A Personal Appeal to Britain’s Politicians: Wake-Up From Your Warm Dreams! Fuel Poverty is Killing People

“The most revolutionary thing one can do always is to proclaim loudly what is happening.”
Rosa Luxemburg

There are times when I find it hard to speak politely. I left school at sixteen and worked on the shop-floor of a large engineering works for ten years, gaining a higher national qualification in mechanical and production engineering along the way before getting the chance to study for a degree in the History and Philosophy of Science. While I worked in heavy industry, I learned some choice ways of expressing myself which are basic, direct, and hurt the sensibilities of those who have spent their lives in polite company, although they got the job done effectively. So I sometimes struggle to find the right tone at those times when a message needs communicating forcefully to people in a position to influence policy, but without having them recoil and ignore things they don’t want to contemplate.

But the time for niceties has passed. Britain’s people face a looming disaster of epic proportion. Britain’s political class needs to act swiftly to minimise the damage which cannot be wholly averted at this late stage. Successive governments have set the stage for the impending denouement, so this is not a partisan rant, but a cross-party appeal to common sense. People are dying by the thousand as a direct result of botched energy policy and we must act to save lives. Now.

Let’s clear some of the undergrowth so we can see the shape of the problem. Firstly, we’ll deal with the climate scare.

The Climate Question

There is no ‘enhanced greenhouse effect’ from rising levels of co2 in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is an essential trace gas with little radiative effect compared with the enormous quantity of water vapour in the air. The hydrological cycle has massive redundant capacity to provide a negative feedback to any increase in radiative forcing from additional airborne co2. In any case it is by no means certain that the majority of the increase in airborne co2 is of human origin.

The real drivers of climatic change; the cyclically varying make-up of radiation from the Sun, the tidal effects on ocean circulation caused by the Moon’s declination cycle, and the Earth’s tectonic and seismic responses to the changing disposition of the rest of the solar system masses, induce near repeating cyclic patterns in Earth’s ever-changing climatic history. Through the decomposition of the complex signal into simpler sinusoidal components, we are able to better determine their origin, and predict future changes.

The indications are that the Sun is going into a phase of low activity levels. This is likely to increase cloudiness and reduce sunshine hours. That will induce surface cooling for several decades to come.

The Energy Issue

Supplying society’s need for high quality securely distributed energy is paramount to our well being. Clean water supply, food, health, education, and all of modern society’s benefits stem from our production of energy. Cleaner air is a desirable aspiration, but it cannot take priority over basic requirements on which peoples lives depend. The emissions from coal burning power stations are not particularly toxic at the levels they are ingested, and some of the by-products, such as sulphur are of direct benefit to agriculture. Acid rain destroying Scandinavian forest is a long debunked myth. Sulphur dioxide doesn’t make us ill. Hypothermia kills people, especially old people who have paid their dues to society and have the right to a warm home in retirement.

The Engineer’s Solution

Take a leaf out of Germany’s book and Commence building modern replacements for Britain’s aging coal fired generation capacity NOW, with whatever heavy industrial capacity we have left. Frack for gas NOW. Get the Americans in to do it if necessary, but don’t offer our tax money, we pay enough for gas as it is. Just cut the red tape and they will come to work willingly, without subsidy. Re-open any viable coal mines we still have, and start building some new ones.

The Political Situation

It’s time to encourage the British Government to grow some bollocks and tell the unelected incompetents in Brussels to FUCK OFF.  Then it won’t be able to use the excuse that the European Large Plant Directive prevents us from solving our URGENT energy crisis in the most time efficient and self reliant way. Repeal the Climate Change Act immediately, if not sooner. Use the money the European Union has been embezzling from us without providing audited accounts for the last two decades. Stop giving our tax money to thieves, NOW. If the British establishment doesn’t heed the warning, it will be brought down by cold, angry people voting for a populist party with no administrative experience. While it would be fun, it’s unlikely to solve the energy crisis which is upon us. The new Carbon Tax is an obvious ploy to steal more money from a cold population and will not be tolerated.

Summary for Policy Makers

Stop dicking around, the eyes of the people are upon you. If you don’t move fast to fix the mess you’ve created, their collective boot will be up your collective arse, and since the Labour and Conservative parties are the two cheeks of the same arse, pointing the finger at each other in parliament won’t appease the taxpayer.  You are our paid servants, not our masters, so shape up, or ship out.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up the polite language once I started ‘the political bit’, oh well…

Queensbury West Yorkshire this morning. “Our children aren’t going to know what snow is” – Dr David Viner, Govt climate advisor 2002