Sorry – no green squirrels to be found. Instead, here’s this jolly little chap in red on green …

 

I wish that Whitehall and their propaganda arm would cease shouting ‘squirrel’ and instead learn one thing from the actual tree rats. They’re stashing their food for the winter months. It’s called ‘squirreling away’ for a reason. If our green mandarins and government had followed their example as a matter of principle we’d not be in this situation where we’re being bombarded with scare news about no food, no meat and no Christmas turkey.

Above all we’d not be in this situation where the big energy supplies are now demanding that the current Business Secretary, Mr Kwarteng, lift that price cap of 12% (paywalled link). We’d have what is called a ‘strategic reserve’, namely a sufficient storage of natural gas to buffer the current price rises. We used to have such strategic reserves, also for oil. Now we have ‘renewables’.

Nobody in Whitehall seems to have been the slightest bit concerned about that lack. They and their propaganda MSM are instead wrapped up in their green phantasy dreams, paid for by us.Only Dan Wootton in the DM (link) mentions in passing that scrapping the green energy surcharge – 23% on household fuel bills – might be a good idea. 

Our fabulous MSM are meanwhile mixing up the crushing gas price rise with the imminent collapse of CO2 production needed for maintaining food supply, from keeping shelf life for fresh food to stunning animals for slaughter to keeping frozen food supplies running. I mentioned yesterday that two ammonia fertiliser plants here in the UK shut down on the 15th of this month because of the rise in natural gas prices. Did nobody in government demand they keep production running, perhaps with a little help from Sunak? 

Two days later the Norwegian firm YARA followed suit, giving the same reason, cutting production by 40%. This was reported by Reuters (link) – not precisely inaccessible to our intrepid MSM writers! Are they incapable of doing some digging around the interwebz? Frankly, if I can do it so can they, no? Moreover, shouldn’t our mandarins have known about this and told Sunak to hand over some dosh, if only to keep food production going?

Btw – I found a little gem regarding ammonia production. ‘Tis from wiki – something even journalist beginners might at least be expected to look up. We find in the very first segment that “China produced 31.9% of the worldwide production, followed by Russia with 8.7%, India with 7.5%, and the United States with 7.1%.” (link). I’m sure we’re all happy to beg China to help out our farmers with some fertiliser!

But there’s much more. I wanted to know why it is that we find ourselves so suddenly in this crisis. Was it a ‘perfect storm’ which nobody could possibly foresee? Well, amazingly enough. on the 30th July there was an article in the Financial Times where we read that:

“Natural gas prices in Europe and the UK have soared to some of the highest levels on record, threatening to raise costs for households and businesses as global supplies of the critical fossil fuel remain tight.” (link)

Do our mandarins and politicians no longer read the FT? How strange! We are told in the article that prices in Asia were also rising, that there’s more demand for LPG and that there’s fear this ‘global squeeze’ might get worse. Did alarm bells still not ring in Whitehall? 

The article is the first to mention that Russia has sent less gas to Europe. This one fact has been picked up across the board in the current MSM wailings and warnings – Putin bad, remember. So now we know where that accusation came from. There’s more:

“Natural gas supplies have tightened globally as big economies have rebounded from the coronavirus pandemic. Brazilian imports of LNG have climbed to the highest on record, as droughts crimp its hydropower plants. […] US output of natural gas, a key source of LNG supplies in recent years, has also been lower than forecast before the pandemic.” (link)

Furthermore, we’re told that European natural gas production has declined, both from North Sea gas fields as well as from the largest European onshore gas field in the Netherlands which will have to shut down permanently next year, a general decline “by at least 10 per cent since the first half of 2019, according to analysts.” (link). 

Does one need to be a genius to predict that such decline in 2019 – not in 2020, not in 2021 – might have repercussions for the future, pandemic or not? Are ‘energy analysts’ not capable of modelling future scenarios? Perhaps they should’ve had a word with Professor Pantsdown! Worse – not even international reports from the beginning of this month on those shortages – e.g. here and here – seem to have had an impact on Whitehall thinking, nor did this analysis published four weeks ago, on the

“dramatic draw-down of European storage stocks in the winter of 2020/21, and the subsequent slow rate of storage injections that has accompanied the sustained high European price levels.” (link). 

Did our energy bosses and mandarins think everything would be fine because ‘everybody  has done it’ – running down their reserves, that is? Did they think that it worked in the past so what could go wrong now? These various reports must have, should have been known to our business department mandarins and our MSM writers!

Sadly, they’re all so committed to CarrieBo’s green bovine excrement that their heads are firmly up their green backsides. They tell us that we must ‘use less’. Meanwhile, we’re being prepared to ‘use less’ food, in articles about ‘fresh meat production being slashed in a few days’ (link) – as if nothing can be done, as if this is an ‘Act of God’ about which nothing can be done expect suffer.

Paul Homewood, always worth reading, quotes an appeal by GWPF to suspend climate policies and cancel Johnson’s pride and joy, COP25 (link). There’s also a great piece by Matt Ridley in the DM (link) – also worth reading in full. And then there’s this gem I found in The Times of all places – how this escaped their green chief editors is unfathomable:

“An unusual lull in wind speed has set in across Europe in the past few months. According to EnAppSys, a consultancy, it has been “one of the least windy [periods] in this part of the world since 1961”. That means wind farms are generating less power than usual and gas-fired power plants have had to run more often. At times when the wind isn’t blowing, gas has been accounting for about 50 per cent of electricity generation. On some occasions coal plants have also had to fire up.” (link, paywalled)

You have to savour the irony: “we” peasants are paying a huge ‘green levy’ on our domestic fuel consumption and are now gong to be clobbered with even higher prices because gas was and is needed to keep our electricity supply going – because the ‘wind industry’ isn’t doing and cannot do that for which we’re forced to pay them.

So why is it that our MSM who have been aiding and abetting the green folly so beloved by the affluent inside and outside the M25 don’t ask these pertinent questions? It’s because  they prefer to point to yon giant squirrel, now tinged green. You really couldn’t make it up!

 

KBO!

 

Photo by hedera.baltica

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