"Comrades, pull the curtains (of the snow-bound train) and let's pretend we're moving"
Leonid Brezhnev in Soviet-era joke
This is what you get when you try to solve a predicament and save civilisation.
This is what you get when you try to solve a predicament and save civilisation.
UK Is Cutting Down Huge
Swaths Of American Forest To Fight Climate Change
It is not often (in fact NEVER) that I can look to InfoWars for any sense about climate change, but this is a big exception!
Apart
from the obvious bias about this being about the "Left"
there is little I can take exception to in this presentation.
The
powers-that-be in Britain are burning biomass from slow-growth forest
being cut down in Virginia to replace coal so they can say they are
doing something despite the fact that burning biomass creates 8 %
more carbon.
This
is truly taking a situation and making it worse so they can claim
they are doing something to "fight" climate change.
This
falls into a similar category as geoengineering and far worse that
perpetuating the myth that "sustainable energy" based on
fossil fuels is going to "save the planet"
It
is an illustration of the predicament of burning the planet in an
attempt to maintain human industrial civilisation as well as the
truism that everyone wishes to flatly deny that "human
civilisation is a heat engine"
With
this going on it is not hard to see why CO2 levels in the atmosphere
have reached over 411 ppm and are rising.
In
the meantime Britain has a real energy problem.
This
last winter they have had a severe shortage of natural gas and have
had to bring in more than one shipload-full from Russia (something
they refuse to acknolwedge).
And
then they crow about how they have done without dirty coal for THREE
DAYS!!!
At
the edge of extinction only insanity remains.
Cold Snap Triggering Gas Crisis in U.K. Shows Rising Supply Risk
From the Guardian
UK runs without coal power for three days in a row
Demand
lower following recent warm weather, making it easier for gas,
renewables and nuclear to cover UK’s needs
The UK has been powered without coal for three days in a row, setting a new record and underlining the polluting fuel’s rapid decline.
Coal
has historically been at the cornerstone of the UK’s electricity
mix, but last year saw the first 24-hour period that the the country
ran without the fuel since the 19th century.
New
records were broken last week when zero power came from coal for
nearly 55 consecutive hours.
That
milestone in turn was smashed on Monday afternoon and the UK passed
the 72-hour mark at 10am on Tuesday. The coal-free run came to an end
after 76 hours.
Without
the fossil fuel, nearly a third of Britain’s electricity was
supplied by gas, followed by windfarms and nuclear on around a
quarter each.
The
rest came from biomass burned at Drax power station in North
Yorkshire, imports from France and the Netherlands, and solar power.
Drax said it expected to go without coal on Tuesday.
It seems that the Ecologist (founded by my eco-hero, Teddy Goldsmith agrees..
Hardwood forests cut down to feed Drax Power plant, Channel 4 Dispatches claims
Brendan Montague
16th
April 2018
Drax Power
- is it really producing renewable energy?
Wikipedia
Creative
Commons
A
Dispatches investigation has uncovered evidence of hardwood forests
being chopped down to provide 'green energy' for the UK. Experts say
unique habitats rich in wildlife are under threat as Britain’s
power stations switch from burning coal to wood, writes BRENDAN
MONTAGUE
Huge areas of hardwood forest in the state of Virginia are being chainsawed to create 'biomass' energy in Britain as the government attempts to reach targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in efforts to tackle climate change, an investigation by Channel 4 Dispatches has found.
A
key part of government efforts to hit its green energy targets is to
switch from generating electricity from burning coal to burning wood
- or so-called biomass. It’s a policy that is costing taxpayers
more than £700 million per year through a levy on their
electricity bills.
The
biomass industry and government argue that because wood is a
renewable source of energy and trees can be replanted to reabsorb
carbon dioxide this policy is good for the environment.
Simple
experiment
Antony
Barnett, reporter at Dispatches, travelled to the southern
states of the USA to investigate the source of wood that is now
being turned into millions of tonnes of wood pellets to be burnt in
Britain’s largest power station, Drax, in North Yorkshire.
Footage
reveals huge areas of hardwood forest in the state of
Virginia being chopped down and removed to a factory
owned by US firm Enviva that grinds up logs into pellets. A large
proportion of these pellets are then shipped across the Atlantic to
be burnt at Drax in the UK - one of Enviva’s main customers.
Britain
has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 57 percent by 2030 and
getting Drax to switch from burning coal to wood is meant to play an
important part in that. Drax now produces up to 17 percent of
Britain’s 'renewable' electricity, enough to power four
million homes.
The
power station giant claims that burning pellets instead of coal
reduces carbon emissions by more than 80 percent.
However,
Dispatches conducted a simple experiment at a laboratory at the
University of Nottingham to compare the carbon dioxide emitted when
burning wood pellets, similar to those used by Drax, instead of
coal.
Dozens
of scientists
It
found that to burn an amount of wood pellets that would generate the
same amount of electricity as coal it would actually produce roughly
eight percent more carbon.
Biomass
is viewed as ‘carbon neutral’ under European rules. This
means Drax is not obliged to officially report the carbon emissions
coming out of its chimney stack. Dispatches calculated that if Drax
were to report on the full extent of its emissions it would show
that last year they amounted to 11.7 million tonnes of CO2.
Drax
claims that the replanting of trees means all the C02 will be
reabsorbed. But scientists argue that it will take decades for
forests to regrow and subsidising biomass from wood pellets is
fuelling an industry that’s making climate change worse in the
short term.
Professor
Bill Moomaw helped lead a team that won a Nobel Peace Prize for its
work on climate change at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change. He is one of dozens of scientists who have written
to the British government, warning against this policy.
Professor
Moomaw said in an interview with Dispatches: “If we take the
forests and burn them the carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere
instantly, in a few minutes. It takes decades to a century to
replace that.
Carbon
absorbed
“Britain
may be on track to eliminating the use of coal but they are not on
track to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. We’re not going to
meet our one and a half or two-degree targets that all governments,
including the British government, agreed to in Paris.
"Burning
more wood makes it absolutely impossible to meet that target. We now
know that if we overshoot that the consequences last for 100s to a
thousand or more years. So there’s no off switch,
there’s no reverse gear.”
Andy
Koss, chief executive of Drax Power, defended the policy
of burning wood pellets in an interview with the programme: “I
am very comfortable that all the material what we source meets
regulatory standards in the UK and meets our very strict
sustainability criteria.”
Koss
said the site Dispatches had seen being logged was atypical and that
the “vast majority” of its wood comes from residue and waste
material. He said: “We’ve obviously looked at this as
well. The site was a working forest, it was left
unmanaged.
"The
owner of that forest wanted to clear this using standard harvesting
techniques to turn it back into a working forest. That forest is
being regrown. We know the owner of that particular tract -
that will grow and there will be more carbon absorbed.”
Sustainability
provisions
On
the question of Drax’s claim that by burning wood instead of coal
it reduces carbon emissions by more than 80 percent, Koss admitted
it didn’t include emissions from its chimneys: “We don’t
count that. The government doesn’t count that.
"It
doesn’t include stack emissions because if we are sourcing
sustainable biomass from working forests, where this is more growth
than is being harvested, we see the carbon as being reabsorbed.”
Envier
said in a statement to Dispatches that it "works to industry
leading, strict sustainability and wood sourcing policies and
certifications."
It
added: We will not work with any supplier that does not adhere to
our commitment to protecting, nurturing and growing forests. Enviva
does not accept wood from old growth or independently designated
conservation areas. The small family owned site allegedly being
shown in the footage is made up of younger trees = not the
alleged 80 to 100 years - and is not a sensitive wetland
forest.”
A
spokesman for the Government’s Department for Business, Energy &
Industrial Strategy told Channel 4: “Between 1990 and 2016,
the UK reduced its emissions by over 40 percent. We have the
most stringent biomass sustainability provisions in Europe.
"Environmentally
friendly, low carbon bioenergy can help the UK to transition to a
more diverse energy mix, increase our energy security, keep costs
down for consumers and help us to meet our 2050 carbon targets.”
This
Author
Brendan
Montague is editor of The
Ecologist.
This article is based on a press release from Channel 4
Dispatches. Dispatches: The True Cost of Green Energy will be
shown at 8pm on Monday 16 April on Channel 4.
PS. This is the audio of the Dispatches documentary which is not available in this country.
PS. This is the audio of the Dispatches documentary which is not available in this country.
More from the Ecologist
No Drax! There's nothing 'sustainable' about big biomass
The
Drax power station in Yorkshire is the UK's biggest CO2 emitter,
burns more wood each year than the entire UK timber harvest, and is a
major importer of coal from strife-stricken regions of Colombia,
writes Frances Howe. This Thursday campaigners will target the
company's AGM to highlight its impacts on forests, biodiversity,
climate and communities, in the face of Drax's PR offensive to make
biomass appear 'sustainable'.
Even the author of this article in the Guardian seems to agree.
Burning wood for power is ‘misguided’ say climate experts
Using
biomass instead of fossil fuels may not be the answer to averting
global warming
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