Why is Beddington against thorium

GWPF have an interesting article about a promising new nuclear power technology - thorium reactors. Perhaps most intriguing is Sir John Beddington's opposition to their development:

...although the Coalition Government continues to pour subsidies worth many millions of pounds into wind power, which, as Live revealed earlier this year, produces at best intermittent energy with potential environmental costs, it has so far decided to do nothing about thorium except to maintain a ‘watching brief’. 

Click to read more ...

Lynas on wind farms

Mark Lynas has a must-read article about the impact of wind farms on bird populations. This quote from an Oxford biologist is just one of the memorable moments...

I think wind farms are potentially the biggest disaster for birds of prey since the days of persecution by gamekeepers, and I think wind farms are one of the biggest threats to European and North American bats since large scale deforestation. The impacts are already becoming serious for white-tailed eagles in Europe, as is abundantly clear in Norway.  A wind farm – built despite opposition from ornithologists – has decimated an important population, killing 40 white-tailed eagles in about 5 years and 11 of them in 2010.  The last great bustard in the Spanish province of Cadiz was killed by a wind development.  In my experience, some “greens” are in complete denial of these impacts, or hopefully imagine that these bats and birds can take big losses: they can’t because they breed very slowly.

The question that readers will no doubt want to ask is this: how much responsibility does Mark Lynas bear for this disaster?

Greens trash national parks

Tony at Harmless Sky is highlighting a new planning document introduced by the Welsh Assembly, which will allow windfarms to be built in national parks. There is a petition afoot to try to stop it.

Sir John Houghton and George Monbiot both live in Wales if I recall correctly.

Update on Jun 11, 2011 by Bishop Hill

Tony emails to point out that the document is not new, but that it is having an increasing effect.

The truth will out

Updated on Jun 4, 2011 by Bishop Hill

Phelim McAleer has an interesting post about the movie Gasland, in which residents of a US town are famously shown igniting their tap water.  The insinuation is that this is something to do with fracking activitiy in the shales thousands of feet below the ground.

Click to read more ...

Milking it

H/T Decaux for this story from the Scotsman:

SCOTLAND'S oldest university is hoping to become the first higher education institution in the country to generate all its power through its own wind farm.

After a three-year investigation and scientific study of wind levels in Fife, St Andrews University yesterday submitted an application for planning permission for the farm, which would be built on farmland six miles from the town.

...The university sees the proposal as a key part of its strategy to offset what it described as the "punitive" national costs of energy.

Still more feed-in-tariffs you and I have to pay for.

Petition against windfarms

Another petition - this time calling for a moratorium on windfarms.

Sign here.

Manmade earthquakes

Commenters on unthreaded have been pointing to a story this morning about fracking operations near Liverpool Blackpool being halted because of a possible link to earth tremors.

A brief Googling suggests that this is possible, but the implications are not exactly scary.

Earthquakes induced by human activity have been documented in a few locations in the United States, Japan, and Canada. The cause was injection of fluids into deep wells for waste disposal and secondary recovery of oil, and the filling of large reservoirs for water supplies. Most of these earthquakes were minor. Deep mining can cause small to moderate quakes and nuclear testing has caused small earthquakes in the immediate area surrounding the test site, but other human activities have not been shown to trigger subsequent earthquakes. Earthquakes are part of a global tectonic process that generally occurs well beyond the influence or control of humans. The focus (point of origin) of an earthquake is typically tens to hundreds of miles underground, and the scale and force necessary to produce earthquakes are well beyond our daily lives.

Green poison

The EU has exempted a number of "green" technologies from its hazardous chemicals regulations.

The solar industry was celebrating last week after the EU confirmed late on Friday that it would exempt solar panels from new chemicals regulations that had threatened to effectively ban certain thin-film solar technologies.

The revised directive on hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment, which was ratified into law last week, imposes a general ban on six hazardous substances, including cadmium, which is commonly used in cadmium telluride thin-film solar technologies.

So it appears that in the EU, at least, poisoning the environment is perfectly alright so long as you are an environmentalist. The end justifies the means.

(H/T Messenger)

Scientists squeal at rising energy bills

If I remember what I have been told correctly, the scientific community is united in its belief that global warming is a real and present danger. So pressing is the crisis that it demands dramatic cutbacks in carbon emissions; rising fuel prices are therefore pretty much a given. There is only a handful of swivel-eyed "deniers" who say otherwise.

Or so the story goes.

If I actually believed this then I would find it hard not to feel just the tiniest hint of satisfaction at yesterday's article in the Guardian:

Click to read more ...

Lockwood: no wind for 40 years

Well, that's not exactly what he said, but it's not far off:

...the last two winters have featured exceptionally low temperatures and were remarkably still when they should have been the windiest seasons of all, as high pressure diverted the jet stream from its normal position.

Meteorologists have found that the position of the jet stream has been influenced by the lower levels of activity on the Sun. This decline in sun-spot activity is expected to continue for the next 40 years, with potentially serious consequences for the viability of wind farms.

Professor Mike Lockwood, from Reading University, said: “Changes in the jet stream will change the pattern of winds that we get in the UK. That, of course, is a problem for wind power.

“You have to site your wind farms in the right place and if you site your wind farm in the wrong place then that will be a problem.”

So, when you see a windmill standing still, despite all the billions of subsidy thrown at them, you can console yourself with the fact that things will have picked up a little in time for your children to see the benefit.

If only Prof Lockwood had discovered this before we spent all that money eh?

Update on May 30, 2011 by Bishop Hill

Mike Lockwood via email says his research on solar/windspeed links is not new and the reduced average windspeed stuff mentioned in the article is nothing to do with his work. I think what he means here is that his research shows the jetstream will move (a problem for windfarms in itself) but says nothing about average windspeeds.

Select committee backs shale

The House of Commons Energy Select Committee has backed shale gas drilling in the UK. According to Roger Harrabin at the BBC:

A Commons committee has urged ministers to support plans for controversial shale gas drilling in the UK.

The energy select committee said environmental problems associated with it in the US could be overcome by tight regulation and good industry practice.

But the MPs said the UK government would need to be vigilant to ensure the technology did not pollute water or produce excessive greenhouse emissions.

H/T Woodentop in Unthreaded

Huhne's damaging legacy

With serious allegations about Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne's driving licence, the last thing our favourite politician needed was this:

Even if Chris Huhne does lose his job over allegedly persuading his ex-wife to take his penalty points for a speeding offence, he will have been in office long enough to leave a damaging legacy – last week’s Carbon Budget, which commits the UK to halving emissions of carbon dioxide by 2025.

Breezily insisting that this would set the country on a path towards ‘green growth’, Mr Huhne told the Commons that the cuts in emissions, which can be achieved only by a radical and hugely expensive reconstruction of the energy industry, would not only protect the climate, but ensure prosperity.

Others are less optimistic. According to Tata, the Indian multinational that owns the great steelworks at Newport and Port Talbot, Mr Huhne’s Budget is likely to drive much of British industry abroad – to countries including the United States, China, India, Japan and everywhere else in Europe, which have made no binding CO2 commitments, and where energy will thus remain much cheaper.

Read the whole thing (scroll down the page to find the top of the story). The article also looks at the Cambridge conference and Svensmark.

(H/T to lots of people for this one - and sorry I keep forgetting to hat-tip people. I've got one or two rather big things on at the moment. Getting snowed under.)

Repeal the Climate Change Act

There is a petition afoot to repeal the UK's Crazy Climate Change Act.

Sign here.

Quote of the day

Welcome to the neo-medieval world of Britain’s energy policy. It is a world in which Highland glens are buzzing with bulldozers damming streams for miniature hydro plants, in which the Dogger Bank is to be dotted with windmills at Brobdingnagian expense, in which Heathrow is to burn wood trucked in from Surrey, and Yorkshire wheat is being turned into motor fuel. We are going back to using the landscape to generate our energy. Bad news for the landscape.

Matt Ridley

Diary date for Cambridge

Readers in the Cambridge area may be interested in this meeting, which features two familiar names, in the shape of Lord Oxburgh and Mike Kelly. Lord O is described as

...well known for his work as a public advocate in both academia and the business world in addressing the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and develop alternative energy sources.

Just the man to run an inquiry into allegations of misconduct against climate scientists then.

The subject of the meeting is the energy gap:

The UK Government has a Herculean task – in both maintaining electricity supplies against obsolescent generating capacity, and in meeting very challenging carbon reduction targets, and moreover in achieving this through market mechanisms.

I wonder if Lord O will be arguing for extensive investment in wind power?