Thursday, September 3, 2009

The Dark Ages (Redux)

A few years back, a group of environmentalists decided to see what would happen if you thrust a country back into the Dark Ages. They chose Britain, possibly because the British were too busy stabbing each other and binge-drinking themselves into a stupor to notice. With nary a hint of protest, the environmentalists set their plan into motion. Now the free range chickens have come home to roost.

Here’s what happened. Beginning in the 1990s, the Labor government started a concerted effort to destroy the British power grid in the name of stopping global warming. . . er climate change. . . er the next ice age.

Noting that coal and nuclear power plants account for about 45% of all power generated in Britain, Labor chose those forms of power as the best place to start. So they made it virtually impossible to build nuclear plants. Then they made it unprofitable to run existing coal-fired plants, and finally they all but forbade the construction of new coal-fired plants. And here is what they’ve achieved:

Britain currently gets around 13% of its electricity from nuclear plants. But most of their nuclear plants are simply too old to carry on. Indeed, half of their existing nuclear plants have already been shut down and the remaining plants will soon follow. The last one should be closed by 2023. New nuclear plants are planned, but the earliest one of those could be up and running is 2017, and that’s probably insanely optimistic.

Britain also gets around 31% of its electricity from coal-fired plants, but this will end soon. EU environmental rules require that coal plants be fit with expensive scrubbers or be shut down. But these scrubbers are too expensive to make economic sense. So owners are finding it cheaper to just shut the plants down. Indeed, right now these plants are operating (in a reduced capacity) under an exception that expires in 2015, after which time they will be shut down.

So by 2015, Britain will lose about 44% of its capacity to generate electricity. Alas, they don’t have the capacity to spare. The chart on the left shows the problem. Beginning in 2015, Britain will not be able to generate enough electricity to meet demand. This gap between supply and demand will continue to grow until around 2030, at which point Britain will be able to meet only half of its demand.

What does this mean? Blackouts.

In the 2007, South Africa experienced blackouts because of a moratorium put in place in the 1990s on the building of new power plants. Consequently, the national power company, Eskom, began rolling blackouts, cutting off power for hours at a time. Initially, these blackouts were announced. But they soon discovered that this attracted thieves to the affected neighborhoods, so they stopped announcing them.

Britain will be heading down the same path. So, if burglary is your thing -- and if you live in Britain, we know it is -- you are about to experience a golden age of crime. It will be glorious!

But wait, in all fairness, I don’t want to overstate the problem. The same idiots who caused the problem have a “solution.” They prayed to the Great Unicorn for magical new technologies that will produce the missing electricity without harming the environment. Here is what they got:

Over the next eleven years (fortunately 2015 is more than 11 years away), they intend to build enough maritime windmills to produce 33 Gig Watts of power. Not bad huh? And while many claim that Britains lacks the resources to produce this many windmills, we should not doubt that they can pull this off. After all, Britain is the world’s biggest producer of wind power. In fact, in 2008, Britain produced a whopping 0.6 GW! See, they're almost there. . . only another 98.2% to go!

But there is a catch with this marvelous plan. The government estimates that it’s about to lose 75 GW of power because of all these plant closures (failures). Thus, even if Plan Quixote works, it will still come up 42 GW short. . . actually, that’s not true. There’s another problem I haven’t mentioned yet. It turns out that windmills don’t work on calm days. I know, knock you over with a feather! Even the government estimates that 25 GW of potential from windmills will only be able to replace 5 GW of fossil-fuel fired power. Thus, to plug the gap with wind, the Brits need to produce 375 GW of wind power -- more than ten times what they’re building. It would seem, the Great Unicorn has failed them?

And this doesn’t even account for the fact that their oil and gas fired plants are running out of fuel as their North Sea reserves run dry (they peaked in 1999).

Yet, there is an out. When the darkness and the cold become unbearable and the number of patients dying in the dark in hospitals increases well beyond its currently high levels, the Brits can start building gas-fired plants. And to fuel those plants, they can call upon old reliable, dependable Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Of course, that will be expensive and will wreak havoc on anyone who pays for their own electricity, partly because the prices will vary dramatically day by day, and partly because Putin loves him some predatory pricing. But it should keep the lights on most of the time. And so what if it makes Britain dependent on Russia. Economic slavery sure beats global warming. . . cooling. . . whatever.

Of course, there is something else they could do. They could burn environmentalists and Labor MPs to keep warm.

24 comments:

StanH said...

Andrew, I guess I have a mean streak, I think it’s funny. Unfortunately this is the only way to get rid of these creeps or at the very least render environmentalist and leftist irrelevant. Nothing clears the mind like freezing your ass off, spending long nights in the dark clutching your copies of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring, and Owlgore’s “Earth in the Balance.”

AndrewPrice said...

Stan, I come from the school that says sometimes you have to let people suffer the full consequences of their stupidity as a warning to them and others. This is one of those moments.

And it's not like the consequences weren't obvious. . .

LawHawkSF said...

Andrew: I lived through the period of watching masses of Brits on TV parading in the streets against Western military defense. Their cry was "better red than dead." It looks like they may have won after all, just a bit belatedly and not in exactly the way they intended.

patti said...

is putin (yes, i laugh EVERY TIME i say/hear/read his name...the best joke in the world!)riding the great unicorn there? and seriously, i haven't had lunch yet. PUT ON A SHIRT.

AndrewPrice said...

Patti, I think that's his Planet of the Apeski's pose. Any minute he comes to a large statute of Lenin burried in the ground and he drops to his knees and says: "You finally did it tavarishes, damn you all to hell!"

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, Yeah, I was going to suggest that the Russians won "the cold war" after all, but I thought better of it.

Tennessee Jed said...

Reading your piece brought to thoughts immediately to mind, Andrew. First, it gives new meaning to the old saw "look before you leap."

Second, if that happened in over here, at least we could have burned and eaten Al Gore. He is so "ginormous," he could provide fuel long enough to produce sufficient windmills

AndrewPrice said...

Jed, I'm all for exploring the uses of Al Gore as a form of alternative energy.

I would suspect that we won't fall for this, but then who knows. Team Obama might be up for this stupidity. They do seem to like repeating historical mistakes. Also, they have spoken repeatedly about killing the coal industry.

So maybe in a few years, we'll be reading at night by the light of an Algore Candle?

ScottDS said...

Damn, I'm gonna have to watch TV by candlelight!

(That's not my joke... unless you liked it in which case, it was.) :-)

Anyway, it sounds like a nice opportunity for some enterprising eco-minded entrepreneur to step in and solve the problem with a little bit of ingenuity... or is that too naive?

AndrewPrice said...

Scott, the laws of physics are against you. That's the problem. There are only two ways to make energy (excluding fusion) -- either (1) release it by burning something or blowing it up, or (2) collect it.

The "environmentalists" (and I put that in quotes because I think they care less for the environment than they seek to control the rest of us) want us to switch from releasing energy to collecting energy.

The problem with that method, however, is that the collection methods available are highly inefficient (meaning most of it is lost) and unreliable. The one exception is hydropower, but the environmentalists don't want us damming rivers.

Also, and let me just throw this out there, it's not at all clear that you don't do an equal or worse harm by collecting the energy. Consider hydropower, for example. To collect the energy in the water, you actually remove it from the river. This has a dramatic effect on the river and basically calms the river -- unless it can pick up more energy down river again. Do we know that the same thing won't happen if we start taking energy out of the wind or the sunlight?

P.S. Nice joke!

Writer X said...

Hopefully they'll start by burning the environmentalists, including Al Gore, at the stake. Don't forget the marshmellows. And I'm with Patti: What's up with Putin and his GQ photo shoot? Not attractive.

BevfromNYC said...

Look on the bright side - as "they" say, "Necessity is the Mother of Invention". Thoughout human history, when we got too cold or too hot, too hungry or too tired, someone always came along to invent something to ease our suffering. I have hope that there is someone like that now.

If not, I am with WX and Tennessee - lets just burn the envirnomentalist for warmth,or better yet, put them in giant hamster wheels and make them run until they drop...either way, I want marshmallows.

AndrewPrice said...

Writer X, You don't think that's a good look for Putin? Putin thinks it is. . .

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, I like the idea of putting them into hampster wheels and letting them generate electricity for the rest of us!

In terms of invention, I don't think it's a good idea to make your people suffer in the off chance that someone invents something to stop their suffering. . . but that's just me.

Writer X said...

Andrew, I'm sure Putin believes he's quite the stud. To me, he just looks creepy.

AndrewPrice said...

I think he's pretty creepy looking too. And, frankly, I think it's strange that he needs to have himself photographed doing all kinds of "masculine" things like shooting tigers. Sounds like he's either compensating for something or. . .

Writer X said...

LOL...or he's going through a mid-life crisis. Putin would be better off getting himself a red convertible.

AndrewPrice said...

A little red convertible with a tiger in the passenger site, the Siegfried and Roy GTI. :-P

Writer X said...

Perfect. As long as Putin doesn't slay the tiger.

AndrewPrice said...

Or presumably vice versa. . . though I'm not sure that would trouble me all that much. I hear tigers can't resist the great taste of ex-KGB.

alvaro said...

I was shaking in my boots until you mentioned their Plan Quixote-that warmed me up a bit. Ah, laughter!

AndrewPrice said...

Alvaro, it is creepy isn't it that a country would do something so obviously bad to it's people. It really tells you something about the ruling classes.

alvaro said...

You're absolutely right, Andrew, and isn't it unfortunate that it's happening right here. What's even scarier is that people are not only allowing it to happen before their very eyes, many are facilitating it. I just posted a painting this week on BH that I did in 2000 and commented about it. Without ignorance, this cannot take place. Yet, here it is-happening in the freest country the world has ever know with all the information at our fingertips. Yes, those in charge are despicable human beings-too bad for all concerned! Again-thank you guys for doing this blog!!!

AndrewPrice said...

You're welcome Alvaro. Right now is a time that we all need to pull together to defend the freedoms that took 200 years to build. Thanks for commenting.

I'll have to run over to BH and check that out -- I've been kind of swamped lately and haven't had a chance to get over there.

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