Spindle Time: Winnies, Poohs, and Climate Neener-Neeners

Just in time for the Weekly Winston comes the fabulous news that the Bank of England has decided to put Churchill on the five-pound note.  Now, can we please put Reagan on the twenty, or something?

Speaking of Winnie, who according to legend (surely apocryphal) was the inspiration for A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, loyal Power Line reader RS sends along this adaptation of Milne to remind us of why we shouldn’t believe any of the “trigger” talk in the immigration bill, and should say “Pooh” to the whole thing (or perhaps rather that the bill is a bunch of poo):

The wonderful thing about Triggers,

Is Triggers are wonderful things.

Their standards are made out of rubber.

Their rules are made out of springs.

Their bouncy, flouncy, pouncy, trouncy,

Spin, spin, spin, spin, spin.

But the most wonderful thing about triggers.

Is they apply to no one.

For the original version, see this short YouTube clip.

Meanwhile, on the @ClimateFail front, Japan has announced that, contrary to earlier indications that they might keep their nuclear power, they’re going to increase coal-fired electricity instead:

The Japanese government is moving to speed up the environmental assessment process for new coal-fired power plants as its power sector struggles with a surging energy bill in the wake of the forced idling of much of the country’s nuclear power plants following the Fukushima power plant meltdown in 2011.

At present, it can take up to four years for approvals for new plants to be processed.

According to Japanese media reports, the government intends to make 12 months the maximum period for assessing and approving new coal-fired power plants as its utilities seek to develop more power stations to stem surging energy supply bills.

This will mean scuppering the pledge of the previous administration to cut greenhouse gas emissions:

Japan is likely to abandon an ambitious pledge to slash greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter, the top government spokesman said on Thursday.  Asked to confirm if the new administration would review Tokyo’s 2009 pledge, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the government was “moving in that direction in principle”.

“I have been saying for some time that it is a tremendous target and would be impossible to achieve,” he told a regular news conference.

Prediction: this kind of headline will come eventually to a Renewable Portfolio Standard state near you.  But even if Japan doesn’t move back into coal, there’s always the likelihood that they’ll use natural gas for the next . . . thousand years.  That’s the expectation of Charles Mann in this new, must-read article in The Atlantic, What If We Never Run Out of Oil?”, about the practically unlimited supplies of gas available in methane hydrates in the ocean, which the Japanese are working to unlock economically.  Guess who’s been backing research on this in the United States?  The Obama Energy Department.  I’m guessing they didn’t check this with Bill McKibben.

It’s a long article, but a typical Mann tour de force (if you haven’t read his 1491 and 1493, they are terrific), but worth the time to go through the whole thing, after which you can’t escape the conclusion that the anti-hydrocarbon crusade of environmentalists is over.  They’ve lost.

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