Greta’s Laws of Irreplaceable Utility.

Actually these were going to be Billothewisp’s laws of Irreplaceable Utility. 

But as little Greta Thunberg has gone to such lengths of personal privation on her two week crossing to the USA to prove these laws I just had to give her the credit.

Of course young Greta (and her puppet masters) had no deliberate intention of proving these laws. But she has done such an amazing job she just has to get the credit.

So what are Greta’s Laws of Irreplaceable Utility?

Here dear reader, we will address the three laws one by one.

Law One:

Usage of a particular technology only dominates when that technology is far more utilitarian (i.e. quicker/better) than the competing technology it replaces.

Young Greta’s proof here is stunning. I stand in awe.

It took her two weeks to sail to the USA. If she had flown it would have taken her eight hours. That is an amazing 42:1 improvement.

Remember this was pitting a state of the art racing yacht with minimal concessions to humanity – no toilet (except a bucket) not enough bunks, crew of six, two passengers and no beer against a Jumbo jet also with a crew of six, 250 passengers, reclining seats, eight toilets (no buckets) and lots of gin and beer.

However you like to cut it, except for a publicity stunt (and maybe a holiday adventure), sailing the Atlantic as a viable method to get to the USA is a no-hoper.

True: People did do it in the past.

But that was because they had to. 

Relatively few ever did sail to the USA and even fewer ever sailed back. All that sailing stopped when they invented passenger airliners.

Even today flying the Atlantic in (say) a 1950’s Bristol Britannia airliner (like this beauty below) would be far more utilitarian (i.e. quicker and better) than sailing it in the latest state of the art yacht.

Bristol Britannia on maiden flight to USA 1958
Courtesy Wikipedia and RuthAS

Law Two:

The level of utilitarian advantage to humanity of a particular technology is directly proportional to how much cheaper it is than the technology it replaces.

I would bet that the cost of sailing, crewing and maintaining a high performance yacht for two weeks while it crosses the Atlantic is much about the same as fuelling and crewing a Jumbo jet for a single eight hour crossing.

Again young Greta plays a blinder here.

The Yacht: Two passengers. Six crew.

The Jumbo: 250 passengers and six crew.

That is a 125:1 advantage for the later technology.

Both the sailing yacht and the Jumbo (I would guess) will have a useful life of about twenty years.

Assuming the Jumbo takes one day for a return journey and the yacht four weeks and both run for ten months of the year (the rest being soaked up by maintenance) that means a Jumbo will do 6000 crossings in twenty years to a yachts 200. 

A diesel engined ocean liner could manage about 500.

Clearly and obviously:  The later the technology, the more effective it is.

Law Three

The unitised level of pollution of utilitarian advantage is directly proportional to its age.

A candle wastes about 60 Watts of as heat to produce 12.5 Lumens.. A 60 Watt incandescent bulb produces 860 Lumens while six LED lamps each consuming about 10Watts (i.e. 60 Watts total) produce a blinding 5200 Lumens.

Guess which is the newest technology.

However much you improve your candle or even your incandescent bulb it simply cannot compete with the new kid on the block – LED lights. The same applies for yachts and air liners.

Supposedly Greta’s one way crossing was Carbon free. Sadly that is simply laughable. So dream on.

The replacement crew (to sail the yacht back) have all flown out to take her over. I imagine also that the six crew that sailed young Greta to the USA will also all fly back. That’s twelve flights.

For individual crew members, grandstanding on the political stage is not an option. They have to live in the real world – and to do so entails using the latest, most cost effective and least polluting technology available.

How young Greta gets back is also of interest but as yet unannounced.

It is at this point worth remembering that whatever the level of vilification of air transport, when calculated on a per capita per mile basis it is in fact pretty damn economic.

We all know Greta could have really done it with zero emissions. That would have meant that Greta would have stayed at home and used a telecommunication link. Yet another aspect of high technology.

But how can your minders get you to promote their agenda when you are not there in person to press the flesh? How can you personally chastise all those bad people who have never been on a racing yacht and had to share a bucket for a toilet for two weeks?

And that is the rub.

Whatever the cost, for this event, even little Greta Thunberg had to go to the USA in person.

Just like Mrs Smith from down the road has to go to America to see her new Grandson. 

Or a surgeon has to go to a conference to find out and share information about new life saving techniques.

Or like the other millions upon millions of journeys to and from the USA every year that are as important if not more so than that of a child-star political puppet.

Unlike Greta they cannot afford to lose two weeks. Nor can they afford to pay for a racing yacht, six crew and a strong plastic bucket.

So if Greta’s Laws prove one thing it is this:

High technology is our friend - and the planets friend.

Going backwards is not an option.

---------

p.s. As a side issue, I do have to ask: What happened to the contents of the bucket after use? It wasn’t just thrown into the ocean I hope! You know raw sewage, pristine oceans and all that.

2017 - Its Getting Better! (...So Get Over It )

By just about any metric you want to measure it by, the prospects for humanity both now and in the future are improving and at an increasing rate.

But what about the population bomb? Global warming? ISIL? Pollution and all the other terrors and demons waiting for us all?

Well here's some facts rather than the self serving doom-laden propaganda that gets disseminated by the likes of Greenpeace, FOE and WWF.

Global life expectancy is now....70. Whereas most people think it is stuck at about 40.

How many kids do families typically have in (say) Bangladesh? 4? 6? 8?

No. It's now actually 2.5.

In fact the world went through "peak child" around 2000. Peak child means that the population of 16-24 year old is now stationary at about 2 Billion.

The world population is though still going up. That is because due to better health care, plentiful energy and a better diet people are living longer. But because the 18 - 24 year old are stationary at 2 Billion it means that the peak of the world population is in sight.

The world population will stabilize at about 11 billion within the next 70 years.

What about disasters? Remember the hysteria over Fukushima? Remember the smirking doomsters predicting death tolls of  hundreds of thousands? Possibly millions?

Yet in fact, NOBODY died from the Fukushima melt-downs - except for those poor souls were scared half to death by scientifically illiterate fear-mongers who had them forcibly evacuated.

Global Warming? True - we should not be complacent but even hurricanes are now at an all time low. The North Pole ice cap is still there, no doubt much to the chagrin of Al Gore. Sea levels are yet to show an increase.

Pollution? We are getting a grip. The incredible stupidity of promoting diesel cars has hit the buffers and just about everybody realizes how polluting coal is. Though bizarrely the grip is loosening in those countries piously parading their "Greenery". Germany continues to build new coal plant
while closing nuclear. But even then, nuclear is taking off in style all around the world. The West are the laggards, which is dissapointing.(A bit like having your football team in the relegation zone).

On the down side we continue to squander resources on junk energy like wind and solar. They have their niches but that's all. But people are getting wise to the snake oil salesmen who promise the world and provide little. Lets hope a few more of them get a good financial kicking in 2017.

Bigotry and pedantic religious dogma have also taken a beating. Mainly because world literacy now stands at well over 80%.

Education and better health care now mean that women are steadily overcoming the dogma and prejudices that have shackled them in the past. The education genie is out of the bottle. Much as the likes of ISIL and their ilk would want to put it back in - it ain't going to fit. Women are taking their rightful place at the centre of human progress.

Even Donald Trump and Brexit show how advanced nations are throwing off self serving elitist cliques. Now we just need to ensure we don't build new ones!

No doubt this is all disappointing stuff for the doom mongers - those who love to see the glass half empty - and full of poison. For them realism is now the enemy,

Today realism shows us things really are getting better.

True there are lots of things that still need fixing. Lots of wrongs that need righting.

But hey its the new year - let's be optimistic and crack on. Let the doom mongers stew.

Happy New Year!

Fracking: Will it Ruin my Locality?

There is an enormous amount of controversy surrounding fracking and/or conventional oil and gas extraction in the UK. Groups of "Frackavists" paint lurid images of corrupted aquifers, poisoned rivers and vast environmental damage.

Along with that come the other scare stories. Rumours abound of potentially collapsing house prices and ugly scenery-scarring derricks. These scare stories do have an effect and many people develop a negative opinion about gas/oil extraction, especially in their locality.

But are these stories true?

We could look to the USA that has been massively exploiting shale gas for close on to twenty years. But we do not need to. We can look to our own (long term) experiences with on-shore oil/gas exploration and exploitation.

Most people do not actually realise that the UK has a large on-shore oil/gas field and that it has been exploited for nigh on forty years. This oil/gas field is known as Wytch Farm. Wytch Farm is by far the biggest on-shore oil/gas field within Northern Europe. Its production hub sits within Poole Harbour in Dorset. Wytch farm has over 100 oil/gas wells. Currently the site is owned by Perenco Ltd. Prior to Perenco's take over of the site a few years ago, the site was run and managed by BP.

Looking down from Purbeck  across to Poole Harbour. Below is the largest on-shore oil/gas field in Northern Europe with over 100 wells. Can you see any?

Wytch Farm sits within one of the most environmentally sensitive areas in the World, laying on the edge of the World Heritage Jurassic Coast. The main operational centre is on a small island in the heart of Poole Harbour and sits about one mile (and in direct line of sight) from the area known as Sandbanks. Sandbanks is the second most expensive area in the world for residential property. If you wanted to buy one of the properties nearest Wytch Farm you would be lucky to get any change out of £10 million.

Wytch Farm is a large industrial complex yet it is so unobtrusive and environmentally benign that most local people simply do not know it exists.

But what about fracking?

Fracking is usually associated with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing of the well hole. 

Wytch Farm was one of the world's pioneers in the development of horizontal drilling. Some of the many wells that radiate out from the operational hub of Furzey island within Poole Harbour stretch out for up to 10 km. Most of the production wells running out from Wytch Farm have been “optimised”  using a technique known as water flooding. This technique is different from fracking as this is a conventional gas/oil field. Even so, water is still injected into the rock. But it is used to "flush out" the oil and gas rather than increase the pathways for the oil/gas to flow down. In both cases this activity takes many thousands of meters under the surface and has makes no difference to the surface topology of the site.

So Wytch Farm is an extremely good guide for how properly managed new oil/gas exploration/exploitation (including fracking) affects the local area.

Particularly for Wytch Farm we can state:

• Wytch Farm has not damaged an area of outstanding natural beauty.
• Wytch Farm has had minimal impact on the environment.
• Wytch farm has provided many good quality jobs for local people.
• Wytch Farm has invested heavily in the locality and in environmental protection.
• Wytch farm has reduced UK dependence on foreign oil and gas.
• Wytch Farm clearly has had no affect on property prices.

Wytch Farm, as far as local residents are concerned is virtually invisible. Occasionally when a new well is being drilled, a derrick pops up for a short while but is soon gone. If Wytch Farm were to badly affect the local area does anyone seriously believe that the likes of Harry Redknap (whose house is arguably the closest to Wytch farm) would pay millions to live there?

So how would new oil/gas exploration/exploitation in the UK affect Global Warming and Air Pollution.

The first and most obvious fact is that whether or not any new oil/gas fields are developed in the UK the number of fossil fuelled cars/trucks on our roads will be totally unaffected. As will their emissions. All that would happen is that the shortfall from UK production would be made up by importing oil/gas from international suppliers.

Crucially, this imported oil/gas would have to be shipped here.

One little known fact is that the fifteen largest ships in the world (mostly oil tankers) actually pump out more Sulphur Dioxide and particulate matter than all the cars on All the roads in ALL the world.

For the UK, all noxious emissions from cars are matched by a single supertanker.

By simply producing oil locally and so reducing the use of large oil tankers there would be a reduction in Sulphur Dioxide pollution and other noxious large ship emissions.

Keeping it in the ground is a wonderful slogan, but really, unless and until there is a valid replacement for oil based fossil fuel used for transport, it is better and more environmentally responsible to use local supplies rather than remote and uncontrolled foreign supplies.

So, if there is the prospect of an oil/gas development close to you, ask those who are telling you the lurid tales of doom and desolation what they think about Wytch Farm.

Ask them why should any new development be any different from Wytch Farm.

Of course you will probably find that they have never even heard of Wytch Farm in Dorset let alone know it is the biggest oil/gas field in Northern Europe.

Just in case you think I am indulging in the Frackavist diseases of selective quotation and open deceit – here's a few links that may further enlighten you.

Wytch Farm:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wytch_Farm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-23961621

http://www.hydrocarbons-technology.com/projects/wytch-farm-oil-field/

http://www.perenco-uk.com/

Large Ship Pollution:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/mar/31/noaa-pollution-florida-freighters-tankers-cruise-ships

Lies Propaganda and Methane

I find myself an unlikely defender of fracking. This is not because I think there is anything particularly dodgy (or wonderful) about fracking but because I think that gas is only useful in the short term. The hope for a low pollution low emissions future lies firmly with nuclear.

Even so, I feel I need to blog the rampant scare mongering, lies and black propaganda surrounding what is a relatively minor modification to a well established industrial activity.

I wont bore you with yet another synopsis of fracking or how fracturing rock in non horisontal wells has been common practice for about 40 years. Instead I'll cut straight to the fear mongering surrounding fracking.

Fear Mongering Item One: Water Table Pollution

After years of outright lies, faked or irrelevant videos (including flaming faucets) and other general hysteria about water table pollution, the US Environmental Protection Agency produced a mammoth report on the potential and real impacts of Fracking on drinking water (Executive Summary Here)

This report, while carefully worded, essentially demolishes the whole basis of the propaganda alleging widespread pollution and water contamination from fracking.

True, there have been a small number of spills and pollution incidents, mainly from poor well head and surface maintenance. These have been dealt with and in some cases prosecuted as you would expect.

In the USA, fracking is a very, very large and diverse industry. Sadly occasional errors do and will occur. All industries suffer similar and often much worse failures.

But rampant water table pollution? No.

Black propaganda always has a shelf life. Today the lies and gross exaggeration peddled about fracking and water table damage is now pretty much an embarrassing busted flush.

So instead, now we have:

Fear Mongering Item Two: Methane Leaks

Using natural gas (Methane) as a replacement for coal in Electrical generation cuts the Carbon Dioxide emissions by about a half. That is why people are excited about it as a way to reduce Carbon Dioxide emissions.

Since around 2007 when Fracking took off in the USA Fracking gas has replaced coal to such an extent that USA Carbon Dioxide emissions from electrical generation have been reduced by about 15%.

Her is a graph on how its dropped in the last few years.

It might not look like much but it is the largest drop for any country in the world in the last ten years. Today Dirty USA has electricity emissions that are lower than Energiewende obsessed Germany.

Notice how the drop correlates with the rise in fracking in the graph below.

So whats not to like?

Methane is a Greenhouse gas about 25 times more virulent than Carbon Dioxide. So if you use Methane to cut down Carbon Dioxide emissions by replacing Coal with it, but then manage to lose somewhere between 4 and 7% of your gas into the atmosphere you end up back at square one. Lose a higher percentage and you are in negative territory.

(First of all - as an analogy, would you happily slop close on to a gallon of fuel over your shoes every time you filled your car because the filler cap leaked? Or would you get it fixed?)

The general anti-fracking hysteria surrounds a respectable 2013 paper by Karion Sweeney et. al. In their paper on a single day they measured rogue Methane above one area of the USA. They found leakage rates corresponding to 6-11%.

Is that bad? Yes.

Does it need investigating further? Yes.

Does it mean that gas fields in USA are leaking between 6-11%? No.
(Paper is Here)

To be fair to Karion, Sweeney and colleagues - they do say in the introduction:
[quote]
This study demonstrates the mass balance technique as a valuable tool for estimating emissions from oil and gas production regions and illustrates the need for further atmospheric measurements to determine the representativeness of our single-day estimate and to better assess inventories of
CH4 emissions.
[unquote]

The main and most definitive source for data on Methane and other gaseous emissions in the USA is the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). They have been accumulating evidence on American rogue Methane for over 30 years.

Firstly the EPA have produced a breakdown of the different industrial areas that release rogue Methane. (document ref Here )

They also give an idea of Methane release by year.

From this graph we see rogue Methane from all sources has actually fallen by 15% since 1990 to 2013. The greatest decrease has actually coincided with the massive shale gas bonanza from 2007. Furthermore the EPA state that while rogue Methane has fallen by 15%. the rogue Methane emitted by farming has actually risen and has been offset by a bigger fall in release of rogue Methane from the oil and gas industry. So while fracking has been rapidly expanding, Methane loss has actually gone down in the oil and gas industry by somewhere between 15-20%.

The main reason organisations like the FoE continually promote mistruths about Methane release is because of the success Gas has had in cutting Carbon Dioxide emissions in the USA while their poster boys of wind and solar have barely scratched the surface. Gas has shown us how their dogmatic obsession with wind and solar has led us all down a blind alley.

We must make sure we judge fracking in the UK by the plentiful scientific evidence from the USA and not by the manipulated half truths from the FoE.

Death by Energiewende

A while back (in this post - Here) I worked out roughly how many people would be killed from air pollution by the insane German retreat from nuclear power and the consequent retrenchment into a choking mix of lignite and hard coal. The deaths, limited as it was to the partial shut-down so far actioned, came out at a staggering 1150 per year and that is ignoring the tens of thousands of seriously ill and the legion of minor debilitating ailments.

Even though my humble calculations used unimpeachable peer reviewed data from world leading academics, my post drew a fair amount of flak from assorted greens. Their continuous denial (especially relating to the use of lignite as a nuclear substitute) was absolute. Nuclear was the enemy. The use of coal/lignite as a substitute was not their problem. In fact they opposed the use of coal/lignite as well. (sigh). Clearly realism was not their top priority

Well, denial is a difficult thing to overcome. But luckily this excellent post by the Breakthrough Institute (Here) gave me an idea.

Even if we ignore the coal and lignite, perhaps we can figure out the casualty figures from the renewable sources themselves. Here, for brevity, I'll stick to the main killer among the renewable technologies. That technology is Biomass. The ugliness of the fanatical exploitation of German agriculture to service this new god is well described in the Breakthrough post above.

Using figures from Here and Here it would appear that currently Germany sources around 600 PetaJoules (or around 167 TWhr)  from biomass annually.

So how many people will this kill every year? Luckily we have a highly regarded and scrupulously peer reviewed paper by Markandya & Wilkinson to help us out (Paper is Here ) In this paper we find this table.

Using the above table we find that this 167 TW/hrs of energy derived from biomass will kill (4.63 x 167) about 750 people EVERY year. The serious illness (hospitalised) count comes in at over 7000/yr and minor though debilitating illness is a staggering 38,000.

The Green cults running this insanity want to (at least) double this usage, and so double the death toll. But remember this is simply the biomass. These figures appalling as they are, get buried in the noise when you start looking at lignite/coal.

Now let us substitute 600PJ of nuclear instead of the biomass. According to Markandya & Wilkinson this 167 TW/hrs of nuclear will kill 8 people and lead to 36 serious illnesses. 

So the terrified Germans with their Energiewende and nuclear close-down, are killing nearly 100 people from biomass for every potential death from nuclear. But at least this way they can balm their medieval paranoia over nuclear.

Of course it is actually much, much worse than this, because to replace nuclear you REALLY do use coal/lignite as a substitute. Biomass is (and always will be) a bit part player.

Thousands will die needlessly EVERY year in Germany because of the mythical fears and hysteria promoted by the Greens so they can do away with nuclear.

The Energiewende and the Greens' denial of deaths from coal/lignite and biomass, coupled with their hysterical non-scientific opposition to nuclear will see thousands of ordinary Germans sent to early graves. Every year. Year in. Year out.

Yet it is unlikely that any death certificates will bear the real cause of death. I imagine signing off someones life with "Death by Energiewende" would be strictly verboten.

Pandora's Promise

"What if what you have been thinking all this time - is wrong?"

This film was made by Robert Stone. He is a multi-award-winning, Oscar-nominated and Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. (Biography HERE ) His film, Pandoras Promise has received enormous accolades. In preview showings it has caused a storm. Indulge me. Watch the trailer.

The film relates to a journey of discovery  made  by Stone and a number of very prominent and very famous environmentalists. That the journey they question their preconceptions about nuclear power.

It is, I am told not only an eye opener but is a powerful moving and ground breaking expose against the ignorance and pseudo science that surrounds the environmental lobby today.

If you want to read a fistful of reviews go to the bottom of This Link - The unofficial guide to Pandoras Promise They are quite enlightening.

General USA Release June 12th 2013. Due for UK release later in the year ( I'll let you know when I find out)

True Believers and Earthquakes

Now our true believers are blaming earthquakes on Global Warming. Not only that, but any other climatic abnormality is also up for grabs. See Green Fudge Post Here

This nonsense does a great disservice to Climate Science. It even maligns the average believer in AGW. But it also highlights what anyone questioning the science is up against. Essentially the science really doesn't matter any more. Now it is faith and conviction.

It might seem somewhat extreme to draw parallels to the Nazi's but the parallel exists. The whole basis of Nazism was a bogus but deeply held conviction of racial superiority. This was in turn was based on an unquestioned and extreme theory of Eugenics. Whether the Nazi's concept of Eugenics had any real scientific basis was totally irrelevant. After Hitler was in power the Science was Settled. The Germans were the Master race.

First of all I do not wish to insult Heidi, the author of the Green Fudge post. I expect she is an otherwise charming and kind person. But her blinkered unquestioning belief in what she has been told concerns me. A willingness to blame anything on Global Warming in order to support your belief is a step on the slippery slope.

Blaming earthquakes and random calamities on Global Warming and then by inference pointing the accusing finger at those who seek to challenge the concept of catastrophic global warming is worryingly reminiscent of how every problem/disaster/crime in Nazi Germany was placed at the feet of the Jews and political dissidents. We all know how that ended.

The Science is Never Settled.
Consensus must always be held up to scrutiny.
Questions must always be asked.
Criticism must always be allowed.
Data must always be available for analysis.

We ignore or forget these truths at our peril.

Boiler Scrappage Scheme

Billothewisp gives one cheer to the Labour party for the Boiler Scrappage Scheme.

Getting rid of old inefficient boilers does have a semblance of common sense about. But really they hardly deserve even one cheer for this paltry penny-pinching scheme.

Lets do a spin analysis.

Positives:
Changing old boilers for a more efficient new ones is a good idea. It will reduce gas consumption and also reduce pollution.

But now comes the crunch.

The government has allocated £50 Million for the whole scheme. Thats 125000 boilers. I am also assuming the admin costs are zero (don't fall about laughing)

In England There are about 3.5 Million old boilers. (see Guardian report here)

So that makes this wonderful scheme cover less than 4% of the boilers needing replacement.

Of course then there are all the rituals and intrusions associated with any form of government grant.

1. Read the rules and regulations.
2. Send off for an application pack
3. Probably wait as they have run out/getting printed/lost you request
4. Try desperately to fill in in the forms
5. Ring the help desk to figure out exactly what information they need. Wait for 20 minutes on hold each time. Help desk is overloaded or theres a system failure etc. etc etc.
6. Repeat item 5 until done or you give up.
7. Get quotes from from approved installers. All of whom will bump up the price when you indicate you need to send the quotes off for scrappage scheme.
8. Send off application and associated quotes. (at last)
9. Wait for approval.
10. Wait for approval.
11. Wait for approval
12. Wait even longer for approval due to a "system error"
13. Finally you phone. Wait 20 minutes to be told you need to send more information.
14. Do you qualify? Maybe go through some appeals process.
15. Find the cheapest installer has now gone bust
16. Try and change installer.
17. Get no reply.
18. Hang on the phone for another 20 minutes listening to Vivaldi.
19. Find out their systems cannot cope with a change of installer after approval.
20. Repeat items 1-19 until either you succeed/give up/commit suicide.

At the end of this shambles you have to pay up front. Then send off for approval. Finally get you certificate for £400.

Now there is another Neanderthal way of doing things.

Being simple creatures, Neanderthals hate form filling. They also rage against having petty pumped up unnecessary bureaucrats intruding into the private life. They hate jumping through assorted hoops for the pleasure and grandeur of the great good and extremely well fed. We despise being conned into providing a spin opportunity for those who so beneficiently rule over us.

This simple Neanderthal would do this instead:

Make all British built A rated boilers VAT zero rated. Job Done.

No need for forms/inquiries/multiplequotes/call handling centres/approval/rejection/etc etc

A new A rated Boiler installation will cost say, between 2000 and 3000. On average say, 2500.

VAT on a £2500 bill at 17.5% = £437.50.

I rest my case.