They have their social license to keep them warm;
Heavy pollution enveloping much of Europe prompted emergency measures across the continent on Tuesday.
A toxic cocktail of extreme cold, no wind and heavy burning of coal and wood for heating has left many regions shrouded in smog.
h/t dave
This is exactly why Progressive Europeans plan to bring in millions of Muslim third world coal burning haters from the deserts of the world.
Give them a house, a car, and plenty of welfare to stoke the climate with more pollution.
In the next decade there will be only one choice to switch to alternative energy. It is called nuclear. Ten years ago I would laugh at what I will write next. Economic action will move from Alberta to Saskatchewan and to lesser degree Manitoba.
Xiat, top marks for dreaming big but a big fail on economic viability. Nuke plants – Someone has to pay to build ’em. The Alberta and Saskatchewan Gov’ts would be stupid to do so outside of supplying power for steam generation. Hydrocarbon energy is still way cheaper, easily transportable and safer. CO2 is plant food – necessary for all life on Earth – calling it a pollutant is stupid and blaming man-released CO2 for measurable planetary warming is just as stupid. The World will need hydrocarbon energy for generations yet. The other competing energy forms don’t hold a candle to the economic benefits (i.e. jobs and tax revenue) that can be provided by a healthy oil and gas industry in Canada so why be so eager to destroy Canada’s resource value? That’s just suicidal deranged leftwing ideology.
Xiat’s right on this. Plants are paid for by the electricity they produce and amortized over 40 years. Economic lifetime of nuclear plants is now heading for 60 years, if properly maintained, and some plant operators are starting technical discussions about operation to 80. Some in Ontario produce exceptionally cheap power such as Pickering, which is now fully amortized.
The real issue for western Canadian nuclear power is grid size. Saskatchewan is simply too small an electrical grid for a large reactor. So, it would have to partner with Alberta. This is the reason why the Saskatchewan government has had such great interest in small modular reactors for the past several years.
Gazprom owns thirty-four percent of the European gas market.
Euro-crats have seen fit to rely on “alternative forms of energy”.
What could possibly have gone wrong with all of this?
Gee, couldn’t they have just used all those big fans to blow the smog out into the North Sea?
Wood and coal? Can’t they just wrap themselves in their self-righteousness virtue and stay warm?
MartinB
Manufacturing robots, service drones, automation, short distance shuttle transportation (hospitals, airports, etc) and increased number of senior’s scooters on the sidewalks will require huge amount of electrical power. Hydrocarbon supply of energy won’t be replaced, however it won’t dominate and the economic importance will decrease.
Northern SK and MB that is where you find uranium – presently the hottest commodity, however the real boom is few years away.
France has REDUCED the speed limit ? To reduce pollution ? Ha ha ha ha. Jimmy Carter tried that leftist command and control reflexive nonsense to “save” gas after he orchestrated the RISE of radical Islam’s Oil Embargo in the 1970’s. How about some pollution control devices on the tailpipes ? How about synchronizing stoplights ? How about some REAL science to solve the problem ? Other than silly, inconsequential LAWS.
Think about modular systems that can power single town.
Sorry…Nuke won’t replace hydrocarbons as the cheapest most reliable accessible energy technology for a long time yet. Waste disposal is a huge issue that has to be worked out – not terribly visible right now because there’s so few reactors but kicking things up an order of magnitude and it becomes a very real growth limiting issue. You’re a dreamer but keep it up – that’s where progress starts. I can be wrong too but my gut right now tells me no. We’re already making 4 stroke diesel engines with thermal efficiencies as high as 52%…and so long as the Greenies don’t make us all into red-commies there’s a lot of room for more improvement. The big issues of safety, cost, suitability, labour expertise, social acceptance, etc. for a large scale nuke development breakout won’t happen in 10 years. Natural gas will rule power generation in North America for a long while yet.
Smog from wood? Wow, how can that happen, eh? Wood is a renewable resource y’know. Biological, uh huh.
Lots of woodstoves here in Ontario too. Wood is what old people use to heat the house out in the country when their electric bill tops $500 a month.
I’m considering going into the oil lamp business. If the Liberals wynn the next election, could be a growth industry.
BTW … I just finished watching The Crown … which devoted an entire episode to mocking Winston Churchill’s “inactivity” during a period of similar temperature inversion. It was such a lame, transparent, attempt at mocking conservatives for NOT CARING about toxic pollution, etc. The “its only weather, not climate” crowd piled on poor ol’ dottering Churchill … and even featured a main character (spoiler alert) getting KILLED “as a result of the poor visibility” in the toxic smog (not to mention her roommate sick in bed because of the smog). The disinformation “climate change” campaign continues, unabated.
Maybe if they reversed the elctricity and used those windmills as giant fans they could disperse the smog 🙂
Coal is just older wood
Really ? I was taught that coal was made from dead dinosaurs …
CHEVRON even created cute little cartoon dino-saurs. Cute.
Wrote to Lorrie Goldstein of the Toronto Sun questioning why the Sun didn’t jump all over this as showing what will happen as the stupid greenies like Wynne force people to find alternates to the insane energy costs in Ontario. The Libs will blame everyone else but themselves as normal.
China will be laughing about this as their pollution rate drops below Europe’s. I have been to China and there is a haze over the entire country, the winters of course are the worst as coal is used to heat homes and factories as well as coal energy plants.
I thought coal was condensed eeeeevile, the literal poo of the Devil, fermented and compressed over zillions of years. Designed by Satan hisself to deeeestroy the world!!!
Or is that too Xtian?
No point trying to discuss nuclear, with people like yourself, who have no clue. You can fit the nuclear waste produced by powering the state of California for a decade under a coffee table; and that would be first and second gen reactors. The fourth gen designs and the theoretical ones, they would actually be utilizing the waste from the older reactors. Last century’s waste is going to be this century’s fuel.
And apart from that, there are billions of years worth of fissionable material on the planet. Heck, just the radioactive impurities in coal hold more energy than the combustion of the coal.
Remember a friend reminiscing about living in the Czech Republic about the time Czechoslovakia got rid of the Communists and then split into two countries. One of the things that struck him most was the coal piles in front of all the homes. They were gone ten years later, but perhaps they are returning.
Totally agree with Xiat. Nuclear is the way to go for electricity. We not far away from small modular reactor (SMRs) that will be placeD in small cities and wherever power is needed, such as industrial area. Nuclear has a much reduced need for transmission, like the new Shepard Energy Center near YYC…close to the market. In Alberta, we collect wind electricity over and area the same size as the Netherlands…about 350 by 150 km.
If I had my way, we’d leave Alberta’s electricity production as is (keep coal) and stop more wind development immediately because if its unreliability and need for close to 100% backup.
The NDP has made contradictory statements about what they really want, as if they actually know. To achieve the hallucinogenic 30% electricity generation (vs capacity) from wind and solar (and a bit of hydro) would cost $30 billion or more in capital investment plus 20 year subsidy payments. Even if citizens don’t pay up front, we will all pay in the long run.
NDP have asked for 5 GW of new renewables, mainly wind…that will cost close to $20 billion (turbines, transmission, gas backup). Because of the pathetic output of wind, it will take at least 10 GW of new wind (at least $30 billion) and even then we will frequently rely on natural gas for electricity. As you know, wind produces at 29 to 33% of nameplate capacity on average annually.
Point being, we could build a couple of large nuclear reactors for the same investment and with refurbishment they will last 60 or 70 years. (Unlike turbines that need replacing every 20 to 25 years or so.)
This Climate Leadership Plan is not leadership in any way, shape or form. These people have no ideas what they want and do not know the costs a will be. The claimed benefits (from closing coal and adding more wind) to health and the environment are bogus.
CAS
I wrote this in an email today….
Some key points we will be raising again with ____:
*The CLP process is faulty and does not address long-term electricity (or all energy) needs.
*The CLP has not been vetted and the consequences and costs and benefits (if any) have not evaluated by a multi-disciplinary team (real environmentalists, engineers, economists and others) that have NO vested interest in the plan such as those held by CanWEA, CanSIA and many government advisers who were hired from these agencies and from the ideologically-driven Pembina Inst.
*The CLP has a grave flaw in that our power grid will reply in natural gas for 95% of our power on occasion. It is perilous to have only one source of electrical power in a grid. (NG is great, but relying on one source is dangerous and leaves Albertans vulnerable to prices spikes or worse shortages..as unlikely as that seems today.)
*Shannon talks about “new technologies” …she mentioned them again yesterday. What are they? Wind and solar are well-developed technologies, their performance is pathetic and not about to change. The government through ERA (http://www.eralberta.ca/) has spend tens of millions on known technologies that probably have not reduced CO2…possibly increased CO2). We know of one $10,000,000 project (our tax money) that seems to have been an abject failure and anyone who knew anything could have told them so. We are not opposed to R&D..we are opposed to silly ideas.
*The phrases “decarbonization “and “get off of fossil fuels” are myths. The IEA and common sense tells us that the world will be hugely reliant on FFs for decades for heating, industry and transportation.
CAS
Captcha is “SUPER IMPASSE” .. appropriate in dealing with these NDP folks.
Learn about thorium and gen4 reactor technology, then come back to discuss modern nuclear power. Most of the reactors operating today are 1970s technology. Automotive technology didn’t stop with the Edsel.
Coal is actually fossilized beer. That’s why the very best coal is made from “coal porter”.