Those of you with a slightly Warped? sense of humour will enjoy this from one of our SAS members who doesn’t like to be named!! Hope it raises a smile.
Lack of wind sparks new fears over green energy revolution
Lulls trigger questions over the long-term predictability of wind patterns amid escalating climate change
By Blow Hard, a wind enthusiast
A lull in wind speeds over the summer was felt in boardrooms across Europe. As it blew at its weakest for around 60 years, major energy companies lost millions of pounds in electricity sales.
By September, households started to feel the pain. Coal and gas-fired plants were switched on to make up for loss of wind, compounding a global shortage of gas and pushing electricity prices to record levels.
“It’s very serious,” the chief executive of a Danish oil-turned-wind giant, told the FT in August, as he warned shareholders of a hit to profits. “It is like you’re a farmer and it doesn’t rain.”
Countries are relying more on wind to meet their energy needs in the rush to slash carbon emissions. The technology accounts for more than 6pc of global electricity, and is set to grow as fossil fuels are muscled out of the way by cleaner sources.
In the UK, turbines on land and dotted around the coast generate about a quarter of domestic electricity over the year. The Prime Minister says he wants to make wind the backbone of the energy system, with a huge increase in offshore turbines, as part of the legally binding push to net zero.
But events like the wind lull have triggered questions over whether it was a sign of things to come, and how predictable wind patterns are in the long term amid climate change.
It’s an area of growing corporate and scientific research, with huge consequences for energy security and business investment. But much remains unknown.
“Given what we saw in 2021, I think we will see and we need studies to understand [wind trends] better, especially given our increased reliance on wind as an energy source,” says a professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Anticyclone, near London.
A SCOTTISH Correspondent writes
In a new development this weekend, the Queen of Grievance, otherwise the Queen of Scotland, blamed “the Scrooges at Westminster” for the lack of wind across the UK. “It’s absolutely shocking” she said between clenched teeth. “Windy Boris and his cronies at Westminster create so much hot air, you’d think there would be enough wind to allow us to heat the whole of Scotland, and sell the surplus to the English at absurdly high prices so as to support the Scottish economy. After all, that would only be fair, since we deserve to be supported by the English, as we have been a colony since 1707, but it is they who should really be our slaves and vassals since the battle of Bannockburn (1314). I mean, fair’s fair, and I’m all for a fair wind!”
Andy Keithson, the CEO of OchAyetheNoo Power, joined the clamour for support by maintaining that it is only with English consumers and taxpayers’ money (otherwise known as Trouser Constraint Payments) that massive foreign owned companies like OATNP could possibly survive and employ all those highly paid people in posh offices on Glasgow who would otherwise have to be digging out the coal down the mines of Lanarkshire or somewhere else. Without them there would be no wind. The fact that there is about 300 years of coal left has been left out of the calculation. The number of unemployed miners has reached an all time record. The Renewable Energy lobbyist bleated that “The wind is always blowing somewhere.”
In Aberdeen, the Cambo oilfield came back into the frame after MakSiccar Investments took the Scottish “Government” to Court in a case of premature adjudication, claiming that Her Majesty had already decided their application case before the application for an oil exploration licence was presented. Oil rigs work much better when there’s no wind. Judges were severely critical of the First Minister, holding that the pretence of a neutral determination, independent of Government, was essential to the rule of law, and that decisions should be made in a properly secret way, excluding the public as far as possible, and not made in the course of a TV interview.
Following the Rangers FC prosecutions, Legal Costs for the lack of wind were also subsequently paid to a Mr D Trump, an overseas golf course owner whose five star facilities in Aberdeenshire, were trashed by an “experimental “ offshore windfarm which turned out to simply be a windfarm in disguise, while still pretending that it could power the entire Northeast of Scotland. He had lost a case some years back in the Supreme Court, when judges held that his counsel’s argument that Westminster legislation which required a decision maker to pay proper respect to the rule of law, actually meant something completely different.
Standing looking out to sea, he said “I won really bigly this time; those Scottish lawyers are really great value. Great guys. My mother would have been one, probably a QC or Chief Justice, but she emigrated”, he said from the warmth of his Florida Club, which is entirely powered by oil and gas piped from Alaska, and which has no visible wind turbines on any of its fairways. “If I’m impeached by any of those climate change pro vaccine crazies, I’ll be sending for some of those Scottish wigs, you watch.
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