Why solar-power is a waste of time.
Year 5 pupils in daily nationwide brainwashing
There was much hilarity at the local primary school when the teacher decided - in accordance to her superior’s orders from which she is unlikely to fully understand the origin or motive of - that the class of ten-year olds should write to the school governors requesting that the school is run on solar panels rather than evil fossil fuels. The governors are not exactly a tough Net Zero crowd, even if they weren’t expecting the letter. It’s like writing to the GP requesting fewer appointments and a harder system to book them. One can only imagine the board pressing their APPROVED stamp on the latest horde of future terrified climate crisis zealots running away in the playground from whoever is the fossil fuel that day when playing lurgy.
It’s unclear when it become socially acceptable to scare children, in this case into thinking they might be the last generation on earth. Mind you, if we truly are facing Armageddon then why are we teaching them anything other than bush survival skills at all?
I suggested that the children write in support of solar panels as the unreliability of their energy will require the school to shut down so frequently that the pupils will be sent home, which is something every 10-year old can get behind; and indeed parents once they see the Net Zero brainwashing. As the Telegraph put it, Net Zero is ‘the absurd and misanthropic creed that celebrates the closure of the Port Talbot steel plant’ resulting in job losses connected to almost every household in the town as ‘progress’, as the carbon is simply emitted elsewhere. The UK is now the only G7 nation with no steel manufacturing. It now has the competitive edge of an athlete in concrete shoes. Bravo. It’s hard not to see such disabling of national independence as deliberate.
Meanwhile, presumably the teachers will be detailing all products from which the pupils will have to abstain to reach Net Zero; that’s if they can make themselves heard over the sound of 10-year olds’ jaws hitting the floor. These include tennis rackets, life jackets, hair colouring (oh the pink-haired irony!), fishing rods, footballs, clothes, guitar strings, smart phones, crayons and balloons to name a few. Net Zero already has its work cut out to be better than a dishwasher by returning us to the Sone Age, now it has to be an improvement on sports, electronic devices and children's parties.
The entire concept of solar and particularly wind power isn’t even new, it’s just a retrograde step. On every hilltop in southern England lies the remains of a once iconic windmill that ground grain and oriented lost travellers. These were made from the wood of the land, and sat upon its hillocks without intrusion or blight. We now have the Royal society pointing out that the current UK commitment to relying upon wind power is based upon a single particularly windy year, which is like judging a relegated football team on the footage of a single consolatory goal rather than a season of inadequacy. The Royal Society’s survey of 37 years found 30 days of unsubstantial wind in 2020, 33 in 2019 and 56 in 2018. The new wind turbines are not only desecrating blights on the landscape requiring Cinderella perfect porridge wind to work, but a backward step from the logical progression of mankind’s energy source which is nuclear.
Instead, we live in a period of time where the Labour party has pledged to fast-track the building of wind and solar farms across the countryside. Daniel Zeichner, the shadow farming minister, said that proposals to destroy arable land with demonic, oil-lubricated, bird slaughter machines apparently shows that ‘Labour is the party that will deliver for rural Britain’. It’s good to see a political party finally listening to countryside campaigns wishing to displace their heritage with the ugly industrialisation of the bucolic.
In keeping with the anti-capitalist ethos of his party and therefore needing to raise his voice to be heard over the hypocrisy klaxon, Zeichner added that the reforms would ‘put money into the pockets of thousands of farmers and landowners’ by allowing them to profit from the generation of clean power. I guess it’s money landowners can use to distract themselves from the destroyed sacred landscape, fertile arable land covered with solar panels and heaps of dead birds on desecrated horizons; money can’t buy you love, but it can purchase the betrayal of beauty. This is Zeichner as farming minster, as defence minster we can look forward to his support of introducing Nerf guns; if indeed these have not yet been introduced.
So, back to the letter requesting a large primary school is run on solar power. In many cases solar panels can generate enough power for essential electrical systems and recharge a 10 kW battery to use overnight. This allows for a fridge, cooking, water heating, lights and TV and device charging. However, it’s worth noting that heating and cooling take a lot of energy. Now, I’m not up to speed with what contemporary colossally high temperatures schools are required to cook their pupils in (at my school there was a scrum to sit on the radiators for a few seconds to thaw out), but it’s unlikely to be reached via solar power. This is of course with solar panels running at optimum. You can almost hear a solar panel installation company mumbling on their website when asked about the effectiveness of solar panels in gloomy weather, as solar panels produce 24% less electricity under light cloud, 67% less under heavy cloud, and heavy rain can reduce their electricity output by 80% to 90%.
Awkwardly solar power is being most produced at the times you don’t need it: in summer and at midday when the sun’s light is at its strongest and most powerful. This contrasts with average households having a peak of activity and electricity consumption at breakfast time, and the evenings for dinnertime.
It’s unclear if the school actually will install the solar panels they claim will save the planet from Co2 emissions, causing frequent closures, after all it the teachers who will also get time off, so unanimous support is likely. But it’s certain that the authorities ruling over us want us living as Asterix did; afraid that the sky will imminently fall upon our heads. If the drawn, suspicious faces we witnessed peering over face flannels during Covid are indication then it is no way to live; fear kills as effectively as unreliable renewables in winter.
It’s hard to know what’s more exciting about the Net Zero cult, electric London buses spontaneously catching fire, EVs unrechargable in the cold, or school blackouts due to lack of sunlight. It’s certainly more exciting than the certainty of dependable fuels we’ve used to establish the most advanced societies in the history of mankind. We carpeted stony ground with shag pile and now we’re pulling it up in favour of cold, cheap laminated flooring; it’s the 90s comeback that once established will be far more regrettable than the Nirvana unplugged album.
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