro, UK has no capacity to use hydro to balance. But it is surprising in both UK and Germany than coal is used increasingly to balance wind.
    Of course the best way to overcome intermittency is to not have it in the first place. There is still a way to go before we overcome the propaganda of the Green Blob. They are still supported at high level in the UK establishment. But we have an election this year.

  4. The election will not change anything unless UKIP win. It was Milliband who brought in the green energy act, and Camoron has just carried it on as both are rabid EU supporters.

  5. Euan, one of the dirty little secrets the greens do their best to hide is the relationship between plant life and lifetime capacity factor. If you look through the specifications by Vesta for their 1+ MW machines, you discover that they claim a 20-year lifetime. But only if the plant operates to 80 per cent of its nominal capacity factor. Operating at 100% has a severe impact on turbine life in a relatively short time. If you look at the actual details of switch-off of UK machines, I wager you will find them turning off at less than their nominal rating.
    And it’s no surprise that these should be relatively fragile devices. They have an enormously high centre of gravity with a heavily unbalanced load on the turbine shaft. Ball bearing wear and flattening is a huge issue for them. That’s why they have to turn them even when there’s no wind. Now what I really want to know is what is the real net generation of wind turbines. Specifically, how much are they drawing off the system simply to preserve bearing life.

  6. Euan, I also left a far more detailed post on your blog. Suffice it to say that if your Christmas Day graph is a typical day in Britain then it’s evidence of a massive policy failure in many directions going back a quarter-century.

  7. I see the eco-nazis in europe are now forcing the poor to choose between heating their homes or food Just typical of the eco-nazis under the Green Swastika the worshippers of Gaia deam for all those who refuse to woship on the Church of Gaia should all be sacrifificed just like the abortionists do

  11. Well, OT, but kind of apropos, nevertheless. Went for a short spin to town to buy cold pills and some groceries. Left the kitchen light on, because I figured it might get dark before I returned. Come home, open the door to the distinct aroma of scorched phenolic plastic. Only one thing it could be. I unscrewed the sole twisty bulb from the ceiling fixture, and the base was too hot to touch; the tube itself pretty warm too. It was still shining brightly, but running over-hot. Put a 40-watt incandescent in its place.
    Funny, I have some twistys that have lasted for a long time, and others die very prematurely. I think I will substitute LED bulbs for the few that burn long hours, and stick with incandescents for task lighting.

  12. “Other” is wood, mostly burned at the Drax station. Essentially all of this wood is in the form of pellets made from Nth Am forests. Formerly it was hidden in the figures by including it with the coal numbers.

  13. Yes, all the economics are based on assumptions about longevity of turbines that I believe we will begin to learn is a lot less than presumed 20 years.

  14. Where does the notion that Greens are Nazis come from? Is this a notion that has been spread or did it just pop up in many folks minds spontaneously?

  15. Because the Greens are fascists/extremists.
    Nothing will satisfy them but their narrow utopian belief system.
    Anyone opposing them, or even moderate, is apostate, and to be condemned for not sharing the exact same beliefs, to save Gaia from nasty homo sapiens

  16. Are you serious?
    When they said: No discussion or questions let alone seeing their raw data, methods and sources. No “opposing” discussions about their stated (computer molded- gov’t grant funded) position of CAGW at their tax funded galas, er conventions.
    When they deliberately lied about CAGW and the so called 97% of professional scientists were in agreement.
    When their authoritative voices, like Dr. David Suzuki strongly suggested to school children at a gym assembly that anyone like politicians, who opposes CAGW should be jailed.
    That’s how we came to the conclusion these people were fascists.
    Whether eco-greenies are dupes or willing accomplices in this wealth distribution scheme by NGO’s – doesn’t matter. You are as equally a foe to our life, liberty, culture, traditions and future.

  17. The import numbers are all nuclear from France.
    There is also an undersea cable from Holland to England and, I believe, another from Norway to Scotland. The electric utility administration in Britain jumped into some submarine power cable deals when it became apparent that the policies of the Blair years were leading to electricity shortages.

  18. Just do a Google search on nazi + green. The environmentalist wing of the NSDAP has been extensively researched, as have National Socialist connections to organic farming, the occult, vegetarianism, public health campaigns against tobacco and cancer, et cetera.

  19. Euan, short as the experience is thus far, maintenance is proving particularly severe in cost for offshore turbines. And to no one’s surprise, salt water and spray is not kind to mechanical and electrical parts.
    As for the labeling of greens, it’s a curious truth that all of their solutions serve to diminish human choice, ability. Like the German fascists of the 1930s many of them idolize some romanticized past, and they are perfectly fine with coercion to achieve that perceived greater good. It’s not particularly new. JJ Rousseau first propounded the myth of the Noble Savage in the 18th C. Thoreau and Ruskin among others helped keep it alive in the 19th C. By and large it was dormant in the 20th C until the fall of the Soviet Union and industrialized Socialism. With the merger of Reds and Greens it has been given new life.

  20. “Where does the notion that Greens are Nazis come from? Is this a notion that has been spread or did it just pop up in many folks minds spontaneously?”
    My notion was that they are old school commies using the Nazi techniques … which are remarkably similar.
    For those who haven’t done so, I encourage you to visit Euan’s website.
    http://euanmearns.com

  21. Interesting thought just occurred to me…I grew up in “the Los Angeles Basin” when and where the term “smog” was coined (smoke + fog), I believe.
    While anybody whose sense of smell had not yet burned out thought “Fontana Steel Mills” and “Butadiene plant in El Segundo” while people with views from high places noted that the density of the crap seemed higher along major thoroughfares in that pre-freeway time, the “Official Explanation” was the backyard incinerators where the trivial amounts of waste paper we generated were processed were the sole cause of the smog.
    Among the ideas floated were fans along the mountain ridges or in tunnels through the mountain bases–I forget whether they were to blow the crap out to sea, or out to the desert.
    But they were pooopooed as unbelievably silly and stupid and the backyard incinerators were banned.

  22. http://euanmearns.com/germanys-energiewende-as-a-model-for-australian-climate-policy/
    My comment about Green Nazis was somewhat tongue in cheek and made under the influence of a little biofuel;-) The above guest post on my own blog gives some interesting insights to the birth of Green in Germany.
    But to be honest its not really a subject I’ve given much thought to and so I’m a little surprised at the responses here. One thing that does puzzle / worry me is that I believe the vast majority of UK population are non-Green and yet all the main parties try as hard as they can to court the Green vote / placate the Green noise. I’m hopeful at next election that the Tories will break ranks and stand on a non-Green platform.
    It has also surprised me how our society is gripped by this propaganda. I can see Kate screaming at her radio. There are a surprising large number of Green supporters in the upper echelons of UK politics, especially in the Lords. And in the EU bureaucracy and increasingly at high level in the UN / OECD and their institutions.

  23. Euan, the majority of our western societies do not perceive the nature of the Greens and their propaganda, much as most Germans did not perceive the true nature of a certain Austrian painter in the 1920s. The Greens firmly established themselves in the public eye with the campaigns against whaling and later sealing. The anti-sealing campaign showed their tactics at their most effective. Images of huge, brutal men killing baby seals helpless on the ice. Anthropomorphism was everything. How could we kill something so cute, cuddly and harmless? Remember, this is the age of television and now Youtube internet. Appearance is everything. Just ask Richard Nixon after debating John Kennedy after the 1960 debate.
    And so the meme was created. To be against the Green agenda was to be in favour of pillaging the natural environment. Horror stories over the past four decades about famine in Asia and Africa have reinforced the Malthusian hypothesis that there’s just too many people in the world. Again, if you didn’t support abortion and birth control, you were supporting male oppression of women (which is in large part how the women’s liberation movement became caught up in the green agenda.)
    Enlisting the elite was easy. After all, they have all guilty consciences about the source of their ill-gotten gains (James and Zac Goldsmith come to mind). And paying a little bit more for everything seems a trivial price to pay for the betterment of the planet when you’ve got more money than Midas.
    And with the fall of industrial socialism (stalinist USSR), green became the only real ideology of the Left which otherwise had been thoroughly demoralized by the collapse of the Soviet Union. At one point in the early 1990s, the Left had been reduced to idolizing Enver Hoxha, the petty dictator of Albania.
    Once the elites back you, infiltrating bureaucracies is easy.
    No surprise that things like the British Lords are full of Green. After all, mostly they’re political appointees, mostly Labour appointments after 15 years in power. And Lords are as always a convenient place to reward supporters and fundraisers, especially if they’re just a bit too loony to be allowed to run around loose or are otherwise unelectable. Please note that insane Green is far more prevalent among the appointed Lords than the hereditary Lords, which is perhaps one factor as to why the hereditaries were disfranchised by Blair’s Labour government.
    Societies go in cycles. One of the variables is the cyclic distance between elite and the general population. Right now, the views of the elite are quite removed from those of the everyday person. If past history is any measure, these things are usually corrected by Madame, as was the case in 1789.

  24. Just rese anti-windfarm protetts in Canada and Scotland many people opposed to these bird mammers that the eeco-freaks fro the various green groups dont want you to know about

  25. By their actions you shall know them.
    Extreme views, demanding the right to scorn and override all due process, a cult atmosphere, insane policies dedicated to the cause.
    I suspect those of us who learnt a little history can see the same mob insanity being used to bring some very unsavoury persons to wealth and power.
    The amazing failure of critical thinking in academia is fully exposed.
    This parallels the same committee speak that has passed for thinking in most of our bureaucracies for the last 30 years.
    As I put it, “If you don’t know, don’t ask”.
    Makes everyone present look smart and builds consensus.
    As for the Nazi comparisons these eco-nasties.. they are the same idiots who labelled anyone who questioned their alarming claims as holocaust deniers and anti-science ..
    Very similar to..
    Anti-Fatherland.. anti-The Aryan Race..
    My father spent 1942 to 1945 fighting the results of a people gone mad, left us a huge library of the rise and fall of the National Socialists and the actions of those who enabled them, Eugenics is back..…
    Just as Germany went from leader of the industrial revolution to madness, so the UN has gone from a place to talk rather than fight, to an unhinged bunch of kleptocrats who seem obsessed with seeking to control the world..
    That same madness all of these frightened little wanna be rulers bring to their desire to live upon the proceeds of other peoples work.
    1 Know that you be smarter than all others.
    2 Know you can run other persons affairs better than they can, could or will.
    3 Know your “natural” superiority will be recognized by other “intelligent persons”.
    4 Any who agree with you are smart, any who doubt are subhuman.
    5Use the big lie technique cause the ends justify the means.
    6 Be willing to kill people to save them…
    Ugh the stupid it burns.
    Similarities are hard to miss, especially when they dress in Nazi uniforms, like over at SS or sceptical science as they prefer to be known.
    Or advocate a “final solution” of reducing the world population to 500 million.
    But honestly there is something sad and pathetic about most of these priests of the Cult of Calamitous Climate, just as there was general mockery of the Nazi’s.. until they seized power.

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