taking from the poor and giving to the rich

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

a picture of the neo liberal and big finance desirable future

[An_Inspector_Calls]

i am no believer in veggie sandal solutions myself, i opt for nuclear and electric cars, conservation and turning the thermostat down ...and solar heating ...

there has been no honest discussion and very little integrity in the energy sector in my lifetime .... the reason i do not take your line on renewables is the scandalous miscalculations of the old CEGB under its chair of the 'true' cost of wind power etc [check their depreciation costs etc] .... there are City types who agree with you but there is one sound conclusion in all this .... we are facing a huge investment and strategic challenge in energy, and special interests will dominate the debate ... i do not wish to add any weight to their influence since they always seek to make the poor poorer and the rich richer ....

Electric cars: well maybe one day but certainly not soon.
Solar heating: Great when they get the installation cost down by a factor of 3.
I don't see what Lord Marshall's obituary has to do with this. I doubt the CEGB ever bothered with an analysis of wind (it disappeared in March 1990). If the CEGB did do such an analysis the DCF factors would all have been sensible.
We certainly face a large investment in electricity production but then we've had a 10-15 year 'holiday'. And if we don't build wind in remote parts of the country, the grid in its present form will suffice - it's rolling maintenance throughout. And if we build gas plants instead of windmills we could save £70b according to PWC.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

it did an analysis of wind and sea power in the 70s i think, sorry i just can not find a reference yet, and there was a scandal some years later over thee gross distortion of the costings, which is why i refer to it; Marshall lied to save his nuclear programme .... no one in this game is to be trusted .. the DCF factors were at the very heart of the scandal ...

what i would like to know from the neo liberal establishment is quite why they think non British energy supply is superior to producing it ourselves ... but then their crooks are just as good as our crooks eh?

i have just spent the evening with, amongst others, a very bright 18 year old who hopes to study molecular physics when he goes to university, i was deeply impressed by him as a truly intelligent and assiduously well read young man with a taste for argument .... he thinks we will all be dead in 50 to 100 years from rising seal levels and other consequences of climate change ... i tend to concur with this grim conclusion .... [if you did not he was prepared to recite chapter and verse]; it is not a field for us older people to make decisions in, it is our responsibility to get the crooks out of it .... the standard current establishment and City world views and interests can not deal with this and do not want to .... the very 'disagreeable' [a technical personality description] dominant and greedy older males who run things have no intention to sacrifice one jot of their control and ability to do what they want unimpeded ..... according to my reading such people were hit in the head when we were hunter gatherers ... maybe, as we shall shortly be hunter gatherers again, we could start hitting them very hard on the back of the head now, before they kill all the children ... none of us will live to see this but our children and grandchildren will ....

apologies AIC but i find your posts on energy indistinguishable from the paid commentators for the existing energy interests in EC1, Wall St and Dallas, i am sure you are not such, but i would urge you to look beyond the very limited rationality you seem to be applying .... i do not know a serious scientist who thinks too differently from the young man ....

[An_Inspector_Calls]

I don't recall Marshall lying to save the nuclear programme.

I don't share the depth of your friends concerns. Perhaps he could benefit from reading Pasqual Bruckner's Fanaticism of the Apocalypse? The IPCC predicts sea levels rising at 3 mm/year - in old money, a foot in a century. But recent evidence shows a deceleration in the rise (probably because we've stopped warming). As for huricanes, droughts, heat-waves, tornados: there's no evidence of any increase in their intensity - a point highlighted by Dr Roger Pielke at the Senate Climate Meeting just the other day (http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/ind...0-07669df48b15). This is a short article, and very easy to read. There are copious cross-references to the IPCC reports supporting these statements. So I don't see your friend's vision of catastrophe.

I have no objection to a younger generation being involved in policy decisions just so long as they bring to the debate knowledge and experience of the industry. There is no point in making decisions about energy supply if you do not understand, in an island grid, the need for plant to be despatchable, capable of frequency regulation, firm, predictable capacity, and most of all, energy at a sensible price. And those that don't understand these concepts have limited rationality, as you put it. It seems to me that many involved in deciding the future of the industry have got there simply by the weight of their lobbying group rather than knowledge of the business.

[Richard Barrett]

look beyond the very limited rationality

Indeed... accepting the vast majority of scientific opinion on the subject of climate change doesn't really require an apocalyptic sensibility, only a willingness to disentangle science from vested interests; and seeing the problem in terms of local geography (an "island grid"), and cost to the Western consumer, is to reckon the potentially catastrophic human effects on a global level as less important than parochial considerations. I don't think we have much of a future if that continues to be the case.

[An_Inspector_Calls]

So just what are 'the potentially catastrophic human effects on a global level ' you're speaking of ?

[Richard Barrett]

So just what are 'the potentially catastrophic human effects on a global level ' you're speaking of ?

You gave the impression that you were familiar with the work of the IPCC so I refer you to their reports.

But I don't think Calum intended this thread to be about climate change, but about subsidies to the landed gentry and the contrast between this and the further impoverishment of the poor which seems to be an ideological obsession of the current UK government - as Monbiot says in the article linked by Calum, "[t]he minister responsible for cutting income support for the poor, Iain Duncan Smith, lives on an estate owned by his wife’s family. Over the past ten years, it has received €1.5m in income support from taxpayers"... We could also mention the fact that housing benefit in the UK functions principally as a subsidy for rich landlords rather than as a benefit for poor families (and, as is well-known, over 90% of new housing benefit claims are coming from families with at least one employed member, rather than from workshy scroungers). These are two examples of how "taking from the poor and giving to the rich" is ingrained in UK politics at present, to the point where it isn't even seriously challenged by the so-called opposition.

[An_Inspector_Calls]

Yes, but what, given your freedom from vested interests, have you managed to disentangle from the science reported by the IPCC that is alarming you? Briefing the Senate climate change committee Pielke (as I directly referenced) has cited various sections of the IPCC report which convey a climate changed vision of the future which appears to be not alarming.

[Dave2002]

Electric cars: well maybe one day but certainly not soon.

So what are those things that have been passing me on my way to work during the last year - and at a decent speed too - I think they have a name something like Leaf! OK - you're going to say that they're too heavily subsidised, and expensive, but they do exist.

I also met someone recently who was driving the very latest Prius. He said it was very good, and he seemed pleased with it.

[Dave2002]

That would be the same Fred Hoyle who held (among other evidence-free fringe beliefs) that life on Earth began when bacteria arrived from elsewhere on comets, that the universe was in an eternal steady state, and that flu epidemics are caused by viruses from space.

At the time Hoyle's ideas were not unreasonable, and AFAIK he was very willing to have his ideas tested by evidence.

I think one of the scariest things he did was involving an issue of what would happen if a nuclear bomb were to be dropped into the sea and detonated - would it cause the whole world to explode. I believe this was tested evidentially (!!) later on - though I don't have a reference - but Hoyle (presumably amongst others) calculated and said it would be OK.

[An_Inspector_Calls]

I'm quite aware of the fact the electric cars exist. Leaving aside the costs and the subsidies, the fail miserably on range. Only when that's solved, and that will take some doing, will they become viable.

[Dave2002]

I'm quite aware of the fact the electric cars exist. Leaving aside the costs and the subsidies, the fail miserably on range. Only when that's solved, and that will take some doing, will they become viable.

I think it depends where you live and where you want to go. A 50 mile range, particularly if backed up by another power source as in hybrid cars, is perfectly useful for commuting purposes, and would have suited me fine over the last ten years. You are right about some things though. I suspect that a car which might be claimed by the manufacturer to have a 50 mile range might in fact only have a 25-30 mile range under real world conditions. Progress is being made though. I don't know enough about how well they work at speed - do they require more power (obviously yes - if they go fast enough to experience wind resistance) at higher speeds, or are the electric motors efficient over a wide range of speeds? I am serious about having been overtaken at 50 mph by such vehicles. There are also some ludicrously small vehicles now being marketed by firms such as Renault aimed at urban drivers. They look a bit like electric versions of Smart cars, appropos of which I have frequently been overtaken by Smart cars when I was myself driving slightly above 70 mph on fast roads and motorways.

I have long held that many journeys by car or otherwise are completely unnecessary anyway, but that doesn't stop people doing them.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

But I don't think Calum intended this thread to be about climate change, but about subsidies to the landed gentry and the contrast between this and the further impoverishment of the poor which seems to be an ideological obsession of the current UK government - as Monbiot says in the article linked by Calum, "[t]he minister responsible for cutting income support for the poor, Iain Duncan Smith, lives on an estate owned by his wife’s family. Over the past ten years, it has received €1.5m in income support from taxpayers"... We could also mention the fact that housing benefit in the UK functions principally as a subsidy for rich landlords rather than as a benefit for poor families (and, as is well-known, over 90% of new housing benefit claims are coming from families with at least one employed member, rather than from workshy scroungers). These are two examples of how "taking from the poor and giving to the rich" is ingrained in UK politics at present, to the point where it isn't even seriously challenged by the so-called opposition.

I agree. This thread has been hijacked and is now seriously off-topic. There are already other threads relating to climate change.

[Dave2002]

I agree. This thread has been hijacked and is now seriously off-topic. There are already other threads relating to climate change.

I'm not sure I can drag it back on to topic, but financial "fixes" do seem to have some strange effects.

Student funding is an area where there are problems, and unfortunately also a class divide. Bright students from poorer families should, in theory, be able to access the student loans etc. and take up courses, but many are scared do do so, so they don't get the education which would help them to progress. Middle and upper class students will usually take the loans, either because they realise they're going to help them, or their parents think it's a good investment. They may or may not put in the appropriate effort to make the best use of the help they are given.

As the caps gradually come off the charging for courses, a consequence of this will be that only students from richer families will have access to the best education. If a fix for this situation is to raise the student grants or loans, the landlords who charge exorbitant rents for poor quality housing will simply raise their rents.

The same type of behaviour would be expected of landlords who have tenants on housing benefits. If the benefits rise, the landlords will try to take a significant cut of any rise.

I think there are other examples of what might be called profiteering depending on the magnitudes of any funding which might be available.

[An_Inspector_Calls]

It was actually Calum who first mentioned climate change . . .