The Green movement have come full circle, from protecting forests and attacking coal, to preserving coal and destroying forests. The most interesting question for me (apart from wondering how long it can continue) is what the UK environmental movement is going to do with this. Do they care about forests? Do they care about the electricity bills inflicted on the poor? Do CO2 emissions matter?
In the UK, the Drax plant was once the largest coal fired power station. Now, thanks to £340 million in ‘green’ subsidies (and the rest) it makes electricity that is twice as expensive, produces more CO2, and apparently razes US forests to do it.
The Mail on Sunday has discovered that the UK Drax plant was paid by the British taxpayer to burn “millions of tons of wood pellets” which the company says are from ” dust and residues from sawmills”. But according to witnesses, environmentalists and workers, the wood is coming from US forests that are clearfelled to supply it. The Mail on Sunday has accounts from a senior forester in the firm in North Carolina that supplies Drax. He claims the company is clear-felling forests that aren’t suitable for logging, and that most of the wood ends up as pellets and chips. Likewise, some US environmentalists are tracking the trucks and photographing the damage:
Late last month, Dogwood campaigner Adam Macon travelled with colleagues to the Enviva pellet plant at Ahoskie, North Carolina, where he saw piles of hardwood trunks 40 feet high being fed into the plant’s hopper – the start of the process where the trees are pulped and turned into pellets. These could not be described as ‘leftovers’.
Macon recorded the number plate details of an empty truck leaving the plant and followed it to a forested area 20 miles away.
“All that was left were the stumps of once great trees. They had destroyed an irreplaceable wetland treasure.’”
Drax is reputed to be the “UK’s biggest single contributor towards meeting stringent EU green energy targets.” It is starting up a third big biomass unit in a few weeks and may get “over £1 billion” in subsidies.
The electricity it produces costs £80 per MW/hr which is “two-and-a-half times more expensive than coal”.
One new report predicts that over its 40 year life, the plant will emitting four times more than the maximum CO2 emissions that the DECC (Dept of Energy and Climate Change) claim a biomass plant should emit.
In his video presentation, Drax’s Andy Koss claimed the firm was so green that its contribution to cutting emissions was the equivalent of taking three million cars off the road.
But a new study led by Dr Thomas Buchholz of the Spatial Informatics Group, a team of environmental experts and scientists, casts doubt on this. His findings are based on the official Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) model for calculating emissions, known as BEAC. This weighs factors including harvesting, transport and emissions from the furnaces – when pellets are burnt they produce much more CO2 than natural gas or coal – as well as new tree growth.
Dr Buchholz’s conclusions are devastating. The official DECC standard says biomass plants should emit a maximum of 285kg of carbon dioxide for every 1MW/hr of electricity. But the research found that averaged over 40 years, Drax’s net emissions will be more than four times as high.
The Mail on Sunday also mentioned that former UK Energy Minister, Chris Huhne pushed for biomass in the UK, and is now the EU chief of a supplier of wood pellets.
Read the whole sordid story at www.dailymail.co.uk
The Greens have a hatred for coal,
Banning all of its mining their goal,
Instead they burn wood,
Doing more harm than good,
As on forests it takes a huge toll.
A few good comments
Kevin Marshall (Manicbeancounter) | June 8, 2015 at 7:41 am
Greame,
Drax B will be made bankrupt anyway. Last year they were fined £28m ($55m) for failing to sufficiently educate consumers on how to reduce energy usage. The are an electricity generation business, who does not even retail to consumers, but they were expected to go around educating people on how they could claim Government funds to reduce power usage. The real irony was the headline in the Guardian – Drax to pay record £28m fine for failing to help households cut bills. The amount in subsidy that Drax B receives annually for burning wood chip instead of coal is ten times the amount, based on 1GW of capacity burning wood-chips at £45 MWh subsidy and operating at 75% of capacity. This all loaded on consumers utility bills.
Willard | June 8, 2015 at 9:40 am
Drax was possibly the most evil of Bond villians, so evil in fact that Bonds arch enemy Jaws changed sides in the final scenes of Moonraker.
Another Graeme |June 8, 2015 at 10:12 am
So basically, Drax gets paid to generate electricity and fined for not convincing people to stop using it. O what a world we live in.
Think what a story the mainstream media are all missing by failing to point these facts out, and focus everyone’s minds on them, as they are uncovered. They could do a reality series (hint, hint).
210
This is weird!
Sort the fact from the fiction, it’s still weird.
It’s not the first report I’ve seen on Drax. But it is weird all the way!
How long can it last?
80
Mainstream media won’t report it because a good number of them have sided with the eco-movement and political-class. They won’t admit it of course, but we all know by the stories they publish. Some even become offended if you point out to them they have become biased and are pushing a political agenda. (Or they are feinting offense in order to divert the issue away from themselves).
The way they behave is a cause for concern because that’s what state-control media outlets do. (See North Korea being the extreme example). They push an agenda on the population as news. They only highlight certain aspects of a story. Anything contradictory to the narrative they are pushing for, is conveniently left out. ie: “We know what is best, the public doesn’t need to know that particular detail.”
I don’t like that. I want the whole picture. By having the whole picture, we can then accurately come up with solutions that properly address problems.
Mainstream news has pretty much flipped on its head. While few of today’s journalists still do things the old school way, the new generation have basically become mouthpieces for political agendas. They don’t question contradictions or explain the whole picture. As a result, what used to be Western society’s immune system against political agendas is now gone!
An interesting side effect or reaction is that people end up using the Internet as the alternative news source. Mainly because the on-line community now asks questions that mainstream media does not. The media seems more interested in Twitter feeds (sometimes, it even relies on those feeds as news!) and Youtube videos.
The more I observe these eco-folks, the more I’m inclined to believe the movement has itself been taken over. They went from Environmental Conservation to Eco-Authoritarians. (Force the public to accept their agenda via Govt power; by changing regulations that affect lifestyle and economics of a nation). They clearly do NOT care about the economic hardship they impose upon others. They care about feeling good about themselves with their “well intentions”. Most of all, they view humanity as a disease and that we deserve what we get.
Except of themselves! They and their privileged friends have no qualms in jet-setting to lavish “Conferences” or to various countries in order to join protests. (To express how much they care and earn some public relations points)…Have they even bothered to look at the amount of aviation gas they consume on a yearly basis or the additional resources they consume in order to support their lavish tastes?
No one in the mainstream media is going to point out the hypocrisy of the modern environmentalist movement because it will destroy public support and credibility of the movement. Its pretty obvious this movement has no clue about science, engineering, or economics. If they did, they would come up with all sorts of awesome things that were practical and could be implemented in the real world! They wouldn’t have a problem with public supporting their ideas. Not to mention they wouldn’t be contradictory and hypocritical with their actions and words.
Its all about seeming to do good (intentions), instead of actually doing good…While taking their cut on the side. (Naturally, the rest of us pay for their activist lifestyle via govt subsidies!)
You can tell this movement in general has little public sympathy.
For Example:
When Greenpeace provoked the Russians (by protesting at one of Russia’s oil platforms), two Australian Greenpeace activists were arrested alongside others. (Colin Russell and Alex Harris)
=> http://www.news.com.au/world/australian-greenpeace-activists-arrested-by-russian-authorities-may-face-piracy-charges/story-fndir2ev-1226724427038
Notice how most of the Australian public didn’t care? That says a lot!
On a side note:
Remember Greg Combet? He was the Minister for Energy and Climate Change in the Gillard Govt.
Have a guess what he’s doing now! Economic consultant to AGL and Santos…Two of the biggest players in coal seam gas (CSG) in NSW!
=> http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/csg-industry-hires-wellconnected-staffers-20150524-gh2rg3.html
Its like yesterday he was all about Climate Change, and the next day, he has no problems earning money from people who dig, drill, and extract!
Of course, the more you dig, the more taxpayer money is found to be spent!
=> http://www.news.com.au/national/deceit-is-as-easy-as-abc-for-newsreader-juanita-phillips-taxpayerfunded-european-jaunt/story-fncynjr2-1226895408012
* 10 day trip to a European Climate Conference with lover (Juanita Phillips)? : $71221
* Juanita Phillips salary when she was ABC 24 host : $316,000
…The Australian public having no clue how their hardworking dollars are spent? PRICELESS!
Now you folks understand how some in media side with the political class! They’re either dating or married to them! …And WE end up picking up the tab! How romantic!
350
AG, thank you for your post.
One contemplates with dismay the pre-programmed, uncritical, low wattage eco-drivel of the MSM. Getting kontrol of the mouthpiece is one of the first orders of business in this information dependent age, even if you happen to be a in an evolutionary dead-end like the Green Amoeba of yesterday.
From: Moulding and Manipulating the News, Sharon Beder, Melbourne (2004)
60
‘It is a bitter irony of source journalism … that the most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the “best” sources’
Sort of reminds me of performing seals waiting for the fish.
60
Journalism has distilled down to copy and paste now. Journalists know journalism, and above all, they know what their bosses want. Their bosses want articles which they perceive that their target audience might understand, so anything of a technical nature is positively verboten. So, why would a journalist even bother to find out about electrical power generation. (After all, electrical power will always be coming out of the hole in the wall, ergo, one method of generation is the same as the next)
There’s something face over apex (ar$e backwards) about that, and it’s something I have found to my eternal surprise.
My perception when I started was that I had selected my subject of (supposed) expertise to contribute to a blog about, and it would soon tap out. I got the shock of my life when the blog owner emailed me that it was perhaps some of the most interesting stuff he had read in years, because he had never seen it anywhere else.
The same happened when I first tentatively stuck my toe in the water here at Joanne’s site, thinking it would also soon tap out here, because people would not want to read about this.
What I have found is that people do in fact want to know about this, and of more importance, they want to be able to understand it.
It was scary for me at the start, because I couldn’t find anybody saying what I was writing about, and the sense for me was that I was wrong. It was a leap of faith type of thing for me, and I kept thinking that very soon, someone was going to prove to me that I was wrong.
Now, to my immense pleasure, I know that people actually want to read about all this, and there’s where journalism falls down. They know journalism, but cannot grasp the technical details of power generation, will not even begin to find out, seek articles which confirm their beliefs, reject out of hand anything which speaks against what they think they know, and are actively dissuaded from finding out about it, let alone publishing anything.
If it was a difficult thing for me to write about it, from the viewpoint of someone who was trained in electrical power, then it’s a quantum level so far over journalist’s heads, and that scare factor also plays into it for them as well. They are not confident enough to write about it for fear of being wrong.
Therein lies the problem.
While ever electricity comes out of the hole in the wall, they will never write a word about it, just cut and paste what their Editors perceive the public wants to read, when what they really want is to be informed, and informed correctly, in a manner they can understand.
Imagine the stunned looks from everyone when it finally is shown that the only true stable, regular, and reliable large scale power comes from the source they have spent almost a decade vilifying, and that the ones they have placed their blind faith in are failures at doing this.
Tony.
190
It is called Churnalism …
30
The world has finally become a Monty Python show !
60
I have always thought that biomass burning was the most cockeyed theory that the green lunatics have come up with. They call it “sustainable recycling” on he basis that trees capture CO2 and it is released during burning, so it is all good and does not add to the net CO2 in the atmosphere. What they have failed to add to the equation is the CO2 cost of planting the forest, maintaining it to maturity, felling it, transporting it to the pelletising mills, pelletising it, transporting it to the ship, shipping it to the UK, transporting it to Drax, and all this prior to burning it! Then add to that the actual dollar cost of the whole exercise. No wonder both the environmental and financial costs are off the planet!
360
And just in case anyone thinks that I must be keen to be blogging at 4:45am, I am currently in Provence enjoying 33C and a warm swimming pool. Just love this global warming!
231
Not me, Pete.
I’ve got a personality defect.
120
Not me either Peter. It’s only 3:09am in Perth.
191
What convoluted thinking!! A forest is converting co2, from all sources, to o2, and sequestering hydrocarbons 24/7, 365 days a year, for years and decades on end.
50
I can’t get past the idea that in the dark of night all that pesky biomass is producing CO2. It’s a blerdy wonder the Green Blob haven’t come up with a way of saying ‘NO’ to the night time. They do to everything else.
61
24 hours of global sunshine would make solar power slightly more reasonable…
70
But the greens don’t apply the same principle to domestic firewood, where the principle is sound and only dead trees are used.
Talk about convoluted thinking.
90
Except on the West Coast of New Zealand where even dead wood clearing is a Green ‘NO’.
So…..NO jobs, NO livelihoods, NO progress
…just continuing into impoverishment.
The Green Elite meanwhile prepare for the jet-setting junket of the century Le Moulin Rouge à Paris – Le plus prestigieux cabaret de Paris
130
Same in New South Wales, Australia (first named New Wales until UK politicians changed it), farmers cannot clear dead wood from the paddocks more than 35% in a calendar year
10
Just a comment, in fact the northern hemisphere hardwood forests which are deciduous, maple, poplar,oak, birch, etc., shutdown over winter so they are not sequestrating CO2 for 3-4 months. Most of these forests are producing less than 6 or 7 m3/ha./an; this means roughly about 3 tonnes of dry wood with a calorific value of 14,000 kj/kg. compared to coal which is around 30,000 kj/kg. The bigger sawmills use their waste to produce steam for the drying kilns and some even run a small steam turbine, but it only makes sense in a local situation, not shipping it halfway across the world to burn.
80
Robert O – and of course it is shipped using wind power.
00
The original proposal for an Emissions Trading Scheme in Australia studiously refused to allow credits for the sequestration side of Agriculture’s carbon cycle.
They intended to tax Agriculture’s recycled carbon on the same basis as fossil carbon.
Why?
Because agriculture was the last sector of the Australian economy which was still dominated by small business capitalism. The last sector where the majority of business owners made the business decisions. This double dipping ETS would have quickly bankrupted small business in agriculture.
Of the coalition representatives in the national parliament, only Barnaby Joyce was able to quantify the inequity in this policy. He was the only working business accountant in the parliament.
It is curious to see that with Drax the “warmists” are taking the opposite tack.
60
I love this site! I’m learning so much. However, my friends and family think I’m loony. They follow the MSM or left-wing MSM (is there a difference?) I’ve almost given up discussing current issues with them. The ABC has a lot to answer for.
10
They should follow my recommendation and fire those evil, carbon loaded, trees into space, thereby actually ‘decarbonizing’ the environment…
80
[SNIP. sorry, but no. These things can be taken the wrong way. – Jo]
81
Oh no we couldn’t do that as the sun would end up looking like a giant orange pin cushion, but for the good of humanity it should go ahead and be called ‘Operation Hedgehog’ after all the pricks will be on the outside….
50
Using solar powered rockets?
30
Just depends on what the biomass is and where its from.
30
I thought it was only Catholics who had mass,so who is burning all this incense during a biomass?
20
Wood chips or pellets ?
when asked if this reduces CO2 emissions .. Enviva stated
No. According to the UK Environment Agency, switching from coal to biomass reduces emissions of carbon dioxide by between 74 and 90% on a lifecycle basis
of course it does !!
and how do these get to the UK .. via diesel powered ships no doubt..
a single large container ship can emit cancer and asthma-causing pollutants equivalent to that of 50 million cars. The low grade bunker fuel used by the worlds 90,000 cargo ships contains up to 2,000 times the amount of sulfur compared to diesel fuel used in automobiles.
130
They are still burning hydrocarbons. But it is much more difficult to get a “clean burn” of wood hydrocarbons than it is to get a clean burn from natural gas or coal. Locally during each winter there is talk about banning wood burning stoves because it contributes to winter inversion smog. It is claimed that putting a log on the fire releases more air pollution into the air than driving a modern gasoline power automobile at sustained highway speeds all afternoon.
And destroying forests to burn in place of coal is just madness.
120
Where does the Oxygen we breath come from, once all the trees have been cut down, I wonder?
I wonder a lot, about the lunacy of all this. I must be something in the water, do you reckon?
120
“I must be something in the water”
amoebas were a previous thread.
For solution see comment 6.1.1
50
Or the sheep dip. 😉
50
🙂
10
I guess we can stop calling them “tree huggers”.
They’re doing the same thing in the Pacific Northwest, spotted owl be damned.
[Snip]
100
It has been claimed before that just getting the wood pellets to Drax increases their emissions by 20% over the original coal based rate. (Felling forests, transport, chipping, shipping all use fuel). Then there are the special ships, purpose built harbour and bulk storage, special rail trucks and storage facilities at Drax, as the pellets can spontaneously combust.
All this looks minor when the emissions from burning are shown (in the article) to be 1140 Kg. per MWh (minimum, it could be more), very close to that of an old fashioned lignite burning plant.
For comparison:
Latest Chinese coal fired plants, 700
Current USA plants (<10 years old), 760
Modern German lignite plant below 800
NSW 40 year old black coal fired, 900
Will we see the Green Gullibles calling for a return to coal to reduce emissions?
P.S. there is a coal seam right below Drax.
200
Yes, that’s as maybe, but think of the cost of moving Drax to get to it! Who would pay for that? Future generations! Think of the children! /sarc
80
Don’t post before you’ve had your first coffee.
There was a coal mine which supplied Drax. It was shut down after Arthur Scargill took on Maggie. Now the remaining coal fired units at Drax use imported coal.
90
…and a substantial oil deposit under Gatwick.
50
“…We have no financial interest in the oilfield, we just see this as a great opportunity to make innocent people suffer…”
Thankfully, satire hasn’t been banned yet.
70
Give the Greens time and they will ban sarcasm because they are too thick to understand it
00
Greame,
Drax B will be made bankrupt anyway. Last year they were fined £28m ($55m) for failing to sufficiently educate consumers on how to reduce energy usage. The are an electricity generation business, who does not even retail to consumers, but they were expected to go around educating people on how they could claim Government funds to reduce power usage. The real irony was the headline in the Guardian – Drax to pay record £28m fine for failing to help households cut bills. The amount in subsidy that Drax B receives annually for burning wood chip instead of coal is ten times the amount, based on 1GW of capacity burning wood-chips at £45 MWh subsidy and operating at 75% of capacity. This all loaded on consumers utility bills.
150
Drax was possibly the most evil of Bond villians, so evil in fact that Bonds arch enemy Jaws changed sides in the final scenes of Moonraker.
30
I lived in Englsnd for a long time, and used to drive frequently from Guildford to Devon. On the A31 I passed a long, sinister, brick wall. This was to keep the lower orders out of the Drax estate. No doubt if you climbed overe the wall and got past the trees you would have been seized by armed men in tight black uniforms, and taken to an underground cell, to await whatever fate the current Drax (now a Consevative MP) deemed appropriate for disturbing his super-villainy.
10
And just as frequently from Devon to Guildford.
10
Though Ian Fleming probably got the name from the Drax sugar plantations on Barbados. Fleming lived in Jamaica, and knew his way around the West Indies.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Drax
10
So basically, Drax gets paid to generate electricity and fined for not convincing people to stop using it. O what a world we live in.
80
It seemed the right thing to do at the time
00
The carbon released as CO2 from burning coal comes from plants, and the energy sequestered during that carbon capture comes from the sun.
90
I would act surprised, but it would be just that, an act.
90
According to Wikipedia, the Drax power station will shortly be burning 7.5 million tonnes per year and this will require the annual cutting down of 12,000 sq, kms of forest. I was always under the impression, obviously mistaken, that greenies were all for planting forests, not chopping them down.
The UK’s energy policies were devised by arch-ecoloon Ed Milliband, who thankfully badly lost the recent general election.
In the UK, the national grid has to buy unreliable, expensive wind power first, the rest then goes out for auction on an hourly basis. This means that no power supplier can make any long term planning because he does not have a clue about future electricity prices, and that means………
No one is prepared to build any new real (as opposed to wind powered ones) power stations, unless they get a guaranteed price, well above the current free market price, so no power stations are being built, just being closed. So coming soon……….
Welcome to black out Britain when it gets really cold under a stationary, windless, high pressure system.
140
Eurovision should have been our warning about a European Union.
110
I never watch the Eurovision Contest out of principle,but I saw an ad for it the other day and I have to tell you the presenter was the ugliest woman I have ever seen,I’m certain she had a beard,I don’t know if it was a send up or what but she definitely needed some Nair or Gillette products.
I know that I am getting old but crikey don’t people take notice of their appearance any more?
20
GMac,
That was Conchita Wurst, the Austrian pop recording artist and drag queen who won the 2014 contest.
Eurovision sure has come a long way since Abba in 1974 🙂
00
I wish you wouldn’t talk about Drax. There are only so many blood pressure pills I am allowed to take in a day.
Drax was the UK’s biggest power station. It was built to be near the coal. What a good idea!
It takes more wood to produce a kW hr of electricity than it does coal.
This means that for a given amount of electricity more CO2 is produced after its conversion to wood pellets.
The coal travels round the corner; the wood travels from North America.
This is being subsidised by the tax payer, approved by the greenies and helps us to meet “carbon” targets so is a “good thing”.
Somewhere, a lot of people need their heads banging together. The result of wasting all this money is to produce more CO2 than we did before. You really can’t make this stuff up.
They argue that it is now “sustainable”. Maybe it would be if you could grow a tree as fast as you could burn it.
To me it shows two things, Firstly, the greenies never work out the total cost and implications of what they recommend. Secondly, it just highlights the fact that these decisions are entirely political. The control aspect is what it is about – benefits are optional.
230
It’s simple – Greens = Anti-Industry.
1980’s: Greens oppose damming the Franklin river in Tasmania, instead supporting installation of a cable allowing electricity to be imported from coal burning power plants in Victoria.
2010’s: Greens oppose operation of coal burning plants, suggest renewables like hydro, yet still oppose construction of dams.
In every single case they make for renewables, they always suggest small scale can work, but oppose any large scale application. Case in point: we have large areas of desert in this country, it would be possible to create a solar-thermal power station over an area of, say, 100km2 (10km x 10km). That’s 100 million square metres at 10w/m2 (conservative average over 24 hours) = 1GW. Solar thermal with liquid salt storage = dispatachable generation. 30 of these could power the entire country for most of the day and night. Yet this could never get the nod from the greens, as they would claim “destruction of unique habitat” or some such.
They need to be taken to task over all their pathetic protests and asked to explain for example how renewables subsidies are sustainable, given the examples of Spain and Germany, both of which are backing away from policies which not only increase the cost of living to the point where pensioners need to choose between food or a warm house, and are being rorted by thieves and those with no care for the environment other then how they can make money from appearing “green”.
41
graphicconception
“It takes more wood to produce a kW hr of electricity than it does coal.
This means that for a given amount of electricity more CO2 is produced after its conversion to wood pellets.”
From http://greenecon.net/how-to-measure-fuel-efficiency-energy-costs-and-carbon-emissions-for-home-heating/energy_economics.html
Pelletizing improves the energy concentration of wood but it is still not close to even the worst coal — lignite.
60
It is the madness of crowds.
That the results of their actions cause much greater destruction than the evil they sought to mitigate, is lost on the Gang Green.
Think of them as an infection of the body of civilization.
The starving, electricity free poor brown persons of the world, the ruptured bats and battered butchered eagles, these do not matter to the sanctimonious members of Gang Green.
Only how they feel that they are saving us all from 2degrees warmer weather counts.
This kind of stupid can only be compared to a flesh wound festering until full blown gangrene has set in and surgery is your only option.
But we are that fat,lazy and stupid, where the disinfectant of rational thought and uncommon sense would have prevented losses of $trillions of public funds, we laughed at the loons and ignored them as they crashed our economy and regulated productive useful activity into criminal behaviour.
The members and enablers of this cult of calamitous climate have revealed themselves as too stupid and dangerous to be in any position of authority, however we will recover and forget and repeat this mob hysteria in another meme within 30 years.
Parasites are parasites they never change their lust for their hosts blood.
131
Please excuse me for posting again, but the more I think about it the more angry I get. I need to vent. As an American I am more than a little put off by the destruction of forests in the US because of utterly stupid environmental policies in the the EU.
I am not against responsible logging and the use of forest products anywhere or by anybody in the least either. But this is just stupid.
220
I’m English Dave and I share your anger and frustration. I cannot work out the warped ‘logic’ behind all this. We have plenty of good coal in England and Wales. The Greenies/EU/UN have so very much to answer for.
100
Didn’t the greens used to campaign against cutting down trees? Strange world we live in, with dumb politicians who authorize this madness.
30
I have to laugh, otherwise it would make you cry. For people like myself, who were raised to be environmentally responsible unlike the green fetishists, all this nonsense is disgusting. We need to concentrate on real issues like pollution and waste, not myths like CAGW.
10
Bingo!
170
I wonder just how many years it would take for such a plant to be “sustainable” – i.e maintain the same energy output, and have biomass grown = biomass harvested (and that’s just biomass, not including the CO2 aspect).
I was under the impression that hardwoods grow/mature slower than softwoods, so I imagine it would be quite some time..?
70
On first blush… sounds like a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Are we talking about a biological perpetual motion machine?
61
Yeah well, this is sort of my point! Maintaining a supply of mature plantation timber without destroying ‘old growth’ forests (which is what usually upsets the genuine Greens – and here I tend to agree with them). Could it actually be done in the 40 year lifespan of this power plant – without some (perhaps years of) pre-planning (which is now a moot point)?
20
Hi James, not having “a go at you”.
That’s why I used the “At first blush” – which means “I haven’t invested any time thinking about this…”
Personally I am all for genuinely cost effective sustainable solutions that help manage our resource base.
I think that I am very much in agreement with you.
00
James, the UK Mail story points out that people are not regrowing the original hardwoods. Land owners are replacing these forests with fast growing softwoods, of course.
71
You are right Jo, perhaps I need to improve my reading comprehension skills? Still, softwoods have a lower energy density, so a larger volume of wood would be required, even if it grows faster.
I see nothing ‘progressive’ about this concept, unless of course, one happens to be discussing the personal finances of those involved in the wood pellet, or shipping industries, I imagine the primary producers get paid next to nothing.
20
The Greens have a hatred for coal,
Banning all of its mining their goal,
Instead they burn wood,
Doing more harm than good,
As on forests it takes a huge toll.
251
If you are a greenie, burning modern wood is good, but burning 320 million year old wood (coal) is bad.
A frontal lobotomy helps if you have a burning desire to want to try and support this sort of logic.
140
Ruairi: Excellent use of “Iambic pentameter” once again. Hope I spelled that right.
30
There is a biomass plant being built near my home town Manjimup in SW Oz. It will only be burning plantation post harvesting residue, that would be otherwise burnt in thew paddocks.
The biomass plant result in a much cleaner burn than would otherwise occur. The only downside will be the loss of nutrients that would otherwise remain in the ash residue in the paddocks.
70
And who will be checking that they continue to use only the harvesting residue ?
The Enviva pellet plant probably started out doing that but soon discovered that there was more profit in using whole trees.
40
These fools have to be both illiterate and innumerate. Or perhaps they’re just plain dumb.
All of these so called mitigation factors are part of the most easily understood con and fraud of the past 100 years.
We now know there is nothing unusual or unprecedented about our climate at all. Just look at the better proxy studies from ice cores, ocean cores etc and we find that our present climate is as good as it gets.
There were only 2 billion people in 1900 but today there are more than 7 bn and every person today has a better and longer life than at any time for the last 11,000 years. Yes even the poorest are better off and China and India are quickly dragging people out of poverty because of the use of fossil fuels.
And these new developing countries will add over 90% of new co2 emissions until 2040, therefore the blatant fraud of mitigation of CAGW??? should be opposed at all times.
The Greens and Labor are just con merchants and should always be put last on any ballot paper at the next election.
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I watched an episode of The Bolt Report about 18 months or so ago, he had an ex Labor environment minister on and the minister made the comment that 60% of Australia’s CO2 emissions were from bushfires.
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The sad thing is most “green” spokespeople spruik nonsense suggesting they are basically uneducated.
Recently I heard a “green recycling expert” exhorting everyone place “cling wrap” type plastic films – such as used on newspapers – and plastic shopping bags into recycling.
When I worked for local government as an Environmental Health Officer we deliberately excluded such objects from recycling for basically 2 reasons.
The actual mass recovered is small. Secondly these materials foul up the machinery and shut down the operations.
Things may have changed since I was involved but I doubt it. The ABC – which I love by the way except for their AGW bias – spread this misinformation with a regular “interview a greenie” radio spot.
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Why do you seriously love their ABC? I suppose it’s just great if you love wall to wall left wing comperes over the last 40 years but some of us want 50% comperes and commentary by libertarians and conservatives as well.
Why should the taxpayer dole out about 1.3 billion $ a year to the ABC and SBS just to promote and encourage delusional left wing garbage?
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These items are recyclable BUT you have to melt them not shred them. Ships (especially navies) now have a portable option available to them and melt/compress these materials into discs that are then landed and sent for recycling.
00
It’s OK Dave. We understand the sheer frustration of it all. Here in Australia we had Rudd and Gillard.
You are excused.
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Sorry. Meant to reply to Dave in the states at #13
50
Thanks
40
Ethanol is another myth. To try to save a once highly profitable industry “experts” now advocate mandatory ethanol levels in fuel. Sadly modern engines are not wholly compatible and fuel economy and increased engine wear damage results thus neutralising any “benefits”.
It may be good for some of the economy but in reality it is just another example of “protectionism” through subsidy.
Subsidy may be beneficial to enable new technologies but alternate energy subsidies have been continuing for decades now and will probably never disappear unless fossil fuels are arbitrarily shut down.
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I recently read that the biofuel industry is a leading cause of de-forestation in South East Asia.
Also, speaking as a mechanic, ethanol will destroy the rubber needles in carburetors so don’t put it in your lawnmowers and whipper snippers either. I have also been told by other mechanics that ethanol fuel will evaporate much quicker than standard fuel so not only is it bad value for money, it can cause fuel system problems from leaving deposits as it evaporates.
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Interestingly, what in Aus is called “98 (RON) Premium” fuel is free of ethanol
It costs about 8-9c/litre more than ethanol-laced fuel so a vehicle fill-up of 60 litres costs ~$5.50 more. On a weekly fill, that’s about $290 pa extra on the average fuel bill
So, what may one get for that $290 ? Decreased consumption, cleaner engine, better power, longer engine life, less maintenance costs than incurred with ethanol-laced fuel
Obviously in my view, worth an extra $290 pa, even for vehicles of truly modest capacity
70
An interesting comment over on WUWT:
The corn ethanol motor fuel mandates could, in time, be viewed as crimes against humanity.
Allan MacRae .June 7, 2015 at 2:36 pm — WUWT
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Rosco, agree that ethanol fuels are a terrible waste of a valuable food source and would disappear overnight if the taxpayers were not heavily subsidizing them.
But subsidies never disappear, they might shift in title but like income taxes they are permanent.
Our regulated services such as busses, garbage trucks, etc. all sought and got big subsidies when the cost of oil & thus gasoline and diesel doubled. They called it a temporary fuel cost subsidy. Now that oil went from well over $100 per bbl to about $50 per bbl. Guess what, that fuel cost subsidy is still on our service bills although their fuel costs have dropped back , or below, what they before the big rise in oil prices. Temporary subsidies are much like temporary income tax in the US. It was proposed and made law in WW I as a temporary tax. The rates have quadrupled, then again, and again,… an now the government is addicted to them and they will only continue to keep rising.
No tax and very few, if any, subsidies are temporary.
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the recipe for bio fuels includes petroleum fuel to grow it, harvest it, process it and transport it. Waste of $$$$ and energy.
10
This is all utter nonsense based on the absurd concept that CO2 increases because of (Western) industrialization and wealth. It is the fundamental and unproven argument that CO2 increases solely because by man and without any explanation other than two things go up roughly at the same time.
Forget the unproven computer models, which as Dr Selby says correlate perfectly with CO2 and not at all with temperature, there is no proven connection between steadily increasing CO2 and temperature. None at all. In fact you can prove there is almost no industrial CO2 in the air, but that is real science to which no one listens.
I am heartily tired of reading that everyone agrees with CO2 driven temperature increases because of a CO2 hot house effect. On a global scale this is now disproven. In fact what was agreed was that without substantial amplification by increased water evaporation, this is not true and if it was true, there would be a hot spot. Which isn’t true either.
So none of it is true and this economic and political madness is an attempt by the marxist UN climate people to take over the world economies. They do not even hide it! Maurice Newman point this out in the Australian this morning as he joins Lord Monckton in the dangers for Western democracies. Like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, there is no attempt to hide the UN agenda.
The whole point of this fantasy is to cripple democratic capitalist Western societies so that the UN can introduce a communist world government and end the era of the ballot box. Anyone who questions this is shouted down. Half the CO2 comes from China, but nothing is said because they are an openly UN admired government. The utterly dysfunctional EU is held up as another model.
What worries me is that the Green communist lobby have obviously told their followers to keep quiet and let it all cruise to November and hold onto their gains. No crazy claims! No damaged Peruvian relics! No silly protests to Antarctica. Cool it. Then as Stalin urged, not a step back. Climate Change is now true, because it is. So there. The economics and agenda are not to be questioned either. Not by Lomborg and certainly not by the public.
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TdeF
Please remember the essential differences between natural and man-made CO2 as illustrated here —
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/man-made-co2-vs-natural-co2/
20
Sunday fun:
Youtube: This is an apology from an Australian
posted by Climate Tracker – GCCA – 6 June, 2 mins17secs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOZ1twbD9ZQ
from Rappler Philippines 7 June: Australian climate activist delivers country’s apology for PH
Through a spoken word video, Chris Wright, a member of the Global Call for Climate Action, delivered his apology for vulnerable countries like the Philippines.
“So this is an apology from an Australian, for the small part I played as Haiyan raged against your shores – But I can’t watch storms anymore,” said Wright.
is Chris Wright deluded? brainwashed?
LinkedIn: Chris Wright, Sustainability advocate, poet and researcher
Location, Sydney Area, Australia
Industry, Government Administration
UNFCCC Fellow, Global Call for Climate Action, 2012 – 2013…
Australian Youth Delegate at the UNFCCC COP17 Global Voices
November 2011 – December 2011 Durban, South Africa…etc
https://au.linkedin.com/in/ccmwright
no need to say tck tck tck, The Global Call for Climate Action, & all related Youth groups are anti-coal, pro renewables, whether or not they can do the job.
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[…] What green vision? US forests burned to make costly UK electricity and produce more CO2 The Green movement have come full circle, from protecting forests and attacking coal, to preserving coal and destroying forests. The most interesting question for me (apart from how long it can continue) is what the UK environmental movement is going to do with this. Do they care about forests; do they care about the electricity bills inflicted on the poor? Do CO2 emissions matter? […]
00
To Err is Human; To Really Foul Things Up Requires an Environmentalist.
The stupidity is breathtaking.
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Mike Smith @ #25
Can I borrow that one for quoting on suitable occassions?
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No problemo 🙂
10
In principle there is nothing unusual about the UK Drax station burning clear felled American forest.
It merely follows the Greens, in this case the UK Greens, universal dictate that can be seen in almost every conceivable situation and that is ;
NOT IN MY BACKYARD!
Anybody else’s backyard particularly if it is an undeveloped country is wide open to plundering of their resources if it is in the narrow extremely and totally selfish interests of the western based Greens.
ie; Clearing of jungles to sow palm oil trees for bio fuels.
The forceable removal of entire native villages in undeveloped countries from lands they had worked for centuries to plant trees for the nefarious “carbon credits”
Denying the poorest of poor any chance of ever having regular electricity supplies because the quite small coal fired stations emmissions will lead to a western Greens promoted and entirely non evidential “climate catastrophe” .
The highly organised Green campaigns to stop the building of dams in third world countries because it would affect some water snail or fish or whatever. Dams and water that would have supplied water year round, provided electricity and provided the base for new industries and new employment opportunities plus creating wealth, health and a modicum of prosperity.
Plus so many more similar and heavily promoted by the lavishly living elitist western based Greens grossly misnamed and highly exploitive “do gooder” and “environmental” anti-development programs and campaigns that can only be described in their finality as nothing more than grossly evil in outcome for their effects and impacts on the lives of other far less fortunate peoples in other countries who, unlike the gross excesses of the life style of the Greens in western developed nations, have to live their lives having access to little more than the barest essentials for a continued existence.
But this time it seems the UK Greens at least have excelled themselves in their ignorant opportunism and utter stupidity in that they have decided to exploit the resources, not in an underdeveloped country but in the immediate backyard of an equally selfish and self interested and equally morally corrupt cabal of Greens in the USA.
So we now have a situation where;
1 / The American Greens allow the continuing cutting down of their forests [ Yeh Right ! ] so the Poms can have some reliability of power supply as the wind turbines won’t do it and solar just stops the bit of sunshine the Poms get from hitting the grass and ground and doesn’t do much else.
2 / The American Greens stop the cutting down of their own forests in their own backyard so somebody else’s forests are cut down instead to feed the Drax station.
With annoyed American Greens now on the warpath and with a point to prove, probably not now likely.
3 / The Poms pay another half a billion pounds to convert Drax back to coal
4 / Nobody in the UK can agree on a future course of action so when the supply of wood pellets ceases, Drax , one of the biggest stations in the UK is shut down and then the Poms run short of power for the winter coming up and all sorts of hell breaks out amongst the politicals , the greens and etc and etc.
.
And the end result, a highly salutary lesson to the rest of the world in don’t ever, ever trust the Greens or anybody else who advocates some sort of highly dubious strategies to prevent the onset of an even more dubious claim of a climate warming catastrophe from a whole bunch of what is becoming apparent, a whole cabal of increasingly incompetent , totally self interested, intellectually corrupted, tax payer exploitive so called climate “scientists” [?? !] .
5 / If you are from elsewhere other than the UK and the USA buy pop corn futures.
UK Green on USA Green combat using every known nasty strategy as only the Greens know how is going to be quite a spectacle!
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Biomass is also used as a fuel source for power plants here in Australia, but here we use Bagasse, the waste stalks, etc. from the crushing of sugar cane.
In fact, there are around 20/25 of them in Queensland and some in NSW. They are sited at every major sugar mill in Queensland.
They are filthy dirty power plants, judging on the one I have seen at Bundaberg, and in fact are mainly ancient, tiny little units, naturally.
Here is the link to the list for those plants in Queensland.
It might seem that they make a contribution to power generation, but they are only operational during the sugar processing season of the year. The plants supply virtually only enough power to run the mill during that crushing season, and some power is fed back into the surrounding grid.
However, here we have only (approximately) 350MW in total, running for only a short time during the year.
The units are tiny, averaging around 2 to 5MW with some a little larger. They are ancient units most of them, and contribute very little power to the rest of the grids, making just the power needed to run the mill itself.
They were also exempt from the CO2 Tax when it was in operation.
Tony.
70
And despite that bagasse dwarfs the rest of the renewables in Australia:
http://www.australianminesatlas.gov.au/mapping/files/australian_energy_flows_2010-11.pdf
Bagasse was more than all the other renewables put together in 2010-11. Hoping they update that graphic soon.
40
As is the unit attached to the mill just west out of Mackay
10
I have family living in country UK who also happen to own the house next door. As the oil bills were getting absurdly high, son-in-law accepted offers of £90,000 subsidy to convert two oil burning central heating units into one wood pellet burning furnace. The pellets come from USA and get delivered regularly by truck to his country door. Environmentally efficient? With a giant £90,000 subsidy, who cares… At least his house in winter is now warm enough for us to visit!
20
what green vision? what could go wrong?
5 June: Reuters: Alister Doyle: New U.N. climate fund to take risks to promote green tech
A new United Nations fund set up to help developing nations tackle climate change will take bigger risks than many international lenders to promote innovative green technologies, the head of the fund said on Friday.
Hela Cheikhrouhou, executive director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), told Reuters that donor pledges of $10.2 billion so far were a good start but only a fraction of the sums needed to curb greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to rising temperatures.
The fund will take risks to foster new technologies in emerging nations, she said, likening it to a company in a high-tech stock market index that has a lower credit rating than a blue-chip firm.
“If you want a paradigm shift you cannot be among the blue chips and be super conservative,” she said by telephone from Bonn, Germany…
The GCF board is likely to decide a lending profile for the fund well below the top AAA rating of the World Bank if it were to be judged by a credit rating agency like Standard & Poor’s, she said.
“The fund must be in our view the low end of investment grade … A project with high risk doesn’t mean that it is a bad project,” she said, because the GCF’s investments would be the “first of a kind … setting a trend”…
Estimates of total investment needs were about $450 billion a year from 2020, split between $350 billion to curb greenhouse gas emissions and $100 billion to adapt to changes such as more frequent downpours and heat waves.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/05/us-climatechange-funds-idUSKBN0OL1N720150605
21
Rosco,
Mandatory dilution of gasoline with 33% lower energy content ethanol, has been in effect in US and Canada since 2005. The federal mandate requires a dilution equal to 10% of total fuel sales but with no specification of what is delivered into any individual customers tank. Our pumps, next to the rigorous regular volume calibration certificates, carry the absurd notice that the fuel “may contain up to 10% ethanol”. You can not sell milk with “may or may not contain some milkfat content”, but “gasoline”, OK.
40% of the heavily price supported US corn crop goes to (mostly coal powered) ethanol production plants. Dry Nebraska, where protests against Canadian oil pipelines are staged with Democratic billionaire funding, has huge corn production using irrigation water pumped from the depleting Ogallala aquifer and contaminating it with nitrate fertilizer. The protests are framed as trying to protect the vital aquifer from the heavy Canadian oil which would somehow penetrate the hundreds of feet down to the aquifer, should the pipeline rupture.
The net result of putting corn into cars is wealthy subsidized farmers and starvation in the poor third world as corn prices are forced up.
70
As both Stalin and Mao found out starvation is the cheapest and best form of removal of humans.
War costs far too much and is not as efficient but a man made famine works a beaut.
The Greens have a goal to bring the world’s population down to about 500mil-1billion,unfortunately this isn’t shouted enough by the media or our politicians,the question should be asked why aren’t they ?
60
Off topic and maybe i should have put this in Jo’s Tips and Threads post but a couple of other projects are under way at the ROM factory aka; the garage /workshop so the useable hours in a day get a bit short sometimes.
What happens if;
1 / Paris basically succeeds,?
A very doubtful proposition at the moment.
2 / What happens if Paris is a full on bust?
Referring to 2/
IF Paris does NOT get a full sign up of the big boys in the global political game then after a time to digest the outcomes, some months in fact, just like Copenhagen, it is likely to be seen that Paris will be judged a bust.
And then the questions?
[ Speculation only below as I don’t yet have a model for this although there might be a number of former climate modelers available soon if Paris fails looking for some paying work to do some modeling on this or any other perceived or invented problem;
Which means of course that I would get the answer I was prepared to pay for.]
Then the AGW/ climate change / climate disruption scientific and green cabal might well become the hunted, politically and publicly as with no prospects of achieving any thing of substance left in the CAGW cause, the analysis could well start to switch towards just what have these scientific and green catastrophe pushing drongos cost us in wealth, societal cohesion and political trustworthiness.
And why the persistence with the claims if they are not accepted by the global nations as there are no perceivable benefits of any sort to any individual nation and lots and lots of down sides to continuing to go it alone in trying to reduce at increasing public cost in the economic, societal and political spheres, the grossly misnamed “Carbon.”
40
I’m guessing Paris will be neither a full success or a total flop. They will still get billions, and maybe some “voluntary” promises, the skeleton of some kind of international deal which can be used in future months to pressure countries to commit, and will be able to work that into a press release of glorious achievement, even if they didn’t get the whole gambit. They will have learnt from their PR mistakes in Copenhagen and will do everything possible to be able to issue press releases in the follow up which contain the following memes:
1. Most countries are doing something for the “first” time.
2. The money is nowhere near enough. Give us more.
91
And there is always the chance of a Black Swan event hovering in the background readying itself for an appearance somewhere, sometime, an event that nobody thought of or believed could ever happen.
40
Can’t speak for the rest of the world but know how Australia is going to approach the Paris shindig. Not concerned at all.
30
I hope you’re right Scaper.
10
Fingers crossed no/2 comes to fruition ROM, the interesting question is how will the backing away/down for anyone pro-CAGW occur while avoiding public disgrace or prosecution, another scenario is countries will be so strongly divided with internal power struggles that sides will be taken with a possible North/South Korea situation occurring, many will laugh this off as fantasy but consider just how much power the Environmentalist Socialists have attained over recent years via the UN and it’s many aligned organizations.
This influence of power goes right through to the grassroots of all countries think of your local council, schools, charities and then think of how the true believers of this green cause will react when even 50% of their fellow citizens publically denounce what has become a daily ritual of a quasi-religion that they feverishly believe will save the planet, even ISIS can’t compete with this measure of deluded grandeur.
I hope this doesn’t occur and that any power vacuum from hasty political evacuation is filled with sound democratic policy that strengthens that countries sovereign rights, anything’s better than the alternative.
31
And to the ecoloons there’s what makes it “Green” right there , any and all environmental concerns are automatically trumped if the process is inconvenient , expensive or better still , potentially fatal for humans . ANY green policies on ANYTHING follow the same pattern , for example :
In Tasmania , E.regnans forests have evolved so they can germinate naturally ONLY after a fire and this adaptation extends to an ability to exploit the open space and nutrient rich ash bed afterwards , the fire also kills parasites and diseases that can kill the E.regnans seedlings and such conditions also favour the reproduction of healthy , vigorous trees as they are the ones that produce the most viable seeds .
Naturally , Greens are opposed to the individual coupe clear fell / regeneration burn technique which fits perfectly with the natural fire climactic lifecycle of these forests . Instead , they want selective logging techniques to be used , selective logging techniques which are bad for the E.Regnans forests as removing only the healthiest individual trees will see the area taken over by understorey scrub ,while timber recovery becomes far more expensive and far more dangerous for the loggers .
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Jo asks (my italics), “The most interesting question for me (apart from wondering how long it can continue) is what the UK environmental movement is going to do with this. Do they care about forests? Do they care about the electricity bills inflicted on the poor? Do CO2 emissions matter?”
The answer, I am afraid, is “No” to all of the above. The mentality on display here from the environmental activists is much the same as that which motivates them when they assert that wind farms and solar farms match fossil fuel sources for economic viability, or when they deny that wind-turbines massacre wildlife (as do some solar fixtures). Only someone brazenly divorced from the truth can support any of these activist positions, but plenty of influential people do, in government, in academia (I use the term loosely) and in the press (as in “-release”). What will the UK environmental movement do? Absolutely nothing.
Those vested interests are very strong, thoroughly infiltrated and mutually supporting. This insanity could persist for a long time yet. It’s good to know that there are some people with a genuine concern for the environment in the US pursuing this scandal, but I ought to point out that this is not a new story and they have had no impact yet.
130
Exactly Owen. If this were a coal mine destroying km2 of forest, Greenpeace would already have a special campaign running.
151
Thank you Jo, and we are surprised, because?
50
Meanwhile in the economic basket case of Tasmania, near the City of Burnie, once upon a time there was a pulp mill that employed people.
80
And State Forests set aside to supply timber for a once thriving logging industry and related businesses, the Labor Greens handed these long established State Forests over to National Parks & Wildlife, no doubt to be saved for future generations of Tasmanian Centrelink clients.
80
Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the Greens…..
90
This was well known back in 2012, around the time I was in England and driving past Drax.
I’m amazed its taken so long to get some more widespread exposure.
40
8c per kWh is still three times cheaper than what I’m expected to pay at my meter.
40
I managed a large community organisation in Melbourne a few years ago and was getting electricity for 3c per kWh when purchased in bulk with a lot of other organisations.
00
It seems the cleanest and most efficient and environmentally friendly forms of generating electricity are the good old tried and true capitalist methods, coal, gas, hydro and nuclear. Admittedly coal and hydro do impact on the environment’s appearance but that impact is tiny in comparison to the huge eyesore of wind turbines and the fact that they have a net generation of greenhouse gases (assuming that was a problem).
As for cutting down modern forests to feed a power station instead of utilising ancient forests in the form of coal, that is just bizarre.
00
Energy policy and production used to be managed by professional engineers and associated people. Now it is run by uneducated fools.
10
… innumerate fools.
cf
“the spread of secondary and tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.”
— Sir Peter Medawar Nobel Prize winner in Medicine
00