Blackpool 2013???
….Exactly same number of people killed in the terrible nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, funnily enough. And with just the same result: masses of manufactured green outrage; demand by a highly vocal minority of anti-capitalist activists (Eg that living argument for never sending a boy to Westminster, Huhne C) that still more extravagant precautionary measures be adopted to ensure that producing energy is even more costly and difficult than it was before. (H/T GWPF)
This is what’s happening now in Blackpool with shale gas:
CONTROVERSIAL gas drilling DID cause Fylde coast earthquakes.
And now energy chiefs have sent a stark warning to shale gas company Cuadrilla Resources – stop the tremors or we will shut you down.
It comes as the company this week held urgent talks with the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to consider a report into the risk of earthquakes associated with fracking – the process used to extract shale gas from deep beneath the Fylde coast.
The meetings followed the British Geological Survey’s (BGS) conclusion two recent earth tremors felt nearby were most likely to have been caused by fracking.
Sounds scary. Could this mean that Blackpool is the new San Francisco, its proms, amusement arcades and fish n chip shops under constant threat of being sucked into gaping crevices? Uh, no, not exactly:
Seismologist Brian Baptie added: “These are still very small earthquakes, even by UK standards and won’t cause any damage, if fracking continued I couldn’t see the tremors getting much bigger.
So, tiny, barely perceptible tremors which aren’t going to get significantly bigger are yet being advanced as a serious reason by the Department of Energy and Climate Change for denying Britain thousands of real jobs and billions of pounds worth of cheap, abundant energy? This is madness – and about the only good news on the horizon is that at long last people are coming round to recognise that it’s madness.
My Spectator boss Fraser Nelson has made it his big new cause:
How big does Shale have to get before our policymakers wake up to its implications? There is an Energy Summit in No.10 today where Chris Huhne wants to focus on the need “to help consumers save money on their gas and electricity bills”. A preview interview on the Today programme underlined the dire situation. First, Huhne was not asked about how his own green regulations have massively contributed to the problem. Then, the managing director of British Gas was invited on to say that “unless someone discovers huge amounts of gas and imports it into the UK…”. And, bafflingly, no-one mentioned the small fact that one of BG’s rivals recently discovered 200 trillion cubic feet of gas near Blackpool. As Matt Ridley says in this week’s Spectator, that’s enough to keep the entire British economy going for many decades. And it doesn’t even need importing.
It’s being kept off the agenda because the big energy companies see this as competition from upstarts. Green warriors don’t want to know because it confounds their careful predictions of apocalypse — and destroys the rationale for subsidising hugely expensive renewable energy. When oil was discovered in the North Sea in the 1970s, Wilson’s government was delighted: here was a cash boon that would transform Britain. The discovery of Shale in Britain is being studiously ignored, because it goes against the conventional wisdom on green energy. Ridley’s brilliant feature gives you a full briefing.
And of course, the Matt Ridley piece he refers to is an absolute must-read.
Even the Sunday Times – which, like its daily sister paper, has been championing for years the kind of environmentalist scaremongering that has brought us to this dreadful pass – is now beginning to recognise that we have a serious problem here.
After years of talk about the green revolution as a far-off eventuality, it has finally collided with the real world, and everyone is running for cover.
What is certain is that the penny has finally dropped. One in four households is now “fuel poor”, which means that more than 10% of its net income goes on energy bills. Things are going to get worse — and not just because unemployment last week hit a 17-year high. Britain is on the cusp of a £200 billion low-carbon overhaul. The government wants to replace our dirty coal-fired stations with expensive offshore wind farms and nuclear reactors to meet climate change targets. The makeover is the biggest since North Sea oil and gas came on stream in the 1970s — and you and I will pay for it. Analysts said the average domestic energy bill could hit £1,800 a year by 2020.
After years of talk about the green revolution as a far-off eventuality, it has finally collided with the real world, and everyone is running for cover.
“It’s here now. Cheques are going to have to be written to build this stuff,” said Mark Powell at KPMG. “But the world has changed and all of a sudden the question of affordability has come front and centre.”
As I’ve argued elsewhere, shale gas is our lifeline at one of the darkest hours in our economic history. One day, David Cameron may finally come round to appreciating that not offending your more obstreperous Coalition partners is slightly less important an issue than not bankrupting your economy. By that stage, though, unfortunately, it may already be too late.
Michaelmulligan says:
I’d like to write another one about why the Labour Party don’t deserve to win too.
But I would also like you to actually start mapping out what a detailed UKIP manifesto might look like.
I won’t vote for them in 2015 as a protest. I’ll only vote for them if their manifesto is credible, costed and free of fascism.
They have two years to produce one.
I’d like to write another one about why the Labour Party don’t deserve to win too.
But I would also like you to actually start mapping out what a detailed UKIP manifesto might look like.
I won’t vote for them in 2015 as a protest. I’ll only vote for them if their manifesto is credible, costed and free of fascism.
They have two years to produce one.