{"id":290263,"date":"2023-12-07T08:21:10","date_gmt":"2023-12-07T07:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=290263"},"modified":"2023-12-07T08:21:13","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T07:21:13","slug":"the-black-lie-at-the-heart-of-net-zero-energy-fantasies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=290263","title":{"rendered":"The Black Lie at the Heart of Net Zero Energy Fantasies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY\u00a0CHRIS MORRISON<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Temperatures plunged last week across Europe and the wind stopped blowing for a number of days. Without gas- and coal-fired turbines coming immediately to the rescue, thousands of people could have perished in the bitter cold. Yet natural gas is being legislated out of existence as a source of electricity across the continent. The black lie at the heart of Net Zero energy fantasies is that there are workable back-ups for intermittent wind and solar. Apart from oil and gas, there are none. Once politicians remove them from the mix \u2013 if elected, the British Labour party plans this in barely 60 months \u2013 the old and the infirm will shiver and die when a windless electricity grid produces negligible amounts of crucial power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exaggeration? Not really. Earlier this year, Lord Frost delivered the annual GWPF lecture on Net Zero which he titled \u2018Not Dark Yet, But\u2019s It\u2019s Getting There<\/a>\u2019. He felt that members of Western governments \u201cactively prefer to live in complete cognitive dissonance rather than confront what they know in their hearts: that they are pursuing unfeasible and internally contradictory policies\u201d. There can be no excuse for what Lord Frost describes as \u201chigh status\u201d opinions on Net Zero. The lack of \u2018green\u2019 back-up for intermittent power is becoming obvious to all but the most blinkered and boneheaded. But a wilful refusal to confront the issue is the current default \u2018settled\u2019 position. If the grid collapses in a few years\u2019 time, the politicians and all their trusted messengers in the media will have a great deal of explaining to do. As the frozen bodies pile up, their trite, pseudoscientific, \u2018saving the planet\u2019 political slogans will be found somewhat wanting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea that we can power most of our energy from the wind and the sun has been kept afloat by the promise of massive battery storage. There can be no further excuse for peddling this delusion. Earlier this year, the U.K. Royal Society published a wide-ranging storage paper<\/a> pointing out that current batteries cannot possibly store more than a fraction of the energy needed to support the grid when wind fails. And fail it does, not just during spells of extremely cold weather but, as the Royal Society pointed out, during past annual low wind speed periods. Desperate to keep the Net Zero fiction alive, the Royal Society promoted hydrogen as a back-up, an idea only slightly less dumb than digging up the planet to produce vast quantities of limited life batteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Highly explosive, expensive to extract, weak kinetic energy compared to natural gas, difficult to store and move around \u2013 there is no end to the disadvantages of hydrogen. The Royal Society seems to envisage a new nationwide complex of storage and pipes that would likely cost hundreds of billions of pounds. Francis Menton of the Manhattan Contrarian<\/em> noted that the Royal Society\u2019s paper contained valuable information, but was \u201cactually useless for any public policy purpose<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wherever you look, promoters of green energy engage in largely unchallenged deceptions. To coincide with COP28, Channel 4 is running a \u2018climate emergency\u2019 season<\/a>. \u201cWith their combined, deep expertise, Kevin McCloud<\/a>, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall<\/a> and Mary Portas<\/a> will front a powerful three-part series aiming to kickstart real change, by identifying the practical steps that governments and big business can take to eliminate our carbon emissions,\u201d reads the press release. It\u2019s an odd choice of \u201cdeep expertise\u201d on offer, namely, the Grand Designs<\/em> TV host, a TV cook and a shop window dresser. Within minutes into the first programme, the zombie statistic that wind was nine times cheaper than gas last winter was trotted out. In fact, this occurred only briefly with a number of abnormal wholesale price spikes<\/a> in electricity in the wake of developments in Ukraine. Suggesting that wind is nine times cheaper than gas is as wilfully misleading as stating that wind was infinitely more expensive when oil prices turned negative at the start of global Covid lockdowns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without reliable back-up, subsidy-hunting promoters can add as many windmills as they like, but it will not make any difference when there is no wind. Last week, wind struggled to provide 3% of Britain\u2019s electricity. As the investigative climate journalist (and former accountant) Paul Homewood is fond of noting \u2013 twice nothing is still nothing. In the meantime, British electricity users are set to pay almost \u00a3100 billion in subsidies<\/a> for renewables supplying the grid over the next six years. Even when the wind is blowing, this growing subsidy covers barely 5% of total U.K. energy, since the grid only accounts for 25% of consumed energy. Last week\u2019s dismal contribution brought that down to almost zero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The true insanity of Net Zero has yet to be faced by global elites seeking to \u2018transform\u2019 human societies in collectivist ways never attempted in the past. Since this is a political project, truth is the first casualty in the war on wicked humanity. Nobody is paying much attention to the work of the Government-funded U.K. FIRES that notes that the U.K. is likely to have barely a quarter<\/a> of the energy promised by the Government and the Climate Change Committee in 2050 if all legal obligations of Net Zero are followed. In its latest energy review, U.K. FIRES writes that the \u201cwhole excitement\u201c of its project has been to recognise that such a shortfall is close to a certain reality. As the Daily Sceptic<\/em> has reported<\/a>, U.K. FIRES bases it findings on a brutally honest reality. It does not assume that technology still to be perfected, or even invented, will somehow lead to minimal disturbance in comfortable industrialised lifestyles. A world of little energy means no personal transport, no flying and shipping, freezing homes, meat-free diets and dwellings made of \u201crammed\u201d Earth. And, probably, far fewer humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his recent paper, Lord Frost identified a current active determination across politicians and opinion formers not too look too closely at all the Net Zero issues. This was worrying, he commented, adding the words of the political and economic writer Sir Alfred Sherman: \u201cYou can wake a man who\u2019s asleep, but you can\u2019t wake a man who\u2019s pretending to be asleep.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris Morrison is the\u00a0<\/em>Daily Sceptic\u2019s Environment Editor.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From The Daily Sceptic BY\u00a0CHRIS MORRISON Temperatures plunged last week across Europe and the wind stopped blowing for a number of days. Without gas- and coal-fired turbines coming immediately to the rescue, thousands of people could have perished in the bitter cold. Yet natural gas is being legislated out of existence as a source of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":290267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Temperatures plunged last week across Europe and the wind stopped blowing for a number of days. Without gas- and coal-fired turbines coming immediately to the rescue, thousands of people could have perished in the bitter cold. 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