A broadside of bullshit from the government
There has been an outpouring of articles in the press over the last few days from the usual suspects on the Conservative Right. A veritable broadside of bullshit from the government.
Lord Lawson posted a particularly fatuous example in the Daily Mail on Friday. If you want to see why Lord Lawson might have an interest in denying the likely extent of climate change this article makes interesting reading:
Now intellectual giant Boris Johnson has weighed in with his considered opinions in the Daily Telegraph
He tells us amongst other things that
We have real worries about security of energysupply – a new building like the Shard needs four times as much juice as the entire town of Colchester.
Maybe it’s because we are at the sharp end here, but doesn’t that sentence encapsulate all that is mad about this government’s policy?
If you accept that there is a problem with “keeping the lights on”, then there are three things you can do:
Firstly you can leave things as they are – the likely result being rolling brown outs. Nobody wants that.
Secondly you can build ridiculous buildings as vanity projects which have the same power requirements as entire towns and light them 24/7 and despoil swathes of the countryside to allow yourself to do this. Maybe if you are the Mayor of London you don’t care about that as long as the people who live in these places don’t have a vote which affects you and people marvel at what a big shard you have?
Thirdly you can get all grown up and boring and start to address the demand issues which are creating this problem, and try to find longer term renewable sources of energy on the supply side. In spite of what he would have you believe this does NOT necessarily mean littering the Fylde with windmills.
Like all the fracking apologists recently Johnson spins a partial tale. he joyfully tells us that
In 2008 the cost of natural gas in the US was $8 a unit. It is now $3 a unit.
but forgets to mention that is was under $2 and is widely forecast to return to about $5 as the fracking companies cannot produce economically at these low levels.
He goes on to reassure us in that no-nonsense way so beloved of fracking supporters
As for the anxieties about water poisoning or a murrain on the cattle, there have been 125,000 fracks in the US, and not a single complaint to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Well Boris, old chap, in that case why, for example (to pick the first example out of a Google search which would have taken you less than 10 seconds to complete if you were even remotely serious about presenting facts not propaganda) did the Guardian report almost exactly a year ago that:
Fracking may be causing groundwater pollution, says EPA report
Environmental Protection Agency announces findings after Wyoming residents complained well water reeked of chemicals
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/09/epa-reports-fracking-groundwater-pollution
Johnson’s whole article, like the one Lawson wrote a day or so earlier presents bullshit as fact and ignores reality in favour of gung-ho rubbish designed to convince those who haven’t bothered to investigate the facts. Boris’s rubbish will now be being peddled by the ignorant who believe him because he sometimes amuses with his bufoonery on satirical news programs, but his idiocy here is beyond satire.
We have seen so much irresponsible journalism like this of late. It is not perhaps surprising to see that Mr Osborne has dragooned his friends into creating this broadside of bullshit. It is depressing to realise that newspapers will publish this twaddle and people will read this and accept it because they are not familiar with the facts.
If the government pushes this through, and these fatuous articles by their hatchet men are all part of this process, with the potential extent of this blight across the country they may well end up doing the unimaginable and making the Conservative party unelectable in the shires.
