Break out the thermals, Ice Age on the way!

The party conference season has come and gone, the normal stage managed theatricals dispensed with for another year, and what did we learn?

Well "cat gate" highlighted the lunacy of the Human Rights Act for all to see, Ken Clarke highlighted his liberal credentials, (nothing new there), Ed Balls proved that he should not be allowed within a light year of the economy ever again, and Ed Milliband demonstrated what a completely useless leader he actually is. Apart from that it was all too predictable and pretty dull if I'm honest.

Perhaps the most interesting speech of the month was made by George Osborne, or as I call him my mate George. He made what I thought was a very measured speech about the state of the World, and especially Europe's economy, there is no doubt we are living through a potential catastrophe, I just hope our leaders understand the problems and can take the measures to guide us all through.

In his speech, he made what was perhaps a most fundamental point, which has gone largely un-reported in the press so far. He said that from now on the UK would row back on the commitment to cut CO2 emissions by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050, and by 20% by 2020 and would from now on only reduce emissions in line with the European average.

Since the Kyoto protocol and the subsequent Climate Change Act was passed by parliament in 2008, the climate change zealots have driven the agenda and forced the government to introduce measures such as charging companies for every tonne of carbon they produce. This carbon floor scheme added to other measures, has the effect of putting £404 billion on the cost of producing power, which is over £750 on the annual energy bill of every household in the country for the next 40 years.

It has led to the proliferation of wind turbines that blight our landscape and achieve nothing in the reduction of CO2. It takes over 20 years of operation at 25% efficiency to pay back the CO2 generated in the manufacture and servicing of these monsters, and though we are told the lifespan will be 25 years, I am hearing that most will be worn out long before then, and all that to produce power at three times the cost of a conventional power station. Guess who pays the bill for these acts of folly, WE ALL DO!

We are told that all new coal and gas power stations must be fitted with carbon capture technology so that the nasty CO2 can be trapped and then buried in the ground for thousands of years, the only problem is that carbon capture hasn't been proven yet, and it's predicted that it will never achieve the targets set for it!

As is usually the case, when new rules are made, this country jumps through hoops to make sure they are obeyed, no matter the consequences, while all the huge polluters of the world have done nothing. The USA, China, India etc haven't even signed up to the protocol, leave alone done anything to reduce emissions, and why, because they know it is economic suicide to do so.

In Europe they are still discussing the way forward towards a 2050 target, again no agreement so far, very little implementation of penalties for carbon producers, so all we have achieved so far is to put all of our major industries, such as pharmaceuticals and chemicals at a huge disadvantage with the rest of the world, no wonder so many are looking at re-locating in a more business friendly environment.

Then today, I read in the Sunday Times, that the Met office is now predicting that far from us all frying under increasingly hot conditions as global warming takes us on the road to Armageddon, we are in fact heading towards a mini ice age!

No doubt the climate change zealots will say that the ice age will be all our fault too, but as we have had many mini and maxi ice ages during the earth's history, and will no doubt have many more in the future, I think finally we may be finally moving into a world where we will not be dominated by the doom and gloom merchants.

This planet will eventually run out of oil and gas, so it makes sense to make the very best use of what we have, I'm also sure that technology will come up with novel solutions to the power supply issues as we go forward. Whether it is Hydrogen powered cars, or Cold Fusion power stations, science and technology will find the solution.

A geologist from Shell told me about 6 years ago that if you add up all the oil that we have used from the beginning of the industrial revolution to the present time, it will make up less than 10% of the total oil that is left in the ground, so far we have only extracted the easy stuff, from now on it will get harder and more expensive, and at 30 dollars a barrel it would never happen, however at 100 dollars plus per barrel it certainly will.

In the meantime perhaps we can stop driving up energy bills un-necessarily and perhaps we can stop driving high energy consuming companies such as the North Wales aluminium smelter that has just re-located to South Africa taking hundreds of jobs with them, because of the cost of the carbon floor scheme

You never know, producing a bit more CO2 might even stave off the worst effects of the ice age that is coming?