Matt Ridley on Shale Gas
Matt Ridley is one of my favourite authors. I first read his book,Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
He has written an article for the Times today about extracting gas from shale rock and how it could solve the energy gap.
Here’s a couple of paragraphs.
Whether Mr Huhne likes it or not, a dash for gas is coming. What’s more, it is almost all good news. The discovery of how to exploit huge global reserves of gas encased in shale rock is causing epochal change in the energy scene. Shale gas is like any other gas except that it is everywhere: from Poland to Pennsylvania, from Queensland to Sichuan. There is even some in the Wirral and the Weald, but don’t hold your breath that the Nimbys will let much of it be tapped.
America, where the shale gas revolution began, has 50 years, probably more, of increasingly cheap supplies. The US is not just turning away liquefied-natural-gas tankers from Qatar (hence the current low price of gas), but considering turning gas-import terminals over to exports. Shale gas is popular with those who do not like being dependent on Putins and Ahmadinejads, so unpopular with those two martinets.
I’ll add my thoughts to his on the various ways of generating electricity or heat.
- Coal – Dirty, polluting and kills those that mine it, either directly or slowly with nasty lung diseases.
- Nuclear – Clean, but unloved by the greens and many of the general public.
- Wind – Loved by the greens, but unsightly, very inefficient and needs to have some form of backup generation.
- Solar – Alright in the Sahara, but problematic elsewhere.
- Oil – Works, but too valuable for other purposes to burn.
- Tidal – Expensive and unpopular.
- Gas – Clean, less than half the CO2 of coal and doesn’t need unsightly overhead lines, as you can distribute the gas by hidden pipes.
So as Ridley says gas from shale has a lot going for it.
I agree for now! But who’s to say something even better won’t come along in a couple of years. Never underestimate the ingenuity of the human mind and the politician’s ability to always look up the backside of a gift horse, rather than check the important parts, like the legs, heart, lungs and temperament.
Elect Your Local Councillor by Lot
This was an the heading of an article in The Times yesterday, by Vernon Bogdanor.
He makes a convincing case, giving examples from fifth-century Athens and present day, British Columbia.
This is the last two paragraphs.
Oscar Wilde once said that the prime defect of socialism was that it took up too many evenings, but the experiment in British Columbia shows that it is perfectly feasible to extend participation in a modern democracy, and such participation need not be the exclusive province of the better-off and the better-educated.
Like most other democracies, we in Britain have hardly begun to harness the potential of the ordinary citizen. What better place to begin than with local government, the Cinderella of our political institutions?
I think his ideas are worth pusuing.
Colonel Tim Collins Shoots From The Hip
Colonel Tim Collins, was the army officer who gave the inspirational speech to his troops before the last Iraq War.
He’s just been on Kate Silverton’s program on Radio 5, being as forthright as anybody I’ve heard in the last few months.
A few points.
- He said that Tony Blair had surrounded himself with obsequious advisers who weren’t up to the job.
- He wished that the second Iraq war had been more like the first, with a coalition of sixty countries.
- On Northern Ireland he said that Yesterday’s men are still trying to get the war going. But the real problem is lack of jobs and especially for young people in the province.
- He was very scathing about Defence Procurement, saying that they squandered all the money.
- Asked about the defence cuts, he said something like if Virgin could do the long-range troop deployments, the Navy the strike and the battlefield helicopters were under the Army, then what is there for the Air Force to do.
- As Colonel Tim is a proud Irishman, I was surprised he would want to have dinner with Oliver Cromwell. But then he said he wanted to get to know the man.
It was an amazing interview full of common sense and humanity.
The Universal Credit
I can’t help feeling that this is the way to go on benefits, but it won’t be an easy change.
But I think if anybody can drive it through then Ian Duncan-Smith can, as he seems to have researched the subject thoroughly.
I know my late wife, C, would be applauding the changes. In so many of her divorce cases, the client was often in despair about dealing with the various agencies. She said they all complained, that if they worked too many hours or earned just a little too much, they saw none of it, as the benfits just reduced in line. In the changes, it has been said this morning, that for every pound extra claimants earn, then they will be able to keep thirty five pence. It may not seem much, but it’s more than nothing.
There will be fights over this benefit and those outside the process will try to create havoc, just as some students did yesterday on the protests in Westminster.
Power to the People.
David Cameron is proposing putting details of a lot of Government expenditure and plans on the Internet, so that anybody with time on their hands can scrutinise it. It is an idea that I totally approve of. In fact, I think we need a lot more information there, so that people can have statistics to back their theories; conventional or not!
Miliband is Very Much Old Labour
Congratulations to Ed Miliband and his partner, Justine, on the birth of their son.
But the announcement of the birth with his weight in pound is very much in the past and well into Old Labour territory.
When our second son was born in the same hospital, forty years ago, his weight was given in kilograms.
So get into the present day, Mr. Miliband!
A Unique Place in the History of European Fascism
That was the said in Private Eye as they detailed how the senior figures in the odious British National Party might be bankrupted by Unilever for breaching Unilever’s copyright on a Marmite advert.
They finish the article by saying that they could be the first neo-Nazi party destroyed by the makers of a yeast extract sandwich spread.
C used to love her Marmite, but I don’t!
Hasty Legislation Often Doesn’t Work
This article entitled London landlords cash in as MPs play by the rules, also in the Independent, shows how when you do things quickly, you often don’t get the result you wanted. Before the expenses claim, this article says that the average monthly mortgage claim was £694.63. Now the average rental claim is £1,173.81.
It sounds like in order to get the morality right, we have created a system that doesn’t give the best value in all cases.
C would have thought this par for the course, as the number of times she came home complaining how the new laws about families, children, divorce and dogs were often worse than those that had been in force before.
Should Prisoners Have the Vote?
In my view, yes! Read the arguments on the BBC here.
After all, it might just help some to take some of their responsibilities seriously.
But will it make any difference?
It will to us, in that we won’t have to pay any damages to those who the European Court of Human Rights, think we have wronged.
But I doubt that the number who vote will be high!
But let’s wait until we see the statistics.
I think when we do, that this will be one of those stories that got a lot of people very heated, but in truth it won’t matter!
