to be sceptical about man made climate change

[Brioche201]

.. to a layperson like myself the evidence does not seem robust (record antarctic ice caps) .Even if it were true 'the climate' is such a complicated thing affected by thousands of factors.Is it likely that changing just one or 2 of the factors that are within out control would make a difference (or even that the difference would be in the right direction)
Do you still believe in man made climate change or think it is mainly rooted in politics?

[FreeWorker1]

Ego - no I cant see an issue. The gasses it emits are just the same whether it burns coal or wood chips.

[FreeWorker1]

I used to be able to see Drax, Ferrybridge and Eggborough out of my dormitory window at boarding school away in the distance with smoke coming from their chimneys in the mist like ships sailing across the Vale of York.

Drax is quite an awesome power station. It is so cruial to the stability of the grid that when it got into financial difficulty in th early 2000s the Govt brokered a special contract with NGC to keep it going over the winter. In its heyday it burned 20 tonnes of coal a minute when it was ramping its boilers. It has FGD on its smokestack and apart from its CO2 emisison is clean and very efficient. Its the closure of something like Drax due to the climate change mandate that would be a real waste of capital. Coal is incredibly cheap again and there is no reason for it to close.

Coal can easily be brought in on bulk carriers at miniscule cost and if the port and rail link was upgraded from the coast instead of investng in wood chip processing it woudl have a bright and very long future life.

[LurkingHusband]

Would you want to live near a nuclear power station?

Happily. I was offered a job with BNFL back in the day, but ended up in a more traditional energy industry (more money !).

[JassyRadlett]

Biomass is troubling for that reason - if not done right it's worse than coal. Drax says it's lifecycle emissions are 80% less than coal but that depends on every step in the chain doing it right.

The Drax/Eggborough/Ferrybridge corridor is (was!) really something.

[FreeWorker1]

Drax used to burn local coal. Now it partly burns woodchip pellets from the USA and I wonder how much CO2 is used in the production and transport of those.

[knobblyknee]

YABU.

Everyone accepts that the climate changes in cycles, and that thousands of variables affect those changes, but then wants to deny that we are one of those variables.

You can't burn all the oil and all the coal and all the trees and have millions of cows and pigs churning out methane without it having an effect.

[JassyRadlett]

Would you want to live near a nuclear power station? I'm not sure I would - even though I know the risk of something happening is minute

I'd honestly rather live near a nuclear plant than a coal one.

[JassyRadlett]

Nuclear is a massively divisive issue for green NGOs and environmentalists. And that's the issue - the 'climate' lobby isn't that simple. There are those who are climate-or-nothing, those for whom nuclear is a red line because of radioactive waste/the hypothetical potential for environmental distaster from an accident, those who make money from renewables and for whom their technology is The One, and who won't hear that another should be equal or more prominent, those who are pragmatists about nuclear, those like the RSPB who are more worried about other forms of low carbon on their interests, etc. This is an interesting article. Then you get people like Tindale and Lynas who have changed their minds over time as the evidence has changed and increase, which I always think is a sign of being a proper-grown up.

[Kennington]

Well we are pumping a lot more carbon dioxide into the environment as there are more of us on the planet.

This acts as a blanket to trap in heat in our atmosphere.

But you can call it what you want really.
Even if you don't think the climate change is due to humans the temp is increasing slowly.

[LurkingHusband]

carries the spectre of catastrophic risk

Does it ? More people have died in mining disasters this year, than the entire nuclear industry over all time.

[FreeWorker1]

Interesting article in the Guardian warning about a new form of Climate Denialism.

"But not so fast. There is also a new, strange form of denial that has appeared on the landscape of late, one that says that renewable sources can’t meet our energy needs.

Oddly, some of these voices include climate scientists, who insist that we must now turn to wholesale expansion of nuclear power. Just this past week, as negotiators were closing in on the Paris agreement, four climate scientists held an off-site session insisting that the only way we can solve the coupled climate/energy problem is with a massive and immediate expansion of nuclear power. More than that, they are blaming environmentalists, suggesting that the opposition to nuclear power stands between all of us and a two-degree world."

I think this article lays bare how the global warming lobby is really a 'renewables lobby' and there are a lot financial interest in there. More to the point the age old 'anti nuclear' stance of many climate change lobbyists is clear from this article.

I do not support renewables or nuclear unless they make economic sense but here we see the ideology speaking loud and clear. It is not about climate change at all.

The whole debate is dominated by a bunch of anti-capitalist and anti nuclear activists who warp themselves in a green cloak. Meanwhile vested financial interest groups scoop up subsidy while the rest of us pay.

[JassyRadlett]

Under, you're aware that constraint payments are also made to gas generators? And that much more generally goes to gas generators? It depends on who comes in with the lowest bid to reduce output.

And as the network is upgraded, the payments will decrease as the network will be able to handle more capacity - there has been a particular issue in connecting new Scottish wind farms before the Western Link was opened which have caused issues for that part of the system. But constraint payments have been around much longer than wind power.

I tend to think it's a good thing that new capacity comes online before an old asset is turned off, thus maintaining capacity, even though there are short term costs. It's more economic than other options, as are transmission licences that guarantee a level of access to the market, reducing costs associated with risk in building new projects.

Unless you'd prefer higher bills?

[UnderCrackers5]

Meanwhile
Giant energy companies get paid over half a million a month for 30 windmills.

On condition they switch them off.

They get paid even more if they leave them on

Green madness..

[JassyRadlett]

That sums up the fossil fuel industry quit nicely.

[FreeWorker1]

Jassy - I am sceptical about any entity that lobbies for subsidy and/or minimises the tax it pays.

[JassyRadlett]

There are also quite a few people in the climate change lobby who have set up their own private businesses to profit from what they are lobbying for as well.

No doubt. It's a capitalist system, after all.

My point remains - why scepticism about the motives of the climate change lobby, based on vested interests, but not similar scepticism or concern about the motives of the fossil fuel lobby and the research they fund?