Maybe there really is a Gaia, after all.
Glasgow has just delivered the funniest climate change moment since protesters huddled in driving snow in Washington, chanting — against all the evidence turning their extremities blue — that “It’s getting hot in here!”
Right around the British Isles, onshore and offshore, the wind stopped blowing and the sun stopped shining through cloudy and overcast skies. With the Climate Conference in full swing, coming up for midday on Tuesday, the entire British grid was getting just 1200 megawatts of power from wind and zero, zip, not-a-single-watt from embedded roof-top solar.
Of course, Glasgow was already off to an hilarious start, with leaders of big-emitting countries either simply refusing to show up, or, right off the bat, making sure that the whole exercise in futility achieves anything other than the most threadbare symbolism. Which, when it comes to climate agreements, is really saying something.
So, Glasgow is a failure from the get-go. But Mother Gaia just had to rub their faces in it.
To keep the lights on at the conference – and the heating, as the temperature struggled up from near-zero – and across Glasgow, and indeed all of Britain, as Boofhead Boris was demanding we all abandon fossil fuels, some 21,000MW was coming in Britain from, cough, cough, that CO2-emitting fossil fuel known as gas. Yes, gas generation was supplying 61 per cent of all of Britain’s electricity. Another 6.5 per cent was coming from burning woodchips – and pumping out more CO2 than comes from coal.
And indeed, most deliciously of all, thank you Gaia, Britain even had to turn some coal-fired generation back on.
You couldn’t make this stuff up. A crusading leader hasn’t been caught out this obviously and hilariously since Jimmy Swaggart got caught chock-a-block up a hooker, in the middle of his Moral Majority preaching. Here’s Boris, thundering against the demon fossil fuels — at the same time that fossil fuels are the only thing between his audience and hypothermia.
All up, as the Conference warmed up, so to speak, Britain was getting 70 per cent of its power from burning stuff – gas, coal and woodchips – and emitting CO2.
A further 16 per cent was coming from the nuclear power that Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese have joined in an exercise of stunning bipartisan stupidity and national vandalism in refusing to consider for Australia.
The Australian
All in all, Britain has blown tens of billions of pounds, putting up ugly, wildlife-mincing windmills and polluting solar panels — and getting just 3.4% of its power from them when they were most desperately needed. Bear in mind that 3.4% was all from wind: even in the middle of the day, solar wasn’t delivering a watt of power.
And remember — these are the renewable sources that “work”.
Whom Gaia would destroy, she first makes mad.
Please share this article so that others can discover The BFD