The "kingsnorth" defence

Sometime ago six members of Greenpeace invaded kingsnorth power station. Apparently they shut it down.
If they did so they not only incurred Eon one hell of a lot of costs, but they probably also increased UK CO2 emissions as other power stations were run beyond their efficient design point to compensate for the loss of Kingsnorth.

Of course they claim to have saved UK emissions.

This was the central plank of their defence at their trial.

They successfully defended themselves based upon the fact that they genuinely believed they were protecting property by their actions.
Of course they were not - most of the emissions from Kingsnorth (which I think only accounts for 0.03% of global emissions anyway) ends up dissolved in the sea / absorbed into plants which has no effect upon property.

The government is now planning on taking away this legal defence - and they badly need to.

We need Kingsnorth if we are to stop global warming (the Eon face off explains why).
The camp for climate change have just set asside the neccersary money to rent a property for 6 months very near the kingsnorth site - they say for direct action (interestingly they apologised to members recently when one of their lawyers described them as a peaceful organisation - they want to make it clear they are not).

If we want to stop climate change we need to keep these people out. The law must be changed.

PANiC Stations

A new day, a new Greenpeace sponsored NIMBY organisation.



I'm loosing count now of many branches Greenpeace either has or sponsors.

The latest offering is at Blyth power station up in Northumberland. I still can't figure out what the protesters want to achieve. If they're successful in their aims of preventing the replacement of Blyth all RWE will do is re-furbish it, carrying on at the current (lower than optimal) efficiency. That means more CO2 - at the request of the protesters.

Barmy.

P.S. Love the name - reminds me of how people choose project names in academia.

The kingsnorth six

Well, apparently it's now legal to disrupt electricity generation, provided ofcourse it emits CO2 - and you believe that by stopping it you will save the planet.

Okay - well if that works for power stations, how about cars?

If I were to go around letting down all the tyres on every car that I found (and obviously putting a big sign on it saying so) I would walk free, right? After all they're machines that cause global warming.
Well obviously it doesn't stop there - probably 80% of our trains, all our shipping, all our aircraft, every gas single central heating system will stop.
Ofcourse with 80% of the UKs electricity system being switched off there won't be enough electricity to go around - which should account for everything else being turned off.

Greenpeace have succeeded - it is now legal to shut down the UK.

I remember (just) a Sun headline "will the last person left please turn off the lights?". Not true anymore. We're all still here, and they're being turned off.

I'm upset.

Comment is free

Whilst crusing the internet I came across a news story on CCS with a surprising amount of comment:

Why we need CCS - whether you like the idea or not! - ABC news Australia.

I was struck by the number of people trying to demonise CCS, people who clearly didn't understand it.

It struck me - how many people have already made up their mind on something that they don't understand?
I bet it's very many - afterall it's very easy to blame something - you just call it dangerous, say it could kill peoples children then stand back and watch the fireworks.

People (understandably) will do the rest.

Greenpeace have been very successful in doing this for nuclear. I hope they don't succeed with coal.

Bias

I understand why people willfully mis-interpret facts in an attempt to put their side of view across.
It's a shame that they feel the need to do it though - if they were sure about something they could let the facts speak for them, rather than attempting to conjour up mass hysteria.

Two examples for you:

1) Legalectric
This blog publishes a link to a recent report saying that shutting down a coal station in china had positivie health effects.
The report notes that the station had no modern polution reduction equipment.
Legalectric cries out "oh - we need to shut all coal fired power stations".

Rubbish. Simply there is probably a safe limit for these emissions. The world health organisation publishes some for PM10's (from diesel engines).

2) Greenpeace UK.
These guys don't have a clue about electricy generation at the best of times (I have seen a claim, somewhere, that we're not facing a generation gap!).
Yesterday they were at at a climate change summit organised by the guardian.
They claim that CCS is "greenwash" and that we can't build anymore coal power stations because CCS won't work.
All I can say is that I hope that anyone who happens to read this (unlikey I know) has a better understanding of the world than they do.
Why don't they go and protest outside the chinese embassy then?

Queensland's Swanbank B powerstation

Greenpeace have pulled off another publicity stunt by occupying an australian power station.
They claim that if every home in queensland choose to use solar water heaters the power station could be permenantly shut down, and not replaced.

Sounds great to me.

Just don't expect that solution for the UK - it's a specific solution to that bit of the world - it's not sunny enough over here for that to work. We're probably better off with ground source heat pumps, which require more energy to run.

I recently went on holiday to eastern turkey, and what struck me was that every home (or nearly everyhome) had a solar water heater. They worked, provided you didn't want a shower too early in the morning.
The ladies next door had an electric shower on the end of the solar heated pipe - so they always had hot water, with less (or even no) electricity being used during sunny hours.

One final thought:
They say that, since they are at the top of the stack, they need to test the air to ensure that they can stay there safely.
They're still up there.
This suggests to me that there can be few pollutants coming out the stack.