I read a book a long, long time ago about a chap that joined
a flying saucer cult in 1950s America. This cult – let’s call it “the flying
saucer cult” - were convinced that flying saucers would come to earth on a
particular spot on a particular day (I think it was Christmas Eve - but I did read it twenty years ago) – and they had
to perform particular, peculiar rituals, and live together in a particular, peculiar way, to prepare.
Not to ruin the book for you - but after several years, the
day finally came: the cult members took their allotted slots in a specially selected galactic landing field, laid down to wait, and (spoiler alert): obviously nothing
happened. The next day, our correspondent got up, dusted himself off, said “righty-ho,
I guess that was all completely wrong then but nevermind” and cracked on with
his normal life.
But he was fascinated by the fact that other members of the
cult…well, just carried on. They saw the fact that the flying saucers didn’t
come as proof that their rituals and peculiar way of life…worked. The
fact that the opposite of what they thought would happen, happened, meant that
they actually doubled down on their bizarre beliefs (it would be unkind here to point to Secret Surveyor blogs passim...) More, better rituals. Higher frequency. More
peculiarity. And so on. He was so intrigued that he wrote a book about it.
Which brings me to Ed Miliband and energy policy.
We’re in a very interesting period: it’s clear that our current energy
policy is creating more expensive energy. We know this as energy prices are…well,
going up. Quite simply, if you introduce more renewables into the grid, you
make the grid harder to manage: as you replace reliable hydrocarbon base load generation
with intermittent renewable generation, which is...well, harder to, erm...manage. And if you make the grid harder to
manage, it becomes more expensive to manage the grid. And energy prices
go up. QED.
We know this is the case, as this is precisely what has
happened in the UK recently. And there’s been no impact on global carbon emissions
(another spoiler alert: what you are told about global warming is, in fact,
going to happen. We are going to run the experiment. And it’s going to be bad).
And yet, and yet…
Renewable energy is meant to bring down energy costs,
according to Ed. And as we have introduced renewables into our grid faster than
anyone else, globally, and prices have gone up faster than anyone else,
globally, this must mean that….we should, what, slow the introduction of renew…..NO!
MORE RENEWABLES! FASTER! THE FLYING SAUCERS WILL COME!
Sorry, not sure what happened there…
But it is odd. The enormous grid-failure that happened in
Spain should be a wake-up call. Sod the energy transition: it’s obviously
nonsense, will be counter-productive, will make no difference at all to global
ppm and will leave us in an infinitely worse position to deal with the
calamities that are heading our way, climate-wise.
But it won’t be taken as a wake up call, sadly, as this has
become far too politicised (“Sorry, you’re against solar panels? What are you,
a racist?” Etc).
We are now firmly in a world of preference fabrication
– I have met numerous physics professors at conferences who know the above to
be true, and will happily tell you so after a few pints (ok, we had more than a
few). But will they actually voice this at work? Of course not. Why would they? They don't want to be the bad guy at dinner parties. So 90% of people who know the truth about the flying saucers are keeping their
mouth shut, whilst the 10% who are committed to the lunacy control the narrative, and make us
all sit in the field, waiting for them to come, despite the fact that Christmas
Eve has come and gone and we're getting cold and running out of nibbles...
Best of luck everyone.
Next blog: back to the world ending financially. Hurrah!
