Huhne/ConDem ideas will ruin the economy, generate unemployment; won’t save the planet
Gas-fracking promises plentiful, clean energy, lower prices and a kick in the teeth for Putin and his ilk
“don’t let them scare you into thinking that the Huhne way makes sense. That route points to hairshirts and the caves”
To use a Jeremy Clarkson analogy, someone should put Chris Huhne down before he plunges Britain’s economy into depression with his high-priced energy programme which won’t save the world.
Maybe we shouldn’t shoot him, but at least this childish, arrogant motor-mouth of a politician should be fired by Tory Prime Minister David Cameron before he does irreparable damage to Britain. Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, wants us to meet the ludicrous pledge to the European Union made by the previous Labour government that 20 per cent of our energy should be provided by renewable sources by 2020. Now that would be an admirable plan if it was remotely possible, but it’s not. It might be one day when the technology is available, but it isn’t now. Renewable energy, mainly wind power augmented with a bit of solar when the sun eventually comes out will add a huge amount to our monthly domestic bills as we are forced to pay the massive subsidies for this uneconomic way of generating energy. The lights will go out too because not only does it cost a huge amount, there’s no way we can generate enough energy to meet demand. This will also force many jobs out of the country in industries which consume large amounts of power, like chemicals, pharmaceuticals, steel-making and aluminium smelting, which simply means that the climate saving aim becomes completely pointless as other countries steal our jobs and wealth and proceed to generate our share of carbon dioxide into their bit of the atmosphere.
And yet the media gives Huhne a free ride.
Huhne’s lies
The other day on Radio 4’s Today Show, James Naughtie came up with that familiar line – I’m sorry we’ve run out of time, after Huhne had made his breathtaking assertion (I actually mean lie) that energy bills would be lower by 2020. A few days earlier Huhne did it on BBCTV’s NewsNight, when a pathetically ill-briefed Jeremy Paxman could tell that the man was lying in his teeth, but didn’t have the factual ammunition to make him eat his words.
Huhne’s case for renewable energy might have made sense when it was hard to argue that because we will run out of oil soon, drastic and revolutionary changes would have to be made. But the emergence of gas-fracking technology has changed all that and destroyed the green agenda, which would have enslaved us all as well as bankrupting our economy. It is simply amazing that the editors at NewsNight and Today don’t appear to know anything about this, or they’re deliberately censoring your news to keep it quiet. So let me help you out.
Gas means bountiful energy scenario
Gas-fracking might sound like an insult but it promises to revolutionise the world’s supply of energy. Until a couple of years ago, the conventional wisdom threatened Western Nations with the scary prospect of dwindling supplies of energy with at least two unattractive consequences. High energy prices would torpedo their economic viability, while their political clout would be diluted because countries like Russia and Iran might use their monopoly of energy resources to increase their influence.
New supplies of gas throw that scenario up in the air. Another great by-product of this development is the people whose noses it gets up. Fascist bullies like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Mad Mahmoud Afterdinnerjacket will be grinding their teeth, as well as the egregious Huhne.
Gas-fracking could double the world’s available supply of natural gas, according to Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), and extend the world’s supply at current rates of use to over 250 years from the estimated 120 years of conventional supply. Natural gas will provide power for heating, energy and industrial feed stocks. Even cars could be powered by gas from these new sources.
Conventional natural gas is discovered by drilling into rocks to find pools of the stuff, which is then pumped to the surface. Gas-fracking exploits an old discovery that shale rock itself contains massive amounts of gas, which can be exploited by new techniques. You drill down to the shale layer, and the well then turns horizontal, parallel with the surface. Small holes are blasted in the rock (the “fracking” bit), to release the gas, which is then pushed back up to the surface using water, sand and chemicals.
Powerful critics
America is leading the exploitation of “unconventional”, or shale gas. In 2000, shale gas amounted to about one per cent of U.S. supplies and it imported a huge amount. Now shale gas accounts for about 30 per cent of the market in the U.S., and exports are rising. Britain has big potential supplies of shale gas, as does China, France, Poland and Australia.
But gas fracking has powerful critics. Environmentalists say it pollutes local supplies of water, and can cause earthquakes. One video on UTube called Gasland shows someone innocently turning on a water tap, only for flames to gush out, apparently from a badly drilled shale gas well. Recent drilling at a site in Blackpool, England, caused local consternation when minor earth tremors were apparently set off. But this is nonsense. The so-called “earthquakes” were tremors felt through the ground from the explosives used in fracking and aren’t earthquakes at all in the accepted sense of the word. The flames emerging from the tap were a setup by environmental maniacs in the U.S.
Warmists loathe it
Politicians like Huhne and other hand-wringing climate change warmists don’t like the idea either. Plentiful supplies of shale gas will force energy prices lower, making the drive to renewable energy using wind, wave and solar power hugely expensive in comparison. Government climate change targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions will suffer if clean natural gas use accelerates over renewables.
Environmental lobby group Friends of the Earth has called for a moratorium on fracking until concerns are addressed. France, Switzerland and some U.S. states have called for a ban. These concerns come from those who believe that against all sensible, reliable and untainted evidence, man is capable of changing the climate.
An article in Britain’s conservative Spectator magazine by environmental writer Matt Ridley said arguments for renewables are made obsolete by this new source. “We’re entering an era when gas will be cheap, plentiful – and green,” he said. Some experts think plentiful supplies of gas will bypass renewables entirely on the way to a hydrogen economy.
Huhne’s hair shirt
So the future for energy is not remotely like the one Huhne in particular and the ConDem coalition in general is pushing. Because of the prevalence of new sources of natural gas, cheap energy is back on the agenda for us. Don’t let our politicians pretend otherwise. Demand that they push for gas-fracking. By all means insist that investments in future renewables that might work well one day are made, but don’t let them scare you into thinking that the Huhne way makes sense. That route points back to hairshirts and the caves.
If you let them get away with it, you’ll be priced out of your car and onto the bus, you’ll be shivering at home, and holidaying at Blackpool, where there won’t even be any proper earthquakes whether gas is fracked or not.
No comments yet.