Monday 7 March 2022

Gas Price: This Should Be Obvious, But ...

This is off the scale - and totally unsustainable.  In the sense that the west cannot sustain what we normally consider civilisation like this.                      (Graphic: BBC)

"Civilisation is energy intensive" (James Lovelock, 2005)

ND 

35 comments:

dearieme said...

Arrest the Labour Party and set them to mining coal under the North Sea. They need to re-connect to their roots, don't they?

Or would it be better to use the eco-fascists?

I know: use both.

Don Cox said...

It looks like a real rise followed by a speculative bubble.

Am I right in thinking that the main cause of the real rise is the rising Chinese middle class wanting more home comforts ?

Don

Nick Drew said...

Rising demand in China, certainly: but the whole thing kicked off (last January, see several blogposts since) with (a) a cold winter in the Far East and (b) they & the Koreans et al were actually trying to cut back on coal use!

(Not that China cares a fig abt CO2, it's that coal smog actually kills their people by the thousand)

Nick Drew said...

that's Jan 2021, BTW. I wrote about it in Feb 21, predicting a surge in inflation

DJK said...

I seem to remember the last spike was quickly deflated by some LNG shipments being diverted to Europe.

But plenty of other stuff happening, like grain prices spiking. (Watch out, Middle East).

Don Cox said...

"Not that China cares a fig abt CO2, it's that coal smog actually kills their people by the thousand"

As it did in London before the Clean Air Act.

Don

jim said...

So, do I let my fixed price tariff expire this month and go for the capped variable rate? How long is HMG going to stand the pain of forcing the energy suppliers to lose money. Until after the May elections but then what.

I don't think a few LNG shipments are going to hold this one down. Never mind we can all save £0.001 growing our own veg.

dearieme said...

"As it did in London before the Clean Air Act."

Lomborg points out that air pollution in London decreased at the same pace before the Clean Air Act as afterwards.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Skeptical-Environmentalist-Measuring-State-World/dp/0521010683

DJK said...

RPI hit 26.9% in August 1975, it's currently 7.8%. Anybody care to make a punt as to how high it will go?

The Thatcher government introduced a tax and prices index (TPI) to show how price increases were mitigated by tax cuts (remember those?) I wonder if that is still calculated?

E-K said...

There is no shortage of such energy in the UK. Just a refusal by our obstinate political class to extract it at the behest of a minority.

What is the true agenda ?

PS

SAGE to be disbanded on the quiet. Just about every prediction they made was wrong and by huge margins - especially the last one that Boris was going too fast in relaxing restrictions.

Perhaps they well knew it could be the end of their little power trip.

E-K said...

PPS, I expect every single member of SAGE is a greenist.

See a connection ?

E-K said...

And is this the scandal of the pandemic ???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfyOihhAD4A&ab_channel=Dr.JohnCampbell

Ivermectin saves 70% of patients, is cheap but its use was suppressed. Its effectiveness has been known since 2020.

Anonymous said...

Don Cox: "Am I right in thinking that the main cause of the real rise is the rising Chinese middle class wanting more home comforts ?"

No, China is in recession now. Not too many people in China has much disposable income, since the collapse of Evergrand et al.

This is the insane sanctions on Russia. Which will destroy the economy of the West.

I've already seen a 100% increase in my fuel bills. That was before the last spike.

And now, the Biden regiem has just gone around to Venezula, fucking Venezula to beg for more oil.

Fuckwits!

Timbo614 said...

Given the scale of the increase I don't see how my or any supplier is going to honour their fixed price deals. I took mine out only in October last year so it has 19 months to run supposedly. At the time I thought I might be mad fixing at 24p/unit for leccy and 5.5p for Gas. The new variable prices I have seen/heard from friends are all considerably higher than I fixed at.

@Kev: just a note, all the virus numbers except deaths ticked up today for the first time in quite a while.

E-K said...

Except deaths.

Timbo614 said...

Which are a lagging indicator. As we know.

DJK said...

In Scotland, covid hospitalisations have been on a steady upward trend for three weeks now, and have reached about 2/3 of the level of the January 2021 peak. Death rates have started to rise too, albeit from a low level. No need to panic, but covid hasn't quite yet disappeared.

On Russia, the US still seems to be following the Brzezinski doctrine by fighting a proxy war in Ukraine and a full scale economic war in the rest of the world. I doubt they'll let Russia and Ukraine reach a peace agreement.

E-K said...

Timbo - Three jabs have reduced deaths per infection dramatically.

And now people who wanted us to mask up and lock down to Keep Safe now want us to impose a No Fly Zone over Ukraine and come into direct conflict with Russia.

Bizarre.

E-K said...

There is also Ivermectin which will reduce those deaths to a minimum.

Did I mention that SAGE were probably for the Greenism which made Putin so powerful and strident ?

A year old but....

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/nov/21/independent-sage-scientists-to-join-climate-crisis-battle

L fairfax said...

I hope everyone sign this petition for fracking to start
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/608745/signatures/new

Elby the Beserk said...

dearieme said...
"As it did in London before the Clean Air Act."

Lomborg points out that air pollution in London decreased at the same pace before the Clean Air Act as afterwards.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Skeptical-Environmentalist-Measuring-State-World/dp/0521010683

1:51 pm
======================================================

Maybe. Maybe not. Anyone who actually experience a real smog (I recall our family going into Manchester one day to see a geezer Cinematic epic in a cinema with a large screen for the time) and coming out and not being able to see your feet. Choked our way to the car. Mum drove very slowly, with the old man walking beside the car with a heavy duty spotlight - which drivers in those days had for this very reason.

The Clean Air Act was long overdue and more than welcome. Even though removing S02 from the atmosphere brought black spot a gogo for our roses.

Elby the Beserk said...

Ivermectin.

You need to watch this video.

https://www.oraclefilms.com/alettertoandrewhill

The use of Ivermectin was deliberately denied.

Follow the money

"n October 2020 Dr Andrew Hill was tasked to report to the World Health Organisation on the dozens of new studies from around the world suggesting that Ivermectin could be a remarkably safe and effective treatment for COVID-19.

But on January 18th 2021, Dr Hill published his findings on a pre-print server. His methods lacked rigour, the review was low quality and the extremely
positive findings on ivermectin were contradicted by the conclusion. In the end, Dr Hill advised that “Ivermectin should be validated in larger appropriately controlled randomized trials before the results are sufficient for review by regulatory authorities.”

The researcher seeking a global recommendation on Ivermectin had instead recommended against it. What were his reasons for doing so? Were his conclusions justified? Or were external forces influencing his about-face?
One year on, this film recalls exactly what happened from the perspective of somebody that experienced it first hand; Dr Tess Lawrie; also featuring contributions from Dr Pierre Kory and Dr Paul Marik who worked closely with Dr Hill during the same time frame."

dearieme said...

@EtheB: you completely missed the point. Would you like to try again?

Don Cox said...

Clean Air Act.

dearieme may not remember the Great Smog of London, which is thought to have killed several thousand people. Lomborg is simply wrong.

I wasn't living in London at the time, but I remember the newspaper headlines.
It was the Great Smog that caused the Government to introduce the Clean Air Act.

It's a pity that electric cars are so expensive and have such a short range.

However, there's a big difference between the use of low grade coal for fires and the use of gas for central heating and cooking, which has no medical effects that I know of.

Don Cox

Anonymous said...

It is unsustainable.

Thinking it through the European governments have, effectively, only just ended their Covid powers.
Those powers could very quickly enable them to shut down a large chunk of the energy consuming sector.

Instead of rationing, do cancelling.

dearieme said...

"Lomborg is simply wrong."

Lomborg cited plenty of publications. You cite none. I think you're just failing to understand what he said and somehow suppose that what you say is a rebuttal. But it isn't.

Elby the Beserk said...

Oh look - another gift from the government to us unwitting taxpayers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60653751

"Government rescue of Bulb Energy set to cost taxpayers billions more"

Good job we're all loaded...

E-K said...

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-story-of-how-ivermectin-was-cancelled/

This article from The Conservative Woman contains a truly shocking video on the suppression of the use of Ivermectin during the pandemic.

It would have been a far earlier game changer than vaccines and saved 80% of those who died.

It isn't simply a matter of "hindsight is a wonderful thing" it was quite deliberately sidelined and ridiculed as a treatment when doctors were using it to great effect in many parts of the world.

And in this vein I simply do not trust our leaders to keep us out of a nuclear exchange with Russia. The drumbeat for war is getting louder and louder.

When has a foreign leader ever been allowed to address Parliament directly ? Did ALL MPs and ministers have to stand like a bunch of six form girls ignorant of our complicity and hypocrisy in all of this ?

Only a few weeks ago they were telling us to mask up, lock down and Stay Safe.

Bizarre.

DJK said...

I also found the stunt of Zelensky addressing the clapping seals in parliament extremely distasteful. Ukranian politics appears to be a sewer filled with thugs, kleptomaniacs and actual nazis, with a strange back channel to the White House through the president's son. Please, lets dial the propaganda down a notch.

Jan said...

Today on Womans'Hour they were very gung-ho about women (Ukranian but by implication anyone) going off to fight in Ukraine. All I can think is that covid was the preparation for the mass hypnosis after which your compliant population does anything you suggest!

The count-down to war is going at full tilt with the ramping up of rhetoric by a Ukranian actor and a full House of Commons cheering him on. Churchill would be turning in his grave to have his words more or less stolen too.

DJK said...

Luckily, somebody's already written a song that (mostly) fits. All together now...

We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do,
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too,
We've fought the Bear before, and while we're Britons true,
The Russians shall not have Constantinople.

Bill Quango MP said...

That was a strange House of Commons.

Did smack a little bit of this cartoon.

https://youtu.be/9wC_iSONfWs

Anonymous said...

"Government rescue of Bulb Energy set to cost taxpayers billions more"

Elby the Beserk: "Good job we're all loaded..."


So, which MPs son/wife/brother stands to benefit from the bail out of that particular company?

Elby the Beserk said...

Anonymous said...
"Government rescue of Bulb Energy set to cost taxpayers billions more"

Elby the Beserk: "Good job we're all loaded..."


So, which MPs son/wife/brother stands to benefit from the bail out of that particular company?

2:59 pm
===================================

Indeed

Anonymous said...

Another notification from my 'energy provider' aka the financial rape centre.

Energy bill going up from 189 to 300 this month.

Can we have a sane government?

And that prat Johnson with his preening on the international stage and pretending to be Churchill. He can f*** o**.